July 22, 2024
Community•Daily Life

Stop all the Clocks

Seventeen years ago, Geordie, John G (our Castle manager) and I were sitting in the Music Room looking forward to lunch. As part of the interview process for a new Head Chef, we had asked our prospective interviewees to come and cook. Paul Brooke Taylor had prepared a menu of beetroot cured salmon followed by a partridge dish and then a chocolate fondant. Absolutely delicious. Afterwards, we sat down for a chat and offered him the role. Not long afterwards, he and his girlfriend Serena moved into a white painted cottage on the edge of Highclere’s gardens.

He told me that he hoped to be at Highclere for 3 to 5 years – he was ambitious, his CV was already impressive. He always asked 110% of himself and set exacting standards. In due course he asked Serena to marry him and naturally, the wedding took place at the Castle, the happiest day, with Richard Walton, the chef who had given him his first job, as his best man.

Four or five years later I was thinking about his career path and wondering when he might say something. However, in contrast to his original statement, from time to time he would ask “Lady C you are not thinking of asking me to move on, are you?” “Never on my part” I would reply. He said “good”, I said “good” and it remained a reassuring quip. He was happy here.

He said he did not think he wanted children but Serena knew otherwise and he could not have loved his son and daughter more. Paul was a huge football fan and Jack has become a very able young footballer. His daughter Amelia is a gymnast and thus much of his time was spent being coach, starting fathers and sons teams, driving to matches and organising charity matches. Memorably even Geordie played for him one freezing February. His family time was always a precious priority.

Walking out of his cottage, the horizon stretches in front of the Castle towards the hills of Oxford and is almost breathtaking, it is so beautiful. Paul would then turn and walk down the drive to the Castle kitchens. He always said he had the best commute in the world.

Life at Highclere has not been boring over the last seventeen years. During this time, Team Highclere has become used to, and adept at dealing with, camera crews filming for Downton or filming behind the scenes at Highclere, the “Real Downton Abbey”. Lesley Nichols, Mrs Patmore has stayed as our guest and also filmed with Paul. He has been filmed cooking for other TV shows and of course was really thrilled to cook with Mary Berry. I think we all loved Mary Berry-very much.

I have written various books in which cooking and recipes played a major part and he and I had to learn how to get along with “chef” during the writing process. He was a chef and I was, and am, just a cook. I had an AGA which he refused to cook on and I couldn’t figure out his ovens. I learnt about his precision and he slightly despaired of my sometimes experimental approach. We tossed pancakes together, swopped stories and had a lot of fun. Food is at the heart of life.

Paul and Luis (our own Mr Carson) would compete to see who had the most photos in any of the books which was hilarious but overall, I would say I probably won anyway. We worked late and I spent a lot of time with him.

In the Castle kitchens, he has ensured that there is an excellent process for producing food for general admission tours when 1,200 people a day visit plus all the afternoon teas. He has created fine dining menus for weddings and board meetings as well as for us and our guests who are from all walks of life, from royalty to Egyptologists, statesmen, musicians, writers, ambassadors, race horse trainers and actors. We have done Christmases, New Year’s Eves, Burns Nights and picnics together, filling every minute with sixty seconds of life well run.

He built a team here with three other chefs, in particular Will and Andy, and Rob, with Raj as KP, as well as being part of our wider team and always adding to John G’s Wednesday meetings with a direct turn of phrase. Sometimes he was scary chef. Two of us might be found at the bottom of the flight of stairs leading to his office arguing about who was going to confess that we had inadvertently sold double the number of afternoon teas we were supposed to. If it were me, I would go up and try to soft soap him by asking about his children and Serena before admitting to whatever the disaster was. I just needed to promise him I would manage it better in the future. Obviously then something else would go wrong – (we had “scone-gate”- my enthusiastic marketing – “christmas-cake”- gate…oh dear..)

The kitchen has been situated in the same place for 1,000 years but today it is a fully equipped modern catering kitchen. I would joke with him about how very expensive he was: wanting the best ovens, freezers and fridges but it was always sensible and future proof. The central space has a huge high domed ceiling which was once painted shiny cream but then an artist and scaffold arrived and it was transformed and painted with blue sky and clouds and there is a star in the east. It is lovely but the star is now rather poignant because Paul has now joined those stars as we have lost him.

Cancer is unbearably cruel and heartbreakingly unfair. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who gets it or why, or as to who survives and who doesn’t. The treatments are brutal and awful for both the patient and for the family. Paul was the bravest man we knew and he never gave up over the 20-month span of his illness, always fighting so hard for more time with his family.

His funeral was one of the hardest I have ever been to and almost agonising in its intensity. Richard, his best man, read a poem to say goodbye and, with extraordinary courage, Serena, Jack and Amelia all spoke as well, along with his mother, Viv. Paul himself also spoke directly to us because he had written his own eulogy which was read by his sister and niece.

He was “their North their South,
their East and West,
Their working week and their Sunday rest,
Their noon, their midnight, their talk, their song;
They hoped that he would last for ever, but we are all wrong.”

Once the raw shock of death is over, grief settles in, sitting with us in place of the person we loved. I’m not sure time heals so much as it teaches us how to bear it: it becomes a familiar shadow as we go on breathing and walking. Above all our thoughts remain with his family – his wife and his children.