Chop Chop (8 page)

T
he quiet dark-eyed girl was sullen and moody and not my type at all. The quiet dark-eyed girl was possessive of her containers and tough and once watched me fall on the solid top and burn my elbow without lifting a finger to help me. The quiet dark-eyed girl was unamused by the banter of the chefs. She was especially unamused by Ramilov's habit of leaning in front of the pass with his penis in the plate cupboard beneath and asking one or other of the waitresses to fetch him a plate. The quiet dark-eyed girl did not drink in O'Reillys after work with the rest of us. Nor did she brag like Dave or fuck up like Dibden or bully like Bob. The quiet dark-eyed girl prepared a special vegetarian meal for Shahram. The quiet dark-eyed girl was called Harmony. And Harmony was beautiful.

Everything she said or did was decisive, forceful, pushing the action on. She moved like a tree in a gentle breeze, her legs rooted, her long torso swaying this way and that to the demands of service. At five thirty every afternoon she would take her only cigarette break of the day, sitting on the bench in the yard, for exactly three minutes. Never did she stoop to chitchat. Her demeanor was cool, willowy, composed. She raised her chin to exhale. Brave was the chef who inquired of her private life; it was somehow, implicitly, off-limits. To consider it was dangerous. Deliverymen did not wolf whistle at her, Ramilov did not flash her or pretend to hump her with a carrot or reach slyly between her legs. Even Dave tried to put some other words between his obscenities when she was around. He
curbed his bigotry in her presence too, though her olive skin and strong features hinted at Jewish or Arabic blood that would ordinarily have set him off at a rant. She existed in her own private universe within the kitchen, untouched by the dirt around her, untroubled by its school yard sadism.

The kitchen, being predisposed to types—the cocksure joker, the northern goon, the scorned but aloof pastry section, the foreign and uncomprehending kitchen porters—did not know what to make of this bold, immovable female and warily omitted her from classification. Maybe it is the case that any woman in a professional kitchen, juxtaposed against the hardness and testosterone and bitchery of men, will appear a goddess. But no, I think she appeared a goddess because she was one. A goddess who scowled at me and told me I couldn't use the medium balloon whisk because she needed it in two hours' time. A goddess who refused to share her one-liter plastics and deep sixes and lids, kitchen items that seemed to exist only in theory, items a commis could spend his whole life searching for. Only Dave was better at hoarding kitchen equipment. All over the restaurant these two had secret stashes, in places no one would even think of looking: behind the mise in their service fridges, in the shaft for the dumbwaiter, underneath the combi oven covered by specially placed gastro trays.

(The other thing about Harmony: her hands did not bear The Mark of Bob. When it came to women Bob was at once chivalrous and craven, sexist and submissive. During service he never gave her grief, never so much as raised his voice to her. Women were unstable, emotional commodities that Bob did not understand or trust. As he knew from his own beloved and terrible wife, a woman's will was absolute, and her fury when crossed was awful to behold. For Bob, “The Missus” was a mysterious and sacred institution that should never be disrespected or contradicted. He of all people knew
how a woman could make a man suffer, and even he, the connoisseur of suffering, would not wish it upon others. When his own wife demanded her “Booboo,” Bob became a simpering fool, switching in an instant from brutal tyranny to baby talk. Such language sounded very undignified coming from a first-rate arsehole of Bob's standing, and in those moments, to the great surprise of all the chefs, we found ourselves wishing for the petty, heartless bastard we knew and despised. This other Bob, this “Booboo,” was just depressing, like a toothless crocodile or a clean rat.)

Harmony was callous because the environment demanded it. Or perhaps she had sought the kitchens because her character would brook no shit. Whatever the truth, she was the only chef who seemed comfortable in The Swan's turmoil. Everyone else had about them the look of caged beasts: one-hundred-hour-a-week Dave, jabbering Shahram, shifty Darik, cloistered Dibden—to make no mention of Ramilov the iconoclast, winking at blind horses and pulling fiercely at weak ropes. Harmony alone belonged. It was wrong to say, as I did earlier, that she existed in her own orbit. We existed within hers. Primarily, she belonged because she retained an independence from the place. As I slaved week after week in that pit of despair I came to see how that singular, star-bright quality, silently relayed from the corner fryer, was worth a thousand macho brags. The other chefs might talk about how they were ready to up and leave, how they wouldn't take any more of Bob's cruelty, but none of them would do it. Most had no other qualifications, no professional experience beyond kitchens. No life beyond. Some had spent so long in front of the burners that just the thought of getting on the Tube or walking down the street put them on edge.

Inexorably, as the weeks wore on and we slogged deeper into December, I felt myself slipping toward the same condition. Even to step outside the back door and see the small square of sky above
the yard was unnerving: it suggested there was something beyond cooking, a world outside the kitchen, and that led the mind down unpleasant lines of inquiry. As Ramilov, our very own Book of Wisdom, writes, fear is the great nut squeeze. The kitchen was all chefs knew. Something made them pick up the knife afresh each day. Something chained them to it. Like flies, they were enslaved to the pursuit of food, to the fulfillment of their urges, and, like flies, their single-mindedness could be read as brainless, as cowardly, or as noble. I, however, had no wish to pick up the knife or suffer for food; I did not care one way or the other about any of it, yet somehow I had become trapped.

Harmony gave me hope. Dave will scoff and Ramilov will explode with ridicule, but I am not ashamed to admit it: I looked to her with growing desperation. She became a sort of crutch to me, and I gleaned much inspiration from observing the way she held herself beyond the kitchen's consumptive, libidinous grasp. Yet—and this is the funny thing about it—the more I watched her, the harder it was to leave.

I must confess my thoughts of her were not entirely pure. My dictionary explains, with a leer, that crutch and crotch share the same root, as if all succor has carnal implications. This is what you get, I suppose, when hundreds of men compile a book together. (I can only hope the editorial influence of Ramilov and Racist Dave does not drag this book the same way.) But on this occasion, on the subject of Harmony, those learned men were quite correct. I daydreamed about her soft lips and sweet caresses, her warm dark eyes. I prayed for a way past her defenses. Perhaps one service she would be up against it and I would ride in on a white horse, so to speak, to save her from the onslaught of checks. We would beat the dinner rush together, side by side, anticipating each other's movements, spinning gracefully around each other. Then she would see that I
wasn't useless or small of self. Then she would see that I was capable and strong and considerate and that she had been wrong about me after all. After that we would be inseparable, and there would be no more cold Harmony, no Harmony who watched me fall on the solid top and burn myself without lifting a finger to help, who pushed me out of the way of the mustard as I bled.

I should stress that I was encouraged in these fantasies. For Harmony was not always cold toward me. Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, she might say hello to me in the morning, or let me use the large mixing bowl. On more than one occasion she offered me chips that were going spare. Small things, admittedly, but I, unused to the civility, made them seem bigger than they were. I can see now that I read too much into these gestures. I confused sympathy with interest, and the two are not the same. In my defense, I was not much fortified against the smiles of beautiful women.

At the time, however, I felt sure romance was afoot. I put the memory of Rachel Parker, my university heartache, behind me and planned my approach. I knew from my excessive consumption of fiction that women were won by either chivalry, bravery or tremendous cruelty. If you defended their honor, they pretty much had to kiss you. If they hated you at first, it was practically a given that they would fall in love with you later—or that they had really loved you all along. By that rule, the true reason for Harmony's meanness toward me was embarrassingly obvious. Now she needed to notice my thoughtful and modest nature, to see that I was not of the Ramilovs of this world. But there was no place for poetic sentiment in the daily kitchen bustle, with the pans clanging and the prep list building and Racist Dave singing and Ramilov flicking chauffant water in my ear.

One afternoon, a week or so after Dibden's soufflé collapsed, I
found myself with a rare half hour to spare. I decided to ask her if she wanted to go to the park with me.

“Why?” was her blunt response.

I did not know what to say.

“We could have a walk . . .” I mumbled.

“You want to have a walk?” The concept sounded ridiculous when she said it, and perhaps it was. It wasn't what I really wanted, after all. From her mouth I could hear how vague and deceitful my statement had been. I realized she was operating on a different scale of honesty. It wasn't new to me, that honesty: my brother was the same. Everything said in a very clear and plain way that left you nowhere to hide. An intimidating trait, one I never sought to emulate. I needed a little foliage. I wasn't that honest with myself.

“Haven't you got any jobs?” she wanted to know.

In a somewhat cavalier fashion I explained I did not.

“Then you can make this mayonnaise for me,” she replied.

All right, I would win her heart with work. I made her mayonnaise. On another occasion, in the hope of impressing her, I volunteered to slice courgette ribbons for her. But she threw them all in the trash and told me to do them again “but less shit.” I no longer had the time and got behind on my own work. In the rush, I nicked my fingers on the mandoline and got blood on some of the courgettes, which also had to be thrown away. She got her ribbons in the end, but only half what she would have got if she had done them herself. This did not endear me to her any further.

—

The miserable memory of Rachel Parker flared up again. Why, I wondered, did women have to be this way? I had given all my modernism essays to that girl and, after the initial gratitude, it was all
why was I so slow at writing them and why was her mark lower than mine. After all those essays bequeathed in good faith, all those “good words” a friend had put in for me with her, all those study sessions where our knees touched under the table, where I was close enough to sense her body moving beneath her clothes, look where that had ended up. Tragedy on the university bus back from Brighton. She began telling me about this new guy she had met, and I, with the fatal clarity that comes of a few drinks, realized she would never be mine.

“He's just so sexy,” she said, combing her hair. As if I were one of her girlfriends. As if I didn't possess the same appendages as Lover Boy. I smiled sickly while she talked of their “crazy” date at the roller disco. I tried, weakly, to ask questions. What was his situation? Was he older? No, he was the same age as us. At our uni.

“If you like him, you should follow your heart,” I replied.
Follow your heart?
I was hurt, confused. It is an unfortunate defect of human beings that they slip into cliché at their emotional extremes. I realized I had played it all wrong trying to make friends with pretty, bland Rachel. We had nothing in common. Sometimes two knees touching was just that. Those feminine mysteries she had let me get close to—applying makeup in front of me, asking my opinion on her outfits—had taken me further away from my goal. And I, too sensitive, too obscure in my intentions, had sidelined myself.

“What about me?” I asked.

“You? What about you?”

“I thought we had something.”

“Us?” She did not stop combing her hair. “I've never thought of you like that.”

This was one of those polite ways of punching you in the face that I encountered a lot at university, and which I grew to despise passionately. If you have ever been told you weren't invited to a
party because there wasn't enough room, you will know what I mean. But at the time I wasn't familiar with this construct, didn't understand that I should let it lie. Duped by how reasonable her response sounded, I imagined our divide could still be bridged.

“Why not?” I asked.

Some deeper cruelty flickered in her cold blue eyes, but whatever observation it accompanied she chose not to express. She kept quiet. Still combing her hair, delighted by my agony. In a white shirt and a blue V-necked sweater. I remember exactly. Pristine, her full lips freshly done. If I could kiss those lips just once, would she melt into me like in the romance novels, and realize she had loved me all along? Something told me no.

“I'm not begging,” I said to make it clear. “I'm not begging.”

In hindsight this was a mistake. I had lost her, I would never have her, but putting this match to my dignity was unnecessary. Chiefly, I think, I was mortified with myself, for confusing acceptance with interest, for mistaking beauty for goodness.

Still nothing from Rachel. As if my declaration were not worthy of a response. Suddenly I realized I had lost, lost everything, and my temper went the same way.

“Why are you being such a bitch?” I shouted angrily.

That shattered her cool façade. She scowled at me, curling her mouth in contempt.

“Oh, fuck off, you little shit,” she said. “Why would I be interested in you?”

She moved to a seat at the front. The bus became loud with whispers. We got off at the same stop and I feigned interest in a bush so we would not have to walk back to halls together.
You see what you missed out on, Rachel?
the subtext ran.
This man can find inspiration anywhere, even in this bush.