A Bitter Feast(66)
“Mmm.” Fergus still hadn’t been convinced. “But why should we do this? The kitchen is clicking. We’ve got a reputation to maintain now. Why should we take that sort of risk?”
He was right about the kitchen, Viv knew. They’d found their rhythm over the last couple of months. They were turning out better food, and doing it consistently. But all that made her more determined. Sweating a little because she was still in her whites and it was stifling in the little room, she said, “So how many restaurants in London are doing a menu like ours and doing it well?” When Fergus frowned, she went on, encouraged. “A dozen, at least. If we want to stand out, we’ve got to be just that bit different.”
The frown was still there—it still surprised her that frowning made his dimples deeper. “Not sure I want to be reminded of Ireland every day of my life,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly fun and games, you know, in those days.” He seldom talked about his boyhood in Belfast.
“You must have some good memories of food, though, growing up,” Viv ventured, hoping to bring him back from whatever he was seeing.
“Baked beans on toast for tea every night?” Fergus countered, focusing on her, but there was a hint of laughter in his voice now.
“What about Belfast? There must have been something good in the restaurant there. It held a Michelin star for years.” She knew he’d started as a kitchen boy in the best restaurant in Belfast, before he moved to London.
“Family meal,” Fergus said, grinning now. “I didn’t care what it was as long as there was plenty of it. Growing boy.” He studied her. “You’re not going to give this up, are you, darlin’?”
Viv shrugged, pressing her lips down on a smile and suspecting that just made her look prissy.
“I can see it now. You’ll give me no peace, woman. We’ll start with one thing, and we’ll see where that takes us. Deal?”
“Deal.” Viv did her best to sound casual, then ran into the staff toilet and did a fist pump. It was going to be brilliant. She knew it.
The weeks flew by. They tested recipes at night, after service, staggering into work hollow-eyed in the mornings. They worked all day in the kitchen on Sundays, when the restaurant was closed.
They made Caesar salad with Cashel Blue cheese. They made Irish lobster confit in Kerrygold butter. They made black pudding the way Fergus remembered it from his childhood, and lamb sausages so delicate they almost melted in your mouth. Everything they put on the menu got raves.
The leggy models grew few and far between, as Fergus had no time to accommodate them. Viv would never have admitted to jealousy, although she did allow herself to think that in spite of the workload, Fergus seemed healthier. There’d been no more episodes like the night he’d walked out in the middle of service, although she suspected he was still doing coke on the nights he managed to go out with the boys.
When they’d refined a new recipe enough to put it on the menu, they’d repair to the little flat Fergus was renting off Old Church Street, not far from the restaurant. There, they pored over cookery books and scribbled endless notes on scraps of paper.
It was a Sunday night, and after working all day in the kitchen, trying to perfect a foie gras and apple stuffed chicken, they’d walked up to the King’s Road in the warm summer evening and bought fish and chips to carry back to the flat. Fergus filled her kitchen tumbler with a second glass of expensive white Burgundy and raised his own glass in a toast.
“Have I told you lately that you’re brilliant?” he said, plopping down on the tattered sofa beside her as he crumpled his empty chips paper. Fergus might like his designer clothes and handmade shoes, but he cared nothing about decor and the flat looked as if it had been furnished from a charity shop. Which it had. The thought made Viv giggle. “That’s funny?” Fergus asked, giving her a look of mock offense.
“No,” Viv said hastily, eating a last chip. “I was just thinking we should do pork belly. Maybe with parsnips.”
“Peasant food. Poor Irish peasant food,” Fergus said, but without heat.
“Uh-huh,” she agreed. “Good peasant food, though. And cheap is good for the balance sheet.”
They sat, tired feet propped on the onion-crate coffee table, sipping their wine in companionable silence, both in the Sunday jeans and T-shirts they’d worn under their whites. Viv felt her breathing take on the rhythm of his. They’d worked side by side for months, touching, bumping, synchronized in the intimate dance of the kitchen. He had never flirted with her, other than his occasional lapse into broad Irish teasing when something was going particularly well. Although there were times she’d caught him looking at her intently, his brow furrowed, as if something about her puzzled him.
Her eyes drifted closed. “Citrus-smoked salmon,” she murmured. “With avocado crème fra?che.”
“They don’t have avocados in Ireland, darlin’.”
“I never meant we should put ourselves in a box,” Viv said, trying to blink herself awake. “No need to be rigid about the Irish thing.”
“No?” Fergus took the tilting wineglass from her hand and set it on the crate. “Woman, do you never think about anything but food?”
“Sometimes.” She was suddenly aware of the warmth of his thigh against hers, but she felt as if she were mired in treacle, powerless to move.