Chapter 10 #2
Mebel goes back to working on her lobster.
Now that she’s managed to get past the worst part, something seems to have come over her.
Adrenaline rushes through her, and as she gazes down at the lobster, Mebel is overcome by a sensation.
She can do anything. She can do everything.
She is a glorious warrior. It takes her no time at all to take apart the lobster just as Chef Clarke has shown them, and what surprises Mebel the most is the sense of peace that comes over her as she works.
It’s something novel, something that comes from putting her hands to work.
Something about it eases her mind, allowing the usual cacophony of noises in it to come to a resting place where there is, for once, blessed silence.
After the lobster, they move on to mussels, and again, Mebel doesn’t allow herself time to get squeamish.
She doesn’t let herself think of how disgusting it is to have to scrape away the “beard” of the mussels, and how dangerous it is to shuck oysters, and how much of a scallop has to be thrown away.
She hyperfocuses on each task, and her hands move like—well, not like an oiled machine, but like an old machine that has suddenly realized that it has more to do in life than lie still.
At the end of the session, they all arrange their seafood on a large plate and then stand at attention with their hands behind their backs as Chef Clarke comes to their workstations and examines their handiwork.
He’s satisfied with a few and less so with others, telling them in his clipped British accent that they’ve “nicked the scallop meat here” or “left a bit of digestive tract there.” When he finally arrives at Mebel’s table, she squares her shoulders and looks somewhere an inch to the left of Chef Clarke’s ear because she can’t bear to meet his eye.
She braces herself for the inevitable reprimand, and maybe this time, Chef Clarke won’t bother with a private talk, maybe he’ll just tell her in front of the whole class that she doesn’t belong here.
“Ah,” he says, and there is a note of pleasant surprise in his voice that makes Mebel’s ears prick up. He lifts the lobster head, which has been sliced in half, and studies it closely. “This is quite neatly done.”
Quite neatly done, Mebel thinks. That sounds like a good thing, right?
He moves on to her scallop. “You’ve cleaned it well while preserving its shape.” He prods at the mussels and the oysters, and then says, “That is sufficient.” He moves on to the next table.
As Mebel stares after him in shock, she catches sight of Gemma, who is grinning at her and giving her a thumbs-up. Joy sparkles through Mebel’s body like champagne. She grins and nods at Gemma. Adam turns around and mutters, “Yo, good job, Mebs.”
“Thank you,” Mebel says. And you know what? she thinks to the stuffy voice in her head. I kind of like being called Mebs.
Maybe.
The next class, they learn how to butcher a chicken, and though everything inside Mebel rebels against her picking up the slimy chicken carcass, once again, she manages to bulldoze through it.
At the end of the day, Mebel is tired but also strangely energized.
Who would’ve known how empowering culinary school would be?
She feels so empowered, in fact, that she decides that tonight she is not going to eat dinner at the school’s cafeteria.
No, tonight, Mebel Tanadi is going to dress up and go into town for dinner.
Except that, hours later, when Mebel finally arrives at the heart of Cowley, all dressed in Ferragamo, she realizes that there isn’t a single restaurant in Cowley that is worthy of her fabulous outfit.
The downtown street, very creatively called “Cowley Road,” is full of what one might generously call “take-out places” or, if one weren’t feeling generous, “dives.” Mebel walks past a Chinese take-out place in which she’s pretty sure two patrons are having a fist fight, then a culturally confused place that serves both “authentic Japanese ramen” and “authentic pad Thai,” then a Tesco, followed by a convenience store, before she loses hope of finding a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Two men spill out of a nearby pub, talking in low voices, and when they spot Mebel, something in their leers makes her pause. She wraps her coat around her tightly.
“Didja see that fancy bint?” one of the men says loudly.
“Heya, luv, where are you headed?” his friend, who sports a large beard, calls out.
Back in Jakarta, Mebel was chauffeured everywhere, from home straight to fancy restaurants, and so running into two spirited strangers who are now talking to her is a newfound experience that she doesn’t quite understand, but is nevertheless filling her with both fear and also, bafflingly, excitement.
She wonders if this would be an appropriate time to put her keys in between her fingers before throwing her meanest punch, but just as she’s about to rummage for her keys in her purse, Beard goes, “Ow!”
He clutches at his eye and bends over, his huge shoulders rounding.
“You all right?” his friend says.
“No, I’m fucking not, something flew into my eye—ah, it hurts like a motherf—”
Mebel steps carefully toward him and taps him daintily on the arm.
“What?” he snaps.
“I have the eye drops,” Mebel says, holding out a small bottle.
Beard glares at her with one eye for a moment, then snatches the bottle from her. He raises his head and squirts way more drops than are needed. Then he blinks furiously and releases a long sigh of relief. “Thanks,” he mutters, handing the bottle back to Mebel.
“You walk around with eye drops in your purse?” his friend asks, something close to awe in his voice.
“Of course,” Mebel says smartly. “Always be well prepare.” She puts away the drops, then says, “Maybe you gentlemen can be so kind and direct me to nicest restaurant in town?”
The men blink slowly at her. Their breath fogs up in the cold night air and smells like stale alcohol.
It is beginning to dawn on Mebel that perhaps these two might not be the best food connoisseurs around, and that maybe she wouldn’t trust their judgment when it comes to fine dining.
Or anything else in life, for that matter.
“ ’Ow about the Goat and Eagle?” Bearded Man says.
Mebel wrinkles her nose. “So, they serve goat meat? I like goat meat. Not sure about eagle, but I will give it a try. I am a bit surprise that they serve the eagle meat here.”
“No, they don’t serve actual eagle meat, good grief. The Goat and Eagle is a pub down the road,” Mr. Beard says. “I go there when I’m feeling posh. They serve a good kidney pie.”
“I like the King’s Arms, m’self,” his friend says. Mebel mentally calls him Ears, on account of the way his stick out. “Get yourself a nice plate of bangers and mash, and wash it all down with a pint of cider.”
“That sound good,” Mebel says.
“They do a mean spotted dick at the King’s Arms every Thursday.”
Mebel frowns. “I don’t know if I like spotted dick, is sounding quite unhygienic.”
Ears shrugs. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Tell you what, why don’t you come with us, and—”
Whatever else he was about to suggest is interrupted by a group of youths coming out of the pub.
They’re laughing and carousing with one another, not looking where they’re going, and one of them crashes into Mr. Beard, who swings around and grabs the offending person by the collar of his shirt.
The easygoing laughter dies a quick death.
“Watch where you’re going, mate,” Beard says.
Mebel reflects on how funny it is that in every part of the world, the words “mate” and “buddy” and “pal” are often used in situations where it’s clear that neither party thinks of the other as a friend.
She surmises, not unwisely, that now would be an appropriate time for her to make her exit, because there is nothing worse than a guest who doesn’t know when to leave.
But as she’s inching away, the guy whose shirt collar is currently being squeezed in the massive hands of Mr. Beard squeaks, “Mebel?”
“Oh!” Mebel finally looks, really looks, at him. It’s a boy she recognizes as Bruce from her class. And behind him are Gemma, Bella, and Adam. “Oh, hello,” she says.
“Mebel!” Gemma says. “How nice to see you here!”
“Um, Mebel?” Bruce says. “Could you ask your friend to let go of me?”
Mebel looks at Beard. “Can you stop choking my classmate?”
Beard looks back and forth from Mebel to Bruce. “This little shrimp is your classmate? What class are you taking?”
“I am student at the Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts,” Mebel says with an amount of pride that surprises even her.
“Sounds posh,” Beard says.
“Does, don’t it?” Ears says. “You learning them posh French dishes then?”
Mebel thinks for a second. “Well, so far I have learn how to cube a potato and how to butcher shellfish, like lobster and oyster,” Mebel says primly.
“Not yet posh French dishes, but I’m sure they come soon.
And when they do, then maybe you two can come and try them.
You can be my trial customer, because I am learning how to make nice French food to win my husband back, you know. ”
“Sounds good,” Beard says, and lets go of Bruce.
Bruce stumbles back, holding his collar, looking back and forth between Mebel and Beard with wide eyes.
“I don’t like the look of that one,” Beard says to Mebel, gesturing at Bruce.
“Hey,” Bruce whines.
“I know what you mean,” Mebel says, “but actually he is not so bad.”
“Here’s my number,” Beard says, handing Mebel a business card. “You let me know when you cook them soupe à l’oignon.” The French words roll out of his mouth with shocking grace and smoothness. “That’s my favorite, that is. See you later then.”
“Goodbye,” Mebel says. She tucks the business card safely into her purse, then turns to Bruce and the others, who, with the exception of Gemma, are staring at her with wide, somewhat scared eyes.
“How do you know those guys?” Gemma says. “They looked like really…well, very interesting.”
“Townies,” Bruce says.
“Townies?” Mebel says. “What is that mean?”
“In Oxford, the population is divided into two groups,” Bruce explains. “The students and the townsfolk, also known as ‘townies.’ Townies are generally a tough crowd.”
“We are not townies?” Mebel says.
Bruce groans. “No, Mebel, we’re students. We’re literally enrolled in a school.”
“Yes, but we are not in Oxford University student, are we?” Mebel says. “The requirement to get into Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts very different from the ones to get into Oxford University.”
“Marginally,” Bruce says with confidence. “I bet it’s not that different, honestly.”
“All they ask from me was name and credit card details,” Mebel says flatly.
“All right, maybe the requirements are slightly different. I’m just saying, we are definitely not townies.”
Mebel gives a vague shrug. It’s not that she doesn’t see the difference between the students and the “townies,” but this is the exact sort of thing that would’ve bothered Henk.
He had always been about labels. He would’ve also insisted that he’s a student and not a townie, and Mebel, as the dutiful trophy wife, would’ve followed suit accordingly.
But now that Henk isn’t here, Mebel is realizing that maybe she doesn’t actually give a damn about such things.
So what if some people see her as a student or a townie?
She is a student and she does live in this town; therefore, she is both.
“Bruce has had too much to drink,” Bella mutters to Mebel. “He gets like this when he’s drunk. Lecturing everyone, telling us that he knows way more than we do.”
“Sound like fun,” Mebel says. She is beginning to think that perhaps she should’ve let Beard and Ears give him a good beating, after all.
“Anyway, that was so cool, what you did back there,” Gemma says, and her admiration sends a fierce wave of pride coursing through Mebel.
When was the last time someone had been proud of her?
Or rather, not proud of her but of something she did.
Because plenty of people have been proud of who Mebel is; Henk used to be proud of how beautiful and polished she was, her parents used to be proud of how well behaved she was, and her friends were proud of being friends with an affluent person like her.
But Mebel can’t, for the life of her, think of an instance when someone has been proud of something she’s done.
“Let us take you out to dinner tomorrow night to thank you for tonight, Mebel,” Gemma says.
“What?” Bruce whines. “But tomorrow we’re going to that posh new place in town. The French one that just opened, remember? My dad booked us a table there.”
“I’m sure we can fit one more in,” Bella says.
Mebel is about to tell them it’s okay when it hits her that a fancy new French restaurant is exactly what she needs to nourish her soul.
It has been two weeks since she arrived in Cowley, England, and she is in dire need of a fine dining experience; otherwise, she is wont to go berserk.
So she stands there smiling her best I will make a fantastic dinner guest smile.
“She did save your life,” Adam points out.
“Oh, fine.” Bruce looks Mebel up and down. “Dress nicely, Mebs.”
“Bruce, she is in head-to-toe Ferragamo,” Gemma whispers. She winks at Mebel.
Bruce has the decency to look abashed at this. “All right, well, tomorrow evening then.”
“See you in class tomorrow,” Mebel says, and traipses away with a huge grin on her face.