Recipe for Disaster (20 page)

Gallic Wars – blah, blah, blah – Julius Caesar – blah, blah,
blah – it was all interesting stuff, but she was so scared he
would slip up and mention her and the dig, she couldn't
enjoy it.

'I remember reading about Roman cuisine,' began Jake
dreamily.

'Oh, yeah? That's quite a specialist subject – what do you
know about it?'

'Well, they were very highly paid, for a start. Cleopatra's
cook was given a house as a reward for having cooked a
great meal.'

'Of course, they were literally slaves in those days. They'd
be clapped in irons for the least little thing, but I guess it
must have kept them on their toes.'

'Their national dish for a long time was a sort of gruel,
like polenta. But then they became obsessed with meat.
They would eat anything – camels, puppies –'

'Oh, that's gross!' said Lydia.

'– dormice, guinea pigs, elephants –'

'Man, that is seriously weird,' said Hans, coming over to
clear away glasses. Kate pretended to look at his watch.

'Gosh, is that the time? I had no idea it was so late!' She
stretched.

'But it's only half-past eleven!' said Jake.

'Well, you know – the early bird and all that.'

'No I don't. You actually said the other day that going to
bed early was just for wimps.'

'Did I?' Obviously I'm flattered, but do you really have to
remember everything I say?

'Yeah, that's exactly what you said when I wouldn't go
out for a drink with you all after work the other night. You
called me names, as I recall.'

Oh, bloody hell, so I did!

She yawned several times. Wasn't it supposed to be
catching? Never had an hour passed so slowly. It was worse
than waiting to have her wisdom teeth extracted. But
finally, when she had almost given up hope, Jake started to
yawn of his own accord.

'Well, I don't care if you do want to call me names, I need
my bed. It's been nice, though. I don't seem to do this
socialising thing very often. We'll have to do this again some
time.'

'Absolutely!' agreed Kate, hustling him through the door
and drawing a hand across her throat when she was sure he
wasn't looking.

Jake came down to work the next day to find that Angelica
was drawing pink ballerinas all over next week's rota.

'Sorry, Jake,' muttered Tess, who was looking extremely
harassed. 'My mum is coming for her any minute now, I
promise.'

'Why aren't you at school?'

'I've got chicken pox,' said Angelica importantly.

'No you haven't, you little liar,' said Tess, seeing Jake's
look of alarm.

'Nits, then.'

'No, you haven't got those either.'

'I've got spots.'

'Yes, but only because you drew them on with felt tip
while you were supposed to be having breakfast. The truth
is, she locked herself in the bathroom until after the school
bus had gone and then my car wouldn't start and then she
threw a whole bowl of Rice Krispies down her dress and
then – well, I just gave up, I suppose.'

'And why do you not want to go to school?' asked Jake
sternly.

'I wanted to see God.'

'We all want to do that, but you won't find Him here.'

'You'll see the back of my hand if you don't watch out,
young lady,' muttered Tess.

'I do find him here,' said Angelica indignantly. 'He's
walking in right now. Why do you want me to see the back
of your hand, Mummy. Have you drawn spots on it as well?'

Jake retreated to his office. Conversations with Angelica
were sometimes like being in a particularly surreal episode
of
Star Trek: Voyager
.

His bank manager had written to him, grudgingly
offering half the overdraft that Jake had asked for and
threatening dire consequences if he exceeded this paltry
limit by a penny. Jake wished he was running a restaurant
in Ancient Rome. Then if his backers got greedy he could
just offer Angelica as a slave, in lieu of payment. Or send
Godfrey off to moonlight as a gladiator.

If he lived in ancient times he also wouldn't have to wade
through emails like this latest one from Georgia. He was
pretty sure that somewhere in the last dozen they had made
up, though it was difficult to be sure.

Georgia hadn't cottoned on to the fact that emails were
supposed to be brief and to the point. She adopted a stream
of consciousness technique, which often ran on for pages. It
took Jake four goes to finally pinpoint where she was, how
long she was staying and when she would be back. He
found himself hoping this wouldn't be for a long time,
which was not how you should think about your girlfriend,
but if you had just spent most of the previous night having
disturbing dreams about a girl with red hair . . .

As if he had conjured her up, Kate walked in.

'You didn't pick up all your post,' she said, dropping an
envelope on the desk. Kate had decided to pretend the
night of the star-gazing hadn't happened, which she was
finding difficult to do. This made her voice sound cold and
distant.

'Thanks.'

God, he had really blown it there. She was obviously disgusted
with him for trying it on, and really he couldn't blame
her. It was the sort of behaviour he despised Harry for, and
here he was, doing it himself. He should be ashamed.

He went back to Georgia's missive while he was opening
the letter, giving himself a nasty paper cut in the process.
He skimmed through it absent-mindedly, the odd word
leaping up at him – 'lonely . . . hard work . . . weather awful
. . . bad cold . . . nearly sneezed on catwalk . . . I love you lots
and lots and can't wait to see you again, darling, darling
Jake.'

Georgia was feeling terribly guilty, but of course Jake
wasn't to know this. Harry had been down to London twice
and on both occasions managed to bump into her by
accident. He had insisted on buying her a drink and the
second time, dinner. She had enjoyed herself more than
she had for a long time. There was something curiously
restful about Harry. He seemed to think she was great
company whatever she said. He didn't fall asleep halfway
through a conversation and when they talked he gave the
impression he had all the time in the world to listen, instead
of always glancing at his watch and muttering things about
having to get back to work.

'Must go – a friend is taking me out to dinner,' and she
signed off with lots of guilty kisses.

Jake vaguely wondered who this friend in Paris was then
he forgot all about her.

The letter Kate had brought in was from the Restaurant
Club of Great Britain, a small but élite group of food critics,
whose main joy in life was to destroy the spirit of every fool
who thought he could cook. Only last month one of them
had done such a hatchet job on a place in Devon that the
chef had run out of the kitchen in his clogs and straight to
his therapist. He was currently at the Priory and rumour
had it that he was flatly refusing to leave.

The Club also gave out awards, which were the cooking
equivalent of the Oscars. As most of its members were
journalists they were horribly articulate in their meanness
and they were hated and feared throughout the length and
breadth of Britain. Their top award was in the shape of a
miniature knife crafted in silver. It was a running joke
among chefs that they should give them out to the losers
instead, so they could slit their own throats.

They liked to warn chefs in advance that they might be in
line for an award, because it made them sweat and suffer
more, and sorted out the men from the puking boys.

Jake put aside the letter and shivered. It was like
spending years in training for an assault on Everest,
trekking to Base Camp and then finding out that actually
you were too scared to go to the top. Ever since he had read
about them, he had coveted one of those little silver knives.
Now he was being offered the chance to go for it, he wanted
to run away and get a nice, easy, undemanding job in a
sandwich bar.

A few minutes later Kate popped her head round the
door to find Jake pacing up and down, muttering: 'Get a
grip, you stupid man,' in a quite demented way.

'I was going to ask if you wanted a coffee, but now I'm
thinking it should come with a sedative.'

Jake stopped pacing, grabbed her and kissed her on both
cheeks like a mad Italian. 'I don't need coffee – I need
champagne!' he said exultantly, and showed her the letter.

She took in its meaning instantly. 'That's brilliant! I bet
you're torn between dying from terror or going on a three day
bender.'

He looked at her, surprised. 'That's exactly it! How do
you know?'

Oh hell, why couldn't she tell him? It was so unfair. They
were cut from the same cloth, she and Jake. They shared
the same qualities of driving ambition, punctuated by
dizzying self-doubt. They were both, in their way, artists.
They should be able to confide in each other. The fact that
she was keeping secrets from him was weighing her down,
as if she was carrying a massive sack of potatoes on her back.
Jake resumed pacing up and down.

'Christ, there's so much to do! They will be looking for a
completely new menu. I wonder if we should redecorate –
no, damn, I can't afford it. I wonder how handy Godfrey is
with a paintbrush?'

He went into the kitchen to tell everyone.

'Woo hoo! Let's all get drunk tonight to celebrate!' said
Godfrey.

Jake looked at him as if he were crazy. 'Are you mad?
We're not even halfway there yet. Have you read some of
the things they write about people?' He riffled though a pile
of papers and found a cutting from a very old copy of the
Observer
. He had read it so many times it was danger of
crumbling away.

'This is what they wrote about a colleague of mine.
Listen.

For Mr Hudson, grease is obviously the new black. My
pasta pomodoro
arrived swimming in so much oil, I
thought I was eating in a garage rather than a restaurant.
The mange tout were limper than a drunken
penis after a fourteen-pints-of-lager night out and the
roast potatoes looked like they had set sail in a sea of fat.

The décor is described as minimalist. This evidently
means you are expected to eat your dinner without the
requisite cutlery. When I pointed this out to the
waitress, she looked at me accusingly, as if I had
hidden them up my sleeves. I half expected to find we
had been charged for them at the end of the meal. To
give him his due, the wine waiter had obviously been
mugging up, but his method of imparting information
was to spew it out like a parrot on speed. When I asked
to see Mr Hudson at the end of this ordeal, there was
some delay. Apparently he was sitting in the chest
freezer, sobbing.

'I know John Hudson well. He is a really good chef.
Apparently he's on so much Valium now, he just stares
glassy-eyed at the checks when they come in.

'If they like what you do, people are falling over
themselves to get a table at your restaurant. If they don't,
you spend the rest of your career wondering if your
restaurant has a "Keep away – we've got the plague" sign on
the door and you are the only one who can't see it.'

'Oh my, what a nice treat we've got to look forward to,'
said Godfrey faintly.

Jake and Tess put their heads together and for the next
few days everyone went into cooking overdrive.

It took Jake three goes to make a
poulet sauté Marengo
he
was happy with, and then he decided, at three thirty in the
morning, that actually he wasn't.

'This is boring and predictable and we are scrapping it.
You can have it for lunch,' he told Godfrey.

'That's the third time I've had to eat chicken this week
and it's only Wednesday,' complained Godfrey.

'You'll be having it for the next ten meals unless I come
up with something I like,' snapped Jake.

'I am now thinking of
poulet de Bresse aux morilles
,' he
continued, getting out the ingredients.

'I wish he would move on to lamb or beef. I've eaten so
much bloody chicken, I feel like I'm about to lay an egg,'
muttered Godfrey.

He was in luck. The next day they put their minds to fish.
First they tried salmon with puy lentils; then moved on to
salmon with watercress, toyed with a salmon en croûte,
flirted with the notion of sweet and sour salmon, considered
searing it with pancetta, pine nuts and balsamic vinegar, and
then, just when everyone was losing the will to live, Jake
decided to go with fricassee of turbot with spinach parcels.
No one wanted supper after work because they all felt as
if they had ingested food through their pores.

Kate went to bed that night and dreamed that she was a
small sardine being chased by a dolphin.

The evening service started off by pretending it was going to
be a dream shift. The customers were coming at sensible
intervals, in nice easy groups of four or six. Most of them had
been before and were passionate fans of Jake's cooking. He
hoped they would have a great meal, obviously, but then
have to hurry home. He was longing for his bed. He was
desperate for sleep – eight hours, unbroken, no dreams.

A party of ten tourists came in, unbooked, which meant
there had to be a swift and polished moving together of
tables, never easy in a crowded restaurant, but they managed.
When Kirsty brought the order down to the kitchen, it was
apparent they didn't know what a menu was actually for.

'They fancy salmon fishcakes,' repeated Jake slowly.

'I know they're not on the menu, but they bullied me into
asking. They said you could probably do some anyway, if
you are that good a chef.'

'I am a good chef,' he agreed, watching Godfrey sidle out
of the kitchen, but not so far away that he couldn't enjoy the
explosion. 'I am to food what Michelangelo was to art. But
no one asked him to take a quick break from painting the
Sistine Chapel so he could do a sketch of their pet poodle,
did they?'