by the pass, helping Francis with the starters and plating things up for the various dishes, taking pictures so Andrea would be able to replicate layout, with Francis doing the vegetables.
With three people, the job was euphorically easy – normally it was just the two of us. We had chatted whilst we worked.
Well, I had chatted.
‘So, what’s Justin like to work with?’
Silence. Banter, the oil that makes the engine of the kitchen bearable, was conspicuous by its absence.
‘Here’s the lamb …’ Slam. Andrea’s movements by the stove were jerky, and rather odd. I had worked with Strickland once and he had not only been poetry in motion, but he obviously revelled in his skill – the sheer joy that is to be had in having achieved mastery of whatever it is that you can do.
Andrea, on the other hand, was like a life-sized marionette moved by invisible strings. His thin face, with its dark five-o’clock shadow, expressed a sour hatred of life in general and me in particular.
Maybe he thought that having to work here, in the hell-hole of the Old Forge Café, was an insult, a cruel punishment visited upon him by Justin.
I quickly sliced up the lamb fillet, placed it on its bed of wilted rocket and drizzled some rosemary-infused jus over it, then added a little spoon of cranberry and port jelly. Andrea had cooked it to perfection.
‘Service, please!’ I called, asking for it to be taken away.
Jessica came in to the kitchen and I said, ‘Table 12 please, Jessica.’
She looked over my shoulder at Andrea. I turned and looked at him closely. I had been studiously avoiding looking at him. By that, I don’t mean so much physically as character-wise. I had hoped that he was a rough diamond, that when you got to know him you’d think he was actually quite nice. But Jess was a good judge of character, and when I saw the expression on her face, I knew that I had been deluding myself. The scales fell from my eyes. He was a bloody good chef but I suddenly realised the truth. He was horrible.
We both saw a tall, pasty man in chef’s whites and an old-fashioned toque – a high, old-fashioned chef’s hat, which you hardly ever see nowadays. Its effect on Andrea was to make him look even taller and thinner, and with his white jacket and white linen apron he looked weirdly like an animated tube of toothpaste. He was ignoring me, but staring at Jessica.
Jess was my very own personal hero, saving me from many a close call. She had dark hair, large brown eyes, a look of extreme intelligence and was always demurely dressed for work. Jess was not someone given to displays of cleavage.
Andrea came over to the pass to introduce himself to Jess, a horribly sickly smile on his face.
‘Allo, my name is Andrea, I work for Justin McCleish—’ in case there were any chance of mistaking the fact that he was too good to work for me ‘—but I will be ’ere for the next few weeks … and you are?’
This speech would maybe have gone down a little better if he had been talking to Jess’s face rather than where it said ‘Old Forge Café’ on her apron.
She looked at Andrea with as much enthusiasm as he had me earlier, and he returned to his position at the stove. Jess shook her head. ‘What a plonker,’ she said dismissively to me.
The rest of the service passed by in a pleasantly hectic blur.
For me, it was a delight having a competent grill cook. All I had to do was plate up and help Francis whenever he stumbled, which was often, with a starter or a vegetable accompaniment.
The downside was the contempt that Andrea obviously held me in, his irritation obvious at being expelled from Justin’s side and forced into the hell of mediocrity that was the Old Forge Café.
I tried once or twice to get him to talk about life with Justin, to try and get some feel of their relationship, but it was useless. Any idea of getting useful clues from Andrea rapidly disappeared.
The last dessert cheque was done at about two-thirty and we started cleaning down the kitchen. Andrea disappeared outside to have a cigarette, and I took the opportunity to explain to Jess that she would have to put up with him for a bit.
‘But he’s so creepy,’ she grumbled, ‘and he keeps staring at me.’
‘It won’t be for long,’ I promised her.
‘How long?’
I decided to be honest with Jess as to why Justin had employed me.
‘Well, the situation is this …’ I scratched my head. ‘Justin is being blackmailed and he wants me to find out who it is and frighten him or her off. That won’t take too long.’
I briefly sketched in the background, and Jess’s expression became one of tender concern.
‘So he doesn’t want you for your cooking ability?’ Jess patted me sorrowfully on the shoulder.
I shook my head. Her large eyes regarded me sympathetically, which was nice on one level but added to my sense of inadequacy. My waitress seemed to have made it her duty to try and protect me from life and its hardships, which was great but a little demeaning.
‘That won’t take too long? Are you sure?’ asked Jess. ‘I mean, your last out-of-the-kitchen activity was hardly a resounding success, was it?’
She had that look that she habitually wore around me that told me she was certain that she was right and I was wrong. Unless it was a question of food. Her eyes held mine with the natural superiority that parents have over small children.
‘Anyway, the only good thing to come out of that was your getting to see Claudia again,’ she said, referring to my ex.
‘I dare say, but she’s engaged, and not to me.’
‘She gave you her phone number …’
‘Justin has every faith in me. I’m sure he knows what he is doing,’ I said, emphatically, shutting down the Claudia conversation.
‘You’re an idiot.’ Jess shook her head, but in a nice way.
Any resentment that I may have felt at being put in my place by a girl half my age (twenty-two to forty-five) was tempered by the fact that she was indisputably brighter than me, and the fact that I am very often wrong about things. For example, the time she had just alluded to, when I had fallen in love with a murderer (not that I had known at the time – I’m not that stupid) and had nearly died because of it.
So, no, it hadn’t been an unqualified success at all.
This, I reflected, was the man that Justin McCleish had hired to save his bacon. I consoled myself with the fact that surely he knew what he was doing.
‘Anyway,’ I tried to cheer her up, ‘you’re in charge of the kitchen while I’m away. Remember, Andrea is working for you, not vice versa. You’re on tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Sure am,’ said Jess. She didn’t look very excited by the thought.
‘Well, I’m off to see Esther.
