She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Ben, you’re not from here. This is a village, everybody knows everything about everyone else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in the end.’
We shook hands and I watched her back disappearing across the green as she trudged home through the rain.
I thought about what she had said. I suppose I thought it was quite sweet that everyone knew what everyone else was doing without Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or other social media.
After all, it was a pleasant, friendly little village. What could go wrong?
The following day, twenty-four hours after DI Slattery’s visit and Jess’s hiring, there was the arson attack.
Coincidentally fire, in the form of smoke, had gone into what I was cooking at the time. I had just made and served a customer called Dave Whitfield, local builder/property developer, a smoked venison sandwich on rye with a small garnish of curly endive, beetroot and cornichons.
It would be fair to say that Whitfield was not shaping up to be one of my favourite customers.
Jess walked in as Whitfield started being Whitfield. I had met him briefly a couple of days ago in the local pub. I hadn’t been overly impressed with his personality then, and my opinion of him was getting progressively lower. Jess gave me a sympathetic glance as she passed by, heading for the kitchen to change into her apron.
‘What’s that?’ He pointed aggressively at the garnish. Most things about Whitfield were aggressive, his mannerisms, his bald (aggressively so) shaved head, his tattoos, visible on his arms and flowing up his neck, lots of red and blue and green (bright, vivid colours, no pastels for Dave), his general demeanour.
I explained. How it would enhance his eating experience, how the flavours were cunningly paired, how the vinegar that the small cucumber (which is what a cornichon is) was pickled in would cut through the richness of the meat. And didn’t it look good! He was having none of it.
‘Bollocks to that,’ he remarked judiciously. ‘No offence, mate, but when I want crap on my plate I’ll ask for it, OK?’
Idiot, I thought. I gritted my teeth, shrugged and fetched a plate, and deftly scraped off the offending items with the blade of a knife. For a mad moment I would willingly have plunged it into him.
Actually, I’d have changed instruments first.
I was using the back of my long, broad-bladed chef’s knife to clean the plate. For stabbing Whitfield to death I’d have gone for a long, thin but sturdy boning knife. It would have slid in much more easily.
As my old head chef used to say, ‘Always choose the right tool for the right job.’
The question of what is right and not right, a perennial problem. They say that the customer is always right. Not in the world of good food. There, the customer doesn’t know best, the customer is entitled to their opinion, but that’s all they’re entitled to. Not to demand changes to the menu. I’m quoting a chef I once knew; well, it was OK for him, he had the luxury of fame and money. I had neither. I did what I was told. I felt belittled, sad and dirty, complicit in Whitfield’s vandalism of my food.
The sandwich sat forlornly on the plate, uncomfortably naked like a middle-aged man on a nudist beach. Like a nude Dave Whitfield in a non-functioning jacuzzi.
He switched his baleful attention from me and the food to jabbing messages into the keyboard of his phone.
Tranquillity, I thought to myself, that’s what is needed.
I went back to the kitchen and did some Qi Gong breathing exercises and felt calmer. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe. Zhan Zhuangs they’re called, there are five of them in all, well, five that I know about. Each one has a specific arm movement to maximise Chi. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe, feel the Tao.
Jess walked in with an order in her hand while I was doing Number Five, standing in horse-riding stance, my arms bent at the elbows at forty-five degrees, my hands forming a kind of triangle.
‘Cheque on … are you OK?’ she asked nervously. I suppose I must have looked very odd, possibly slightly insane. I was facing the stove and my fingers were framing the stainless steel of the extractor fan hood, as though I were worshipping it.
‘Yes, Jess,’ I explained, ‘I’m just channelling the energy of the universe, please carry on …’
‘Well, that’s all right then … Just so long as you’re OK. Cheque on, one steak baguette, one minestrone soup with parmesan and rosemary focaccia … Are you sure you’re OK?’
I finished what I was doing, I felt a lot better for it. I put a frying pan on the stove and took a rump steak from my fridge and a tub of pre-cooked caramelised red onion. As I seasoned the meat I said, ‘Nothing like breathing into your Dan-Tian, Jess, all that Chi energy.’
‘Yes, oh wise one,’ she said in a mocking voice. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘That would be nice, thank you.’ I watched as she disappeared back into the restaurant. She was a damn good waitress.
In general, I had reason to be happy. Business was picking up. I had just finished dealing with a couple of tables of elderly people, contentedly munching their way through quiche, soup, sandwiches and assorted cakes. I had also served five well-heeled ladies who lunch. They are the kind of customer that I liked: tough, confident women in their mid-fifties to whom I, a sprightly forty-five, was a kind of babe. One of them had been shamelessly flirting with me, a situation I was happy to accept.
At twenty to thirty covers a day, as we refer in the trade to the number of meals ordered, I could break even and then I could eject Whitfield who I had learned, it was hardly a surprise, was pretty much universally locally detested.
In the kitchen I had asked Jess about him. ‘Who is that awful man Dave Whitfield?’
She rolled her eyes at the mention of his name. ‘Dave Whitfield, he’s local, he’s a pain in the arse.’ She was local too, but otherwise the polar opposite of Whitfield.
She obviously couldn’t stand Whitfield. Then she explained something that had puzzled me about the village green.
‘You know the houses on the other side of the green, opposite here?’
I nodded. There were several houses there (including DI Slattery’s, of course) overlooking the common. (The green was alive with notices: No parking anywhere on the common! Dog owners, Pick it up! No littering! Hampden Green was big on signage.)
She continued, ‘You know the one with the kind of blue Perspex tower that’s illuminated?’
Again I nodded. It was like a miniature version of the Shard in London in someone’s front garden. It must have been nearly three metres tall. This house cast an eerie blue light over the green at night. It was quite disconcerting, the way it glowed.
‘That’s Whitfield’s house,’ she said.
It all made sense. I had been wondering what kind of man would have a monstrosity like that in his garden. Well, here was the answer – it was Whitfield’s plastic tower, his turquoise aura. His own personal advert for his construction business. The letters D.W. were etched into it for all to see. Now I knew what they stood for.
‘How on earth did he get planning permission?’ I asked. Planning was a sore point. My window frames were rotten (thank you Mrs Cope!) and needed replacing. They were listed, though, and this added insanely to the cost. The point was any form of deviation from the established was fraught with difficulty