Читать книгу Ostrich Country - David Nobbs - Страница 9

Pegasus felt a sense of helplessness the next morning as he faced up to a great mound of lifeless vegetables. He had to prepare seventy portions of potatoes, forty portions of peas, twenty portions of cabbage, fifteen portions of carrots, ten portions each of parsnips and cauliflower. Vegetables which were not in season had to be unfrozen. There were fearsome slicing and peeling machines such as he had never encountered. Perhaps he ought to have insured his fingers. One day his fingers would be as valuable as Betty Grable’s legs.

The pans and stoves seemed very large after his saucepan and gas ring. Everything looked much more mechanical and less artistic than he had expected. This whole venture was absurd.

He was supposed to have previous experience, and the two chefs, Alphonse and his assistant Tonio, assumed that he knew how to begin. He had to be very careful.

‘I’m not used to machines of this sort,’ he told Alphonse, and Alphonse showed him how to use them. It was easy, really. The vegetables came out just as efficiently for him as they did for Alphonse.

‘I’m sorry. We never used carrots,’ he told Alphonse, after he had cut up some carrots the wrong way.

‘What kind of place have you been working from, with the extreme absence of carrots?’ said Alphonse.

‘A little place,’ said Pegasus. ‘The owner had a thing about carrots.’

‘Was he having the thing also about other foods?’ asked Alphonse.

‘One or two,’ said Pegasus non-committally, in case there should be other disasters.

He got his timings mixed up. Alphonse was cross.

‘I’m not used to these quantities,’ said Pegasus.

‘This place where you work, she was having no customers?’ said Alphonse.

‘Not many. The owner had a thing about customers,’ said Pegasus.

He needed quite a lot of help, he felt a bit of a fool, but lunch passed off without disaster. And no one sent their vegetables back.

He started early on dinner, and it all went much more smoothly. He began to lose his sense of absurdity. Here he was working alongside these true professionals. Alphonse, with his typical French moustache, and his lean, rather crooked, pimply face with a big nose and stick-out ears. Tonio, hairy and Italian, always either singing or swearing. Pegasus began to feel happy. He was too busy to think about Jane Hassett. Tonight he would sleep soundly. Tomorrow he would work still better. Soon he would be a great chef. And he still had all his fingers. He felt that he was coming to life, that he was starting to live his own natural, destined life. He began to sing, but silently, in case they should think him presumptuous.