Читать книгу The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Jenny Oliver - Страница 13

Next morning Rachel arrived at the pâtisserie with all the embroidered flowers that he’d made such a fuss about snipped off her apron, determined to prove to Chef Henri he was wrong about her.

Then she might leave.

The pâtisserie itself was one of her favourite bits about the whole competition. On the ground floor, it was small and unassuming but the counters were piled high with some of the most delicate pastries and tarts she’d ever seen. The glaze on the tart au citron shone as if it’d been freshly polished that morning. The sign on the front of the shop was written in gold and inside an old lino floor was scratched and scuffed where customers had stood waiting in line. To the left of the counter were high stools that seemed to seat the same three old men every day, who came in to drink espresso and eat croissants, and behind the counter was a young woman with bright pink lipstick and wild curly hair pulled into a messy plait, who had introduced herself to Rachel as Françoise the day before when Rachel had been completely lost trying to find the competition kitchen. She’d patted her on the shoulder and wished her good luck in a conspiratorial tone that Rachel hadn’t quite understood until she’d come face to face with Chef.

Now, as she walked in and bought herself a pain au chocolat for her breakfast, when it came time for her to pay, Françoise raised a brow as if to ask if Rachel now understood her words of luck; Rachel nodded, a silent understanding between them about the tyrant boss. Françoise laughed and told her that he didn’t get any better the longer you knew him.

As Rachel left the pâtisserie through the side door that led into the corridor she’d just started to take the stairs up to the kitchen when she came across a man in a suit, who flattened himself against the wall to let her pass.

‘Merci beaucoup,’ she said, not really paying attention, caught up in thoughts about what Chef would say about the fact she hadn’t run back home to England.

‘It is my pleasure,’ he replied as she passed. His perfect English made her glance back. Short, neat black hair, sharp, tailor-made slate-grey cashmere suit, thick, dark eyebrows that drew together now over big brown eyes as he watched her looking at him.

‘Thanks,’ she said again and then felt foolish. ‘I er …’ she started, pointing up the stairs. She felt her cheeks start to get hot and looked away, embarrassed by her reaction to him. He wasn’t good-looking per se, but striking in the kind of way that she just wanted to stare at him for days. Trying to disguise the reddening of her face by pretending she had an itch on her cheek, she turned back and said, ‘I’m going up there.’ A blatantly obvious statement that she couldn’t quite believe she’d just said. She hadn’t been so flummoxed in the presence of a stranger ever. Pull yourself together, Rachel, she thought.

‘So I see,’ he replied with a smile twitching on his lips and before she could reply he held two fingers to his forehead in a salute and turned away, clipping down the stairs.

She watched him leave, pulling on a dark-grey woollen coat as he got to the bottom step before yanking open the door into the icy cold. A lingering smell of expensive aftershave and soap made her close her eyes and consider how well groomed the French were. She breathed in again, trying to catch the scent once more, but it was gone. Running her finger along her bottom lip, she did a flash replay of the momentary conversation in her head, shook her head at her own embarrassingly floundering responses, and found that all she could remember was his eyes. They were espresso dark and dancing with confidence—that last little amused look had knocked her totally off kilter.

‘He is nice, non?’ Françoise had stuck her head out of the doorway and was following Rachel’s gaze.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know,’ she said too quickly.

‘He is very nice, I am telling you.’

‘Well …’ Rachel shrugged as if it barely mattered because she would never see him again.

‘You are still early, non?’ Françoise said as she wiped her hands on her apron then looked at the paper bag with the pain au chocolat clutched in Rachel’s hand. ‘You should enjoy your breakfast, eat it at the counter with an espresso, mais non?’

‘I shouldn’t really.’

‘Ah, yes, you should. I will have one too. It is quiet. I am bored. I like to have someone to talk to.’

‘But—’ Rachel glanced up the gloomy staircase to the workshop where everyone would soon be gathered waiting to stab each other in the back or wait for the weak to fail. An offer of plain, simple company from Françoise was too tempting to turn down. ‘Go on, then.’

Back inside the pâtisserie, she perched on a stool by the counter as Françoise bashed away with the coffee machine.

‘This thing, it is shit,’ she muttered as she flicked some switches and the thick black liquid poured out into a small white cup rimmed with gold.

‘You sound like Chef.’ Rachel laughed.

‘Fuck no.’ Françoise sneered.

‘And again.’

Françoise laughed. ‘I have worked with him too long. He is a tyrant.’

‘He is, isn’t he?’ Rachel took the espresso cup and saucer from her and declined the two sachets of sugar.

‘No, I am being mean.’ Françoise shook her head. ‘He is OK. I think he suffers from the past.’

Rachel raised a brow in disbelief. ‘I think he’s a tyrant.’

Françoise laughed and then turned her back to Rachel and started doing her hair in the mirrored wall behind the counter. ‘My boyfriend arrives today. From Bordeaux.’

‘Very nice.’ Rachel sipped the coffee, wondering if she should say anything else.

‘I only see him once in the month. He is very—’ She paused, untwisting her lipstick. ‘He is like Chef. He has the hot blood.’ She turned back round to face her, eyes smiling, her mouth pulled into an O as she slathered it with more Chanel Rouge. ‘You just need to learn how to handle the men like Chef. That is all. Do not let them scare you. The anger, the words, it is all air that is hot. Big, hot air.’ She laughed. ‘Underneath is the mouse.’

Coffee finished, Rachel was second to arrive in the workroom. Lacey was already there; she’d watched her stalking up the stairs, and now she was standing alone, polishing her tabletop.

‘Hi,’ Rachel said as she unfolded her knives and put her snow-globe on the bottom shelf of her work surface where Chef wouldn’t see it.

Lacey didn’t reply. Rachel studied her, her loose grey curls pinned into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, apron covering a three-quarter-length mauve dress with capped sleeves that revealed gym-toned arms. Gold studs in her ears, coral lipstick and glasses hanging on a diamanté chain around her neck.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked as Lacey continued to wipe.

‘London.’

‘Oh, whereabouts? I went to uni in London. I’m from a tiny village in Hampshire.’

‘Look.’ Lacey screwed up her cloth and turned towards her. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’m not here to make friends. This is a competition and I just want to keep it professional. No games.’

‘Games?’ Rachel looked perplexed.

‘I saw you yesterday with your little flowers getting all the attention. Some of us are here to work. Hard. So … let’s just—’ She held her hands up and then went back to polishing her station.

Rachel couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m not—’

‘You came back. Hurray!’ Abby bounded in with George, unaware of the tense silence in the room. ‘We wondered. We made bets. I said you would.’

‘I thought I’d give it one more go,’ Rachel said, hesitant after her altercation with Lacey.

‘Well, I’m really glad you did. We need to stick together.’ Abby patted her on the shoulder and walked over to her bench.

Over the next five minutes all the others trooped in, with Marcel last. He glanced at Rachel and said, with his smooth French accent, ‘Looks like I lost my bet.’ Then he winked at her just as Chef strode in so she was blushing red as he towered over her station.

‘You are still with us? I thought you run back to England? Non?’

Rachel shook her head. She tried to think of him as the great baker who had lost everything. Of the boy who had grown up too fast. Of the genius who revolutionised French pâtisserie. Last night she had crept down the stairs and perched on the bottom step outside Madame Charles’s flat and, tapping in the code that Chantal had slipped her, had surreptitiously logged into her Internet. There she had spent an hour or so Googling Henri Salernes. The restaurant he had set up with his brother that had taken Paris by storm and made them among the youngest three-Michelin-starred chefs in the country. She’d pored over pages and pages of glowing reviews from even the most hardened critics and pictures of snaking queues out of the door and celebrities huddled in darkened corners sipping champagne.

Then the headlines changed to the shock exit of his brother, who walked away at the height of their fame. And then the steady charting of Henri’s epic rise and fall. The temper that had driven away most of his best sous chefs, the arrogance that had banned negative critics from walking through the door and the gradual loss of his Michelin stars, one by one over the years until there were none.

But just as the articles got juicy, she’d heard the click of Madame Charles’s heels on the stairs and, slamming her laptop shut, Rachel had backed up into the shadow of the landing and watched as her elegant landlady swept into her apartment, the lights glistening, the warmth emanating, and as the door shut the soft lull of some classical music and the ring of the telephone accompanied by Madame Charles’s soft, low voice as she answered the call. Rachel had watched the closed door jealously, reluctant to go back up to her room, especially now she was going back for more of Chef the next day. Wishing instead that the doors to this sumptuous apartment might open up and swallow her whole.

What was it Chantal had said about Chef? Not a good home. Rachel had thought of lovely little Tommy back in Nettleton who’d been adopted by Mr Swanson and his wife two years ago. He’d had not a good home. As he stood in front of her now she tried to imagine Chef at Tommy’s age. Looking up at his stern, miserable face, she tried to picture him as a five-year-old, as one of her sweet little class with trousers too big and jam down his cardigan.

She watched him glance at her apron and take in its absent flowers.

‘Well, we’ll have to see if you do better today, won’t we?’ He smirked.

‘Yes, Chef.’ She nodded. No, it was no good. He just wouldn’t shrink to the size of one of her pupils. He had been born a fully fledged pain in the bum, she was sure of it.

‘I have my eye on you,’ he said as he strode away.

Rachel made the mistake of glancing to her right and saw Lacey raise her brows with disdain.

The day started with pastry. Filo, short, flaky, puff, choux. Savoury and sweet.

‘You know nothing about pastry. Everything you think you know, you don’t know,’ hollered Chef.

All morning they sweated over it. Chef coming over and screwing it into a lump, slapping it across the room to the bin, shouting, ‘Too much flour. Start again.’

Abby cried. George had a coughing fit and Tony cut another finger, rendering him useless for the afternoon’s challenge.

‘After lunch you make me something. I spend the day teaching you, now you give it back to me. I want to see what you have. In here.’ Chef bashed his chest with his fist. ‘Now leave, it is lunchtime.’

Rachel walked out with Abby, both bundled into their coats and scarfs ready for the wintry cold that had hit last night.

‘I’ve left my family at Christmas for this guy. He’s a nightmare,’ Abby whispered as they left the room.

‘You have kids?’

‘Two. Little girl and boy. One year apart. Glutton for punishment, me. I’ve told them I’m off meeting Santa—we need to discuss how good they’ve been this year.’ Pulling out her purse, she showed Rachel a picture—a passport-photo strip in a plastic wallet of two bright blond children, aged about six or seven, could have been younger, and a fun-looking surfer-type guy holding them on his knee.

‘He looks nice.’

‘Doesn’t he? Jane from number seventeen thought so, too. He left last year, bought a boat, said family wasn’t for him, he felt suffocated, and he’s sailing round the world now—with her. Have you seen those boats? If anything’s suffocating I’d say it’s them—can’t even stand up half the time. He sends postcards from places like Mauritius and the kids think he’s all exciting and glam. Not like boring old Mum.’

‘You’re cooking in Paris. That’s glamorous,’ Rachel said, and they both turned to look back up the stairs at the peeling paintwork and blown light bulb and giggled.

Marcel was just jogging down the stairs and gave them a funny look when he passed them laughing. ‘It is something about me, no?’

‘No, not at all.’ Rachel waved a hand to show that it was nothing, that they were laughing at something else.

Marcel shrugged, a lazy grin on his face as he pushed open the door to the street. ‘You could give a man a complex,’ he said, winking as he strolled out and then lighting a cigarette behind hands cupped against the breeze.

‘You could give me anything you want, Marcel,’ whispered Abby dreamily. ‘He’s so pretty, isn’t he? Like a model for Gucci.’

Rachel nodded as they watched him disappear up the road. Marcel was chocolate-box handsome; perfect as if he’d been chiselled from marble and on show in a museum.

‘I find him very distracting,’ Abby mused. ‘I have to consciously not look at him during baking, otherwise I’d be all over the place.’

‘You have to get a grip—’ Rachel leant on the door, letting in a shock of icy air ‘—or he’ll sense your weakness.’

‘Please, God.’ Abby clasped her gloved hands heavenward. ‘Let Marcel sense my weakness.’

Passing the pâtisserie, Rachel saw the guy she’d passed in the corridor earlier standing drumming his fingers lightly on the counter. Same grey woollen coat, same thick dark hair, same instant flutter in her stomach. No one seemed to be serving. She glanced through the window, peering over the gold scrolled lettering that spelt out Salernes on each window, and saw no one except the customer. Where was Françoise? Had her boyfriend arrived already? She glanced from the shop back to Abby and said, ‘Do you think I should go and look for Françoise …?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’ Abby shook her head, pulling her coat round her against the chill and blowing on her hands. ‘Stay out of it. Come on, it’s freezing out here.’

They walked on a step but Rachel found herself turning back. ‘I think I should. Look, he’s waiting … And I don’t want her to get into trouble,’ she added, refusing to acknowledge that her reason for returning had very little to do with Françoise.

Doubling back in through the side entrance of the shop, she checked the two cubbyholes to see why there was no one about. The back door to the patio outside was open, cold air was streaming in along with the raised voices of an argument. She ventured forward and, peering round the door, saw Françoise and a man who must have been the boyfriend from Bordeaux in the middle of an almighty row, arms waving in the air, voices raised, Françoise’s hair all loose and wild escaping from her plait and the boyfriend scowling as he flicked cigarette ash angrily onto the paving stones. It certainly didn’t look like the romantic reunion Françoise had been dreaming of earlier.

‘Françoise,’ Rachel whispered, but she didn’t turn.

Rachel coughed a couple of times to try and distract her but she was clearly in her stride, yelling and shouting all over the place, her finger stabbing him in the chest as he flicked the fag away and huffed out an exasperated breath, running a hand through his hair.

‘Shit,’ Rachel said out loud as she stepped back from the doorway and into the cubbyhole.

‘Is everything all right?’ the man asked, a look of amusement on his face as the insults from out on the patio streamed in through the back door.

‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head and made a face as she walked forward towards the counter. ‘I don’t think there’ll be anyone to serve you.’

He shrugged. ‘Can you?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t work here.’

He frowned. ‘You look like you do.’

Rachel found herself watching, distracted, as his fingers drummed casually on the counter top, mesmerised by his eyes as they glanced over the array of cakes. Then realising she hadn’t replied, said quickly, ‘The owner would kill me if he found me here.’

The man laughed, his eyes crinkling softly at the sides. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want that to happen.’

‘No,’ she said, trying not to stare. He wasn’t her type, not at all, yet she wanted him to keep looking at her that way. Maybe it was just because he was French and exotic and she felt far from home. She was usually all about the rough and ready, love ‘em and leave ‘em types, not the well-groomed, mature alpha males who looked as if they would buy her red roses, talk about current affairs over dinner and shrug unfazed if someone mentioned commitment. ‘I er—’ She pointed to the door, without taking her eyes from him. ‘I er—should be leaving.’

‘That is OK.’ He cocked his head, not bothering to hide his amusement at how flustered she was becoming as he went back to perusing the rows of pâtisserie.

She started to walk away but then found herself stopping and asking, ‘What were you going to have?’

‘I don’t know. I never know what to choose,’ he said, glancing up from the counter. ‘I like the eclairs, but I also think maybe the millefeuille. Or sometimes the tarte Tatin. There is too much to choose from and my eyes they are, I think I heard the phrase once, bigger than my stomach.’ He laughed. ‘It is hard, non?’

‘Oh, I know. I’m like that too.’ Rachel found herself bending down on the other side of the counter to look at the array of desserts between them. ‘I just want everything,’ she said, then, embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, quickly glanced away when she met his laughing eyes through the glass.

There was a pause as she felt him watch her blush, and then she heard him say, ‘Who would have thought choosing just one little cake could be so difficult?’

‘Well, if it was me …’ She gazed over the rows and rows of treats that sat in front of her. Bright marzipan shapes, chocolate twists dusted with sugar, sticky millefeuille layers oozing with cream, tarts brimming with frangipani, coffee eclairs lined up like fat fingers, red berries piled high and tumbling off crème pâtisserie tarts. And on the shelf above were piles of glistening chocolates. Dark glossy liqueurs with cherry stalks poking out of the top, dusty truffles and striped caramels, fudge coated in ganache. Strawberry creams shaped like tiny fruits perched next to pralines wrapped like presents in gold.

But sitting perched on the tray to her left were Rachel’s all-time favourites. ‘I always like a Religieuse,’ she said, pointing to the tower of two round eclairs balanced with a ruff of cream piped around the neck. ‘They are my first choice whenever I get to come to France.’

‘The Religieuse—the little nun,’ he said and she watched him laugh through the glass. ‘Bon choix,’ he added, before glancing up and meeting her eyes. ‘You are here for Christmas?’ he asked.

Rachel nodded, caught off guard by the question. He tilted his head, as if processing the fact and mulling over another question, but said nothing more, just went back to studying the cake choices.

Then suddenly a shout from the doorway made her jolt upright, almost banging her head on the top lip of the counter. She heard a loud, angry voice shout, ‘What are you doing in my shop? Where is Françoise?’ and turned to see Chef standing, hands on hips, in the doorway.

At that moment Françoise came hurrying in, hair all over the place, pale-faced and terrified, mascara streaked down her cheeks.

As Françoise rushed past her Rachel grabbed her arm to hold her back and said to Chef as confidently as she could in the face of his scowl, ‘Françoise wasn’t feeling well. I said I’d help.’

The cosy warmth of the pâtisserie suddenly felt too hot as Chef looked between the two of them, disbelieving. ‘You are ill, Françoise, you come to me. Rachel—out. Françoise, serve the man.’

As Chef narrowed his eyes, waiting for her to leave, Rachel whispered, ‘Are you OK?’ to Françoise, who’d clearly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall behind them and started scrubbing the black off her face.

‘Yes, yes, it is always the same,’ she muttered under her breath as she retied her hair. Then smoothing down her apron and giving Rachel a quick little wink, she added, ‘We will make up later.’ Rachel rolled her eyes and as she started to leave turned to look apologetically at her customer. ‘I’m sorry about this.’

‘It’s nothing. Merci beaucoup for your choice, mademoiselle.’ He tipped his head to her, his dark eyes crinkling with humour as he surveyed the scene. ‘I’m Philippe, by the way.’

‘Rachel,’ she said. She paused for a moment to smile at him and then, remembering where she was, turned and ducked away past a furious Chef to Abby, who was waiting, one brow raised, her arms folded tightly underneath her cleavage and her breath coming out in white clouds from the cold.

‘Even I could have told you that wouldn’t go well.’ Back at the workroom everyone was starting to prepare. There was a sense, as they plucked butter from the larder and scooped up flour from the bags, that they weren’t pretending any more.

‘You have an hour and a half. Everything here, it is for you. Use it. I don’t want to see some shitty nothing on a plate. Enjoy. I am here, having coffee.’ Chef took his seat at the front and surveyed them like a headmaster.

Rachel looked around; it seemed everyone was going sweet. Lacey was cutting figs and straining prunes from a jar. She could see a row of tiny moulds ready to be lined with filo. Marcel had told them on the way in that his chocolate tart never failed. The secret was Armagnac from his family’s distillery.

Rachel was dithering, her hand hovering over peaches. She watched George pick the fruits for a pear, apple and orange blossom tarte Tatin. Cheryl was asking Abby to confirm ingredient weights for a cherry and date Bakewell. And Ali had decided on a basil and white chocolate vol-au-vent, the idea of which had made Chef snort with disgust.

As she stood panicking, gazing at all the ingredients, her eyes landed on a lump of feta, hard and crumbling into the wooden cheese board on the side, and she had a brainwave. Almost kissed the air and said a prayer of thanks.

When she reached for the cheese she caught Lacey roll her eyes and mutter under her breath, ‘Oh, here we go. Trying to be different.’

But she ignored her. She wasn’t trying to be different at all. She was trying to do whatever it took not to be at the bottom. Being last wasn’t a feeling she was used to. And if she was going to cling on and prove she had some skill, then this recipe was tried and tested. She knew because it wasn’t just Ben’s taste buds that recommended it, it was generations. A recipe passed down from her Greek great-grandmother to her grandmother, her mother and her.

Tiny filo cheese pies so thin and delicate, brushed with glistening egg yolk and packed full of feta, ricotta, blue cheese and parmesan that cracked and burst on the top like volcanos when cooked. Baked till golden, they were the taste of summers in Greece sitting under vines, Coca-Cola for them, chilled retsina for the adults. Clinking ice cubes, steaming plates of cheese and spinach pies, sizzling prawns, pale pink taramasalata, olives warmed by the sun. Her gran in a hat fussing. Her great-grandmother in a chair, faded blue sundress and Scholl sandals. The waves rolling the pebbles. It was the taste of summer and sunshine and family.

It was the taste of a time that was perfect.

She still made the pies, every now and then, but she didn’t go to Greece any more.

As she rolled out her filo, Chef sat up at the front sipping his espresso, Lacey carved her figs into intricate flowers, Marcel dripped chocolate from up high so it would cool into stars on his baking parchment, Ali started whipping his basil with the blender to make a foam, and Tony cut his finger again—Abby said it needed stitches. Chef sighed. Rachel’s pies puffed and cracked in the oven.

Time ticked away and she ummed and ahhed about taking them out as she watched Lacey make the finishing touches to her tartlets, dusting icing sugar over a flowered cake stand she’d brought from home.

‘Five minutes,’ said Chef.

She needed six.

Abby was brushing down her counter. Rachel’s was a mess, the sieve poking out from a pan, a baking tray at an angle in the sink, spoonfuls of cheese splattered across the surface.

‘One minute,’ Chef yelled.

Rachel looked at her pies. Almost. Almost. She heard her great-grandmother: Patience, Rachel. Patience in the kitchen. Her timer ticked.

‘Fuck it,’ she said in the end as the others stood neatly by their creations. Fifteen seconds to go, she yanked open the oven door, her glasses misted with steam, and tipped her pies onto a white plate she’d found under her counter.

When the stopwatch beeped, Chef slowly unfurled himself from his chair and walked from stand to stand perusing the goods. Marcel had supplied a crystal glass of Armagnac, Abby had a model Santa and a sherry to go alongside her mince pies. Lacey’s beautiful tarts sat proud and decadent on their tiered platter, as good as anything Rachel had been served for her birthday tea at the Ritz. Slicing a sliver here and a chunk there, Chef announced his verdicts.

‘Délicieux.’ Lacey’s tartlets.

‘Average.’ Abby’s pies.

‘A waste of good Armagnac.’ Marcel’s chocolate.

‘Intriguing.’ George’s tarte Tatin.

‘Disgusting.’ Ali’s basil creation.

Then he stopped at Rachel’s. She watched as he cast a disapproving eye over her bench. He picked up and dropped her sopping cloth, then prodded her haphazard pile of pies. Their innards were squelching out as they squashed each other without the proper time to cool.

He took one between finger and thumb, holding it as if he found it as distasteful as the dirty cloth. He blew on it, tore it in half and listened for the crack in the filo. Satisfied by the sound, finally he put it in his mouth. Biting, waiting, smelling, biting again, swallowing, pausing.

Her palms were sweating. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted to impress him.

‘Rachel,’ he said. Paused. Seemed to disappear from the moment for just a second. Took another bite. ‘Your food, it looks like shit. But it tastes … It tastes not bad.’