Chapter 11
France, July 2008
MAGGIE LEARNT THREE LESSONS that summer. Firstly: her aunt was an alcoholic.
It was busy by July. The hotel was at the peak of its fame and every room was booked by guests from around the world who lay beside the pool in Gucci sunglasses and Missoni swimwear while the staff ferried out cold bottles of wine and Perrier. And it was hot, really hot, the hottest European summer for twenty-eight years, which meant that almost as soon as they carried a fresh ice-bucket from the kitchen, another one was needed at a different poolside table.
Daphne came into the kitchen carrying a tray laden with dirty glasses. She was a petite Greek student who’d come to work at Le Figuier for the summer, just like Maggie. Daphne did the more basic jobs – laying the tables, clearing the tables, helping Audrey with the beds in the morning – while Maggie mostly stayed in the kitchen. Technically, Phil should be in the kitchen too, overseeing that evening’s menu: fresh tagliatelle with langoustine, followed by turbot with leeks and tarragon in wine, ending with coffee ice cream and cardamom biscuits. However, Phil was outside, drinking with the guests, like she had been every night since Maggie arrived a week earlier.
Luckily, Maggie seemed to have inherited her aunt’s intuition and was already a good cook. Having noticed this the previous summer, Phil had encouraged her niece’s interest by sending a succession of books to London. Old French recipe books with pencilled annotations in the margins; yellowing paperbacks about Asian cooking, which Phil had found on her travels; newer, glossier cookbooks by young American chefs, accompanied by photos of vineyards and gleaming, metallic Californian kitchens; one book which focused entirely on fish; another dedicated to pasta.
Veronica thought it was a peculiar habit and constantly told her daughter that she should be out with boys at her age, not reading in her bedroom.
‘It’s a bit odd , darling,’ she’d told her several weeks earlier, standing in Maggie’s doorway and tutting as her daughter read recipes and wrote notes. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends than reading? What is that? What’s she sent you now?’
Wordlessly, Maggie had lifted the book to show her mother the cover – The Complete Guide To Mushrooms – whereupon Veronica had tutted in disgust and left her to it.
Maggie didn’t want to be out with boys. In her last two years at school, she’d dated precisely three, although the first one, Lewis, didn’t really count because they hadn’t slept together. The second one, Ash, was nice enough but more interested in his car than Maggie. And the third one, a Scottish music student called Angus, who she’d met in a Soho pub, had stroked Maggie’s hair and whispered song lyrics to her after they’d slept together in his cramped bedsit in Penge, but never called her after that one night. A week or so later, returning to that same pub in the hope of bumping into him, Maggie had seen Angus with a flame-haired woman in a leather jacket and had cried every day for a month. There didn’t seem to be any rules with boys. Not rules that she understood, anyway. But she did understand the rules of cooking, so cooking took precedence.
As Daphne slid the tray to the counter in the hotel kitchen, she sniffed suspiciously. ‘What’s that smell?’
Maggie was standing at the counter, chopping shallots. ‘Shit, the biscuits!’ She reached for a cloth and opened the oven, releasing a cloud of grey smoke that billowed to the ceiling. The cardamom biscuits were black. ‘Shit,’ she repeated, looking across the kitchen. ‘Is Phil still out there?’
‘Yes,’ squeaked Daphne, loading the glasses into the dishwasher.
Maggie tipped the biscuits into the bin and made her way to the pantry for more flour, telling herself it didn’t matter. Actually, she should feel proud; she was turning out dinners every night for the guests with minimal help and nobody could tell. Two nights ago, an Italian guest had taken one mouthful of the roasted quail with quince and saffron rice and his eyes had actually welled up, which had taught Maggie the second of her lessons that summer: that cooking, and giving people pleasure through food, was what she wanted to do now that she’d left school.
Some of her friends were going backpacking, others were working before heading to uni in the autumn. But all Maggie wanted to do was find a job in a kitchen. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy. From the few catering jobs she’d done in London, and a weekend shift in a local pub – where, on her first Sunday, she’d had to peel so many potatoes her left index finger started bleeding – she knew the kitchen was a brutal, steaming, sizzling arena where chefs had to be able to withstand the metaphorical and actual heat. They had to suffer burns, calloused hands, weary legs, foot sores, and proper bone-sucking exhaustion before getting up and doing it all again the next day. But still, Maggie wanted it.
She wouldn’t mind some guidance from her aunt today. But instead of supervising her niece in the kitchen, Phil was outside, where she’d been drinking since lunch.
Maggie pulled the jar of cardamom seeds from the dresser and tipped several on to a chopping board, then wiped the sweat off her forehead and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Can you ask her to come in? I can’t remake the biscuits and do everything else.’
Behind her glasses, Daphne looked alarmed, but nodded and disappeared through the door.
Maggie dug her thumbnail into the cardamom pods and carefully released the seeds into the pestle and mortar, then began crushing them.
She’d heard her parents muttering about Phil’s drinking since she was a child, but never taken it very seriously. Her aunt was simply less stuffy, less uptight and more fun than them. Except when did fun become out of control? Because that’s what it looked like to Maggie now, and it scared her. In the past week, it had dawned on Maggie that her aunt didn’t just drink to have fun. She drank as if she needed it. She drank because she was addicted.
Phil seemed to have taken Maggie’s arrival at the hotel as an excuse to sit outside, drinking with the guests every afternoon as if she was one of them, staggering into the kitchen at around six, singing or sliding her arm around her niece’s waist and slurring that she loved her. Maggie had learned to make a strong pot of coffee for her aunt before she let her near a knife or the cooker, and Phil would sober up just enough to oversee service. But as soon as it was done she’d pour herself another drink and slope outside. The previous night, just after she and Daphne had finished the main course, Maggie had found Phil lying on a sunbed crying, while everybody ate on the terrace.
She was heartbroken after a recent love affair with a Dutch diplomat had ended, and Maggie felt sorry for her. But for the first time in her life, she was frustrated with Phil. Her aunt was the most brilliant, most lively, most vibrant person she knew. Why couldn’t she simply drink less? Why had she let a man make her this sad? Over the years, Maggie had often heard her mother mutter the same word in reference to Phil, that she was ‘complicated’, but she’d never understood this as a child because Phil seemed so happy and easy to be around. This summer, though, she was realizing there was truth to that word. Aunt Phil was complicated .
‘She says she’ll come in soon,’ Daphne said, slipping back through the kitchen door.
Maggie crushed the seeds harder, then looked up at the clock. An hour until dinner.
‘Are the tables laid?’
‘Yes.’
‘Glasses out? Napkins?’
Daphne nodded. ‘Everything.’
Maggie frowned at the small Greek student. ‘How good’s your cooking?’
Daphne’s cooking wasn’t half bad, it turned out. Or at least her chopping skills were passable. Maggie slid another batch of biscuits into the oven, and Daphne finished the shallots, softening them in thick slices of French butter, before beating in flour and milk.
‘Keep whisking to avoid lumps,’ Maggie ordered, as she fetched the turbot from the fridge.
‘My brilliant girls!’
Phil was standing in the doorway, her sunburned face surrounded by wisps of blonde hair that had come loose from the plait hanging down her back.
‘Hello. Decided to join us?’
‘Maggie, darling, my favourite niece, you are now quite capable of managing this kitchen by yourself.’
‘I’m your only niece.’
‘Exactly,’ mumbled Phil, as she went into the pantry.
‘I’ve burnt the biscuits.’
She returned with another bottle from the fridge. ‘Drink?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, don’t be cross with me. You sound like your mother.’ Phil sidled up to her and draped an arm around her shoulders, but Maggie stepped sideways and began filleting the fish, pushing the knife between the white flesh and the delicate bone.
‘Look, let me do that,’ Phil offered.
‘It’s fine, I’m nearly done,’ Maggie told her, flipping the turbot over.
‘No, darling, have a break, sit, I’ll do that. Here …’ Phil reached for the knife and, unthinkingly, wrapped her fingers around the blade.
‘Phil, leav—’ But it was too late, and Phil snapped back her fist, cradling it to her chest.
‘Show me, Phil. Show me!’
Maggie could see blood as soon as her aunt uncurled her fingers. ‘Shit, OK, Daphne, get the first-aid box, it’s in the desk in reception. You, sit down.’
Phil meekly obeyed.
‘What were you thinking?’ Maggie went on, reaching for a towel before crouching beside Phil’s knees. She could smell the wine on her breath.
‘Sorry,’ Phil muttered.
Maggie pressed the towel against her hand, cupping her fingers around her aunt’s like a protective mother.
Daphne reappeared and opened the box on the table. ‘ Thees? ’ She held up a thermometer.
‘No. Are there any bandages?’
Daphne, whose English wasn’t perfect, held up the scissors.
‘Are there any wipes? Wipes, you know, in the packet? To clean?’ Maggie pushed herself up and ferreted through the box. ‘Keep the towel there, Phil.’
She retrieved a packet of wipes and a strip of plasters, then knelt and peeled away the kitchen towel. Cooks weren’t allowed to be squeamish but dicing a piece of shin or boning a chicken was very different to human flesh.
‘Good news and bad news,’ Maggie mumbled, squinting at her aunt’s hand, where there was a straight cut like a longitudinal line across Phil’s index and middle finger. ‘The good news is you’re going to keep your finger because it’s not that deep.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘You have to sit there, with a coffee. Daphne, can you make the cafetière?’
Daphne frowned.
‘Coffee, there, in that pot. The grounds are … Oh, nevermind. I’ll do it.’
Maggie made a pot, then poured a large mug and stirred in a spoon of honey. Phil could do with the sugar. ‘Here, drink,’ she ordered, before turning back to a pile of leeks on the counter.
She stripped the outer leaves and sliced the ends, chopping one leek in a few seconds before reaching for the next. A pile of perfect green discs built in front of her. She appreciated the methodology of cooking more than ever this trip, the control she could exert over it at moments when it felt like she had no control over anything else.
But at the sound of a sob, she turned to see her aunt wipe her cheeks with her knuckles, so she laid down the knife and moved to her side, mothering her again.
‘Let’s have a look,’ she said gently, pulling away the towel. The bleeding had stopped, so she reached for the wipes and ripped open one corner.
‘I suppose it’s a lesson,’ her aunt murmured.
‘Lesson?’
‘Everything heals eventually. It hurts, and then it heals.’ Phil gave her a sad smile, and Maggie knew she was thinking of her most recent love affair.
That was her third lesson of the summer: emotional pain, it seemed, was just as agonizing as physical pain. Both could cut deep.
As she wound the bandage around her aunt’s fingers, she swore she’d never let a man hurt her in the same way.