The Triple Goddess (127 page)

‘To me, the promiscuous charms of memory are more fulfilling than a monogamous tie. Having only one piece of music to listen to, to me would be torture, and I would quickly come to hate the sounds I thought I prized sufficiently to exclude all others, and stop playing it.

‘Regarding another book, even if I never opened the cover, so unlimited would be the unconsidered, and ill-considered, matter that I already had in my head waiting to be revisited, pondered, reinterpreted, and enjoyed, given the unlimited leisure to do so, that my choice’s exclusive presence at my side demanding to be read would become intolerable, until I would surely toss it into the ocean for the edification of mermaids and mermen.

‘As to the luxury, given a crate of Lindt chocolate I would doubtless consume much of it too fast, and make myself so ill as to want to dispose of the remainder in similar fashion to the book, and amuse myself by listening to the gurgles of dyspepsia from the depths.

‘A simpler explanation for my decision was that, when it came to the prospect of employment, I wanted nothing to do with my father’s fertilizer business after his death. From the moment I took it over, if so proactive a term can be applied to my stewardship, I neglected it to the point where, by the time I decided it should be sold, it was worthless.

‘And because I was adamant about not profiting from the stamp collection that Cecil Bulstrode had somehow put together in the course of his sojourns around the world, having donated it to the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum without making any effort to ascertain its value, I awoke one morning to find myself penniless and in need of a job.

‘Despite having no training in any craft or line of work at which I could hope to make a living, I was motivated to do well at something. I had no wish to be fat and fifty and with no prospects but that of an impoverished old age.

‘I decided to make a new start in an energetic and sociable
métier
: as a chef; and not just any chef, but a great one who owned his own restaurant and became rich and famous. For as Barabas says in Marlowe’s
The Jew of Malta
…that,
as their wealth increaseth, men of judgement should frame their means of traffic from the vulgar trade, and so enclose infinite riches in a little room…fortunes may be made by those whose private interests lie within th
e confines of a Smallbone kitchen.

‘It was a serious aspiration, for in addition to possessing talent, a chef-in-training has to spend years attaining proficiency in multiple disciplines before he—or she, for I do not mean to imply that it is a male-only profession—can hope to win his toque; and even then success is far from assured. Those who complain about a tough apprenticeship are either not up to the job, or they lack the necessary drive, or ability to function as part of a team—and I was determined in the way that only one who’d reached bottom in life can be.

‘To fully understand the trade, one must begin in the lowliest position and work one’s way through the ranks of the line employees, being prepared to accept and endure long hours, low pay, and rudeness from those whose skills and performance one needs to acquire and emulate. The knowledge that one is there to steal the secrets of others, to improve upon their methods, and thereafter to compete with them for jobs in the culinary marketplace, makes one’s colleagues the surliest and most begrudging of teachers.

‘In addition to which, in order to succeed one has to have a head for business, an eye for trends, and to be a good judge of people in hiring the right sort of assistants. Ultimately every chef is dependent upon those who work under him, and before lording it over others he must demonstrate that he is capable of earning their respect.

‘I took out a loan on the strength of my slight remaining credit, and signed up for classes at a Cordon Bleu school, from which I graduated with honours. I then applied for work at a long list of restaurants in different cities that specialized in diverse cuisines
,
so as to become accustomed to the pace and pressure of all types of commercial gastronomy. In what others called their spare time—I should have regarded it as a serious deficiency in myself if I had any—I studied French, to ease my assimilation into the trade, for it was my conviction that cookery in its supreme form is a Gallic province.

‘I learned my lessons well, beginning as a prep cook, and then a
commis
, or assistant to the
chefs de partie
, otherwise known as station chefs or line cooks, in which capacity I was responsible for basic preparation in the kitchen; as well as helping select the finest meat, fish, vegetables, and other ingredients from the best suppliers and markets. Under the guidance of an excellent
saucier
, I practised the five mother sauces until I could make them blindfold, and I distinguished myself in similar fashion under the tutelage of
poissoniers
or fish cooks,
entremétiers
or vegetable cooks,
rôtisseurs
or roasting cooks, fry cooks, and soup cooks. The
garde manger
, or pantry chef, versed me in the preparation of cold food, and the
pâtissier
, or pastry chef, in making desserts.

‘As I advanced in proficiency, I was encouraged to use my instincts and be adventurous in the creation of new dishes, new dining experiences. From
chef tournant
, or relief or swing cook, within five years I was promoted to
sous-chef
.

‘Three years later I obtained a position as
chef de cuisine
, and then executive chef, upon the departure under a cloud of the incumbent, from a restaurant that had formerly been well known and popular, but which had allowed its standards to slip. Custom had fallen off dramatically, and the partners who owned it were desperate as to what to do, now that the business in which they’d formerly made a killing had become a drain upon their resources in a down financial market. What had once seemed a limitless geyser of profitability as an investment, was now a dry well.

‘The decline of a great restaurant is sad to behold, especially because as soon as word gets around that it is not what it was, it is likely to go under sooner than it might deserve, especially if the right improvements are already being implemented to address the faults and deficiencies. The public is as irrational and fickle in its loyalty to such establishments as chefs are egotistical and highly strung. There are any number of things that can go wrong, but whether the cause is staff problems, or a deterioration in quality, or service, or a citation for unhygienic practices, or a combination of different reasons, the effect is fast and devastating. The case of the owner–chef who fell into such a great depression when he lost one of his Michelin stars that he killed himself, was a tragic reflection of what can happen in the industry.

‘At the failing operation I was with, although the partners didn’t have the faintest idea how to solve their problem, they were extremely lucky to have chosen the right person in me to rescue them, for such situations are for the most part irretrievable.

‘Knowing how owners insist on meddling in even the most thriving ventures, before I agreed to take charge I insisted that I should have complete autonomy of decision-making, and hiring, because I wanted to sack everyone who worked there. And I was canny enough to demand that, in return for accepting only a very modest salary, I be given a contract including significant financial incentives contingent upon my being able to turn things around.

‘After much hesitation on their part, for it would make considerable inroads into their returns should I make good on my undertaking, the partners agreed to my terms. They had little choice, for all those who already had a name in the restaurant and hospitality business had turned them down.

‘The first thing I did was to approach the manager of one of Paris’s premier restaurants, a likeable man in his late fifties called Anatole—a descendant of the novelist and writer Anatole France, one of whose books was called
La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque
—
and offer to hire him for the same position at my establishment. Although I could afford to offer Anatole very little in salary—really it amounted to no more than modest wages—his pension was secure and he was in the mood for a diversion, before he was ready to retire and grow organic vegetables on a smallholding he’d purchased years before in the Loire Valley. He accepted with alacrity and enthusiasm.

‘Knowing what a feather in my cap attracting Anatole to my side was, I further burdened the partners with the provision that they pay him a generous bonus if we were successful.

‘As many of you will know, together Anatole and I quickly restored that restaurant to its former glory, so that even tycoons and the doyens and doyennes of society couldn’t get a table without making a reservation a month in advance. We made an exception for royalty.

‘My manager and I got along well together, for although we were committed to lightening the wallets of our customers, we shared a mute antipathy for the poseurs and creeps who throw their money around in expensive restaurants, when they could be eating more healthily and enjoyably at home with their families. But although those dining would have emerged onto the pavement much better nourished had they been served lentil stew, there was no money in lentil stew.

‘I hated these people the moment they walked in the door, all dressed up in their evening finery, and abusing Anatole if they did not consider their table to be worthy of their positions and social status. They would never give their names, but expected him to recognize them with an effusive welcome, and grovel with gratitude that they should have condescended to patronize our eatery. And I despised the way they treated the waiters, who were in every way superior to those they were obliged to take orders from and serve.

‘For revenge, I fed my diners as much butter, heavy cream, and eggs, and clogged their arteries with as much
trans-
unsaturated and saturated fats and cholesterol, as I could fit on the menu and in the kitchen pans, in order to hasten their going hence to the place where there are no linen tablecloths, no silver and crystal, and where no Diners Club credit cards are accepted.

‘I suppose some might say that, at this point, my ancient love of risk reasserted itself, now that I had an opportunity to give it free rein once more, in a way that might have again doomed me to failure. But I would disagree. Although in some respects my behaviour was similar to that of Reginald Perrin, in the books by David Nobbs that inspired the television sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter,
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
—in which the perverse
Reggie opens a shop called Grot, where he sells useless products like machines which did nothing, soluble umbrellas, games without instructions, square hoops, round dice, and wine made from sprouts and nettles, hoping in vain that the emporium would fail—I maintain that the examples are not analogous, for this
time I was operating on a very level-headed and businesslike basis with an eye squarely on the bottom line.

‘This did not mean, however, that as I enriched myself I could not have some fun at the expense of both my partners and my clients.

‘In the matter of my restaurant’s wine cellar, for example, although I was no oenologist, neither was the man I hired to be my sommelier: a garage mechanic called Lee Dregs who couldn’t tell Coke from Pepsi, let alone a Margaux from an Haut Brion. This put Lee Dregs in the same category as my assistant chef, “Streaky” Bacon, a pig farmer with one colour-blind eye. Owing to his never before having left Devonshire, Streaky was familiar neither with the black Périgord truffle,
Tuber melanosporum
, nor with the white Piedmont
Tuber magnatum
, which I obtained very cheaply from a mushroom-shady dealer in Dieppe, who swore that his truffles were in a fungous class of their own.

‘Customers agreed, and gorged themselves on them despite the hefty supplementary price. Assistant chef “Streaky” Bacon, however, when he put his first and last triffle, as he called it, in his mouth, spat it out and said he would rather eat soap, which he did not stock at home for that reason; neither did our cunning and impudent kitchen cat, Sammy, short for Salmonella, relish the morsel any more than she had a taste for salmon.

‘It was a bad day for Sammy the cat, for later that night she lost her tail to a descendent blade on a cutting board, whereupon the jinxed Manxed—the Manx cat, from the Isle of Man, is a tailless breed—minx leaped into a ragout. As soon as the flesh had disintegrated, Streaky Bacon picked out the bones, and a waiter served the transmogrified moggy to a party of six and great acclaim, after he regretted to have to inform them that the Copper River salmon, which had a two week only season and would have been flown in fresh from Alaska had it not been obtainable tinned in the pet aisle at Tesco, was all gone.

‘Diners who sought the opinion of my sommelier, Lee Dregs, at table, lauded him for his vinous knowledge, and discussed loudly in his presence their amazement that a man of such discernment could have the accent of a guttersnipe. The man, who himself drank only draught Guinness, was most inventive in mixing his own
vins de poubelle
, or garbage can wine, from bottles that he obtained from Oddbins, at half price because they were past their worst, corked, and from Algeria and Hungary.

‘Lee also had a wicked sense of humour, and enjoyed matching what people drank to their character; so that, for example, after I had translated the words for him, a bishop was served Lacrima Christi, or tears of Christ; and his bimbo, Liebfraumilch, or whore’s milk. The bishop had asked Lee to pour them something appropriate, by the glass only, of which the tart took six and the bishop eight, because to order a bottle apiece would have been greedy.