2 The Imposter (4 page)

They went outside to the alleyway where the bins were kept and smoked their first roll-ups of the day. If Jimmy was nervous, he didn’t show it. He had always been a brilliant cook, and since Edward had been away he had become as good as Edward’s father had been.

“It’s going to be hard work today,” he warned. “We’d ideally need another two or three in the kitchen but we can’t afford it.”

“I’m back now. We’ll manage.”

They went back into the steaming kitchen. Edward opened the Frigidaire to check the ingredients: some mackerel that was beginning to turn, a tray of sickly-looking pigs’ livers, a dozen poor quality steaks. He held up a slab of meat. “What in buggery are we supposed to do with this? It’s all gristle.”

Jimmy looked up from rolling another cigarette. “I had to pay over the odds for that, too. We’ll make a nice sauce and hope for the best.”

He took out a tray filled with salted water. Two medium-sized birds, de-feathered and skinned, had been left to soak overnight. “What are these?”

“Rooks.”

“
Rooks?
”

‘Somerset Rook Pie with Figgy Paste. Legs and breast only––get rid of everything else, it’s bitter. You make a paste with bacon fat, currants and raisins and serve it with gooseberry jelly.”

“And it tastes––?”

“Bloody awful.”

The staff drifted in during the half-hour prior to the start of the shift. There was Pauline, a matronly East-Ender who made the fish stew and, during service, doled out the vegetables and side dishes; she had a problem with drink, and the glass at her side was kept topped up with gut-rot gin from a bottle she no longer went to the trouble of hiding. Gordon, the fry chef, had a history of mental illness and plenty of gaol-time. Edward’s father had always met him at the prison gates and offered him his job back again although it wasn’t purely philanthropic; Gordon was a devil behind the grill with unflagging energy and a high threshold to pain evidenced by the litany of burns and cuts on his arms. He kept a speed pourer topped up with rum in his rack and he sucked at it like a baby with a bottle. Stanley Smith dressed like a pirate with the arms hacked off his chef’s coat, lank hair kept out of his eyes with a faded headband and prison tattoos inked onto his forearms. He was the pastry chef, and knocked out row after row of delicate deserts. The kitchen staff had been unchanged for ten years, and it was only the supporting roles––the pot boys, the waiting staff––that were different.

They made their preparations: sharpening knives, folding side-towels into stacks, arranging favourite pans, stockpiling ice and boiling pots of water. Edward took an empty space and arranged his
mise-en-place
. He found a half-bowl of sea salt and cracked pepper, softened some lard, slotted cooking oil and cheap wine into his speed rack. He added breadcrumbs, parsley, brandy, chopped chives, caramelised apple sections, chopped onions and a selection of ladles, spoons and tongs. He arranged the pots and pans into a logical order and slotted his knives into a block so that they could be drawn quickly, as required. The others went about their work, well-practiced routines and roles that complemented each other perfectly. Pauline roasted bones for stock, skinned the pigs’ livers and scooped snoek from tins; Gordon blanched carrots, made garlic confit and a mayonnaise sauce with custard powder, powdered eggs and margarine; Stanley caramelised apples, lined dishes with pastry, took the plate of steaks from the larder, separated the worst and turned them into Salade de Boeuf en Vinaigrette, prepared a raspberry vinegar sauce to serve with the livers.

Edward did his best to fit in, aware that he was hopelessly out of practice. He took a bowl of scrapings and made pâté and galantine, boiled off-cuts and knocked up a strong horseradish sauce, caramelized sugar to mask the taste of over-ripe fruit. He filled a huge steam kettle with stock, a darkly simmering mixture of ground beef, meat scraps, chicken bones, turkey carcasses, vegetable trimmings, carrot peelings and egg shells.

It was awful. He wouldn’t have given any of it to a dog.

Edward went through and checked the reservation book again. They were busy for both dinner sittings. Twenty tables, four covers per table, two sittings. They would need to put out one hundred and sixty dinners. He knew it was going to be hard, bordering on the impossible, but he kept his doubts to himself.

Soon the kitchen was full of noise: profane yet affectionate insults, curses that would make a navvie blush, the bubbling of boiling water, whisks rattling against the sides of bowls, the rhythmic thudding of knives against chopping boards as vegetables and meat were diced. The ovens were turned to their highest settings and the doors left open; heat ran out of them like liquid until it seemed that the air was scorching the lungs. The temperature soared and it was soon difficult to see from the fryers at one end of the line to the ovens at the other because of the wavy heat-haze, the air squirming, like staring through the water in a fish tank.

Jimmy leant against a tiled corner, drank a beer and smoked a cigarette. He watched through a crack in the door as the diners arrived and were shown to their tables. “Here they come,” he called. The first order arrived, Jimmy taking it from Mary, the waitress, and slapping it on the pass. “One Potato Jane, one dried egg omelette, one Marrow Surprise, one Tomato Charlotte.”

That was just the first table. Things were fine to begin with but fresh orders arrived at shorter and shorter intervals and it wasn’t long before they started to back up. Starters were finished and orders for the main courses began to arrive and Edward was soon up to his wrists in meat and blood, crouching at the locker to pull out stringy steaks that already smelt as if they were on the turn. They yelled at Peter, the thirteen year old runner and pot boy, to bring more margarine and oil, and when they weren’t yelling at him they muttered at their stations, cursing, talking to the meat, urging it to cook, begging more fire from the burners, flipping steaks, poking them and prodding them to gauge how well they were done, how much longer they needed.

Jimmy called out a running commentary: ‘Sending tables seven, thirteen, twenty, thank you. Table six, two fillets, medium. Four well, two medium, one blue. Hold six, waiting for Rook Pie. Five wants Beef Salad, where’s the vinaigrette? Two rare, waiting for potatoes on two, where are the bloody potatoes, Edward? Thank you. Away we go.”

The heat got too much for Edward at around half past eight, right in the middle of the rush, the dizziness increasing in frequency and pitch until it felt as if a vice were being tightened around his forehead. He dropped to his knees, unsure of his balance and wary of toppling forward onto the burners. Jimmy yelled at the pot boy to fetch ice buckets for each of them and Edward bent down and dunked his head, the sudden shock chasing away the woozy light-headedness, at least for a few minutes.

The next four hours were a nightmare that he thought would never end. The waitresses cleared the first sitting but the second arrived before they could even catch their breath. A break was out of the question. Fresh orders for starters were delivered and they were plunged back into bedlam again. An oven went down and Jimmy had to attend to it, a bottleneck forming with orders arriving so fast that they couldn’t fight their way through it. A thick wad of them built up. The floor was ankle deep in debris: scraps of food, discarded packaging, dropped utensils and dirty towels. Edward ended up drinking the cooking wine to keep himself together, chasing glasses of it with strong black coffee and a cigarette that he stuck behind his ear until it was eaten down to the tip and burnt his skin.

Nine o’clock came and went and they were on the home straight. They cooked everything they had in a mad effort to keep ahead. The wooziness faded in and out, stronger the longer the service went on, the effect of the ice water diminishing each time Edward resorted to it. Burns and calluses marked his hands, his blood felt like it was boiling and salty sweat stung his eyes.

“Rather be in the jungle?” Jimmy called out.

“This is hotter than the jungle,” he said, “but at least I’m not being shot at.”

“Not yet!”

By the time midnight came Edward had been on his feet for twenty hours with barely any respite. He trembled with fatigue. “Keep going!” Jimmy yelled out.

At a half past twelve the last table cleared the pass. “Finished,” Jimmy shouted above the din. “That’s it.”

* * *

IT WAS GONE TWO BY THE TIME they had finally wiped down, stored the ingredients that they hadn’t used and cleaned the kitchen. They had been awake for twenty-two hours. They retired to the side exit, sitting against the wall and bathing in the coolness of the night air. Dog-ends were scattered around and an empty bottle of house wine was smashed in the gutter. Cockroaches skittered around the overflowing bins and hungry mice surfaced from the drains. The smell was overpowering: acidic like ripe tomatoes, yeasty like stale beer, pungent sweat coming off them damply. Edward was tired to the marrow of his bones, light-headed from exhaustion and cheap booze. The cold night air felt wonderful on flesh that was sore, scalded, steam-burned. He rolled two cigarettes and they smoked them in silence. It was a respite from the furnace heat of the kitchen, the yelling of cooks buckling under pressure, the crazy noise and exertion of the line.

Soho wound down around them, illegal shebeens and spielers offering late night drinks but the legitimate trade ending for another night. Drunks staggered through the alley, dragging their feet, wending left and right and somehow maintaining their balance. Neon signs buzzed until they were switched off for the night. A pair of policemen nodded at them as they passed. They looked like casualties of war, or murderers, their whites covered in blood and grime, sweaty hair plastered to their heads, nicks and scrapes covered by hastily applied sticking plasters.

“You need more help,” Edward said, finally.

“Can’t afford it.”

“Can’t keep that pace up.”

“We have to,” he said.

Edward sucked smoke deep into his lungs.

“Is it always like that?”

“More or less.” Jimmy grinned, a strained wild-eyed grimace that spoke of how thinly he was stretched. He had been working two shifts in the kitchen every day for eight months straight. His last day off had been imposed on him by Gordon, fearful that he was on the edge of a breakdown. He couldn’t have been closer to the edge than he was that night but now, with the kitchen staff at a bare minimum, there was no way that he could be spared.

“How much did you take?”

“Not enough.”

“But it was full.”

He laughed bitterly. “You know how many people paid?”

Edward shook his head.

“Half. How can I argue with them? The food’s not fit for a dog.” He sighed out, long and beaten and depressed. “We’re busy, yes, but they’re only coming because of the reputation the place has. That’s your father’s legacy, and we’re pissing it all away. No-one who came here tonight is coming back. That’s obvious. Eventually, word will start to get around. ‘I had dinner in the Shangri-La last night––it used to be something special, but now, my goodness, it’s a disgrace.’ You know what they’ll say. If we can still fill that room in three months I’ll be surprised. And every seating we don’t fill is another step closer to the end of the road. It’s pointless, Edward. It’s a losing battle.”

Edward knew that his uncle was right. Even terrible ingredients were expensive, and they couldn’t charge customers the prices they needed to break even. He’d heard about the walk-outs tonight, and the customers who had refused to pay full price. Money was tight and there was the rent to pay, and wages on top of that. Revenue was already insufficient to cover the outgoings. The future promised a long, slow, decline until the funds ran out.

“I’m going to see my father tomorrow,” Edward said.

Jimmy nodded quietly.

“How bad is he?”

“Not good. I don’t go as often as I should. It’s difficult. It’s hard to see him now.”

Jimmy leaned back against the wall, the two of them laid out like corpses, and blew smoke into the night. Edward closed his eyes and found his thoughts drifting. This was not the return to London that he had been dreaming of. He would help his uncle but he couldn’t do it by staying here. He would have to leave the kitchen. Jimmy needed money, and Edward stood more chance of finding it for him if he returned to the things that he was good at. He had a particular talent and he knew that it was the only chance they had to get the things that they needed and the things that he deserved. He was going to have to start from scratch, but that was alright; he had done that before. All he needed to do was to find the right mark.

5

EDWARD CAUGHT THE BUS to Bramley from Victoria. It was a pleasant day, early summer, fresh and bright, and he sat at the front with a sandwich and a thermos of tea and enjoyed the drive. It took a couple of hours to reach the sanatorium. The bus drew up in a quiet lane, the verges bright with spring flowers. It was housed in an old manor house and set within several acres of parkland, a grand old building with seven bays on two floors, with a three-bayed elevation surmounted by a pediment. The light glittered against a grand Venetian window set within the central bay. Edward disembarked and signed in at the gatehouse. He followed the path inside the grounds and paused on the broad terrace, taking it all in: lawns and flower-beds were arranged around the building, rows and avenues of trees set out beyond them. Smaller terraces were bright with flowers, shaded by fruit-laden apple trees, and the facility was surrounded by a high wall, then farm lands and, beyond them, an encircling belt of dark fir. He made his way towards the building, passing the kitchen-garden and the ordered rows of vegetables being tended by a pair of patients. He paused at the door to the main building until it was unlocked and opened. He greeted the guard as he passed inside, and, after asking for directions, made his way directly to his father’s room.

The sister was at her desk at the top of the corridor. Two orderlies sat nearby.