A Hunger by Ross Raisin

Author:Ross Raisin [Raisin, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473524200
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2022-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

‘I’ve finished the potatoes, Chef.’

‘Show me.’

He goes to fetch a double GN pan full of potato peel.

‘Put it on the scale.’

He is watching the number settle on the screen but he doesn’t know what it means, what it is supposed to be. He looks up, waiting for my verdict.

‘It’s too high. You’re being heavy-handed with the knife. Go and peel the next sack. I want it under 1.8 kilos. Seven per cent peel. Go.’

He lifts up the pan and goes away.

‘And Dan …’

He turns around. Stands there with his massive pan of potato peel, all the boys’ eyes on him, enjoying this. God knows what he must say about the Longwool, about me, when he’s at the pub with his expensively groomed cyclist mates.

‘Look at your apron.’

He looks at his apron.

‘It looks like you’ve just buried a body.’

Jack and Turtle are smiling at each other. They want to see him taken down, this tech twonk who thinks he can just walk into a kitchen and be a chef.

‘Turtle, come and stand next to him.’

Side by side, they look like a washing powder advert.

‘That is what your apron should look like, even after service. Use your rag, keep changing that. My first job was in a hotel where they fined you for not keeping your uniform clean. And the head chef here before Frank used to make anyone in filthy whites take their trousers off and cook in their pants.’

Xav is walking up to Dan. He tosses a crumpled ball of baking paper into the peel pan. ‘He is the one who got fired for punching a diner?’

‘That’s him. Stewart.’

Dan is listening meekly to all this. Xav, still close to him, reaches to touch his beard. He pets it briefly. If Dan was asked to take his trousers off right now, he probably would.

‘Go and put a clean apron on, then start peeling that other sack. The timer is going on – now.’

After service, going home, it will come for me. The second self that knows it is wrong to treat him like this. Telling myself that it’s just the way it is – that he has to stand up for himself and earn their respect if he really does want to be here. Give him an easy ride and the boys would turn against me. He will likely be gone by the end of the month, anyway.

Here he comes. Clean apron. Lugging the next sack of potatoes towards his workbench, where Isaac has on the quiet left a better peeler waiting for him. The only person apart from Isaac who has so far treated him like an individual, actually talked with him, is Peter. When he came in earlier to deliver these sacks of potatoes he spoke with him easily, genuinely, the same as he does with all the boys – the two of them getting into a conversation about meat-free sausage rolls. Would Peter be surprised, disappointed, to see me behave like this? Even if he shrugged it off,

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