Chop Chop (10 page)

V
ery soon Bob will fade from this story, swallowed by a bigger creature. But in my head his tyranny lives on. Often in my dreams my skin is cauterized and traumatized in fresh and terrible ways. Sometimes when I shut my eyes I see the skin coming off like orange peel, or a blade sliding smoothly and firmly down the bridge of my nose, opening it up to the white beneath. I can still hear Bob's horribly blunt knife—a present from Marco Pierre White that he refused to throw away—causing tremendous grief to the shallots.
Borkunch
, it goes.
Borkunch.
And when I open my eyes, there are reminders all around me. Everything in the kitchen is designed to damage flesh. Lean boning knives that hew through sinew, razor-sharp mandolines that nibble the fingers. We have fire and boiling oil. We could defend a city against the Ottoman army. With these weapons we could fight a monster, and we shall.

The Mark of Bob was placed upon me the weekend after Dibden sank, two Sundays before Christmas and The Fat Man's fateful party. Racist Dave says I am not making this bit clear, that I am buzzing around this story in a way that makes him want to cause me harm. Fine. To make things clearer for Dave, the Mark of Bob was placed upon me on the day of the croquembouche. It was, I like to think, the event that set the wheels in motion; a cruelty too far, which led to the fall of Bob and the rise of something worse. This is how the tree of blood grows. New limbs keep sprouting. What warrants a plaster in December needs a gurney in April.

The croquembouche was Bob's idea. A wedding reception had
booked upstairs and Bob had offered to make the cake. What he meant was that Dave would make the cake—disgraced Dibden was not considered—so Bob offered the happy bride and groom the most difficult and elaborate cake he could think of.

“A fucking what, chef?” was Dave's response.

“A croquembouche,” explained Bob. “It's French. Lots of little éclairs stacked up and stuck together with caramel. It is very fucking soigné.”

“Oh.”

“On a nougatine base.”

“Right.”

“With sugared almonds.”

“Yeah.”

“And royal icing.”

“Yeah?”

“And spun sugar.”

“Okay.”

“And chocolate sauce.”

“All right.”

“And each éclair is filled with brandy crème patissière,” said Bob. “About three hundred éclairs should do it.”

“Fuck!”

Dave saw his day off disappear in a cloud of sugar. But he made it, and a traffic cone was stolen from the roadworks on the high street to contain the towering spectacle. An hour before the guests were due the croquembouche was freed to appreciative gasps from the chefs. Great was Bob's joy, for it was every bit as preposterous as he had envisaged it. Too tall to fit on a shelf, too precarious to sit out in the kitchen, it was left on the walk-in floor. When the moment came to bring the croquembouche forth, however, a terrible discovery was made. The dessert had collapsed. Éclairs covered the
fridge floor soaking up boggy black kitchen muck. The proud tower was now more of a bungalow. Dave went into battle mode, saving what he could of the éclairs and trying to rebuild and disguise the ruined structure with new caramel and sauce. Bob stalked the aisles of the kitchen, his face harder than I had ever seen it, silent and furious, looking for blood.

“Someone knocked it,” he muttered to Dave.

“It doesn't matter,” Dave replied. “Let's just bang it out.”

“Someone knocked it,” Bob muttered again.

“Can I take it now?” Camp Charles rushed in. “The bride is looking
daggers
.”

“Over my Gary Rhodes,” said Dave. “You've got to have icing sugar dusting.”

Eventually the croquembouche was dusted and sent. It was no longer soigné, or pristine, but it looked like whoever had eaten it first had been delicate about it. Bob was still livid, brooding dangerously in the corner of the kitchen. The chefs watched him fearfully. He grabbed the pan of caramel Dave had been using to conceal the flaws and took it back over to the solid top and stood there, stirring quietly. Cautiously, the kitchen returned to its tasks. The silence was terrible. After a minute or so, Bob spoke.

“
Monocle, come over here.
”

I put down the lemon I was juicing and looked around at my fellow chefs. Ramilov, quenelling eel beignets at his section, did not seem to notice. Harmony looked up for the briefest moment and her dark eyes met mine. Was that concern in her face? I was wary of trying to read her expressions. I saw Racist Dave watching through the chain screen as he smoked in the yard. Dibden, who had been reacquainted with the lowly job of grating cabbage, was staring at me, frozen to the spot. His mouth was drawn tight. Very slowly and slightly he shook his head.

“
Oui, chef
.” I walked toward the stove.

“Hold out your hand,” commanded Bob.

What else could I do? It seemed a reasonable request. I didn't know what would happen next. I didn't know Bob. I held out my hand, palm up.

“Other side,” said Bob.

I turned my hand over. Dumbly I watched him gather a spoonful of the bubbling caramel. How stupid I was! Just watching him like that, with my hand outstretched . . . When I think about that moment, I do not see Bob in my memories. Only me, standing there like an idiot, waiting patiently for the saucepan's boiling contents to be tipped onto the back of my hand, waiting for the heat . . .

Oh god, the heat.

I'm not sure if
boiling
is the right word. For I know now that sugar changes state at a much higher temperature than water, between 140 and 160 degrees Celsius. The pain takes your breath away. It matures and swells. It finds new ways to express itself. And I know now that molten sugar hardens quickly when it hits the skin, like plastic does, so that when you try in panic to remove the searing heat you pull your skin off with it, leaving raw, damaged tissue behind. It makes you somehow to blame. I didn't appreciate that at the time, but I'm sure Bob did. Like I said, the man had an exquisite grasp of suffering.

And only now can I appreciate the profound sense of empathy Bob also possessed: he was cruel exactly to the point each chef would tolerate. He possessed an innate knowledge of whom he could and couldn't burn. He knew he could lock Ramilov in the fridge with lobsters and make Racist Dave work forty hours' unpaid overtime every week, but he was keenly, brilliantly aware that if he harmed their persons he would have a war on his hands. He knew
he could scar me and I wouldn't leave, that I would thank guests for their custom even as I tried to soothe the wound. He knew that before I did. What Bob did not realize, what none of us did at the time, was that his cruelty pulled the odd and ornery chefs of The Swan together. He made it him against us.

“Everyone likes stories,” Bob was saying. “Now you'll have a story to tell. Anytime someone mentions sugar, you'll think of me.”

My hand was pulsing and raw right across the back where the caramel had been, a plastic pink jewel set in a clenched fist. I ran to the back sink to cool my tortured flesh under water but the sink was full of salmon defrosting and I knew I would be in more trouble if I got blood on the mise. So I dashed upstairs to the toilet that the kitchen shared with the function room on the first floor. Bob didn't like the chefs going up there when there were guests but sometimes, such as now, it couldn't be helped. I pressed my shaking hand beneath the cold tap and felt the shock of the water hitting it. I shut my eyes and cursed Bob silently for all the pain and misery he had put me through. Those long months in the plonge I had dreamed of succumbing to a terrible accident, a severed hand or the like that would cause the rest of the kitchen to gnash their teeth and wail at the injustice of it all. Well, here was the injured hand, the great agony, yet no sympathy was forthcoming. Nor was it an accident.

As I stood at the sink the toilet door swung open and a young man with blond hair careered in from the wedding party, laughing about something he had shouted to someone outside. His face was red with drink. He looked at me, a little surprised, and I could see what he saw: a young chef with a fresh scar on his hand who had not seen daylight for months, a haggard youth in checkered trousers stained with expensive food he never got to eat. I looked at him and saw someone my age, who might have gone to my university, his skin
scrubbed pink and fresh, his fingernails free of dirt, without a care in the world. His office would have beanbags and smoothies. A foosball table for creative inspiration. Or perhaps he was another writer type, like my nemesis Tod Brightman. Drunk by four
P.M.
was a hallmark of literary talent. This encounter might feature in his next novel.
The Mysterious Tale of Ted Brickman. The Baghdad Birdspotters'
Club. Strawberry Picking in Sarajevo.
Instinctively, I hated him.

“Awesome work on the food, man,” he said in a posh voice. His breath was harsh with champagne.

“Thank you,” I said, pulling my hand out of the sink and hiding it behind my back. “I'm glad you liked it, sir.”

I grimaced humbly and ducked past him.
Sir?
I had wanted to throttle him, but instead I had called him “sir.” Moreover, I felt proud. Even with my hand still pulsing like mad I was proud he liked the food cooked by the kitchen I worked in. I was proud of the place I hated. I could have shown the young man my wound and told him what kitchen life was really like and ruined that reception, I could have walked out of the restaurant then and there, I could have sued Bob. But I did none of those things. I hid my hand and bowed and scraped and called the customer “sir.” I thought about the mise that still needed to be done before the dinner service, and how if I didn't do it chefs would be unhappy and betrayed and customers would have to wait. I headed back to the kitchen. It's a funny thing—I can't explain it. You want to leave every day; in your head you plan handing in your notice while you sweep the yard or carry the potatoes to the cellar, what you will say, how you will break the news. But something always stops you. It is never the right time. There is always work to be done.

Racist Dave observes it is only a burn and says I should stop feeling so sorry for myself. He advises me to jog on with the story and
asks if we are going to get to the gash and drugs and trouble soon. I have reminded him what Walter Benjamin said about storytelling, that “boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.” This argument has failed to impress him.

Downstairs, Bob greeted me triumphantly.

“Oh, Monocle. Welcome back. I got you a good one, didn't I?”

The rest of the kitchen said nothing. Bob was the chef. Backchat was not appreciated. “Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” the mad old king warns. All-powerful Bob, who held our fates under his third chin. What could these flies say to him?

—

“That fucking bastard's got a nerve,” was what Ramilov said later in the pub. “Hot spoons are one thing, but caramel's not a joke. That's just nasty. That's unpleasant.”

“What are you going to do?” said Dave. “He does that to half the chefs that walk through the door.”

“Well, he better not try and do it to me,” said Ramilov. “I'll fucking ruin him.”

Dave shrugged and turned to me.

“Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour cream,” he advised. “It's fucking boss for burns.”

“Don't worry, kid,” Ramilov whispered to me. “Very soon, we'll get him.”

“And it makes you smell like a new BMW,” said Dave.

“Don't you worry, mate,” Ramilov whispered again.

Mate?
This was a change from the Ramilov I knew, the Ramilov who had been campaigning for my name to be changed to “An Extraordinary Cunt.” With a craven gratitude, as a beaten dog returns to its master's side, I decided that Ramilov might not be such a bad
sort after all. Weeks of abuse wiped off the slate by one “mate.” Perhaps there was more to the guy than cock jokes and horseplay. If I had been less busy marveling at this shred of pleasantness, I might have paid more attention to the intent in Ramilov's voice.

The tramp who was Bob's sworn enemy had spotted us through the beveled glass and come in through a side door.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a groggy but ringmasterly manner, extending a crumpled paper cup. “A contribution to the cause?”

His long and slender fingers played upon the cup. A tune from another time.

“Not now, Glen,” said Ramilov. “We're up to our necks in it.”

“Glen Roberts, you're still barred!” Nora shouted from behind the pumps. She pointed to a faded sign on the wall, really several faded signs fixed together, that said in handwritten capitals:
DO NOT ASK ME FOR CREDIT. IT UPSETS ME
.

Then, farther down:
NEITHER A BORROWER NOR A MONEY LENDER BE. I DID IT ONCE AND NOW I AM BROKE
.

With a wistful look at Nora, Glen slunk out.

“It's not right,” Dibden said quietly. The way he held his glass his own Mark of Bob was visible, a cruel privilege only he and I enjoyed. “I mean, I think Bob means well”—here Ramilov barked derisively into his beer—“but we shouldn't have to take this. I mean, I've been taught by the master, Chef Ducasse of The Dorchester.”

“This again,” said Ramilov. “One day your mouth will eat itself.”

“At The Dorchester,” Dibden went on, ignoring him, “it was hard but fair. Military precision, yes, but no violence. We started at five in the morning for the breakfast shift and more than once if I worked late the night before I would curl up on my section and sleep there. There was no time to go home, you see, no time. Every morning a team of chefs would set to making the pastries, there was a team to prep the fruits, a team to make the breads and so on. It
was an immense operation, grueling, but when the chef gave you that little nod you knew you'd done well.”