A Twist in the Tale

“I haven’t got another job vacant at the moment,” protested the manager. “Unless you’re willing to peel potatoes for ten weeks.”

“Anything,” said Mark.

“Then report to the kitchen at six tomorrow morning. I’ll tell the third chef to expect you. Only if you think the head porter is a martinet just wait until you meet Jacques, our maître chef de cuisine. He won’t clip your ear, he’ll cut it off.”

Mark didn’t care. He felt confident that for just ten weeks he could face anything, and at five thirty the following morning he exchanged his dark blue uniform for a white top and blue and white check trousers before reporting for his new duties. To his surprise the kitchen took up almost the entire basement of the hotel, and was even more of a bustle than’ the lobby had been.

The third chef put him in the corner of the kitchen, next to a mountain of potatoes, a bowl of cold water and a sharp knife. Mark peeled through breakfast, lunch and dinner, and fell asleep on his bed that night without even enough energy left to cross another day off his calendar.

For the first week he never actually saw the fabled Jacques. With seventy people working in the kitchen Mark felt confident he could pass his whole period there without anyone being aware of his existence.

* * *

Each morning at six he would start peeling, then hand over the potatoes to a gangling youth called Terry, who in turn would dice or cut them according to the third chef’s instructions for the dish of the day. Monday sauté, Tuesday mashed, Wednesday French-fried, Thursday sliced, Friday roast, Saturday croquette … Mark quickly worked out a routine which kept him well ahead of Terry and therefore out of any trouble.

Having watched Terry do his job for over a week Mark felt sure he could have shown the young apprentice how to lighten his workload quite simply, but he decided to keep his mouth closed: opening it might only get him into more trouble, and he was certain the manager wouldn’t give him a second chance.

Mark soon discovered that Terry always fell badly behind on Tuesday’s shepherd’s pie and Thursday’s Lancashire hot-pot. From time to time the third chef would come across to complain and then would glance over at Mark to be sure that it wasn’t him who was holding the process up. Mark made certain that he always had a spare tub of peeled potatoes by his side so that he would escape censure.

It was on the first Thursday morning in August (Lancashire hot-pot) that Terry sliced off the top of his forefinger. Blood spurted all over the sliced potatoes and onto the wooden table as the lad began yelling hysterically.

“Get him out of here!” Mark heard the maître chef de cuisine bellow above the noise of the kitchen as he stormed toward them.

“And you,” he said, pointing at Mark, “clean up mess and start slicing rest of potatoes. I ’ave eight hundred hungry customers still expecting to feed.”

“Me?” said Mark in disbelief. “But—”

“Yes, you. You couldn’t do worse job than idiot who calls himself trainee chef and cuts off finger.” The chef marched away, leaving Mark to move reluctantly across to the table where Terry had been working. He felt disinclined to argue while the calendar was there to remind him that he was down to his last twenty-five days.

Mark set about a task he had carried out for his mother many times. The clean, neat cuts were delivered with a skill Terry would never learn to master. By the end of the day, although exhausted, Mark did not feel quite as tired as he had in the past.

At eleven that night the maître chef de cuisine threw off his hat and barged out of the swing doors, a sign to everyone else they could also leave the kitchen once everything that was their responsibility had been cleared up. A few seconds later the door swung back open and the chef burst in. He stared round the kitchen as everyone waited to see what he would do next. Having found what he was looking for, he headed straight for Mark.

“Oh, my God,” thought Mark. “He’s going to kill me.”

“How is your name?” the chef demanded.

“Mark Hapgood, sir,” he managed to splutter out.

“You waste on ’tatoes, Mark Hapgood,” said the chef. “You start on vegetables in morning. Report at seven. If that crétin with half finger ever returns, put him to peeling ’tatoes.”

The chef turned on his heel even before Mark had the chance to reply. He dreaded the thought of having to spend three weeks in the middle of the kitchen, never once out of the maître chef de cuisine’s sight, but he accepted there was no alternative.

The next morning Mark arrived at six for fear of being late and spent an hour watching the fresh vegetables being unloaded from Covent Garden market. The hotel’s supply manager checked every case carefully, rejecting several before he signed a chit to show the hotel had received over three thousand pounds’ worth of produce. An average day, he assured Mark.

The maître chef de cuisine appeared a few minutes before seven thirty, checked the menus and told Mark to score the Brussels sprouts, trim the French beans and remove the coarse outer leaves of the cabbages.

“But I don’t know how,” Mark replied honestly. He could feel the other trainees in the kitchen edging away from him.

“Then I teach you,” roared the chef. “Perhaps only thing you learn is if hope to be good chef, you able to do everyone’s job in kitchen, even ‘tato peeler’s.”

“But I’m hoping to be a…” Mark began and then thought better of it. The chef seemed not to have heard Mark as he took his place beside the new recruit. Everyone in the kitchen stared as the chef began to show Mark the basic skills of cutting, dicing and slicing.

“And remember other idiot’s finger,” the chef said on completing the lesson and passing the razor-sharp knife back to Mark. “Yours can be next.”

Mark started gingerly dicing the carrots, then the Brussels sprouts, removing the outer layer before cutting a firm cross in the stalk. Next he moved on to trimming and slicing the beans. Once again he found it fairly easy to keep ahead of the chef’s requirements.

At the end of each day, after the head chef had left, Mark stayed on to sharpen all his knives in preparation for the following morning, and would not leave his work area until it was spotless.