A Taste of Passion

by Ashley Lister

  ‘Your eyes look a little red, Frank,’ the officer noted. ‘Are you sure you saw everything clearly?’

  Trudy remembered the sweet-marijuana smell she had caught when eavesdropping on Frank and the other chef. She was not surprised to see Frank’s eyes narrow as he took a defensive step backwards.

  Bill appeared and told Frank and Trudy to get back to work. He urged the police to use his office as a makeshift interview room but the officer said he was happier taking statements from various chefs whilst they were working.

  Trudy wasn’t going out of her way to listen but, as chef de cuisine, she was fortunate enough to be in the right place each time to hear all the kitchen staff support Bill’s version of events.

  Bill told the police he was sorry for what had happened. He had acted quickly, trying to contain the situation before it escalated into something unmanageable. He went on to make a point of stressing that a closure for Boui-Boui could be catastrophic to his business.

  The senior officer genially agreed. He said there was no point in upsetting anyone’s business for the sake of a simple altercation between a pair of grown men.

  Then he charged Bill with assault and said he was being taken into custody.

  ‘What the hell?’ Frank murmured.

  Trudy had been wondering the same thing.

  Two uniformed officers appeared at either side of Hart. They each placed a hand on his arm. Their faces were grim and expressionless. One of them produced a pair of cuffs.

  ‘No!’ Trudy couldn’t contain the cry. The idea that Bill was going to be arrested for defending himself seemed ridiculous. ‘You can’t do this,’ she insisted. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’

  No one bothered acknowledging her protest.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Bill grumbled. He pulled away from the officers and shrugged his shoulders free from their grips. He glowered at one and then the other, silently challenging them to grab him for a second time. ‘This is preposterous.’

  ‘Preposterous,’ the senior officer agreed. His face was thin-lipped and bereft of humour. ‘And this situation will be preposterous in handcuffs with a guaranteed overnight in the cells if I see you pulling away from my men again like that, Mr Hart.’

  Bill glared at him.

  The senior officer returned Bill’s glare undaunted. Trudy supposed it was easy for him to be undaunted when he was accompanied by a pair of imposing, uniformed officers.

  Eventually, Bill snatched his gaze away. His scowl was bitter with contempt. It remained there when he raised his head and studied Trudy. ‘Keep an eye on everything that leaves these kitchens and make sure the standard doesn’t slip by a whisker.’

  ‘Yes, chef.’

  ‘Tell Aliceon to take care of front of house. She knows what she’s doing out there. She might also want to contact Goldman and Shaw.’

  ‘Yes, chef,’ Trudy agreed.

  She had no idea who Goldman and Shaw might be but she suspected that it was important she get that message to Aliceon.

  Bill called for Frank. The saucier appeared immediately. He regarded the arresting officer with an undisguised sneer of contempt.

  ‘My sous is in charge tonight,’ Bill said. ‘You’ll make sure that everyone respects her authority and does as she tells them.’

  ‘Yes, chef.’

  And then the officers were guiding him firmly out to the waiting police car.

  Trudy watched him go and tried not to let tears well in her eyes. They were taking him away from her. All he’d done was defend himself against a man wielding a knife. How was that an offence that merited arrest? Admittedly, Bill had struck the first blow, and he was the one who beat the man into unconsciousness, and kicked him whilst he laid defenceless on the ground. But she was sure that none of those details meant he deserved to be arrested.

  As Bill lowered his head and got into the back seat of the police car, Trudy thought he looked like a man used to being bundled into the back of police vehicles. It was not a pleasant thought and she made a mental note to ask him if she was right when they were next together.

  He occupied the centre of the back seat.

  His shoulders were squared and his jaw was set determinedly.

  Watching the car drive away, she wished he would glance in her direction and give her a reassuring wink or flash the disarming smile he had that always told her things would be OK.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ Frank asked.

  She let out a long sigh and considered the situation. If she was going to cry she would do that later. For now, the kitchen needed to operate and it needed to operate with the same efficiency as if Bill was still at the helm.

  ‘There are fresh orders coming in and, following the contretemps from before, we’ve got a small backlog,’ Frank explained. ‘What are our priorities?’

  She responded without thinking. ‘Have Kali get the desserts cleared first. Send a commis in to help her if need be. Then we can start to work through the back orders of mains and then starters.’

  Frank nodded. ‘Very good.’

  ‘Who’s covering the Smurf’s station?’

  He blinked. ‘Good question. I don’t know.’

  ‘If no one’s doing his work, get a capable kitchen porter to stand in for him.’

  ‘Yes, chef.’

  It was the first time she had been addressed as chef in a kitchen. She was the chef de cuisine in a Michelin-starred restaurant and the saucier had said, ‘Yes, chef’ in response to one of her commands.

  The words did not give her the thrill that she had always hoped they would.

  Instead, she remained fearful for Bill in the custody of the police.

  Trudy stepped through to the front of house to find Aliceon.

  ‘Chef?’ Aliceon began courteously. Her voice was lowered but, when she spoke, she managed to enunciate every word with clinical audible precision. ‘Is something wrong? I saw Mr Hart being driven away with the police.’

  ‘There’s been a disagreement in the kitchen,’ Trudy admitted. ‘Mr Hart is helping officers better understand what occurred. He asked if you could look after the front of house.’

  ‘Yes, chef.’

  ‘He also mentioned something about contacting Goldman and Shaw?’

  ‘I took the liberty of phoning them,’ Aliceon smiled. When she saw the look of confusion on Trudy’s face she added, ‘They’re Hart’s solicitors. I didn’t think he’d gone for a ride in a police car because he fancied the excitement.’

  Trudy’s smile was sour.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘If he fancied excitement, he wouldn’t have to leave the kitchen, would he?’

  Chapter 24

  The evening passed in a whirl. The chefs worked hard to maintain the standard that Bill had set. Trudy found she had little to do except compliment most of them on their excellence. There were a couple of dishes that she challenged. The boucher presented a handful of plates that didn’t please her eye. The fillets looked hurriedly prepared on one dish and she wasn’t happy with the lack of an aesthetic curl to one piece of rolled sirloin. The boucher grumbled dour agreement to her criticism but he took the plates back to his station and quickly revised them to her standard.

  Similarly Arnold, the porter covering the Smurf’s station, fluffed a grilled starter. He had crisped the edges to a black that Trudy thought unacceptable for the standards of Boui-Boui.

  Arnold made no complaint when Trudy told him to do it again. He seemed oddly impressed that she had taken the trouble to remember his name. When he presented a second attempt at the dish to her, Trudy thought it looked as good as anything she could have made.

  Aliceon came into the kitchen an hour after Bill had been taken.

  ‘Do you have a moment, chef?’

  Trudy resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder to see who Aliceon was addressing. She made an effort to remember that she was the restaurant’s head chef.

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘The press have just been on the
phone.’

  Because Bill was so laidback and approachable Trudy found it easy to forget he was more than a mere local celebrity. He was a local radio presenter. He was a restaurateur with Michelin stars. He was the host of a modestly successful cookery show from one of the smaller satellite channels.

  She stopped herself from asking why the press had been in touch. The answer seemed blatantly obvious. A handful of damning tabloid headlines loomed large in her mind’s eye.

  HELL’S KITCHEN

  A SERVING OF CONCUSSION

  TV CHEF BEATS THE EGGS AND PUNCHES THE STAFF

  She almost trembled at the horror of such lurid assaults on Bill’s character.

  ‘Jesus, Aliceon. What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them I hadn’t heard anything about William Hart being involved in a fist fight. I told them, to the best of my knowledge, Mr Hart was still hard at work in the Boui-Boui’s kitchen, undertaking his responsibilities as owner and chef de cuisine.’

  Trudy considered this for a moment. ‘Did they believe you?’

  ‘Of course not. They might be journalists but they’re not idiots. They asked to speak with Bill.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Trudy gasped. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told them that such conversations were against restaurant policy.’ She grinned slyly and added, ‘I got to practise that line quite a lot recently. I’m now proficient in that particular lie thanks to you.’

  Trudy blushed.

  ‘I said they should contact Mr Hart’s agent if they wanted to discuss spurious media reports,’ Aliceon went on. ‘I said he was more well-versed in understanding how they were breaching litigation laws. Then I severed the connection.’

  From the first moment they had met, Trudy had known Aliceon was an extremely competent maître d’. Now she was able to see the woman was one of Boui-Boui’s most important assets.

  ‘Thank you for handling that so well.’

  Aliceon’s smile was guarded. ‘You don’t need to thank me. I have no problems lying to journalists. Most of them lie to us on a regular basis.’

  Trudy flinched from the comment. She had encountered friends who were cynical about the truth of news stories in the past but there was an edge to Aliceon’s voice that suggested her antagonism was born from bitter experience.

  ‘I wouldn’t have known how to respond to a call like that,’ Trudy admitted. ‘Your skills at damage control are incredible. Thank you.’

  ‘Just doing my job,’ Aliceon said quietly. But her smile looked a little wider when she slipped out of the kitchen and back to the front of house.

  * * *

  The workload refused to subside. Orders came in a steady stream and dishes were presented for her inspection at an unrelenting pace. Each time she had critically appraised a plate, scouring the appearance to make sure it looked good and was up to Boui-Boui’s meticulous standards, someone else was shouting for her attention.

  ‘Chef?’

  ‘Chef!’

  ‘CHEF!’

  By eleven thirty the last of the plates had been served.

  Trudy congratulated the staff on a night’s work well done. She ordered a thorough clean-down and went out to the front of house to find Aliceon. The maître d’ was standing by the reception desk, chatting animatedly with one of the waitresses. Trudy removed her toque and combed splayed fingers through her blonde hair. The collar of her whites was already open and sticky with the remnants of kitchen steam and hard-won sweat. For the first time that evening she realised she had been perspiring heavily after a long night’s arduous labour.

  ‘Excellent work, chef,’ an elderly man said, walking past her. ‘That was one of the most delicious meals I’ve enjoyed in a long time.’ He shook her hand and his dining companion, an equally elderly lady, nodded and graciously said how much she’d enjoyed the food.

  ‘You’re very talented,’ she told Trudy.

  Trudy was thanking them and saying that it wasn’t just her, explaining there was a team of competent and hardworking professionals in the kitchen, but the couple brushed her comments away as though they were hearing false humility.

  Aliceon appeared by her side, smiling at the couple and ushering them firmly but politely out the door.

  ‘Has everyone gone home?’ Trudy asked.

  Aliceon nodded towards table thirteen.

  ‘We have an odd couple on the nutcase table.’

  ‘The nutcase table?’ Trudy repeated. ‘That’s the table I used when I first visited Boui-Boui.’

  ‘That’s around the time we started calling it the nutcase table.’

  Trudy stuck out her tongue but she couldn’t contain her grin. It seemed almost unthinkable but she believed the inscrutable and aloof maître d’ was actually having a joke with her. She sat down at an empty table and Aliceon took an adjacent seat.

  ‘You handled things well in there,’ the maître d’ said. ‘It seems Mr Hart was right to take you on.’

  If Bill hadn’t taken her on, Trudy knew the fight would never have happened and Bill wouldn’t have been spending the night in a jail cell. She didn’t say the words. Instead, she glanced at table thirteen and saw it was occupied by a mismatched couple.

  He looked to be in his eighties.

  She looked to be in her twenties.

  At first glance Trudy guessed they might be a grandfather and granddaughter. She lowered her voice and asked, ‘Why did you call them the odd couple?’

  ‘You don’t see anything wrong with that?’

  ‘A grandfather and granddaughter dining out together?’ Trudy returned archly. ‘No. I don’t see anything wrong with that.’

  ‘They’re not a grandfather and granddaughter. She’s a gold-digger and he’s her sugar daddy, if that’s not mixing metaphors. Look more closely.’

  Trudy looked more closely. The couple were holding hands and she noticed their fingers were interlocked the way lovers would sometimes interlock fingers.

  But that meant nothing.

  Holding hands was an act of intimacy, certainly. But it wasn’t exclusively an act of intimacy. She frowned, wondering why Aliceon would be making such a big deal about such a small matter. It certainly didn’t mean the woman was a gold-digger or that the man was her sugar daddy. ‘They’re holding hands,’ she said. ‘Grandparents and grandchildren are allowed to hold hands.’

  ‘Look under the table,’ Aliceon suggested. ‘They’re playing footsie. I really don’t think that grandparents and their grandchildren are allowed to do that.’

  Trudy lowered her gaze and saw the maître d’ was right. Beneath the table the young woman had removed one shoe and was teasing her stockinged-toes against the crotch of the elderly man facing her. They continued to hold hands above the table, smiling at each other with expressions of blithe delight.

  ‘Jesus,’ Trudy whispered. ‘They’re really going for it.’ She glanced at the maître d’ and asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

  Aliceon snapped her fingers and one of the waitresses appeared. Trudy recognised the fuchsia-haired young woman as Nikki, the same waitress who had been charged with serving blueberry muffins to Trudy on her first night at Boui-Boui.

  ‘Two mineral waters, please,’ Aliceon told Nikki.

  Nikki disappeared to return a moment later armed with two bottles.

  Aliceon thanked her, twisted the cap from her bottle and then began to drink.

  ‘You’re going to drink water at them?’ Trudy said quietly. ‘That’s not much of a plan, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Aliceon corrected. ‘I’m not going to drink water at them. We’re going to drink water at them together. They’re going to finish their kinky little game. They’ll eventually go home without us stepping in. And, in the interim, you and I can pretend that such a broad age difference is normal in a healthy relationship –’

  Trudy scowled at that comment, fairly sure it was a jibe against her and Bill.

  ‘– and I can ask how you’re enjoying your relationship w
ith my ex-husband.’

  It took Trudy a moment to work out what that meant. When she had unravelled the puzzle her jaw felt like it had dropped. The mismatched couple on the nutcase table were all but forgotten as she reeled to the revelation.

  ‘You were married to Bill?’

  ‘I was his second and fourth wife,’ Aliceon admitted.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Trudy gasped. The words were out before she could stop them.

  Aliceon grinned and nodded. She sipped from the neck of her bottle.

  ‘He never said anything.’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing anyone can casually drop into a conversation,’ Aliceon allowed. ‘It’s tough enough for Bill to admit he’s depraved and enjoys his damned spanky games –’

  Trudy blushed.

  ‘– imagine how difficult it is for him to unpack the rest of his baggage within the first few days of meeting someone,’ Aliceon continued.

  There were a million questions forming at the back of her mind and she couldn’t think which to voice first. Aliceon was Bill’s second and fourth wife? How many times had he been married? Did Bill have any other kinks that she needed to know about? What other secrets were being kept from her that everyone else at Boui-Boui seemed to know?

  She sipped her water.

  ‘He must be a good man,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You’ve married him twice and you’re still happy working for him. That does suggest he’s got more positive traits than negative ones.’

  ‘He’s got more positive traits than negative ones,’ she agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s without negative traits. His habit of hitting knife-wielding commis chefs is one foible he could address. Then there’s his bossiness and his belief that his way is always right.’

  She looked as though she was going to say more.

  Trudy noticed a movement from the corner of her eye, the elderly gentleman at table thirteen beckoning for the bill, and Aliceon was responding with her usual efficient professionalism.

  * * *

  Trudy took her half-drained bottle of mineral water and went back to the kitchen. It was just after midnight. The last of the customers were about to leave. The kitchen staff had finished scrubbing down their work stations and it looked as though they had all left for the night. Admiring the pristine condition of the empty kitchen Trudy marvelled that, less than half an hour earlier, the room had been a bustling hive of shouted voices, heady fragrances and ceaseless industry.