In the Kitchen (8 page)

he said, blushing. 'Did you, dear?' said Mum. He didn't remember seeing it again after that.

Plodder Lane sat at the north-east edge of Blantwistle looking down on the likes of Astley Street. Number 22 belonged to a newly built row of houses, with aluminium-framed windows, paved drives and carports. There was a garden at the back instead of a yard, and beyond the garden was farmland, great big runny-eyed Friesians staring into the wind. From the dining-room window, at the front of the house, Gabriel liked to watch the dark grey-greens of Rivington Moor, shifting shades beneath the hurrying clouds. Looking down into the basin between, he was gravely impressed by the sight of the mills, Rileys and Cardwells, Laycocks, Boorlands and the rest, the narrow streets flocking to them, the houses huddled in orderly queues. That he was surrounded by countryside surprised him. He had known, he supposed, that it was there.

Sometimes Dad took them for walks on the moor. But when they were living in Astley Street, the world was made of red brick, yellow flagstone, grey cobble, and the coloured glass marbles that he liked to roll along the cracks.

The Howarths moved into number 17. 'You can breathe a bit up here,' said Mr Howarth. 'I've got nowt against 'em but who wants to smell curry, seven o'clock in the morning to eleven o'clock at night?'

Dad opened two tins of Watneys. 'Right you are, Tom.' He shook his head. 'Got nowt against no one, have we, but what I want to know is, have they thought it through? They bring 'em in now, all right, there's work to be done. But what happens, thirty, forty year from now, when it's them what's taken over the town?'

'Who?' said Jenny, looking up from dressing her doll.

'Breed like rabbits 'n' all,' said Mr Howarth, wiping ale from his chin.

'I want a rabbit,' said Jenny. 'Dad, can I have a rabbit? I won't let it poo in the house.'

She wasn't allowed a rabbit. Mum said she could but Dad said no, of course.

Mum said let's be rabbits, then, if we can't get a real one. They spent an afternoon hopping round the house, rubbing noses and nibbling carrots, until Jen sat on Mum's feet and refused to let her hop any more.

Mum loved the new house, particularly the sliding doors from the sun lounge to the garden. She'd stand one foot in, one foot out, and say, 'This is the way to live.'

For a while there were no arguments about tea. Mum would wait by the front door for Dad, lead him into the kitchen and sit him down with a peck on the cheek. She bought some lacy white aprons and walked around in them, talking about baking chocolate cakes and waving a wooden spoon. Gabriel thought she looked beautiful, even more than when she wore the thing with metal hoops. She went to Lorenzo's and had a pixie cut, right over her ears, a wispy fringe that got in her big brown eyes. She wore the new style of trouser suits and shirts with collars that kept extending. She said her breasts were too small and she didn't like her nose but Gabriel thought everything was just right.

'I'm sorry, Jen,' she would say, 'you've got my nose. Just hope you get a bit more up top.'

After school they would rush in, hoping to find her in the mood for a game.

They played knights and dragons and turned the whole house upside down. They sat at the kitchen table, 'reading' tea leaves and saying who or what they wanted to be when they were 'born again'. 'I'm coming back as an Arab stallion,' said Mum. 'Or maybe an astronaut, I fancy going into space.' Jenny wanted to know if you really could come back and have another life. 'Hindus think so,' said Mum. 'Is Mr Akbar a Hindu?' said Jenny, meaning the man who bought their old house. 'I expect so, love,' said Mum.

One afternoon, they got home and she'd turned the whole sitting room into a Bedouin tent, flowered sheets draping the walls, Mum sitting cross-legged smoking a hubble-bubble pipe. Another time she was stretched out on a plank between two ladders, painting the ceiling with clouds and butterflies, which Dad painted over, of course. The next week she had written a play, on the back of last year's calendar, a scene for every page or month, and wanted Gabriel and Jenny to star. Jenny threw her school bag across the room. 'I'll have your part, young lady,' said Mum, striking a theatrical pose. Jenny hurled herself at Mum's legs. She sat on Mum's feet and squeezed her knees. 'Just you wait,'

shrieked Mum, trying to kick her off. 'What do you want me to do? Cooking and cleaning and shopping and cooking. I shouldn't do anything else! Just you wait, madam, it'll be your turn soon enough. See how you like it then.'

In the early days at Plodder Lane there would often be a new purchase to admire, displayed in the kitchen or lounge. A lamp like a fibreglass hedgehog, glowing purple at the end of every spine; a fondue set with twelve blue-handled forks; a clock in the shape of a cow, that went moo on every hour; Lladró porcelain figurines of elegant ladies, opening a parasol or sitting on a swing. After a while these purchases went underground. 'Come up,'

she'd beckon, from the top of the stairs. 'Now, don't tell Dad, but isn't this divine? I'm putting it up the top of the wardrobe behind the blankets for now, but if you ever want to have a look at it ...' wrapping up the pomander set, electric knife-sharpener, cigarette box with jet and onyx inlay, 'you just let me know and we'll come and take a peek.'

Sometimes she went out walking and forgot all about the time. Slipping through the sliding doors, mud streaking the backs of her trouser legs, pixie hair licked forward, tightening her face, she said, 'Well, that was lovely, I must say. A proper tonic. Don't tell your dad.'

The only thing that got her down, it seemed, was him. He drained the happiness out of her. Every cup of tea she put down in front of him was like a cup of her own blood. When she was sad she watched television, anything, she seemed to like the test card, or lay in bed chain-smoking Virginia Slims. Gabe crawled under the covers with her and stared at the ceiling. There was ash across the pillow. Mum sat up and stubbed out her cigarette. She left the ashtray balanced on her knee. Gabe looked at her and noticed for the first time that she was not much bigger than him. 'You know,' he said, 'how you wanted to be born two hundred year ago?'

She lit another cigarette and blew smoke across his face. 'Born too late.

That's what I said.'

'But you wouldn't have had me then, see. Me and Jenny. Because we're only born, like, now.'

She didn't answer him.

'And we're, you know, like, glad that you're our mum.'

'I'm sick of this bedroom,' she said. 'Look at it. It's so brown.'

'Mum,' said Gabe. 'Do you think the Hindus are right?'

Mum lay down with her hair in the ash. She turned on her side, her face close to his, and adjusted her white lawn nightgown. 'Gabriel,' she said and clamped her hand across his cheek. 'Maybe I was born too soon. All the things Jenny will get to do. D'you see?' The Virginia Slim burned dangerously close to his ear. 'But you get this life, understand, you get this ... and you must ...

because if you don't, all right, you see what happens, don't you, now, you've seen.' She moved her hand away and Gabriel caught sight of the white ash tower before it crumbled into the bed.

Gabe watched Chef Albert sigh over a tray of marzipan roses. There was a dusting of what looked like icing sugar on his moustache.

Hardly daring to say it, Gabe asked if everything was going well.

Chef Albert regarded him mournfully. 'Nothing,' he said, 'no.' His eyes, ringed by dark shadows, were wells of sorrow. Gabe did not like to look his pastry chef in the eye, lest he drown. 'How can it be,' Chef Albert went on, 'when I have zis muppet for assistance.' He gestured towards the apprentice, who giggled and lost control of his icing bag.

'But you'll have everything ready for tomorrow,' said Gabe. He forced a note of gaiety into his voice as if encouraging a small child.

Chef Albert planted his hands on his ample hips and executed a Gallic shrug.

'No, I do not think. I have to begin again with ze meringues and now I see how zees little flowers are ...'

Gabriel shivered and moved away slightly, trying to make his movement invisible by coughing at the same time. He respected Chef Albert's perfectionism but, like all the self-sacrificing virtues, it was best appreciated at a safe remove. It was cold in here, anyway, particularly standing close to Albert.

Inclining his head to indicate that he was still listening, Gabe looked over the pastry kitchen. The Rondo machine still had a few scraps of fresh dough clinging between the rollers but everything else was sparkling clean.

Every pastry chef he had known was lugubrious. It went with the territory, he supposed. There had been one exception, Terry Sharples, down at the Brighton Grand. Terry was always laughing. Until he threw himself off Beachy Head, New Year's Eve, 1989.

Gabriel caught sight of himself in the refrigerator door. He had fancied he would look contemplative but his expression was somewhere between dismissive and harassed. He yawned in order to rearrange his face. In Blantwistle people would say, doesn't he look like his dad, but they said that no matter what.

There was some resemblance but you had to search for it. Gabe didn't have his father's hard lines. Perhaps if you peeled the flesh back, you would see it: Ted as the prototype and Gabe the end result. He had the hair, though: thick, dark and curling on top, oddly foppish, like a playboy Italian count. Gabe worked his finger into the sparse patch at the crown. He wondered what age Dad had been when he started to go bald. Perhaps, when you lose your hair, that's when you really know that you're going to die, just like everyone else. Dad was going to d
ie.
An image exploded in his mind: the floor at Rileys, a hundred thundering looms, the battlefield noise, and Dad, striding around like a colossus, taming the machines with his big strong hands.

Dad would live to see Gabe open his own restaurant. That had to mean something, even if Dad would pretend that it didn't. Dad had to live long enough to see it. Come on, Dad, exhorted Gabe, as though everything would be fine as long as his father pulled up his socks.

Gabe glanced back at his reflection. He rubbed his hand across his face.

'Everything is not so good,' said Chef Albert. He spread his arms. 'You see for yourself how is all zis mess.'

Gabe administered a pep talk and fled. Gleeson and Ivan were holding a furtive conference in the passageway that led to the dining room. Why would a restaurant manager need to speak privately to a grill chef? Gleeson pranced on his toes, ready at any moment to cut and run. He had the wind up him all right. Every day, since Yuri's 'sad accident', he'd been a flutter of spite and nerves. Ivan stood fast but he was agitated, plucking at his red bandanna.

Loitering at the corner, Gabriel wished he could read their lips. There was one thing he could tell from their body language: they did not wish to be overheard.

Gleeson saw Gabriel. 'Ah, Chef, you lost again? Kitchen's that way, I do believe. I've just directed your detective friend – Parks, is it? – to your lair. Try to keep him out of the dining room, would you? We don't want to frighten the horses.'

'I don't think I'll be able to stop him, Stanley,' said Gabriel, beginning to walk away. He smiled back over his shoulder. 'I think the police go wherever they want.'

When he reached his cubicle Parks was sitting at his desk. 'There you are,'

said Parks. 'I've taken your seat.'

'Feel free,' said Gabe. 'How can I help?'

'Paperwork,' said Parks, pointing at the piles on the floor and the files poking out of the overstuffed drawers. 'Bane of all our lives.'

'Yes.'

'When I've got a file open that should never have been opened in the first place ... and it's all about crossing the t's and dotting the i's, no real police work ...' He trailed off. 'Not that I'm blaming the sergeant. Though someone else might have called it different, of course.'

'Was there something in particular?'

'Well, we've not managed to notify the family. Ran the usual immigration checks and naturally it's a false name. Usual story. You don't happen to know ... of course not. Apart from that, I'm just checking back to make sure nothing's occurred to you, nothing out of the ordinary, before I start wrapping it up.' He referred to his notebook. ' One employee we haven't spoken to, another kitchen porter, I think.'

Gabriel nodded. 'She's not shown up again. If I can get to my files I can tell you which agency she came through.'

'I'm guessing your porters come and go all the time.'

'Pretty much.'

'So unless there's any particular reason ... I think we'll leave it at that.'

'OK,' said Gabriel. 'Fine.'

Parks put his notebook in his pocket. 'Oh, there is one other thing.'

'Yes,' said Gabriel, tensing.

'My wife says she wants to go to a really good Italian for our anniversary, it's our twentieth. Had our honeymoon in Venice. Now, where would you recommend?'

Throughout the dinner service, Gabriel stood at the pass, checking plate by plate, adding garnish, wiping rims, admonishing waiters, sending back the overcooked, underdone or sloppily constructed with a pinch of encouraging zeal ground up with a measure of scorn. The tempo had been building from six o'clock and by half past eight the kitchen was in full swing. Gabe replated a chicken fricassée, and turned to look at his team.

Nikolai, the Russian commis, chopped salad onions with heartbreaking deftness and speed. Suleiman hovered by the Steam' N'Hold, waiting for his soufflé with evident anxiety, as though it were his firstborn son. Victor moved between the Bratt Pan, wilting off spinach, and the combi-oven, loading up potato röstis and cubes of butternut squash. A commis dropped a bowl of peelings and everybody clapped. Benny ran over to help him and ran back to his station, wiping his hands. A spit of fat from a wok hissed in the blue burner flame. In Ivan's empire the air pulsed with heat so that the grill chef appeared hazy, as though he were a mirage. He slapped a couple of steaks on the charcoal grill and took a hammer to a third, the sweat darkening the back of his white coat.