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Chapter Nine

Enzo’s laptop sat open on the coffee table, while he squatted on the edge of the settee waiting for the
moi.dssr
file to transfer from his memory stick to his hard drive. Sophie was curled up beside him, one arm draped idly over his shoulder watching the slow progress of the transfer. It was after eleven, and she had sneaked straight up to his room after the evening service.

“Won’t you be missed?” he had asked her.

“Nah. Everyone’s too tired to bother about socialising at the end of the day. And the only one who’s liable to notice I’m not in my room is Philippe.”

“Who’s Philippe?”

“The
sous-chef
. I told you!”

“Oh. The boy who’s taken a shine to you?”

“Yes.”

“So how will he know that you’re not in your room?”

“Oh, papa, stop being so suspicious.” She had drawn a deep breath of indignation. “He quite often comes in to listen to music and chat.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s
all
.” She had sighed, then. “Anyway, I’ve been playing a bit hard to get lately, so he won’t be surprised if I don’t answer when he knocks on the door.”

Finally the file finished transferring, and he double-clicked on it. A message appeared informing him that he did not possess any software that would open it.

Sophie squinted at the screen. “So what are you going to do?”

“See if I can track down the software and download it.”

She disentangled herself and lifted the computer on to her lap. “What’s it called? I’ll find it for you.”

“It’s called
Dossier
.”

“No problem.”

He watched as she focused on the screen, eyes wide and fixed on the browser, tapping on the keyboard in search of the software. She was a beautiful young woman. Even tired, and washed out at the end of the day, and without a trace of make-up. She had inherited her mother’s fine, strong features, and her father’s dark hair and Waardenburg streak, though concealed now by the blond rinse. He remembered how, in those first weeks after her mother had died, and she was just a wet, pink, crusty bundle, he had felt such resentment toward her. As if somehow it had been Sophie’s fault that her mother had died giving birth to her. He found it difficult now, to believe that he had harboured such feelings. Of course, they had passed. And he had come to see her as Pascale’s gift to him, a little part of her that would live on in her daughter. And perhaps, too, in Sophie’s children, if she ever had any.

“What?” Sophie’s question startled him. Her eyes had never left the screen.

“What do you mean?”

“I can feel your eyes on me.”

He smiled. She was so much a part of him. “I love you, Sophie.”

Her eyes flickered up from the screen, and he saw them grow moist as she met his. “I love you, too, papa.” And she reached out suddenly and touched his face. He felt her fingers track lightly over his bristles. “Do you ever see Kirsty these days?”

He felt himself tense. “Occasionally. When I’m in Paris.”

“She’s still with Roger?”

He nodded. “You don’t keep in touch with her, then?”

She shrugged. “No point. Since we’re not sisters any more.”

The revelation that his daughter by his first marriage was not his daughter after all, but the fruit of a fleeting affair between his wife and his best friend, had come as a shattering blow to Enzo. Sophie had greeted it almost joyfully. Kirsty was no longer her half-sister. She didn’t have to share her father with anyone anymore.

“I need your credit card.”

“What?”

“Your credit card. To pay for the download.”

“You’ve found it, then?”

“Would I need your card if I hadn’t.”

Her logic was impeccable. Annoyingly, he could hear himself in it. They were far, far, too alike. He reached for his satchel and took out his wallet, and held out his card.

“Just read it out to me.”

“Where did you learn to be so damned bossy, girl?”

“You, papa. Read!”

He sighed and read out the details of his card while she tapped them into the computer.

She hit the return key with a flourish. “
Et voilà
!” She beamed at him. “Downloading now.” It took several minutes to download, and then Sophie installed it before passing the laptop back to her father. She squeezed up close to him so she could peer at the screen as he opened up
moi.dssr
, and entered Marc Fraysse’s password to unlock the document. “What is it?”

“Wait…” Enzo scanned the first few lines, then scrolled quickly through several thousand words of text, stopping occasionally, scrolling back, then forward again. “Elisabeth was right,” he said finally. “Marc Fraysse
was
writing a memoir.”

“You mean like an autobiography?”

“Sort of, I guess. Although, this really just looks like notes and anecdotes. As if he was gathering his thoughts before getting down to the real meat of it, so to speak.”

Sophie grinned. “As a chef
would
do.”

Enzo scrolled back up to the top of the document, to a date and a place where, for Marc Fraysse, it had all begun. And the voice of the young Marc spoke across the years to Enzo and Sophie, as clear as if he had been there in the room with them.

Chapter Ten

Clermont Ferrand, 1972

I had just turned seventeen, and wasn’t doing so well at school. I never did get my
Bac
. The truth is, I didn’t see the point. I was going to work in the kitchen at the auberge. Everyone knew it. Mama, papa, Guy. So why did I need to know about about algebra and geography? What possible reason was there for learning about history. It was past, gone. Only the future mattered. And right now, I knew what my future would be. It was to follow in the footsteps of my brother. Footsteps that would lead me straight to the kitchen of
les frères Blanc,
where papa hoped I was going to learn how to keep him in his old age.

I didn’t want to go. Guy had been there a year, and I had heard enough of his stories to know that however much I had hated school, I was going to hate Jacques and Roger Blanc a whole lot more.

School had broken up in July, and I had spent the summer working at the
boulangerie
in Thiers, treading water till I would go to Clermont Ferrand in October. The prospect of dragging myself out of bed at three every morning all through that summer to work in the stifling, flour-filled heat of the bakery had infused me with dread. In the event, I loved it. I loved being up and working while the rest of humankind was asleep. It felt, somehow, as if I had inherited the whole world, and had it all to myself. The
boulanger
was a grumpy old bastard to most people. When I say old, he just seemed old to me. He was probably just in his early forties. But he never had a harsh word for me. He could see I loved my work, I loved being there, and I worked damn hard for him.

I also adored the fact that when everyone else was working during the day, I was free as a bird. Free to climb the hills and wander the plateau. Free, it seemed, for the first time in my life. The apprenticeship in Clermont was the only cloud on my horizon. In the early summer it seemed a lifetime away. But as the weeks passed, it started to loom dark, and ever closer.

For the first time in my life I had money in my pocket. Money earned through the sweat of my own labour, even if I did give most of it to my folks to pay for my keep. Of course, I also helped mama in the kitchen for lunch and evening service, but I was in bed by eight. And I slept like I have never slept before or since.

It seems strange to me now when look back on that time. But the fact was, I didn’t really want to be a chef. Long hours of mind-numbing work in the cramped and claustrophobic heat of a restaurant kitchen was something I already knew about. And it wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my days. But when you are seventeen, and without qualifications, or ambition, life stretches ahead like a prison sentence. And you do what you have to. You do what you know.

I didn’t realize it then, of course, but the twin tyrants of Jacques and Roger Blanc, though I would grow to hate them, were the ones who would give me both the skill and the motivation to be what I am today.

***

I remember well the day I left home. It was late October. The weather had turned and the equinoctial gales had already stripped the trees of their leaves. Cloud was settled on the plateau and a fine wetting rain colored everything black. It all seemed to bear down on me, like a pressing weight, and reflected the color of my mood. Papa had bought me everything I would need for my sojourn in Clermont. Laid out on my bed were two white chef’s blouses, two pairs of grey and white checkered pants, and two pairs of rubber clogs. And that was it. My uniform for the next three years, a uniform that would be stained by sweat and by cooking and by hauling coal, and washed and washed until it was almost threadbare.

I remember looking at those things, and the open suitcase on the bed beside them. I remember looking around the room where I had lived my whole life up until then. Walls that bore witness to the scars of my childhood, walls which had seen all my tears and joys, my growing pains, my first fumbled attempts at masturbation. And those walls bore witness to the last tears that I would ever shed within them.

I looked from the window, then, at the view I had always taken for granted, and knew that I really didn’t want to go.

Papa drove me to Clermont Ferrand in his old
Quatre L
. I was seventeen years old and I had never been to the city. It was a wonder to me. All those buildings that towered over you, casting their gloom on the rain-sodden streets. The traffic and the trams, and all those people. I had never seen so many people. It gave me a perspective on my life that I had never had before, and made me feel small, and terribly insignificant. My world had been the
auberge
, my school, my parents, my brother. Suddenly it all seemed like nothing at all.

I remember passing the Michelin factory on the way into town. The huge, smokey, industrial complex churned out the tires that turned around the wheels of France. Of course, I had heard of the
Guide Michelin
, but I had no idea then how those two words, and the stars that went with them, would shape my life.

The Lion d’Or stood in a narrow street off the grand Place de Jaude. The theatre was nearby, and the cathedral and the synagogue, so it was well-placed. The building dated from the nineteenth century, five stories high, and for decades had provided meals and accommodation for the VRPs, the
voyageur représentant placiers
, or travelling salesmen, who motored the length and breadth of this vast country peddling their wares. But the brothers Blanc had changed all that, bringing back from their respective apprenticeships a mastery of French cuisine learned at the feet of the then undisputed practitioner of the art, Fernand Point, in his hotel-restaurant, La Pyramide, on the banks of the Rhone.

They had transformed their parents’ establishment, winning first one star, then two, in the space of just five years. And much of the resultant profit had been poured back into the building to raise it to quite another level. Its clientele no longer consisted of the chattering VRPs in their threadbare suits, but businessmen, successful
commerçants
, politicians, some of whom were now making the trip from Paris just to eat and be seen there.

For the first, and last time in my life, I entered through the front door of the Lion d’Or. Monsieur and Madame Blanc greeted my father like a long lost friend, one of their oldest and best loved clients from the fondly remembered and informal days of the workmen’s lunches. Papa kissed me then, on both cheeks, handed me my suitcase, and left.

When he was gone I was taken into the kitchen and introduced to Jacques and Roger. They were big men, both. Tall, corpulent, and perfectly intimidating. Roger sported classic French moustaches which curled up over each cheek. Jacques had a big, florid, clean-shaven, round face that seemed set in a permanent scowl. Each in turn, crushed my hand in his, watched by a gallery of silent apprentices relishing the arrival of a new boy, on to whom they could offload the most unpleasant of their tasks. Among them was Guy, of course, and he could barely conceal his glee.

“Your brother can show you the ropes and take you to your room,” Jacques said.

The “ropes”, it turned out, consisted of responsibility for the great cast-iron coal-burning stove that fuelled the kitchen, heating the ovens, and bringing the grills and hotplates up to searing temperatures. That meant shovelling the coal from the cellar below the kitchen into buckets, and hauling it up to keep the stove well stoked. It also meant scraping out the ashes from the night before, setting and lighting the firebox so that the stove was up to temperature by the time the chefs arrived at eight-thirty, a task I had to perform twice a day, for lunch and dinner services.

I was also to be responsible, every other week, for cleaning out the black, oily deposits of soot left in the firebox beneath the rings on which the Blanc brothers conjured their culinary magic. And I would have nothing more than a wire brush to do it with. Guy had been doing it for the last year, and was only too delighted to be passing it on to me.

He showed me the garbage cans I would have to empty, and took enormous pleasure in telling me how I would have to scour clean, wash and dry, every counter top and stove surface in the kitchen every night. And God help me if Jacques or Roger found a speck of dirt on them the following day.

And here was me thinking I had been going to learn about cooking!

I was to share, it transpired, a room up in the attic with my brother. A small, dark, dank room up in the Gods, with a tiny window from which you could just see the twin spires of the cathedral of Notre Dame de l’Assomption. You might have thought that having my brother for company would have softened the experience. But Guy couldn’t be bothered with his little brother. He was offhand, almost cruel. Thick with all the other apprentices. And I felt shut out and desperately alone.

That night, after showing me our room, he and the others went off to gather in one of the other bedrooms to play cards. I asked if I could join them. But Guy just laughed and said no one would have any time for a kid like me. They played for money, and I was far too young. He left me to sit on the edge of my bed, staring gloomily into the darkness outside. Rain was battering against the window, and the wind seemed to whistle through every crack and slate in the roof. I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone.

I had wept on leaving home. And I wept again now. Tears of loneliness and misery. And I pulled back the ice-cold sheets of the unforgiving bed I would sleep on for the next three years, to cry myself dry, so that my brother wouldn’t hear me sobbing when finally he came to bed. Which is when I realized that my mattress was soaking. Drenched in cold water poured from tumblers by mischievous hands. I cursed aloud. And I could hear the stifled giggles of apprentices in the corridor outside.