by Will Storr
Kathryn pulled back in irritation at the word, the leg of her chair letting out a little yelp as it scraped on the floor.
“Disloyal? It’s not about loyalty, Killian, it’s about doing the right thing.”
“I am doing the right thing!”
“And you want me to turn a blind eye to whatever it is you’re doing?”
“I’m not doing anything except cooking.”
“You’re putting something in the food, Killian.”
“What?”
“I see you doing it all the time. From your apron! I’ve just not…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “And then, the other night, you said you were going to give up herbs. Then I remembered, when I came to visit the last time. You said there was a herb garden. Is that what it is? Are you growing some sort of drug out there?”
“You’re doing it now,” I said. “You’re questioning me. It’s disloyalty. How can I be with someone like this? How can you have no integrity?”
The wind took a strike at the chimney and, behind the thick glass of the range’s doors, the flames flared and bowed.
“Do you really think loyalty and integrity are the same thing?” said Kathryn. “Killian, they’re not. They’re opposites. If you want to look for corruption, you’ve only got to look for loyalty. It’s how powerful people get away with anything – businesses, the Church, governments, the bloody army. It’s a con. Look at my dad. Loyalty made him believe that his life was worth sacrificing for his country. For his country! For Maggie bloody Thatcher! For some flag, some pattern on a cloth. It’s the same all over Northern Ireland, loyalty to the Catholics, loyalty to the Protestants, loyalty to Britain, loyalty to the Republic. It’s loyalty that means Americans are happy for their country to trigger a holocaust against the communists. It’s the same in Leningrad and Moscow and Peking. Loyalty is a sin, Killian. It’s corruption. It’s a trick. It’s evil.”
“But you’re supposed to be a Christian, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re loyal to your church.”
“I don’t go to church, Killian. Christ, what do you know about the Church anyway?” She took a moment to steady herself and said, more calmly, “I haven’t been for years, if you must know. I don’t agree with it. If you ask me, Adam eating the apple, that wasn’t the original sin. The original sin was God demanding that the apple never be eaten in the first place, and then expecting that ridiculous order to be followed blindly, without question. That’s your loyalty, Killian. It’s cruel and pointless and bullying and it leads to evil, always. And please don’t lecture me on God. I know more about it than you do.”
I shook my head slowly in the difficult silence that followed.
“So you hate the Church and what God said in the Bible is evil? And you’re telling me that you’re some expert? I mean, you’re forgetting – it’s loyalty that makes such amazing food.”
“Why aren’t you listening to me? It’s loyalty that makes evil, Killian. It’s loyalty that stops all the chefs that work at King not going to the police and reporting him for ABH, GBH.” She paused. “You know, was it virtuous when you defended Max after he beat up Greg? Is it virtuous when you defend your mum who is clearly some kind of monster?”
I shouted then, my voice hard against the stone walls and floor, smashing at the warm memories of boyhood that still, despite everything, clung to this room, “Don’t talk about my mum!”
Her chair pulled back further and she looked towards her feet, a wet string of hair hitting her freckled cheek as defeat or regret or exhaustion calmed her a little.
“You can’t expect me to be loyal to you and your ridiculous, pointless feud against Max. It’s not fair.”
“But I’m fighting him on behalf of everyone!”
“Yes, he’s a bully. Yes, he’s an arsehole. But I’m here because I’m trying to say…” She shook her head and collapsed, slightly. “Please don’t turn into one, Killian. Please. I love you. I love you so much. I don’t want you to–”
I moved behind her, my shadow falling over her pale form, and touched her head. I sensed her body soften and she turned, arms raised. I pulled her off her chair and she stood, her face lying in the crook of my neck, her hair in my eyes, the weight of her on me, and I could see the delicate pores in her skin and feel her chest as she breathed. It was as if her embrace was a door that shut out everything that wasn’t her.
I pressed my lips into her and she lifted her head.
“All right,” I said. “I’m going to tell you the truth now. I am keeping a secret ingredient in my pouch. I’m surprised Andy didn’t tell you, really. It’s no big deal. It’s just pepper with a bit of ground clove in it. Not quite enough so’s you’d notice. But just enough to add a kind of meaty richness. I’m allowed a little trick or two, aren’t I?”
“Ground clove?” she said, with a slight scrunch of the brow. “And that’s all? Clove?”
“What’s more likely?” I laughed. “That or I’m drugging the food?”
Finally, she smiled. We kissed with a bite and fury that had no room for all that had just happened. I became lost in it. It was as if the limits of our bodies had become porous. She lay back on the table and I unbuttoned her blue checked shirt and pulled it off one arm and then the other. Then, lifting her gently by the small of her narrow back, I unhooked her bra and she pulled my shirt over my head and we kissed again, her breasts pushing into my chest and her fingers tending to my scars; luxuriating in them. Then her jeans. Top button, next button, then white cotton tight over pale skin and then her hand pulling at my wrist, pulling me away. “No, no, Kill. Sorry. That’s enough.”
I stood up, my face stinging hotly, and looked at her half-naked body that was laid out before me, the dim light forming rich shadows over her stomach and breasts and her stretched, almond belly button and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and it was turning, curling away from me.
“For fuck’s sake. Fuck!”
Anything. I would have done anything. I perched on the edge of the table and ran my hand over the candy-pink King scar on my left arm. She sat up, blushing, and crossed her arms clumsily over her chest.
“I’m a virgin too, you know,” I said, softly. “You don’t have to worry. It’ll be our first time together.”
She picked up her shirt and used it to cover herself.
“I want to wait.”
“Don’t tell me until you’re married?”
“That’s not such a ridiculous thing.”
“Come on, Kathryn, it’s not 1955. This is 1985. It’s the future.”
“It’s just what I want to do,” she said. “You understand, Kill, I know you do. It’s not never. It’s just not now.”
I could imagine what my mum would think if she could see me now. I pictured her laughing, rocking back with pleasure, that squawk that bottomed out into a witchy cackle: “Look at it! All skin and no boner.”
I walked over to the rack on the kitchen table. I deserved this. That’s what Kathryn had said. I deserved everything I could get.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. Here, cheer up. Have a cake.”
I threw it at her and she caught it, a happy, weary grin raising itself on her face. I picked up the still-warm cake I’d cautiously nibbled at earlier and glanced, with a sense of excited, guilty trepidation, at the empty space on the baking tray where the five-leafed version had been seconds earlier. There was an instant, just before she took her first bite, that I wished I hadn’t done it.
“Hmm, it’s good,” she said. “Oh, it’s so – hmm. I didn’t realise how starving I was.”
Another bite and her cheeks began to redden.
“Good cake,” she muttered – quietly this time, almost to herself, and with a slight self-conscious pull.
She ate in silence, groaning her appreciation every now and then, crossing her legs tightly as she took the final bite, pushing it greedily into her mouth with the side of her finger. She gazed at the floor for a moment, then swallowed. Her tongue swept
over her bottom lip, which had become full and red and glistening wet. As her legs tightened around themselves even further, I smiled at her disorientation.
“I love you, Kathryn.”
She pushed her hands down her thighs, as if to dry her palms, as another deep groan of pleasure came from her throat. “That was amazing,” she said, staring at her knees. When she looked back up, through damp strands of dark hair and bleeding mascara, her eyes had taken on a look of pleading. I moved towards her and she lifted her arms to receive me, her shirt dropping from her chest, her legs uncrossing. She whispered hungrily, “Show us your scars then.”
And she was there, where they found her on that night and where they’d continued to find her every night since. She was there, in the place that the cottage held her. To repeat, to attempt to heal.
Mary, weak and wordless up sixteen steps. The finder man says, “Take off her black thrumb’d hat because I cannot abide to look at her.”
She turned from the men and looked at me.
“Why didn’t you stop them barking?”
And the finder man turned towards me, his wide jaw and small eyes and high stubble all set in ugly English dread.
“Who’s there?” he said.
He could sense me as I watched him.
“Foul spirit, show thyself.”
And I was the dog that he wanted.
I was King of the Wastelands.
King of the Mischief.
King of the More/
I was the red and the yellow and the black.
And I would never stop them barking.
46
Sleep came, that night, in a thin layer. I kept breaking through its surface, disturbed by dreams and by joy and the unbelief: Kathryn – my Kathryn – was naked on the mattress beside me. I had decided to forgive what she’d said the night before. I loved her so much, how could I not? When she finally stirred, I was studying her ear, how it curled so perfectly, so tenderly, like young coral.
“What happened last night?” she murmured.
My arm, which I had draped over her chest just high enough that I could feel the kiss of her breasts on my skin, squeezed in. “Hmmmm,” I replied, approvingly, and pushed my nose deeper into her neck so I could gorge once more on her dark and sweet pyjamary scent. She stiffened, her head lifting just a millimetre.
“What did you do to me?”
“What do you mean?”
She turned her head, dislodging me from the warm nest I’d made of her.
“Last night. What happened?”
“Last night was amazing, Kathryn. It was amazing.”
She was looking down towards the sheet, her eyes disconnected.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” she said “You must think I’m an idiot.”
She stood, pulling the sheet up with her.
“I know what you did. You’re a fucking nutcase,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Kathryn?”
She was a blur of frantic distress, picking up her clothes from the stone floor, whilst with an awkward, angular desperation, trying to keep the sheet covering her body.
“Don’t look at me!”
I lay still, confused and aware of her pulling her knickers up.
“What is it, Killian?” she said as she buttoned her Wranglers. “What did you put in that cake? What are you putting in the food?” She turned towards the window. “It’s out there, isn’t it?”
Standing unsteadily, I made a foolish attempt at hugging her; trying to push all her moving parts back together.
“Get away from me,” she screamed.
She ran outside and, in the daylight, she saw the gates to the physic garden for the first time, with the weather-worn gargoyles; their shallow eyes and ancient teeth, straining in their static howls, commanding the skies above them. The sight stopped her momentarily before she went inside, her feet heaving further into black earth. It was all there for her to see – the lush and the misty space, rammed with baying plants and droning with insects. She picked a head of Cauter and sniffed it.
“No!” I shouted. “Don’t!” I grabbed it off her. “Not that one – it’s poisonous.”
“Is this what you gave me? Is that what you’ve been using at Glamis?”
I tried, once more, to hold her. She pushed me away.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “This is ridiculous. Kathryn, you don’t understand – I love you.”
The cold dawn wind came through elms and spread itself cruelly about us. The cottage watched through the open gate as she collapsed onto the turf and sobbed.
“What did you do to me? What did you do to me?”
47
I arrived at Glamis late, and as soon as they saw me, every cook in the kitchen could tell how the day was going to pass. It amazed me, how I could manage the mood of my subordinates by controlling the look in my eye and the muscles in my face. The longer they searched in vain for some sign of my acceptance, the harder they worked to earn it. Throughout most of the service, none of them even had the courage to meet my gaze, and I remembered, with more bemusement than shame, how just a few weeks ago I had let this kitchen overwhelm me.
Everything was going perfectly. The diners were getting served promptly and, when I found mistakes, I had no trouble in letting the individual responsible know that such lapses were intolerable. Then, at the height of service, Drusilla the maître d’ gave a nervous little bow and said, “Mr McClaren wishes to send his compliments to the chef.”
Everything was fine. But for some reason, I reacted by punching a silver cloche off the shelf above the pass with the heel of my hand. It bounced off the back wall and clanged onto the tiles. With the disorientating feeling that my rage had become something sentient and separate from me, I found myself shouting at her, “No more compliments to the chef! No more! I never want to hear another compliment to the fucking chef.”
She gave another fluttering little bow before retreating.
“Yes, Chef. Of course, Chef.”
I watched Drusilla slip elegantly away and realised that I was panting. The backs of my hands were blotchy with red and white and I had a feeling of numbness and tightness over my temples and cheeks. I instructed Marco to take care of my duties, then went to the bathroom, locking the door of the toilet cubicle behind me and resting my head uncomfortably on the plastic pipe that led to the cistern. It wasn’t long before I found myself picking, distractedly, at my scabs.
When I had imagined being in this position – when I had fantasised about being a world-renowned chef – I always seemed to conjure one particular image: me, at the pass, smilingly dressing a plate as friendly eyes looked on. I would be confident, at ease, popular with my brigade. But there was something wrong with my daydream; a disquieting flaw at its heart. That imaginary chef at that imaginary pass was not me. It could never be me. No matter how much I achieved in my career, I couldn’t be that person. I wondered, as I sat there, if what I had thought had been a fantasy about success in the world had actually been a yearning for change in my soul.
I asked myself what Dorothy would have thought of everything I had done.
And that was it. That was enough.
* * *
During lunch service the next day, I watched the first few plates go out in a state of proud, paternal terror. I had prepared them honestly. I had not used any Earl’s Leaf. And there they went, my true children, sent out into the world towards uncertain fortune. My confidence gathered as an hour and then another passed by, apparently without anyone noticing. At about one fifteen, Drusilla was back.
“I’m sorry, Chef,” she said, clacking those long fingernails together nervously in front of her. “It’s Mr Langeau. He’s insisting it doesn’t taste the same.”
I put down the spoon I’d been holding and dried my hands slowly on my immaculate torchon. She clacked again.
“He’s one of our regulars, Chef.”
“Yes, I know that. What did he say?”
Her nostrils flared; her e
yelids panicked.
“He says he won’t pay fifteen pounds for five-pound food.”
“Fucker,” I said. “Okay. Don’t worry, Drusilla. Give me a minute.”
Just this once. To ease me in. I made Mr Langeau another entrecôte with sauce Glamis. I gave him a double dose of the leaf, to shut him up. But then another plate came back and then another. The fourth one, I smashed on the floor, the china and sauce flying towards Marco like shrapnel and napalm.
“You fucking useless prick,” I shouted at him. “You’re fucking all my food up.”
“It’s not me, Chef,” he shrugged.
I looked at the congealing, returned plates that were piling up in front of me.
“Eat them,” I said. “Take these plates, take them out into the restaurant, stand at the bar and eat what’s on them.”
“But, Chef!” he said.
“Drusilla!” I called the maitre d’. “Marco’s hungry. Gather these plates up. Help him with them. He’s going to have his lunch at the bar.”
I watched Marco, looking paler than ever, place his tongs to the side and walk into the restaurant, his hips moving with a defiant lumber and roll. When he came back, I thought, for a moment, that he might physically attack me.
When service was over, I closed the door of my office and phoned Kathryn.
“Hello?”
It was her.
“Hello?”
Her voice. I loved her voice.
“Killian?”
I loved her.
“Killian, is that you?”
I put the phone down.
* * *
The following morning, I arrived at work before anyone else. I hung my coat on the mahogany hat stand that I’d purloined from the restaurant and checked my watch: 06:35. Damn. Too early. I sat behind my desk and looked at the telephone. Probably I should leave it until seven. I browsed through the order book, distractedly. I looked at the time again: 06:39. Fuck.
At 06:48, I dialled her number. I counted: it rang eleven times before she picked up.