‘Is that the Earl’s opera event you two are talking about?’
It was Jess who had just walked in. I know very little about opera – it certainly didn’t feature much on Beech Tree FM. That was the radio station that we listened to in the kitchen, playing undemanding, uncontroversial Seventies and Eighties pop classics. Their DJs had a permanent air of sunny mindlessness and inane links. One came on at this moment, ‘… and now, here’s a song about a river, no, not the Thames, not the Misbourne, not even the Chess, it’s Pussycat with “Mississippi” …’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘maybe we’ll pick up some custom from it.’
Jess shook her head. ‘No, you won’t – it’s fully catered. He gets a firm from London usually: steak, lobster, that kind of thing. I think that’s how he makes his money out of it.’ She scowled at the radio. ‘Who the hell is this?’
‘Pussycat,’ I said. ‘I think they might be Dutch …’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Jess. She sighed. The radio was a source of friction between us – she craved something more modern, but it was my kitchen and my radio.
‘What do they use for kitchens?’ I asked. My interest was piqued.
‘My dad says that they use the kitchens at the house,’ said Francis.
I’d forgotten that Francis’s dad was the Earl’s Head Gardener. Francis was always a reliable source of information about the peculiar character who was our local aristocrat.
‘They’re not massive,’ said Francis, keen to be in the unusual position of being able to show off his knowledge, ‘but they’re well equipped. Marlow House has always done big parties, weddings, stuff like that, particularly with the last Earl, but the new Earl isn’t so keen on people in the house. The opera lot are confined to the field and the gardens this year.’
It’s funny how your mind works. I was unable to cope with my current workload, but part of me was annoyed that the Earl, who admittedly I hardly knew, would hire these London caterers instead of me. There was no way on earth that I could have managed to squeeze in doing food and drink for three hundred people a night – the logistics would be daunting, together with running my own business – but I would have liked to have been asked.
I shook my head in irritation at myself. There I was, getting cross that I hadn’t been given something I couldn’t have coped with.
I have anger management problems that I have to constantly work on, but at least I was just cross, not furious. That was something.
A journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step.
And news of the Earl’s opera event was like the tossed pebble that starts the avalanche.
‘Sack the bastard!’ Graeme Strickland was his usual forthright self. We were in one of Hampden Street’s two pubs. The grotty one. The Three Bells. Diagonally opposite the common from where my restaurant was. Grotty décor, grotty toilets, grotty furniture. It was a wonder we came here at all, but it was quiet and that suited us.
What the pub lacked in desirability, it made up for geographically. It was a five-minute walk from both our restaurants and as we both spend six days a week shackled to the stove morning, lunchtime, noon and night, it was a blessed relief from our respective workplaces.
Behind the bar, resplendent in a moth-eaten grey cardigan, Malcolm, the taciturn landlord with the very red face, stood tall and silent, the grotty lord of all he surveyed. He was a discouraging presence. There was no hint of welcome or eagerness to serve, to spring into action should a customer appear; it was more as if he were guarding the bar from anyone who might be rash enough to try to get a drink.
It really was a horrible place.
Strickland was on a split shift from his restaurant and was allowing himself two pints. Theoretically he should have been working ten a.m. until three p.m., six p.m. until ten p.m. In reality it was more nine a.m. to three p.m., five p.m. to midnight. Six days a week. He had his own way of coping with the endless hours. He’d just come back from his third visit to the toilet. He might have had bladder problems, but his suspiciously wide eyes and frequent sniffs, as loud as they were frantic, told a different story.
His restaurant, the King’s Head, was the other pub in Hampden Street. It had been turned into a restaurant and Strickland had firmly dragged it by the scruff of its countrified neck, from pork pies, filled baps and ploughman’s lunches into the world of fine dining. He was highly successful. Now, if you wanted to eat there it was a three-week wait, unless there was a cancellation.
We tended to choose the Three Bells, first off because it was no threat to either of us. Malcolm’s food ran to crisps and sometimes, if he’d been on a gourmet spending spree, pork scratchings. The second reason was that the Three Bells was round the corner and therefore the perfect place to grab a quick drink mid-shift. There had been an article on the Michelin system of awards in the trade press the other day. This was a sore point. Strickland was aggrieved as he’d just narrowly missed out on his coveted Michelin star. He still had his four rosettes but boy, did he want that final accolade.
‘French bastards!’ he’d said when last year’s annual results had been announced and he had been ignored.
The Charlie was not mellowing his mood. I had stupidly moaned to him about Francis’s lack of ability. It was not only stupid, it was unfair too.
It wasn’t Francis’s fault.
I had hired Francis as a kitchen porter, a person who washes dishes, not as a chef. It wasn’t as if he had misrepresented himself to get a job. He had never said he was a chef. He never wanted to be a chef.
In the old days I would have raged at Francis, screamed and shouted and got rid of him. Now, courtesy of the Tao Te Ching, which I read daily to help with my anger management, I was working on my personality rather than his. The way of the Tao. I decided not to share this with Strickland – he would have thought I was mad.
‘Well, I can’t really do that,’ I said, taking a sip of my drink. ‘I can’t fire Francis.’
Before Strickland could say anything, I changed the subject. ‘And how about you – how are things at the King’s Head?’
He frowned. ‘I’ve got this sodding awful restaurant manager. He keeps harassing my waitresses.’
‘Sack the bastard!’ I said, parroting his advice to me. At least I just had an amiable oaf.
He took a mouthful of lager, and shook his head regretfully. ‘He’s very clever, it’s either when no one’s looking, wandering hands sort of stuff, or verbal, or it’s just creepy behaviour, like staring down a blouse, that kind of thing. But it’s never that bloody obvious.’ He sniffed loudly and stared at me through coke-crazed eyes. ‘Perhaps you could beat him up for me, Ben.’
‘I don’t do that sort of thing!’ I protested.
‘Course you don’t …’ There was polite disbelief in his tone.
Serve time for GBH and people, understandably, think you’re violent. A reputation is a hard thing to shake. Particularly in a village. Strickland continued, ‘Anyway, one of these days he’ll go too far. Probably grab a customer – I wouldn’t put it past him, he’s a sick bastard.’
‘Why’d you hire him?’ I was genuinely interested.
Strickland looked at me. He was a small, dapper, good-looking man, never a hair out of place.
‘He came highly recommended, glowing CV.’
‘Probably from someone desperate to get shot of him,’ I said. ‘You know the way it is with troublemakers and the incompetent;