In the Kitchen (37 page)

'Right,' said Dad, bending down, all casual, breathing over Gabe. 'This here's a dobby loom, one of the old 'uns, see the wooden shuttle, the picking stick, you've got the electric motor right there what powers it across.'

Gabe nodded with a high degree of sarcasm that was only wasted on Dad.

'I'll show you the Northrops. You coming or what?'

As if he had any choice.

'The newer sort, they've got the airjets and rapiers now. Know what they are?'

Gabriel couldn't care less.

'Northrop's been a big innovator, all these is Northrops what you see. This machine here's got a top speed of 260 picks per minute, meaning the rapier goes across that many times. Remember what I was saying? Aye, it takes the weft across, like the shuttle in the dobby loom. That's weaving. Weaves between the warp, like I said.'

Boring. Boring. Exterminate. Exterminate.

'Ten year ago, you'd have been looking at a simple battery here on't side of the machine, what contained the pirns. The bottom part of the pirn had an amount of weft, what's called a bunch, that was needed to go across three times.'

Who cared? When they got home Dad would say it was too late to play out. It wasn't fair. Jenny never got dragged in here.

Dad stroked the side of the loom like it was a wild horse, like he thought he was some kind of cowboy, going to break it in. 'Then this little beauty come along. The Unifill. See here, this is a winding head, and this here's the magazine.'

Honest to God, he wished Dad would drop down dead. He was rattling on just like a bloody loom.

'... specialist weaving, complex stuff they'll never be able to do abroad ...

insulation for electric cables what go under the sea ...'

'Dad. Dad! Can I go home now? I feel sick. Me tummy hurts.'

Dad stopped talking. His mouth lay straight across his face like a ruler. He lowered his head to Gabe's. 'We've not got to the exciting bit yet. Don't you want to have a go on the Dacty machine? I'll let you punch out some cards.'

Gabe looked over the metal-and-fibre sea, to the horizon of the wall. There was no escape. 'OK,' he said.

'Good lad. Stick close, we're taking a tour of the jacquards first.'

Gabriel cricked his neck staring up at the yellow harnesses and stayed in that position like he was really, really amazed and couldn't stop looking at the machines. Dad droned on about the width of the beam and the harness and the reed having to be exactly equal and the warp going through the pirns and the healds lifting up the warp to make the pattern. And Gabe bet that Michael's dad never made him go to work with him. Michael's dad never made him do anything. His dad didn't even have a job. Michael was lucky. In his house they always had the TV on.

'Gabe, go back and wait for me in the tacklers' room.'

'What? Why, where you going? Can I go home?'

'Up there,' said Dad, pointing to the girders. 'I've got to get up there.'

'What you want to go up there for?'

Dad laughed. 'I've got to see to the jacquard.'

'How'd you reach it?'

'With a ladder, soft lad. Then I stand on the girder, like a bloody acrobat.'

Gabe kicked up a pile of lint with his toe and edged it across the floor. It started to roll up nice. By the time he got to the tacklers' room he had a wodge of it the size, if not exactly the shape, of a football. There was nobody in the room but him. He threw the lint ball in the air and caught it over and over until most of it was stuck to his T-shirt and cords and hardly any in his hands. He tried to dust himself off. He did handstands against the wall. Then he sat on the bench. He lay down on his tummy, had a coughing fit and fell asleep.

When he woke he reckoned Dad had gone and forgotten about him because it was dark now and nobody had turned on the lights. Probably everyone had gone home and the whole mill was locked up and he'd have to stay there all night. Most boys his age would probably cry. Gabe wasn't even scared, wouldn't be even if all the lights had fused and he had to stay in the dark.

He got up, crossed the room and felt for the light switch. He flicked it and the lights came on. Rubbing his eyes he pulled open the door and for some weird reason he could hear the looms. He kicked along the short corridor towards the weaving shed where he'd left his dad. He'd forgot about the night shift. The mill stayed open all night.

'What time is it?' he asked somebody passing in the opposite direction.

'Nearly five.'

Was that all it was? But he'd been asleep for hours!

When he ran into the weaving shed he saw Dad lying on the floor beneath the girder, like he'd fallen off. Mr Howarth was crouching over him. Dad wasn't moving, and when Mr Howarth looked up Gabriel saw the panic in his face and decided Dad – what a bastard! – had gone ahead and died.

Mr Howarth started towards him but Gabriel ran out of the weaving shed, out through the cobbled courtyard and wrought-iron gates and struck out on his own for home.

He swung round at the touch on his shoulder, still holding the dried beans shelf with one hand.

Suleiman's clerkish face bobbed deferentially. 'Chef, excuse me for troubling, but you may wish to know – there is a fight.'

'Who?' said Gabe, though he knew the answer.

'Though my line of sight was partially obscured,' said Suleiman, 'I believe it is Victor and Ivan.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARCHING ON THE SPOT, SOME KIND OF VICTORY RITUAL, IVAN clinched Victor's head between his ribcage and bulging bicep. Gabriel pushed his way through the cooks. Ivan staggered forward as Victor's body, a flailing mess of arms and legs, was propelled out from behind a worktop. This did little to allay Gabe's expectation that, any moment now, the grill chef would grab a fistful of Victor's hair and dangle his head aloft.

Everyone had gathered round at a respectful distance. Fivers were changing hands. Benny, still at his station, close to the site of the action, folded white kitchen towels and stacked them neatly and quickly as if preparing emergency medical supplies. Suleiman, studious as ever, watched closely in case the subject should one day come up in an exam. Oona was speaking under her breath, no doubt offering prayers, and occasionally clucking out loud. It was time to put a stop to this show.

Gabriel, though, held back because a part of him, some mean streak he'd have sworn he didn't possess, was enjoying it, the raspberry red of Victor's face.

At the very moment he was about to finally open his mouth Victor jerked himself free. Gabe waited to see what would happen. If he stayed quiet he might learn something about this feud.

Victor, the blood still in his face, charged at his opponent bellowing, head down like a bull. Ivan merely stepped aside. Victor ran into the desserts fridge with a clang. There was a catcall and a splatter of applause. Victor got back in the ring. He raised his fists this time. Ivan threw a punch that glanced off Victor's cheek; Victor answered with a kick to the balls. The look in Ivan's eyes made the spectators shuffle back a step or two.

Victor stood there panting, sweat dripping down his forehead. 'Cocksucker,' he said. 'Motherfucker. You're dead. You're dead. You're fucking dead.'

Ivan weighed his testicles. 'You fight like girl.'

'If you ever, ever speak about her again ...' Victor leaned tightly into the words, shaking with juvenile passion. 'One word ... I'm telling you, man, I'll kill you. You hear?'

Ivan, in his slashed clothes and bandanna, looked like a mutineer. All he was missing was a cutlass. He directed his bad ear towards Victor and cupped it delicately. It had turned a labial red. 'Hear?' he said. 'What?'

Victor hissed through his teeth.

'Girlfriend?' said Ivan. 'I say nothing. Nothing.' He made an obscene gesture with his mouth and tongue. 'She left you?'

Victor whirled round and snatched a knife from Benny's station, the broad blade glittering instantly, famously, in his hand. Brandishing the weapon, Victor let loose a blood-curdling scream that at long last set Gabe in motion.

He reached Victor in a single bound, relieving him of the awful necessity of carrying this thing through. Victor let the knife drop.

'I should sack the both of you,' said Gabriel, steaming. 'I should kick you out right now. Consider this your last warning. Understand?'

'It was him ...'Victor began.

' "He started it." Don't be such a child. Enough.' It wasn't the first fight Gabe had witnessed in the kitchen and it wouldn't be the last. It certainly wasn't the worst. In Brighton one of the commis, tiring of having his buttocks fondled daily, had taken a six-inch Excalibur filleting knife and stuck it deep in the sous-chef 's arse. If Ivan and Victor's squabble was over a girl then Gabriel wasn't going to get into it, he'd leave it to burn itself out.

Service was all but over and so the clear-down began. Gleeson tried to seat a walk-in for ten a few minutes before the kitchen closed. Gabe still had the adrenalin pumping because it took scarcely a look to dissuade the restaurant manager from this plan. 'I see that's not to your liking,' said Gleeson, smiling the way he smiled at diners who ate at six thirty on a Saturday evening, dressed in their Sunday best.

Gabe went into his sticky cube. He took off his whites and sat in his T-shirt and checks going over the banqueting figures on the computer. The figures melted in the heat. Impossible to get a grip. He needed to draw up the shifts for the Christmas period. That would be easier. He looked out at the kitchen.

Most people had gone home. He would go home for as long as he could over Christmas. Oona would have to come in every day. Too bad. What could he do? He could sit here feeling guilty about it, because guilt was what you consoled yourself with when something was out of your control. If you could change it then guilt became redundant because you could fix the problem, whatever it was. Guilt was only a booby prize.

He was drifting again. He couldn't remember going to the mill, after that day.

God, Dad had pissed him off ! And then he'd gone and fallen and broken his ribs. Dad was so invincible. Then he wasn't. It was hard to forgive him for that. But it was all in the past. He hadn't given it a thought in decades. He was getting to be like Nana, the mill, the past, more real to him than what was in front of his face.

'It OK if I get home?' said Oona, trundling in and wedging herself in the spare chair.

'You go,' said Gabe. 'I'm nearly finished here.'

'Finished off me own self, darlin',' said Oona, scraping off her shoes. She rubbed her feet together. It sounded like a dozen matches being struck at once. She leaned against the desk. Any moment now she would ask him if he fancied a nice cup of tea.

'Getting the Christmas rota finalized,' Gabe said briskly. 'I'll be up in Blantwistle, you know, with my father. You'll have to hold the fort.'

Oona picked up a pad and fanned herself. 'Course you will. Your father, God bless him and keep him. How is he?'

'Still dying,' said Gabe, perhaps a little too jauntily.

'Any time you need, you take it,' said Oona, her head at a sentimental tilt.

'Honly too happy to help.'

Gabe nodded. He looked back at his screen and tinkered with the keyboard.

After a short while Oona creaked to her feet.

'I split up with my girlfriend, with Charlie,' said Gabriel, his gaze still on the computer. 'She split up with me.'

He heard Oona rearranging herself on the chair. She would say, it all turn out for the best. She would say, sometime a ting ain't meant to be.

'That lovely girl?' said Oona.

'The very one,' said Gabe.

'You want her back?'

Gabe looked at Oona, her little sad smile, her plump cheeks bursting with concern. 'Of course I do,' he said, not knowing, not caring if he meant it, the conversation proceeding, as it must with Oona, in a series of platitudes.

'That is a problem, then.' This piercing insight provided all for free.

'Yeah,' said Gabe, 'that's right.'

'Mm'm,' said Oona, digging the heel of her hand into her bosom. 'A problem to be solved.'

'What's done is done.'

'Chef, if I know you ...'

'Thank you, Oona.' Gabe jumped up and held the door. 'Thank you, it's getting late. Take a taxi if you want and put it on my expenses. See you in the morning. Goodnight. Did you put the requisition in with maintenance about the extractors? Oh, good. And the air-con's gone crazy again. Got to kick some arses in maintenance. No, don't fiddle with it now. Off you go, that's it, off you go, goodnight.'

Gabe took a fresh set of whites from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

Tying his apron he went out on the floor. The night porter drifted quickly and silently out of reach. Gabe got to work. He diced onions, carrots and celery.

The mirepoix in this kitchen was never prepared properly. This was exactly the way it should be done. He heated some oil over a medium heat. There was always a burnt undertaste to the jus de veau lié because they coloured the meat and vegetables too quickly. Always in a rush. He put the veal and the mirepoix in the pot and adjusted the flame.

How long since he'd cooked from scratch like this? If he came up with one new dish every week before the restaurant opened, tested them in the dining room, and selected the best half-dozen ...

He stirred the pot.

Suleiman came up from the locker room in his civvies heading for the exit but backed up when he saw Gabe.

'Chef,' he said, 'do you require help with anything?'

'No,' said Gabe, 'just cooking. You go on home.'

Suleiman bent briefly at the waist, nodding with his whole body. He turned to leave.

'Hang on,' called Gabe. 'I wanted to ask you something. Did you ... is this something you always wanted to do? To cook?'

'Chef ?'

'You know, when you were a kid? Did you decide this is what you'd do? Or did you sort of end up ... I don't know.'

Suleiman in his smart cheap overcoat, woolly scarf tied at his neck, stood at attention. His hair clung in a slick black circle to his skull. 'It was decided. Most definitely. Of course.'

'You decided, that's right. When? How did you know?'