2 The Imposter Read online

  “Like what?”

  “I sold my house. There was no more money. I would’ve had to close otherwise.”

  “When was this?”

  “January.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “There was no point in worrying you about it.”

  “But—”

  “There was no point, Edward,” he said firmly. “You were out of the country—what good would it have done, you fretting about it over there?”

  “How much did you get?”

  “There wasn’t that much to be had. I’d already remortgaged twice.”

  “How much is left?”

  “Not much.”

  “Anything?”

  He shrugged disconsolately. “Fifty quid.”

  Edward could hardly believe what he was hearing. This was not the return he had been expecting. There was more to ask about the state of the restaurant, but it could wait. Jimmy looked tired: blue-black bags bulged beneath his eyes and his skin was pallid and grey.

  “Where are you living?”

  “Here. It’s not so bad.” Jimmy stared out of the window, his conviction unpersuasive.

  Jimmy fetched a bowl of spotted dick and custard for dessert. Edward felt deflated. He also felt a little shocked. Things were different, and not for the better. The last customers left. Jimmy shut the door and switched off the lights. Edward put on an apron and helped him clean the kitchen. They worked in silence. The news had shaken him, and it was going to take some time to absorb.

  “Where do we sleep?”

  “In here,” Jimmy said, opening the storeroom door and stepping aside to let his nephew pass. A bedroll had been laid out on the floor between shelves of produce, bags of flour and rice. A hurricane lamp rested on the floor. Jimmy knelt down and lit it. He worked his boots off.

  Edward lowered himself to the floor. “Did anyone come around for me?”

  “After you went? Of course they did. The police were here just about every other day and when I convinced them I didn’t know where you are I had the others to deal with. I preferred the police.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That you were dead. I think they believed me in the end.”

  “And that was that? No-one else?”

  “The last one was a private detective. Three or four years ago. I think it was just routine by that point. There hasn’t been anyone else since.”

  Edward extinguished the lamp, lay down and stared into the darkness for a good half an hour, unable to sleep.

  “Are you awake?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” Jimmy said.

  “How’s my father?”

  There was a pause, and then Edward heard his uncle give a long sigh. “Not good. Getting worse. You’ll have to go and see him.”

  The day was a terrible anticlimax and, now, it ended with worry.

  4

  AFTER SEVEN YEARS IN THE SERVICE Edward’s body had become conditioned to rising before first light. It was a habit he would never grow out of and, that second day home, he awoke at four. He had slept fitfully, anyway, waking up and each time finding himself surprised that he was not under the canopy of the jungle and that he couldn’t hear the chirping of the crickets. It took him several moments to remember where he was.

  His earliest childhood memory was of the kitchen: the clouds of steam, the smells, the clamour and clatter of preparation. The first thing he could remember clearly was an image of his father, wearing an old-fashioned cook’s smock with a huge tureen of soup cradled between his elbows. He could see the flour on his arms, his glasses pushed up on his forehead and sweat pasting his thinning hair to his crown; a cleaver brought down onto the bloodied carcass of a pig; his mother going around the dining room to adjust cutlery by infinitesimal degrees; the sound of her calm voice as she explained to a customer why their dinner was delayed; the bitter taste of chocolate that he furtively licked from a bowl. He could remember being taken through the kitchen as a young child, the heat that was as wet as water, the waves that pulsed out of the open ovens, scorching the back of the throat and crisping the hair inside the nostrils each time he took a breath. And, most evocative of all, the smells: roasting meat, the intense aroma of the bread oven, pastry sweetness.

  Edward used the customer bathroom and changed into a pair of checked trousers, chef’s jacket and clogs. He put on an apron but couldn’t remember how to tie it. Jimmy corrected him, crossing the strings at the back, tying it at the front, the bib tucked inside. He paused at the front of house, took the reservation book and thumbed through it. Today promised to be much busier than last night. Perhaps there was hope. Even a broken night’s sleep had reinvigorated him and he felt full of determination. He was home now and he wasn’t going to let the restaurant fail without a bloody good fight.

  It was still dark outside when they got to work. Edward opened the door to the kitchen and switched on the lights. It hadn’t changed a bit while he was away: a long, thin space with the service line arranged against one wall with a narrow pass-through opposite it. Six months after acquiring the restaurant, his father had knocked through two of the walls and extended the kitchen into what had once been a store-room. There was a cold station next to the exit door, a row of deep-fryers, two big ranges, a pull-out broiler, a salamander, a brick hearth for charcoal grilling. Opposite, and separated by a slender work space, was a long stainless-steel counter with wooden cutting boards, sinks and a new Frigidaire at the end. He lit the ranges, flames curling up the blackened wall, and Jimmy switched on the steam table. There was no way for the air to circulate in the kitchen and within five minutes the temperature had ticked up to an almost unbearable level: a wall of radiant warmth on one side and clouds of wet steam rising on the other. He remembered his first proper session in the kitchen as a fourteen-year old pot boy: he’d fainted dead away in the broiling swelter.

  They went outside to the alleyway where the bins were kept and smoked their first roll-ups of the day. If Jimmy was nervous, he didn’t show it. He had always been a brilliant cook, and since Edward had been away he had become as good as Edward’s father had been.

  “It’s going to be hard work today,” he warned. “We’d ideally need another two or three in the kitchen but we can’t afford it.”

  “I’m back now. We’ll manage.”

  They went back into the steaming kitchen. Edward opened the Frigidaire to check the ingredients: some mackerel that was beginning to turn, a tray of sickly-looking pigs’ livers, a dozen poor quality steaks. He held up a slab of meat. “What in buggery are we supposed to do with this? It’s all gristle.”

  Jimmy looked up from rolling another cigarette. “I had to pay over the odds for that, too. We’ll make a nice sauce and hope for the best.”

  He took out a tray filled with salted water. Two medium-sized birds, de-feathered and skinned, had been left to soak overnight. “What are these?”

  “Rooks.”

  “Rooks?”

  ‘Somerset Rook Pie with Figgy Paste. Legs and breast only––get rid of everything else, it’s bitter. You make a paste with bacon fat, currants and raisins and serve it with gooseberry jelly.”

  “And it tastes––?”

  “Bloody awful.”

  The staff drifted in during the half-hour prior to the start of the shift. There was Pauline, a matronly East-Ender who made the fish stew and, during service, doled out the vegetables and side dishes; she had a problem with drink, and the glass at her side was kept topped up with gut-rot gin from a bottle she no longer went to the trouble of hiding. Gordon, the fry chef, had a history of mental illness and plenty of gaol-time. Edward’s father had always met him at the prison gates and offered him his job back again although it wasn’t purely philanthropic; Gordon was a devil behind the grill with unflagging energy and a high threshold to pain evidenced by the litany of burns and cuts on his arms. He kept a speed pourer topped up with rum in his rack and he sucked at it like a baby with a bottle. Stanley Smith dressed like
a pirate with the arms hacked off his chef’s coat, lank hair kept out of his eyes with a faded headband and prison tattoos inked onto his forearms. He was the pastry chef, and knocked out row after row of delicate deserts. The kitchen staff had been unchanged for ten years, and it was only the supporting roles––the pot boys, the waiting staff––that were different.

  They made their preparations: sharpening knives, folding side-towels into stacks, arranging favourite pans, stockpiling ice and boiling pots of water. Edward took an empty space and arranged his mise-en-place. He found a half-bowl of sea salt and cracked pepper, softened some lard, slotted cooking oil and cheap wine into his speed rack. He added breadcrumbs, parsley, brandy, chopped chives, caramelised apple sections, chopped onions and a selection of ladles, spoons and tongs. He arranged the pots and pans into a logical order and slotted his knives into a block so that they could be drawn quickly, as required. The others went about their work, well-practiced routines and roles that complemented each other perfectly. Pauline roasted bones for stock, skinned the pigs’ livers and scooped snoek from tins; Gordon blanched carrots, made garlic confit and a mayonnaise sauce with custard powder, powdered eggs and margarine; Stanley caramelised apples, lined dishes with pastry, took the plate of steaks from the larder, separated the worst and turned them into Salade de Boeuf en Vinaigrette, prepared a raspberry vinegar sauce to serve with the livers.

  Edward did his best to fit in, aware that he was hopelessly out of practice. He took a bowl of scrapings and made pâté and galantine, boiled off-cuts and knocked up a strong horseradish sauce, caramelized sugar to mask the taste of over-ripe fruit. He filled a huge steam kettle with stock, a darkly simmering mixture of ground beef, meat scraps, chicken bones, turkey carcasses, vegetable trimmings, carrot peelings and egg shells.

  It was awful. He wouldn’t have given any of it to a dog.

  Edward went through and checked the reservation book again. They were busy for both dinner sittings. Twenty tables, four covers per table, two sittings. They would need to put out one hundred and sixty dinners. He knew it was going to be hard, bordering on the impossible, but he kept his doubts to himself.

  Soon the kitchen was full of noise: profane yet affectionate insults, curses that would make a navvie blush, the bubbling of boiling water, whisks rattling against the sides of bowls, the rhythmic thudding of knives against chopping boards as vegetables and meat were diced. The ovens were turned to their highest settings and the doors left open; heat ran out of them like liquid until it seemed that the air was scorching the lungs. The temperature soared and it was soon difficult to see from the fryers at one end of the line to the ovens at the other because of the wavy heat-haze, the air squirming, like staring through the water in a fish tank.

  Jimmy leant against a tiled corner, drank a beer and smoked a cigarette. He watched through a crack in the door as the diners arrived and were shown to their tables. “Here they come,” he called. The first order arrived, Jimmy taking it from Mary, the waitress, and slapping it on the pass. “One Potato Jane, one dried egg omelette, one Marrow Surprise, one Tomato Charlotte.”

  That was just the first table. Things were fine to begin with but fresh orders arrived at shorter and shorter intervals and it wasn’t long before they started to back up. Starters were finished and orders for the main courses began to arrive and Edward was soon up to his wrists in meat and blood, crouching at the locker to pull out stringy steaks that already smelt as if they were on the turn. They yelled at Peter, the thirteen year old runner and pot boy, to bring more margarine and oil, and when they weren’t yelling at him they muttered at their stations, cursing, talking to the meat, urging it to cook, begging more fire from the burners, flipping steaks, poking them and prodding them to gauge how well they were done, how much longer they needed.

  Jimmy called out a running commentary: ‘Sending tables seven, thirteen, twenty, thank you. Table six, two fillets, medium. Four well, two medium, one blue. Hold six, waiting for Rook Pie. Five wants Beef Salad, where’s the vinaigrette? Two rare, waiting for potatoes on two, where are the bloody potatoes, Edward? Thank you. Away we go.”

  The heat got too much for Edward at around half past eight, right in the middle of the rush, the dizziness increasing in frequency and pitch until it felt as if a vice were being tightened around his forehead. He dropped to his knees, unsure of his balance and wary of toppling forward onto the burners. Jimmy yelled at the pot boy to fetch ice buckets for each of them and Edward bent down and dunked his head, the sudden shock chasing away the woozy light-headedness, at least for a few minutes.

  The next four hours were a nightmare that he thought would never end. The waitresses cleared the first sitting but the second arrived before they could even catch their breath. A break was out of the question. Fresh orders for starters were delivered and they were plunged back into bedlam again. An oven went down and Jimmy had to attend to it, a bottleneck forming with orders arriving so fast that they couldn’t fight their way through it. A thick wad of them built up. The floor was ankle deep in debris: scraps of food, discarded packaging, dropped utensils and dirty towels. Edward ended up drinking the cooking wine to keep himself together, chasing glasses of it with strong black coffee and a cigarette that he stuck behind his ear until it was eaten down to the tip and burnt his skin.

  Nine o’clock came and went and they were on the home straight. They cooked everything they had in a mad effort to keep ahead. The wooziness faded in and out, stronger the longer the service went on, the effect of the ice water diminishing each time Edward resorted to it. Burns and calluses marked his hands, his blood felt like it was boiling and salty sweat stung his eyes.

  “Rather be in the jungle?” Jimmy called out.

  “This is hotter than the jungle,” he said, “but at least I’m not being shot at.”

  “Not yet!”

  By the time midnight came Edward had been on his feet for twenty hours with barely any respite. He trembled with fatigue. “Keep going!” Jimmy yelled out.

  At a half past twelve the last table cleared the pass. “Finished,” Jimmy shouted above the din. “That’s it.”

  * * *

  IT WAS GONE TWO BY THE TIME they had finally wiped down, stored the ingredients that they hadn’t used and cleaned the kitchen. They had been awake for twenty-two hours. They retired to the side exit, sitting against the wall and bathing in the coolness of the night air. Dog-ends were scattered around and an empty bottle of house wine was smashed in the gutter. Cockroaches skittered around the overflowing bins and hungry mice surfaced from the drains. The smell was overpowering: acidic like ripe tomatoes, yeasty like stale beer, pungent sweat coming off them damply. Edward was tired to the marrow of his bones, light-headed from exhaustion and cheap booze. The cold night air felt wonderful on flesh that was sore, scalded, steam-burned. He rolled two cigarettes and they smoked them in silence. It was a respite from the furnace heat of the kitchen, the yelling of cooks buckling under pressure, the crazy noise and exertion of the line.

  Soho wound down around them, illegal shebeens and spielers offering late night drinks but the legitimate trade ending for another night. Drunks staggered through the alley, dragging their feet, wending left and right and somehow maintaining their balance. Neon signs buzzed until they were switched off for the night. A pair of policemen nodded at them as they passed. They looked like casualties of war, or murderers, their whites covered in blood and grime, sweaty hair plastered to their heads, nicks and scrapes covered by hastily applied sticking plasters.

  “You need more help,” Edward said, finally.

  “Can’t afford it.”

  “Can’t keep that pace up.”

  “We have to,” he said.

  Edward sucked smoke deep into his lungs.

  “Is it always like that?”

  “More or less.” Jimmy grinned, a strained wild-eyed grimace that spoke of how thinly he was stretched. He had been working two shifts in the kitchen every day for eight months straight. His
last day off had been imposed on him by Gordon, fearful that he was on the edge of a breakdown. He couldn’t have been closer to the edge than he was that night but now, with the kitchen staff at a bare minimum, there was no way that he could be spared.

  “How much did you take?”

  “Not enough.”

  “But it was full.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You know how many people paid?”

  Edward shook his head.

  “Half. How can I argue with them? The food’s not fit for a dog.” He sighed out, long and beaten and depressed. “We’re busy, yes, but they’re only coming because of the reputation the place has. That’s your father’s legacy, and we’re pissing it all away. No-one who came here tonight is coming back. That’s obvious. Eventually, word will start to get around. ‘I had dinner in the Shangri-La last night––it used to be something special, but now, my goodness, it’s a disgrace.’ You know what they’ll say. If we can still fill that room in three months I’ll be surprised. And every seating we don’t fill is another step closer to the end of the road. It’s pointless, Edward. It’s a losing battle.”

  Edward knew that his uncle was right. Even terrible ingredients were expensive, and they couldn’t charge customers the prices they needed to break even. He’d heard about the walk-outs tonight, and the customers who had refused to pay full price. Money was tight and there was the rent to pay, and wages on top of that. Revenue was already insufficient to cover the outgoings. The future promised a long, slow, decline until the funds ran out.

  “I’m going to see my father tomorrow,” Edward said.

  Jimmy nodded quietly.

  “How bad is he?”

  “Not good. I don’t go as often as I should. It’s difficult. It’s hard to see him now.”