by Will Storr
“Quail’ll be there in thirty seconds,” Andy called. “Give it five minutes to rest.”
“Yes, Chef.”
When it was ready, Andy arranged the quail on one of the new white plates with some steamed vegetables that he’d finished in a little butter. I watched him taking charge of putting the dish together with his usual purring craftsmanship. Without meeting my eye, he held out his hand for me to pass him my pan of sauce. I ignored the gesture, and deliberately defying the Nouvelle Cuisine practice of saucing beneath the protein, I spooned it over the still-steaming bird.
Lifting the quail to one side, I made a kind of platform with the carrot spears and baby potatoes and put the meat back down on top it and drizzled another spoonful of sauce to repair the messy damage. It looked ridiculous, but that wasn’t the point. I had made the dish mine.
“Okay?” I said.
Andy looked at the plate.
“If you want,” he shrugged irritably.
I picked up the dish.
“Let’s do this,” I said, and led the way out onto the restaurant floor.
As it was a bistro, the dining space was larger than King’s and the walls had been hung with dark-framed mirrors, decorated in gold leaf. The workmen were halfway through painting the ceiling a faux tobacco colour – Ambrose had given them the afternoon off, lest the fumes interfere with our tasting session – and there was a row of antique hat stands in the small corridor on which coats were to be hung. An exciting touch was the addition of an ostentatious “top table” that was constructed on a small platform and would be discreetly spotlit. There would be a twenty-per-cent surcharge for its use and, Ambrose predicted, would be highly in demand by newly minted City folk.
Still, all the decorators’ best endeavours couldn’t block out the deadening unromance of London that poured in through the windows that morning – the dreary dishwater light; the combustion farts of taxis and buses; the seagullish calls of a nearby newspaper seller. It was gloomy in the interior, too, as the bulbs hadn’t yet been fitted. I could only make out the silhouette of Ambrose with his sleeves rolled up, leather-bound notebook on the table and cigarette on the go. And – he was with someone. Her hair, I noticed, was in a ponytail that had been tied low, from the base of her head. For some reason, it hurt me that she was wearing it in a style that I’d not seen before.
“Kathryn!” I said. “Great! How are you? You’re here!”
She was leaning forward, her shoulders in a slump, her eyes cast down. She looked at me briefly before readjusting, quickly, to meet the eyes of Andy behind me.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
I placed the plate down carefully in the middle of the table and grinned at her again.
“Presentation’s a little off,” Ambrose said, as I pulled out the chair next to Kathryn. “Why is it piled high like a tower? Nobody wants high food. They want it flat on the plate. They want to see what they’re eating. And let’s be more generous with this sauce please. This isn’t King – we don’t want too much china showing. We’re supposed to be giving the impression of plenty. Right, come on ladies and gentlemen. The big moment is upon us. Who’s going to say grace?”
I tried to coax Kathryn into smiling at Ambrose’s joke. She sat there awkwardly, staring at the dish, her lips pushed together in a sad, swollen pucker as Ambrose tipped the beautifully browned bird off its platform and sliced into the breast. He pushed a piece of carrot onto his fork and then, with his knife, spread a generous layer of the green-flecked sauce over it. My heart made its presence felt on the inside of my ribs as I followed the parcel through the air, trailing a faint pall of steam, to be placed on the proprietor’s much-feared tongue. He pulled the fork from his mouth. There was a moment, suspended. And then it happened. His eyes dropped. There was a single chew and silence. Then he chewed and chewed and finally swallowed. His unhealthy skin gave life to a fine drop of sweat, like blood from a pinprick, above his left eyebrow. He put his fork down gently, sat back in his chair, stared at the ceiling and spoke quietly.
“Good God.”
Clearly bemused, Andy leaned forward and took a bite. As his jaws worked, a frown of intense concentration came over him, his eyes cast seriously towards his mouth.
“Fucking hell,” he said, before he’d even swallowed. “Wow. How have you… ?”
I shifted uncomfortably. He pushed the plate towards Kathryn, dipping his little finger helplessly back into the unctuous green slick and tasting it again. Ambrose gave a little loinish “uh” and relaxed his neck completely, so that his head hung limply back.
“Try that,” Andy told her. “It’s unbelievable. Oh my God, Jesus Christ. It’s amazing.”
Feverish now, Andy stood up and put his hands on his hips, staring down at the plate with a ridiculous smile on his face, his black moustache crushed up between his lip and his nose. Ambrose’s throat released another deeply satisfied post-coital grunt.
The change that came over Kathryn was something I will never forget. It was like watching a flower bloom into life. All the dour suspicion left her, her cheeks pinked and her eyes became alive and danced with admiration and pleasure and that intimate, thrilled, quasi-sexual shock that all cooks covet, that look that said I had touched her, I had given her pleasure and she couldn’t help but crave for more.
“Mmmm,” she said, modestly holding her hand to her mouth. “God, mmmmm!”
She took another bite. I noticed, with another small lurch of alarm, that her lips had pinked and swelled. I looked at the other two. The effect was less noticeable on them, but it was undeniably there.
Taking another dose of sauce, Ambrose chewed slowly and held it in his mouth for a time before reluctantly swallowing. He sat back and gazed adoringly in my direction.
“You have a first-class talent, Killian,” he said. “Absolutely first class.”
I shook my head and puffed out my cheeks, dismissively.
“Not really,” I said.
“Oh, but you do. You have a way with flavour… You, you, you… as you say, you know just how to extract layers of flavour that I have never, in all my years in this silly business… It’s like you can read the mind of the ingredients. It’s like a second sight.”
“Not really,” I said again, sitting up. “Can you really…? I mean, it’s not… It’s just seasoning, really.”
“What rot!” said Ambrose. Suddenly energised, he leaped to his feet and clapped his hands together, his expertly concealed kettle-drum belly bouncing like a bald extra head above his belt. “And this is just the first dish of the day! Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’re going to have a success! A huge bloody success!”
“They’ll be queuing round the block,” said Andy, his mouth full again.
“Rubbish!” shouted Ambrose. “They’ll be queuing round the block to get to the block where the fucking queue starts. They’ll be rioting in the streets. Bravo, Killian! Bravo!”
* * *
That afternoon we ate our way through the entire menu. By the time we were done, no one seemed in any doubt about the sure success of Glamis.
“You’ve done really well,” said Kathryn.
Ambrose and Andy had disappeared into the kitchen. Kathryn had lifted her ski jacket from the back of her chair and, looking towards the door, was pulling it on.
“Are you going?” I said.
I put my hands on my hips and tried to looked relaxed about things. Breezy.
“Stuff to do,” she said. “Mum.”
“You know – what Max said,” I began. “It’s not true, Kathryn.” Relaxed and breezy. “He’s a fucking liar.” I could feel a vein pumping in my forehead. “I know you think I worship him, and you probably had a point, back then. But he lied about you and he lied about my sauce. And, you know, the whole reason I want to do this – the whole reason I asked Ambrose to hire you – is because I want us, me and you together, to show him how it’s done. Nouvelle Cuisine is over. We’ll prove it to him, and to everyone.”
Re
laxed and breezy and carefree. That’s the way to do it.
“Blimey, you’re keen,” she said. “You’ve never even run a pass before.”
A light above us began flickering. A yellowish pall blinked on and off over Kathryn’s nose and cheeks and shoulders. Yellow and black, yellow and black, yellow and black, like wasps.
“Well, if you don’t think I can do it…”
“I didn’t say that.”
“…why are you here?”
“Because I need a fucking job.”
Relaxed and breezy and I could feel this sensation of density expanding behind my eyes and this restless, flapping urge in the joints of my fingers and the bones of my knees. The bulb flickered all over the white tablecloth. I sat back down and put my head in my hands. A passing motorbike rattled the window and I felt its vibrations in my elbows. I heard the chair next to me being pulled back and the sound of Kathryn sitting into it. She took my wrist and pulled it away from my face. For the first time since we were at King together, I saw the beginning of her vulnerable smile.
“Sorry, Killian,” she said. “I’m sure you can do it.”
I ignored her. She let me go and smoothed down the front of her jacket, which had puffed up with the action of her sitting.
“Max lied, you know,” I said. “I didn’t tell him anything.”
“I know. Ambrose told me.”
The bulb stopped flickering.
“So why are you being like this?” I said. “Why is it still weird between us?”
“I’m just nervous about it,” she said. “You know, my life has been all over the place.” A silver fly landed on the back of my hand. I watched its legs bend, its proboscis lower into one of my scabs. “I just want a piece of calm. A bit of peace. I don’t know if us, being together – maybe it’s not a good idea.”
It started again, the maddening strobe, flashing on the walls and our skin and the marks on the tablecloth. It was enough to trigger a migraine. One of the cuts on my wrists began to itch. I scratched. As the fly zoomed off, small crumbles of dried blood fell onto a white napkin.
“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, squinting.
“Breaking up with you made me realise how much…” She looked away, briefly losing her thread. “I feel a lot for you, Killian. A lot. I can’t go through anything like that again. It was too much.” She hid her face in her hands. “You’re too damaged, Killian. You’re a fuck-up.”
I reached out and touched her chin with my finger. Her skin felt smooth and cold and soft and she didn’t move away. The corners of her mouth trembled slightly.
“Yes but, Kathryn, you’re a fuck-up, too,” I said, smiling. “We’ll be fuck-ups together.”
Nothing happened for a moment. I looked at her sitting there, utterly unable to fathom what she was thinking.
“I love you,” I said.
“Don’t make me cry,” she said.
I took her hands in mine and squeezed them, rubbing my thumbs over the surface of her palms. I felt removed, as if I was looking down on us, huddled together under the failing bulb. I would have to remember this; to store the sensory information of what it felt like to touch her skin; to feel her narrow wrists; to breathe her out-breaths; to be so near to her face and body without her flinching. I’d have to save it, carefully and accurately, just in case.
“I promise, Kathryn,” I said. “It will be worth it. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I really believe in my sauces. I really think I can make Glamis a massive success. Then you can earn proper money and get your mum out of that awful home. Get her somewhere where they’ll look after her properly.”
She peered up at me.
“It’s like you told me,” I continued. “You don’t get anything in the restaurant business unless you earn it. And I deserve this. So do you.” I paused. “That’s what I think, anyway. Maybe you don’t. But can’t we give it a go, just in case?”
She looked down again, still unresponsive. I whispered, “Max is over. We’re going to make sure he is. We’re going to fucking destroy him.”
As she leaned over and put her arms around me, the bulb started going again. “Our success should be for our sake, not just to get back at him,” she said.
“So…?”
She smiled. “But if I ever find myself having to put a Max mask on just to get your attention, there’ll be trouble.”
As soon as she was safely gone, I would climb onto the table, remove my shoe and, holding the chandelier with one hand, smash the flickering fucking lightbulb with the heel. I would savour the small calamity of sound and the sensation of hot glass falling all over me.
“I swear,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about any more. Everything’s going to be perfect.”
37
The media greeted the opening of Glamis with a level of expectation that the British restaurant world had never witnessed before. In the kitchen, we couldn’t see the cameras and the lights and the crowd of more than two hundred that had amassed on the street to glimpse the arrival of the various celebrities that the Sun, the Mirror, the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and even the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph had listed as attending. We could feel the excitement, though. We were all experiencing everything in sharper focus. Colours and smells and tastes became richer and time ticked by with a swagger that was palpable, as if the seconds themselves knew they were a part of history.
During the weeks in which the decorators had been finishing and Andy and I had perfected the menu, Ambrose had been squeezing all but the last drips of goodness out of his contacts book. He arranged for us to give confidential tastings to newspaper editors and food critics and other powerful entities on the strict condition that they wouldn’t formally review the restaurant until it opened. It was a masterful plan. On a series of afternoons and evenings we cooked for everyone in London that mattered. Encouraged by the scent of exclusivity and secrecy that surrounded it, word bounced from critics to journalists to their influential friends.
Our most nerve-wracking night was a blustery Tuesday, when Barry Gruenfeld came for a meal. Gruenfeld, who was celebrated in the nation’s kitchens for the gripping drama of his ugliness – his nose like a stamped frog, his lower lip sitting above his top one and his foul-smelling, rot-toothed smile – wrote a weekly column for the Sunday Telegraph and was easily the most feared critic in the country. Two years previously, Max Mann had had him evicted from King and – rumour has it – subsequently threatened him after he poked fun at the Gentleman Chef’s appearance on the cover of the Radio Times with two fried eggs placed over his eyes. Ambrose was forced to hush the incident up with some senior publishing figure – a straightforward enough task, given that the executive happened to be a regular at his debauched Saturday parties. Aware of these behind-the-scenes machinations and livid at his neutering, Gruenfeld had never forgiven Ambrose or Max. For more than two years, he’d used every excuse he could to snipe at King in print.
Initially, he refused to even take Ambrose’s calls. But after several days, in which he suffered wave upon wave of thrilled gossip from his friends and colleagues, he finally relented. Of course, we fully expected Gruenfeld to feign disgust or lack of interest when he got here. What he did, on the night, was clear his throat, adjust his tie and, with a wide-eyed nervous politeness, ask for second helpings.
The rest of Ambrose’s formidable business talents had been directed towards his network of kitchen informers. He tapped them all in an attempt to locate the most skilled young chefs in the country and then tempt them with the promise of long hours, low wages and a possible scintilla of reflected glory, all the while making it sound like the most astonishing deal imaginable. I blamed the fact he was only partly successful on Max working against us. The result was that we ended up with what must have been the youngest brigade in the country – only two were over twenty-six. I found myself in charge of my own apprentices, the best of which was a shy boy from Leeds named Marco who’d trained previously at the Box Tree in I
lkley and with the Rouxs. He was oddly attractive, with his long curly hair and the grave bags beneath his eyes that gave him a look of power and wisdom. He had an urgency and an instinct for graft that reminded me of myself. I liked Marco a lot. I believed he’d go far.
By the time opening night came around, we were already booked up for three weeks. Due in the restaurant for that first service were Phil Collins, Moira Stewart, Ian Botham, Nik Kershaw with his wife Sheri, Steve Davis, Keith Floyd, and three of Five Star along with a few actors from the new BBC TV show called EastEnders. And so, on the insistence of Ambrose, was Chef Max Mann.
As the hands on the large clock on the wall shifted thrillingly towards six p.m., I stood at the pass with Kathryn to my left and Andy to my right, and gathered the brigade around me. Everything in the kitchen was clean and perfect, including my chefs, their eyes direct, their hands folded obediently by their waists.
“Chefs,” I said. “We have a lot to prove tonight. As most of you know, Glamis started out as nothing more than a side project for Ambrose – somewhere he could relive his wild Parisian days. As you can tell by all the noise outside, we’re already punching considerably above our weight. It’s not every ‘local’ bistro that gets three out of Five Star in on their opening night.”
I paused to let this fact sink in.
“We’ve done this by creating a brilliant menu. But make no mistake, not everyone sitting out there in the restaurant wants us to succeed. Some actively want us to fail. You know who I’m talking about. Some of you have worked for him. One or two of you may still feel a little bit of loyalty to him. If so, you can take off your apron and walk out of that door right now, because I don’t want you here.”
Nobody moved.
“It’s not just his silly 1970s food that has no place in this restaurant; it’s his outdated way of running a kitchen. I’m going to make a promise to all of you right now. There will be no place in here for the kind of bullying that happens at King. Disrespect will not be tolerated in my kitchen, not from anyone. We will prove to Max Mann that you don’t need to torment people to achieve the highest standards. I expect every cook here to want it badly enough to be their own drill sergeant. You should want it enough that you stop thinking about yourself, your wellbeing, your wants, when you’re in here. You should walk in at seven every morning, slip into your clogs and become a part of Glamis. Everything you do should be for the restaurant. Because your career – everything that you work for – lives and dies by the restaurant. We need to prove to Max Mann that the days of Nouvelle Cuisine are over. The days of Max Mann are over! We’re delivering to the people what they’ve always wanted – the luxury, the sensation, the richness, the flavours. We’re taking the best of the past and the best of the present and, by doing so, we will become the future. And that future begins right now! So let’s get him,” I shouted. “Let’s prove to Max that we can do it. Let’s make a booking for the mad cunt’s funeral–”