The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [235]
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 hotpot. From time to time the third chef would come across to complain, and he 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 escaped censure.
It was on the first Thursday morning in August (Lancashire hotpot) 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 swinging 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 doors swung back open and the chef burst in. He stared around 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 ’alf 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 kitchens, never once out of the maître chef de cuisine’s sight, but he accepted that 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 receipt to show that the hotel had received over three thousand pounds’ worth of vegetables. 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