The telephone rang at my elbow.
“Hello,” I said into the receiver. “Hay Net restaurant.”
There was just silence at the other end.
“Hello,” I said again. “The Hay Net restaurant. Can I help you?”
“Why did you tell me you were selling double glazing?”
“Er.” I sat there, not knowing quite what to say.
“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”
“I don’t know why,” I mumbled.
“Are you a bloody idiot or something?”
Yes, I probably was. “No,” I said. “Can I please explain?”
“I’m waiting,” she said again.
“Not here, not now, not on the telephone,” I said. “Perhaps we could meet?”
“How did you get my number?” she demanded.
“Directory inquiries,” I said.
“I’m ex-directory.”
“Oh. I don’t remember,” I said. “Maybe it was through the orchestra.”
“They only have my cell number.”
I was getting into deeper water, and quickly.
“Look,” I said, “if we can meet I will be able to explain everything. Perhaps I can give you dinner?”
“I’m not coming to Newmarket,” she said. “I’m not giving you another bloody chance to poison me.”
“You choose the venue and I’ll pay for the dinner. Anywhere you like.”
There was a short pause as she thought.
“Gordon Ramsay,” she said.
“At Claridge’s?” I asked.
“No, of course not,” she said. “The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, in Royal Hospital Road. I’m free every night this week until Friday.”
The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, quite apart from being one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, was notoriously difficult to get into. Bookings were taken from nine A.M., two calendar months in advance, and were often completely filled each day by ten-thirty. I would have to try to pull strings of a fellow-professional sort if I was to have any chance of getting a table in the coming week.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“Right, you do that.” Was it me or did her tone imply that I wouldn’t be able to fix it?
“Why, aren’t you in New York?” I asked somewhat foolishly.
“Your bloody dinner took care of that,” she said angrily. “I couldn’t make it to the airport last Saturday and was replaced.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh indeed. I’d been looking forward to the New York trip for months, and you bloody ruined it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Is that an admission of guilt?”
I could imagine Bernard Sims going crazy with me. “No, of course not,” I said.
“My agent says I should take you to the bloody cleaners,” she said. “He says that I should get ten thousand at least.”
I thought back to Mark’s advice and reckoned that it might need more than a hundred quid to buy her off. “I think that your agent is exaggerating,” I said.
“You think so?” she said. “I’ve not just lost out on my pay for the tour, you know. There’s no guarantee that I will be invited back into the orchestra when they get home. The directors can be very fickle. I’ve only just been promoted to principal viola, and now this bloody happens.” She clearly liked to say “bloody” a lot.
“Tell me,” I asked, trying to change the subject, “what’s the difference between a violin and a viola?”
“What?” she screamed over the phone. “Didn’t you hear me? I said that you might have cost me my bloody career.”
“I’m sure that’s not really true,” I said. “You should calm down. It’s not good for your blood pressure.”
There was a pause. “You’re very annoying,” she said.
“So my brother always used to say,” I said.
“He was absolutely right.” She paused. “Well?”
“Well what?” I asked.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing! In that case, I’ll see you in court.”
“OK,” I said. “But do tell me, what is the difference?”
“Difference?”
“Between a violin and a viola?” I said.
“It’s not a viola,” she said, pronouncing it like I had done with the i as “eye.” “It’s a viola.” She said it with the i short, as in “tin” or “sin.”
“So what is the difference?”
“A viola burns longer than a violin.”
“What?” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and laughed. “It’s an old joke among musicians. We viola players tend to be the butt of all the worst orchestra jokes. We get used to it, and we don’t really care. I think everyone else is jealous.”
“So what is the difference between them?”
“They’re different instruments.”
“I know that,” I said. “But they look the same.”
“No they don’t,” she said. “A viola is much bigger than a violin. That’s like saying a guitar looks like a cello.”
“No it’s not. That’s silly,” I retorted. “A cello is played upright and a guitar is played horizontally, for a start.”
“Ha!” she said smugly. “Jimi Hendrix played his guitar upright most of the time.”
“Don’t be pedantic,” I said, laughing. “You know what I mean. Violins and violas are both played with a bow, under the chin.”
“Or with the fingers,” she said. “Pizzicato. And it’s not so much under the chin as on the shoulder.”
“Does that mean you have your chin in the air?”
“It might,” she said. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling. I decided that it might be a good time to get out of this call before she started asking again how I knew her home telephone number and her occupation.
“I’ll call you about dinner,” I said. “It will be probably be Tuesday.” It tended to be one of our least busy nights at the Hay Net, and often the night I would be away, either cooking elsewhere or at some other event.
“You really think you can get a table?” she said.
“Of course I can,” I replied. “No problem.”
I hoped I was right. It might just save me ten grand.
9
W e were seated at a table for two against the wall near the door. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the best table in the place. But Caroline was impressed nevertheless.
“I never thought you would manage to get a table,” she said when she arrived. “To be honest, if I had thought you actually could I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place. I’m not at all certain that I really want to be here.” And she had a scowl on her face to prove it.
I wasn’t sure how to take that comment, but she had come, and that was all that was important to me at the time. Over the past couple of days, I had tried hard to recall the string quartet at the gala dinner. I could recall that they had all worn long black dresses with their hair tied back in ponytails, but, try as I might, I had failed to remember their faces. However, when Caroline had walked through the front door of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay I had known her straightaway.
Securing a table had been harder, and very many favors had been cashed in and more still promised. “Sorry,” they had said on the telephone with a degree of amusement at my folly, “tables are usually booked two months in advance.” They hadn’t needed to add that less than two days was in “absolutely no chance” territory.
However, I was not a celebrity chef for nothing, albeit a very minor one. The world of cordon bleu cookery may be as competitive as any, with chefs happily dreaming of using their cook’s knives on the throats of their rivals, but, deep down, we knew that we needed them alive and well, not only to maintain the public interest in all things kitchen but also to be the guests on each other’s television shows.
Having sold my soul, if not exactly to the devil then to the keeper of his kitchen, and having made such promises that may be difficult, if not impossible, to honor, I was rewarded with an offer of “a small extra table fitted in to the already-full dining room at nine o’clock. But it might be close to the door.”