As well as luxury accommodation on a beautiful island . . . He’d thought it would be a dream come true. But now, in the city, burnout followed burnout: old chefs who’d seen it all; tourist hoteliers, whose limit was scampi and chips or chicken in a basket. Time-servers and bedraggled kitchen casualties who he wasn’t entirely sure just weren’t after the free room and board. Being a chef was a punishingly difficult career, with high rates of drink and drug taking. Not everyone got out of it unscathed. And the people Happy Hospitality had lined up for him were hardly the cream of the crop.
He’d hoped he might find someone with as much passion as he had, who could see the amazing potential of the little island at the top of the world. But he sat through interview after interview with little light. The idea was that he would talk to everyone, then the ones whom he liked would cook something in the kitchen set up in the offices. But so far he wouldn’t let anyone he’d met make him so much as a sandwich.
“I’m not sure this is going to work out,” he said, as he and the recruitment agent took a break. He tried the coffee this time. It really wasn’t bad.
She nodded. “I do realize . . . It’s just the location . . .”
“Yeah, you said,” said Fintan. “The location is amazing, actually.”
“We do have a couple more people for you to see,” said the woman.
Fintan glanced at his watch. The plane didn’t leave till the evening. He didn’t have anything else to do; there was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing he wanted to see. The bright lights of the shops and gay clubs and restaurants had no appeal for him anymore. It was, he reflected once again, so dull being so joyless.
“Okay, bring it on,” he said.
The woman glanced at her watch worriedly. The next interviewee was late. Rather late. Bordering on very late. “I’m sorry,” she said finally.
“I thought you had a couple of people for me to meet.”
“I know, but the last one just pulled out. Apparently one of their friends was in earlier . . .”
Fintan’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
The recruitment agent’s lips twitched. “Oh, nothing,” she said.
“What?” said Fintan, then he gradually realized. “What, because they’d met me?”
“I couldn’t possibly say,” said the agent, whose name was Marian and who thought it was a fiendish disappointment Fintan was gay, because she had a terrible soft spot for handsome angry men. Although that had brought her nothing but grief in her life, she reflected, so this was something of a lucky escape. Regardless, word had already gotten around and nobody wanted to work for a misery guts in a place where, if you were lucky, the thermometer might hit 12 degrees Celsius in July.
Fintan folded his arms. “For fuck’s sake,” he was saying crossly, just as the door burst open.
“I am late!” announced the tall, very skinny man standing in the doorframe. He was wearing a rather grubby T-shirt and jeans. His arms were completely covered in spiky tattoos, and he was unshaven and looked none too clean. His accent was heavy.
Fintan internally sighed. So the whole day would be completely wasted. No decent chefs would ever want to come with him. Flora had tried to cut down on everything he had to do, and still he hadn’t managed to properly handle the one thing—the kitchen—that he was meant to love, that he was meant to be looking after.
“Yes, thank you, Gaspard,” said Marian primly. Her lips thinned. She liked sullen men, not ridiculous ones.
Gaspard came in anyway and threw himself insolently onto a chair. “So. A keetchen. In the ocean.”
His accent was so French as to be absurdly comic. Fintan wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn he came from Basingstoke and was putting it on.
“I thought you were back in Marseille,” said Marian, flicking through the CVs.
Gaspard gave a shrug. “Eet ees feelthy like wild dogs on street. Also, there ees wild dogs on street.”
“I’ve heard Marseille is nice.”
“Not my Marseille.”
He had two days’ stubble on his cheeks and really did look in profound need of a bath. He also sat sullenly, his arms folded, as if furious at being in a job interview situation—which indeed he was—as Fintan attempted to explain what was going on up at the Rock. He looked around even as Fintan was still talking.
“You want me to cook ou quoi?”
Fintan was caught mid-spiel. “Well, I’m just trying to explain what—”
“Oui, oui, but eef you hate what I cook, then this ees a waste of everyone’s time, non? Eet ees pointless talk talk talk, bleh bleh bleh.”
Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and stalked into the small kitchen.
“Maree-ong!” he shouted. “You have nuzzing! Nuzzing ees here!”
“You know this guy?” said Fintan.
Marian nodded.
“Is he a dick?”
“Uhm.” Marian truly didn’t want to be unprofessional.
Fintan, reading her face, groaned.
“But,” said Marian, to the sound of a gas burner being turned up high and popping loudly, “he can cook.”
Chapter 8
Fintan went in to watch what Gaspard was doing. What Gaspard was doing was having a cigarette out the window, in blatant defiance of the fire regulations and the many signs posted around the walls.
“What are you doing?” said Marian.
“Sweating the onion,” said Gaspard. “Nobody does eet properly. They do not leave eet long enough. They rush rush rush. And so, dégueulasse.”
He shook his head sadly and leaned back so far out the window, Fintan thought he might fall out.
Fintan couldn’t help himself. His lips twitched ever so slightly. Gaspard tossed his cigarette out the window and went back to the pan without washing his hands. Hearing Marian’s anguished sigh, he theatrically returned to the sink and did so. Then he added some finely chopped bacon, reduced some white wine he had already sampled straight from the bottle, and gave Marian a big telling off on terroir, explaining that if you bought wine for cooking that was worse than your normal wine, you were an idiot, and if you bought that wine for both cooking and drinking, you were also an idiot, and so what was she? Finally he added some cream to the sauce, quickly seared some scallops in another pan with fennel, and served them all the lightest, most delicious lunch Fintan had had in some time, particularly after ferreting around in the back of the cupboard and finding a slightly more acceptable bottle of wine.
“Tiens,” Gaspard grumbled, throwing his food down like a lanky bear.
He disappeared after Marian insisted on his leaving the building for another cigarette.
“I’ll take him,” said Fintan.
“Are you sure?” said Marian. “He’s a pig. And he doesn’t last long in jobs.”
“So why did you show him to me then?”
“Because we were . . . a little short on CVs.”
“Well,” said Fintan, as Gaspard rolled back in, shouting at the top of his lungs what were patently obscenities in French down his phone. “You’ve got him off your hands.”
“For now,” said Marian, glumly collecting the plates. “See you in a week, Gaspard.”