A Taste of Death Read online

  They nodded at me in a condescending way. They weren’t interested in me, they weren’t interested in food. In a blue-collar hierarchy chefs don’t fare too well. We work with effeminate food, not heavy, manly things like bricks, steel, roof tiles, concrete, joists (what even is a joist? One day I’d ask one of the roofers who hung out next to, but not with the scaffolders – they considered themselves superior, a cut above in the building pyramid), and scaffolding.

  The catering trade was, however, present in the pub. Quite well represented by four young male chefs from the pub round the corner, the King’s Head. I say pub, it was now a four-rosette restaurant. The King’s Head was knocking on the Michelin star door, asking to be let in. The chefs looked very young, very frail and very pallid compared to the muscular, weather-beaten scaffolders.

  They must be on split shifts, the nightmare side of working in a kitchen, ten till three, five thirty to eleven thirty and there was nothing for them to do in the couple of hours off that they had, other than come here. There was an enormous Scottish guy with them, six four, overweight, Dougie by name, an affable bear of a man. He was the King’s Head’s sous-chef, the man directly below the head-chef.

  ‘Afternoon, sir,’ Malcolm, the landlord, said to me. It’s one of the oddities of life that many landlords seem to detest the general public and Malcolm was one of them. He looked at his customers with an expression of total dislike, boredom or irritation. He was a red-faced, cadaverous man, extremely silent but when he spoke it was in a hoarse whisper, as if from beyond the grave. I had never seen him smile. I’m not saying he didn’t do it, perhaps he was a closet laugh-a-minute kind of guy, but if so, he hid it well.

  I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t want a successful pub with an affable landlord. They might start doing food and I would suffer. Malcolm only did crisps and nuts; the occasional packet of pork scratchings was his idea of a gourmet treat, that and a ‘seafood snack’ that stank like cat food. He was no threat to business at all.

  I said hello, ordered and watched as he fetched me a Coke.

  ‘I’ll get that,’ said a voice behind me.

  I turned. It was a man I’d seen before in the pub, stocky, short-haired but balding. Like Whitfield, who I’d seen him drinking with when I came in, a devotee of tattoos, although he favoured ones that were more abstract (tribal, Maori-style) and monochromatic.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. His eyes were half closed and he smelled strongly of weed; he looked extremely stoned. He extended his hand, ‘Hi, I’m Craig.’

  ‘Ben.’ We shook hands.

  ‘Do you want to come and join us?’ He gestured at the table. Whitfield too looked the worse for wear, eyes glazed. I guessed he’d been smoking weed too. Maybe it was the stress of having the obelisk burn down.

  I decided to give it a miss. The idea of spending time with people who are stoned is less than enthralling. Fine if you’re sitting in a prison cell with a great deal of time on your hands, but not in the real world where you could be doing something a tad more exciting.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get back to the kitchen in a minute. I’ve got a cheesecake to make.’

  What could be more exciting than that?

  Craig nodded sympathetically, patted me amiably on the arm and wandered off back to his table and Whitfield. Maybe he wasn’t a cheesecake kind of guy. He didn’t even ask me if it was baked (New York style) or the more usual with mascarpone or Philadelphia. Oh well.

  I drank my Coke by myself, listening to the clack and bang of pool balls from my fellow chefs, the rumble of manly conversation about football from the builders, Craig Scott and Dave Whitfield in catatonic silence, the landlord staring into the middle distance, avoiding eye contact with everyone. I finished it, and headed for the exit. As I reached it, the door opened and a tall man of about sixty with iron-grey hair and an expensive suit came in, accompanied by a girl a third of his age, hanging on to his arm. She was showing a lot of flesh, wearing a very short skirt and vertiginous heels. The two of them joined Whitfield and Craig at their table.

  Before I left the pub I looked back at the red-faced alcoholic landlord, the aggressive, rowdy scaffolders, the shattered-looking chefs by the pool table, the stoned forms of Whitfield and Craig – and the sinister, ageing businessman and his mistress. It was like some morality play, drunkenness, violence, exhaustion, greed and lust all in the one room.

  It hadn’t taken me long to realise that, pretty though it might be, Hampden Green was certainly no paradise.

  Et in Arcadia Ego.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Monday, 11 January, lunch

  I had made lime jelly in an ice cube mould and used slightly less liquid so the jelly cubes were quite firm and easy to handle. There was a healthy drop of tequila in the mixture and I carefully placed a meringue circle on a plate, piped Chantilly cream over it, added some passionfruit compote, three tequila and lime jelly cubes and a jaunty little meringue hat. I garnished this with a twist of kiwi.

  ‘Ta da!’ I said, pleased with my handiwork.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ said Jess admiringly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘A work of art, I’m sure the Earl will appreciate it.’

  ‘Well, take it away then,’ I said, and got on with the next order. The Earl? Had I heard right. The door swung to behind Jess as she carried my artwork out.

  I had now learned quite a bit about her. She was twenty. She had a giant Schnauzer called Siegfried. She had studied maths, further maths, physics and chemistry at A level and had straight A-stars in all four. She liked the theatre, she still swam competitively. She had liked middle distance running, ‘but I grew to be totally the wrong shape …’ she sighed.

  She also loved eating cream. ‘I’m Miss Dairy Queen,’ she confided to me and if I had been whipping the stuff would clean the mixing bowl with a spatula and eat it.

  God knows how she kept so slim. Maybe all that swimming.

  I carried on making soup, green pea and parsnip. I blitzed it with a stick-blender, it was certainly vivid. I tasted it – well, if you liked that kind of thing it was lovely – I seasoned it with salt and pepper.

  Later I would make slightly curried mini pea fritters as a garnish and, when I served it, I’d float one in the centre of the bowl so the brown of the fritter contrasted with the emerald of the soup. Class!

  ‘So we’ve got an earl in?’ I said.

  Jess had returned. She put the plates down by the dishwasher and I started cleaning them. A commercial dishwasher has a cycle that takes around three minutes but you have to give what goes into it a quick clean in the sink first or otherwise the machine would break down under the weight of leftover food. In a busy kitchen the dishwasher’s sink ends up looking like a particularly horrible minestrone. There never seems to be enough time to empty it and refill it.

  I was spending a great deal of time washing up. I thought, God we need a kitchen porter. Then I suddenly recalled, with alarm, Jess will be back at uni soon. I’d need another waitress.

  My waitress answered my question regarding the aristocracy. ‘Of course there’s an earl.’ She shook her head at my stupidity. I reflected I was very lucky that she didn’t have any annoying mannerisms like saying ‘Duh!’ whenever I expressed ignorance at local affairs. ‘Earl Hampden, he lives at Marlow House,’ she added.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Mean,’ she said, slightly irritably.

  I couldn’t resist going to have a look myself. I knew it was ridiculous but I had never met an earl, or a lord, or any form of titled person. I wanted to go and see what he looked like. I muttered some excuse to Jess about needing some coffee and I went into the restaurant, made myself an espresso and returned to the kitchen.

  It was the grey-haired man I had seen coming into the Three Bells.

  ‘I saw him the other day, in the pub,’ I said. He had seemed slightly sinister, his age contrasted with the youth of the girl clutching his arm, her hair very blonde
against his dark suit. His choice of drinking companions made him seem Mafiosi-like too. An ageing, lecherous Don.

  Will you look at yourself? I thought. You sound just like your mother.

  ‘Bet he was with some floozy,’ Jess said sniffily, ‘he’s on some rich man’s dating agency.’

  The words ‘dating agency’ came heavily italicised.

  ‘He likes going to Thailand a lot.’ The way she said it made me think it probably wasn’t for the food, the temples or the beaches.

  ‘Bangkok?’ I asked.

  ‘You said it.’ She went back into the restaurant, annoyed at the aristocracy’s lack of morals and I carried on cleaning.

  Later, during a lull in food orders, while a couple of tables studied dessert menus, I asked her if she knew Craig. I described him to her.

  ‘Well, Ben, you are getting to know the village, aren’t you?’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘If you want to buy drugs in Hampden Green, Craig’s your man.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. I don’t know why I should have been surprised that a country village should have its own resident dealer. Drugs are everywhere.

  ‘Yeah, and he is to dealing what Whitfield is to construction, i.e., crap. He nearly got beaten to death a couple of years ago when he tried to rip off a couple of guys from London.’

  Yay, I thought, strike one for my home town and place of birth! Take that, yokel dealers!

  Jess carried on, unaware of my flush of civic pride. ‘He got found in a lay-by on the Speen road. He said it was a mugging.’ She shook her head disbelievingly as if anyone would be so stupid as to fall for so transparent a lie. ‘Yeah, right, Craig, in the middle of nowhere,’ she said scornfully. ‘The only things off the Speen road are fields with cows and livery yards. Who did that then, who put you in hospital for a fortnight, the Pony Club?’

  Time passed. I prepared seventeen meals as well as a fair amount of cakes. It was a pleasantly busy morning.

  While I was cooking I reflected on Slattery and his attitude to me. If he was so worried about crime and keeping his village – this village – free of it, why wasn’t he concentrating more on Craig and less on me? It was puzzling.

  ‘Um, Ben.’ Jess was back, she put her tray down.

  I looked up from what I was doing.

  ‘One of the customers said she would like a word about doing some catering for a party.’

  Great, I thought, with satisfaction. ‘Oh, good,’ I said, then, ‘do you know her?’

  I immediately thought, stupid question. Jess seemed to know everyone in the village, but that’s obviously part of the village way of life. Hardly surprising.

  More Jess facts that I had learned during service: she’d been born in the maternity department of the local hospital in Byfield, the nearby big town, grew up in Hampden Green. She had been educated in the village primary school, then back to Byfield for a grammar school education.

  Her reply to my question entailed a rolling of her expressive, dark-brown eyes. Not a good sign.

  ‘Naomi West.’ The name was delivered with the sort of enthusiasm with which you open an envelope marked HMRC.

  ‘What’s she like?’ I was curious to know what Naomi had done to attract Jess’s ire.

  ‘She’s a yoga teacher, very New Age.’ Jess’s voice was sniffy. Four A-stars at A level in science subjects and the legacy of relentless, Boolean mathematics had left their mark on her view of the value of mysticism. She clarified, ‘New Age in terms of beliefs, not years on this planet.’

  I went through into the restaurant to meet the object of Jess’s ageist, rationalist scorn.

  In my limited experience yoga teachers, women ones, tend to be cut from the same cloth. Often with a background in dance or gymnastics, they are genial, usually fairly affluent, good-humouredly bossy, and obviously very flexible physically.

  Naomi lived up to the stereotype.

  First impressions: wide, sincere eyes, dark hair, quite tanned or naturally brown, slim, wiry body, boho kind of dress sense, silver jewellery, late forties and a habit, as I was soon to find out, of clinging on to your forearm whilst staring intently into your face. The sort of person who tells you earnestly, ‘I’m a people person.’

  She was drinking herbal tea. To be expected.

  ‘Hi, so good to meet you,’ Naomi said. Her voice was low-pitched and husky. She made eye contact with me, as if I was super-important.

  I listened as she spoke, giving details of the proposed party. A hundred people, mid-February, a thousand-pound budget. A chance to showcase and show-off. I was delighted.

  I was aware of a kind of stiff-backed resentment from Jess as the two of us ran through proposed menus. Jess moved around the restaurant deliberately clattering things. If she’d been an animal, a cat say, her fur would have been on end, angrily bristling.

  ‘It’s for the feast of Imbolc,’ Naomi said, meaningfully, ‘perhaps you have heard of it?’

  I confessed my ignorance of pagan festivals. Naomi leaned forwards towards me, said, ‘Maybe you’d like to come over tonight to discuss the menu, we could finalise things …Wait—’ she held my arm, peering at me intently ‘—you must be an Aries, I can tell … the ram.’

  ‘I’m Gemini.’ I said, then, damn! I should have gone with Aries, the customer is always right.

  ‘Of course you are!’ I had to admire her, she didn’t miss a beat. ‘You are so fluent, so communicative, but I can sense the presence of the hornèd ram, I’m never wrong. I’ll arrange a chart reading for you, we can clear this mystery up together …’

  Her long fingers with deep, pink-painted square-cut fingernails lingered long on my arm as she looked up at me. Meaningfully.

  It had been a long time since a woman had put a hand on me, I felt quite overcome with excitement. And not just by the catering prospects.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be great, where do you live?’ I said. I’d brave an astrological reading for a firm booking.

  She pointed out of the window. ‘On the green, the Kiln House.’ She stood up. ‘Eight thirty suit you?’

  ‘Fine, I’ll see you then,’ I said.

  She smiled at me and stood up, then moved lithely out of the restaurant. I went back into the kitchen. Jess stood at the fridge, her arms folded. Her expression was as cold as the machine that she was leaning against.

  ‘What!’ I protested. Judging by her face Naomi and I might as well have been kissing passionately in the restaurant.

  ‘So, eight thirty, her place.’ Her voice dropped an octave and she turned her head, shyly looking at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Ohh, Ben, you’re so strong and masterful …’ She pushed her hand through her hair and stuck her chest out, the fabric of her blouse straining under the pressure. ‘Ohh, Ben, you must be born under the sign of the goat, Ben …’

  I started laughing, ‘Stop it, Jess, she’s not that bad. She only wants me to do a party.’

  ‘Oh, yesss! Ben, let’s party!’

  ‘Not that kind of party, Jess,’ I protested.

  ‘Oh, Ben, let us shed these constrictive garments and dance naked and worship the moon … tune in our auras … can you do asparagus, Ben, I love it so, oh, Ben, tell me you can! I want to dunk my spears in your …rich … creamy … Hollandaise.’ She sucked a finger suggestively, waggling her eyebrows.

  It was my turn to raise my eyebrows.

  At this point I grew slightly cross. ‘She’s a customer, Jess. It’s business, not a date.’

  ‘That woman is a man-eater, Ben, you should steer well clear of her.’ Jess’s voice was haughtily dismissive. ‘She made a pass at my dad once. Mummy was furious. She’s boycotted her yoga class ever since.’

  ‘Look, Jess. It really is none of your business, and, by the way, I’m not your dad …’ That was certainly true. Jess’s father did something – who knows what? – in insurance. She had told me where she lived, on the outskirts of the village; I had driven past a few times. My waitress lived in what might be described as a mansion, behind a well-ke
pt hawthorn hedge and imposing security gates. I think Mr Turner was doing rather well, financially.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I bet he had something to sit on in his living room other than a couple of upturned beer crates, like I did. Just an educated guess.

  Mr Turner I certainly wasn’t.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said serenely, ‘this might be your business—’ she waved her arms to encompass the kitchen, and she emphasised the ‘your’ as if there was some doubt about it ‘—but as your employee it’s part of my duty to inform you of potential hazards, such as the man-crazy cougar in the Sweaty Betty leotard and leggings that is Naomi West.’

  I made a placatory gesture. I didn’t want to upset Jess, even if she had seemed to have decided that she was running the place.

  ‘Well, Jess, if she makes a pass at me, I shall refuse ever to go to her yoga class. I’ll boycott it like your mum. That’ll teach her, she’ll never get to see my Halasana.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jess as she pulled off her apron and shrugged herself into her coat.

  ‘People who have seen my Halasana speak very highly of it,’ I said, ‘it’s truly amazing.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ she remarked adding, sotto voce, as she opened the kitchen door to let herself out into the yard at the back, ‘Bet she shows you her Down Dog.’

  The door closed behind her.

  Eight thirty found me ringing the door of Kiln House.

  I, for one, was looking forward to meeting Naomi West.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Monday, 11 January, evening

  I walked across the common in the driving rain. The ground squelched underfoot and freezing water ran into my shoes. I cursed myself for not having taken my car even though it was such a short distance. A couple of days ago the houses where she lived would have been lit up by the eerie blue light from Whitfield’s garden. No longer. I rather missed the obelisk.

  It struck me that it was an odd village, the sex-addicted earl, the resident drug dealer, the misanthropic publican, and other social undercurrents of which I was completely ignorant. Still, I didn’t need to worry about any of that. I was neutral, I provided food, I was like a utility company, above the fray.