Amazing Disgrace (9 page)

Now fry the eel slices gently in the merest smear of olive oil (their own fat will mobilize as they heat up) until they begin to brown and the skin is easy to separate. Still without removing the skin, set them aside as well to cool. When they are cold enough put them in the fridge and go out and buy yourself the tie you noticed on the way to the fish shop and have been thinking about ever since. It costs nearly eighty pounds, and it has taken the fit of introspection caused by slaughtering
innocent
eels to talk yourself into deciding that it is a killer item essential to the Samper wardrobe. A summery little number, it resembles Shredded Wheat in both colour and texture and is allegedly made from the undyed silk secreted by caterpillars fed on biologically farmed mulberry leaves, if you can believe the blarney on the little card attached. For eighty pounds they should have fed them on honeydew and the milk of Paradise; but it’s a spiffy tie and represents the up-side of my dismal
literary
activities.  

Back in the kitchen once more, take two cups of the green broth and heat one-and-a-half of them. Soften the tablespoon of gelatine in the remaining half-cup of cool liquid and then dissolve it completely in the hot. Stir it well into the rest and put the bowl in the freezer to set. I know full well that this gelatine method is cheating. In the authentic original version I pioneered some years ago (on the same day as my exquisite Mackerel & Blackberry Loaf), I used freshly made chicken stock for cooking the vegetables. When rendered from a whole chicken gently simmered for three hours, this stock sets
naturally
when refrigerated and is unquestionably preferable. This present version is a slightly disgraceful makeshift for those pressed for time: a recourse that I realize is perilously close to TV cheffie cookery. Banish this thought if you can by taking five eggs from inside the door of Derek’s fridge and praying
they were laid later than 2004. Separate the whites and beat them until they stand up (the Robert Mugabe approach to cookery). Bring a little milk to the boil and grate barely enough nutmeg on the surface to leave a fine film. Then with a wet spoon toss blobs of the egg foam onto its surface for a few seconds. They cook almost at once and turn into quenelles of meringue imbued with the merest ghost of nutmeg.  

By now you are home and dry, which is more than can be said for Derek who has just rung to say he’s been caught in a shower near Berkeley Square and is presently huddled in a doorway because, not having his brolly with him, he daren’t risk getting his hair wet. Rugged outdoorsman that I am, I do my best to keep any contempt for such feebleness out of my voice. Still, I suppose when you haven’t much hair to start with and what remains has been frisked and dolloped into a texture considerably like meringue, you do better to lurk in doorways rather than risk collapse. This gives me ample time to remove the now-set bowl of liquid from the freezer and admire its trembling, rubbery surface as well as its beautiful deep green colour. On it I now dispose with the utmost artistry the roundels of cold eel, topping each with a cap of meringue. And there we are: Eels flottantes! Now the point of leaving the skin on the slices becomes apparent. It is entirely a matter of
aesthetics
. The meringues seem to float like icebergs on their little black rafts of eel meat, themselves buoyed up on a fathomless green ocean. And maybe the scrupulous addition of one or two of those famous silver balls to the meringues’ peaks will give this great dish its final touch of fantasy.  

It is true to say that when Derek finally does arrive and has restored himself with a hair dryer and gin he is not in the ideal mood for gastronomic adventure. I now realize that in his way he is really rather unenterprising. He certainly eats what I have spent so much of the day preparing in his honour, but in a
pettishly
tentative and dispirited manner (‘like snacking out of a pond’). But he perks up on hearing that I shall soon see Christ. ‘We
are
moving in exalted circles these days, Gerry,’ he says
with elaborate unconcern, and then can’t stop himself adding: ‘Did I tell you I styled Pavel Taneyev the other day? He’s over here for ages because he’s doing a complete Bach at Wigmore Hall over the next six weeks. Difficult, difficult hair. I think ideally he wants to look Byronic – you know, shoulder-length, wide open collar. But it’s far too fine and he’s really just too old for that look, poor boy. His is that wretched kind of hair that lacks all body, and he really shouldn’t wear it long at all because otherwise it has to be whizzed up to make it look
bigger
and he risks turning into Dame Edna Everage. Whatever else
she
did, she never played the
Goldberg Variations
in
Wigmore
Hall. He’s so sweet, though, ever so generous with
complimentary
tickets to his concerts. We all call him Pauline. Leslie who washes him says he adores being shampooed. By the time I get to cut and style him he’s all flushed and rosy. I always think Russians are so sensitive.’  

Stories about sensitive Russians always make me think of Stalin and the account given by his dentist. Being Stalin’s
dentist
must have rated as the world’s least desirable job, with the gulag or the executioner’s bullet lurking behind one’s every move with the little silver probe. And as for
drilling
… Years after Stalin’s death his dentist admitted it had been
nerve-racking
, and made worse by the dictator’s own terror of
having
his teeth seen to which led him to babble endless Georgian jokes to postpone having to open his mouth. A dental appointment with Stalin ran to several hours. Knowing Blowjob, I expect hair appointments with Pavel Taneyev take quite as long. It’s typical of Derek that he feels compelled to try to upstage me, even as he must know that Max Christ easily outranks Taneyev in terms of visibility and general
recognition
. But there we are, and it costs me nothing to allow for poor Derek’s being a hairdresser with collapsed nether cheeks. Still, I can’t quite bring myself to admit that I should very much like an introduction to Taneyev myself, and it’s a bit of a shock to hear that a person I would adore to write about has so easily swum into Derek’s ken. I suppose I was still hoping to
reach him via Marta. Taneyev remains a hero of mine; and while it’s all very fine pinning my immediate hopes on Max Christ, it may well be that some earnest German is already halfway through writing the conductor’s official biography. So I certainly ought to have an alternative subject up my sleeve. As if I needed reminding of the awful fate that awaits me if I fail, Frankie mentioned the other day that Champions Press has had an enquiry from an international rugby player who wants his story told and they thought of me.
Can
it get more humiliating than this? The essential Socratic dignity of suicide is something that is beginning to take hold of me with quiet conviction.  

‘I must say, Derek, if you can lay your hands on any of those complimentary tickets I shouldn’t at all mind going along to hear Taneyev at least once. When does he start?’  

‘Next week sometime. The first evening’s the Partitas, I think. He’s booked me for that afternoon. He says nobody in the whole world understands his hair as I do.’  

‘A well-earned compliment on your intellectual
achievement
.’ I’m not about to give gratuitous hostages to Derek’s malice so I shall say nothing about my wanting to meet his illustrious client – not unless he first tries to wangle an
introduction
to mine. I shall simply buy a ticket to one of Taneyev’s less popular evenings, such as when completeness obliges him to play those dreary early toccatas, and then slip off backstage afterwards. I expect I shall go in a corduroy suit of a restrained shade – probably that bitter chocolate one I noticed when I bought the tie this afternoon. It’s vital to understate when choosing ultra-soft fabrics, otherwise one risks looking like Big Lord Fauntleroy or plain flamboyant. Discretion is the better part of velour.

The next day, a Wednesday, Adrian’s sister Jennifer rings to say there’s a sudden loophole in her husband’s calendar and could I manage dinner with Max this Friday? Can I ever?, I think as I gracefully accept with a tiny lurch of the stomach. My apprehension becomes more marked when Jennifer explains
that unfortunately Adrian won’t be coming as well because he has just rung to say he’s flying straight off to join some survey vessel that’s having instrument problems. Naturally, I’ve been relying on the promise of his moral support for this critical evening. Well, that does it: I shall go out and buy that
corduroy
suit right now. What is seven hundred pounds when one’s future is at stake? No sooner have I put the phone down than Frankie calls to say Millie Cleat’s keen to reach me but doesn’t have Derek’s number. Certainly she doesn’t, I say, and nor must she. I suggest he tells her I shall be out of touch for the rest of the week. ‘She’s not used to being kept waiting,’ says Frankie delightedly. ‘Exactly,’ I say.  

Cities inhibit me. I look out over the cobbled mews at the back of the flat and feel trapped. Just before he left for work this morning Derek found a letter pushed beneath his front door from his imperfectly literate landlord, a smarmy,
tone-deaf
immigrant who lives upstairs. He was complaining about ‘a very bad yoweling’ yesterday morning that disturbed his patients. ‘Were you singing, Gerry?’ Derek asked me crossly. ‘After I asked you not to?’

‘I forgot,’ I admitted. ‘Only a little aria from
L’uomo magro
. Why shouldn’t I? What patients, anyway? What is he – an analyst? An abortionist?’  

‘An irrigator. He insists on absolute calm when doing it. He offered me a freebie once after I’d just moved in but he’s too creepy. He eats those Japanese breath-freshener pastilles all the time. Also, his flat’s obsessively neat and full of deodorizers and incense burners. I simply fled. He’s not pushing rubber tubes up me, not even to reduce the rent. How can one be an anal retentive
and
an irrigator, that’s what I want to know. But I don’t need trouble, Gerry, so no more singing,
please
.’  

Thus admonished I now creep silently about, gathering my wits before sallying forth to buy clothes suitable for dining with Christ. I’m already sick of London and miss Le Roccie, where I can wear what I like and sing what I like and cook what I like. With a small pang I find myself wondering if old
Marta’s back yet. But then, she wasn’t too keen on my singing, either, and took a terrible revenge for which, if I live long enough, I may yet forgive her.

‘I hope you don’t mind taking the train to Woodbridge,’ my hostess had said, ‘but Max has to be in Colchester on Friday afternoon and it seemed more logical.’ For them, yes. I buy the best bottle of
prosecco
I can find and wrap it myself because shops here won’t wrap anything properly, not even gifts. It is only when one has lived abroad for any length of time that one appreciates what a peculiar place England actually is. I catch a late-afternoon train, allowing masses of time because I hate being rushed and flustered. I’m hoping to arrive early enough to spend an hour or two in a friendly hostelry at the other end, putting my thoughts in order over some Dutch courage. Before catching the train I remind myself to sit bolt upright for fear of creasing my new corduroy suit, which I have to say is
drop-dead
luscious and flatters the Samper physique to the point of sycophancy. And my new dull-Shredded-Wheat tie is simply made to go with it. However, these precautions have turned out to be wholly irrelevant. Not only is the train so dawdling and delayed that I become seriously alarmed, it is also so crammed with commuters that the question of how or even where to sit is purely academic. With a certain hauteur I resign myself to standing the whole way and try to minimize physical contact with my fellow strap-hangers to keep my beautiful suit unsullied. In any case I shouldn’t have dared sit because almost as soon as they got on most of the passengers began tearing open plastic packages of noisome snacks and have dripped and spurted mayonnaise or ketchup over each other ever since.  

My instructions are to get a station taxi to Crendlesham Hall, ‘a little out of town towards the Crendle and Swythings’, whatever they are. Am I right to detect something excluding, even mildly hostile, about these opaque directions? When we
finally arrive in Woodbridge the sauce-spattered horde pours out onto the platform with me in their midst trying to hold myself poised and aloof, like Liszt’s
St François de Paule marchant sur les flots
. The result of his stately passage is that by the time he reaches the taxi rank St François finds himself fresh out of transport. When at last he gets a cab it is five past eight and he is already late for this crucial dinner. The driver is not some ancient Suffolk dunce but a young Pakistani or something, very swift and civil. I implore him to hurry still more. ‘It can’t be far,’ I tell him to reassure myself.  

‘About twenty minutes with luck, sir,’ he says.  

‘Twenty
minutes
? “A little out of town”, they said,’ as if by quoting this I could magically shrink the distance. ‘And what’s a Crendle? Or Swythings, come to that?’  

‘The Crendle’s a hill where they used to execute horse thieves, sir. Rough lot they were in those days. You don’t want to hear how they did it.’ He is watching me in the
driving
mirror.  

‘Yes, I do.’  

‘Ah. Well, what they did was stuff the fellow as full as they could with freshly grated horseradish root, at both ends, sir, if you follow me,
and
in his eyes. That would be dreadful agony, as you can imagine if ever you’ve taken a tiny bit too much with your roast beef. All ablaze and choking, he’d be. And then they’d peg him down to the ground and have a Suffolk Punch sit on him. That’s one big mother of a shire horse, you know, sir. Weighs over a ton. They say the horseradish would shoot out of him, oh, twenty feet or so, even his eyes, too, sometimes, pop-pop. There wasn’t much horse-thieving around these parts. That’s the Crendle over there now, sir.’ He nods towards a low crepuscular hill. Again I catch his gaze on me. ‘Would you care to stop, sir?’  

‘
Stop
? Absolutely not, I’m late as it is. You can’t go too fast. Pardon my saying so, but you’re amazingly well informed.’  

‘For a Pakistani or for a taxi driver, sir?’  

‘Just very well informed,’ I say warmly but warily. ‘For a
Briton.’ I am not about to have my multiracial correctness quizzed. ‘And Swythings?’  

‘They’re what we call a particular area down by the Deben. That’s the river here. Swythings is an old dialect word meaning “quick to mow”. Probably peasant humour, sir, since the land there was so often flooded.’  

He’s much too knowledgeable to be a mere unlettered local; he’s obviously an autodidact. I muse on this and forget about the time and suddenly we’re turning into a lane – no, a drive – and pulling up outside a large half-timbered, barn-like
building
. A naked bulb hangs over the porch and its light, together with that of the rapidly deepening dusk, illuminates an immense heap of sand, a cement mixer and various wooden pallets of materials shrouded in polythene.
Can
this be right? Does the world’s greatest young conductor throw dinners at a building site? It’s a hopeful sign of eccentricity for a potential biographer, if a little discouraging to a potential diner. I pay the driver, who gives me a card and hopes that I enjoy my evening. Right now the chances feel slim. Because Adrian flew off to join his ship before I had a chance to ask him, I’m still unsure exactly what he has told his illustrious brother-in-law about me. As the front door knocker comes away in my hand I reflect on the awkwardness of being invited to dinner by total strangers unless there’s some pretext that everyone
acknowledges
. So it is reassuring that the woman who answers the door is recognizably Adrian’s sister. ‘You must be Gerald,’ she says, taking the immense horseshoe from my hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’s always coming off – it’s just something temporary we rigged up. As you can see, we’ve got the builders.’  

‘Inside as well as out.’ The house looks immensely old, such of it as is visible between dust covers and sheets of plasterboard leaning up against the wall.  

‘Yes, I must apologize. We ought really to have met in London after all. I’m afraid I’ve got so used to it that I forget what a pigsty this place is. Oh, and the lavatory in the cloakroom here is kaput. Josh has put one of his dinosaurs down it so I’m
afraid you’ll have to go upstairs like the rest of us. To your left at the top of the stairs.’ Jennifer waves a hand towards a broad wooden staircase while leading the way to the kitchen, which is a welcoming womb of warmth and light and delicious
cooking
smells. And there, sitting reading a newspaper beside the immense Aga range, is Christ himself with a cat on his lap.  

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ I say. ‘The train took hours and hours.’  

‘We’re quite used to it,’ says the celebrated man, getting to his feet and apologizing to the cat, which lands on the pale brick floor looking blank and cross like a suddenly woken child. The great Max Christ turns out to be surprisingly small, with greying curly hair that could use some of Derek’s
attention
. ‘They’re doing something to East Anglia’s signalling
system
or something. Everyone’s late all the time.’ His English is impeccable.  

We shake hands and I’m about to hand over the
prosecco
to Jennifer when I discover to my horror that I must have left it in the taxi. My hosts make light of this and press a deeply
welcome
gin and tonic into my apologetic hands. ‘The driver gave me his card so maybe I should ring him up and ask him to leave the bottle at the station,’ I say lamely. I find I don’t care much because now they both know I brought something it has already served its purpose. Still, £15.99, a grotesque price. ‘A pretty odd sort of driver,’ I add. ‘He told me all about the Crendle being a hill where they used to execute horse thieves. Asked me if I wanted to stop there, if you please, at twenty-five past eight at night. A Pakistani, he said he was.’  

Jennifer and her husband exchange glances. ‘So Khurshid’s out again, is he?’ says Max. ‘I wonder if it’s remission or
probation
this time? He’s just a harmless sex offender. Perfectly polite and non-violent. Sometimes he stops when he has a lone gentleman in the cab. You were quite safe. Rather a gifted man. Certainly very inventive. He makes up stories about the places he drives past.’  

‘Horse thieves, indeed,’ says Jennifer, lifting a shoulder of
mutton out of the oven. ‘The Crendle’s actually a stone
monument
near a crossroads about two miles from here. Nobody knows quite what it commemorates. It’s so weathered it’s a complete blank on all its faces. You can just recognize it in one of Constable’s paintings.’  

‘Ach, Quatsch, Hannele!’ says Max. ‘Don’t listen to her.’ He urges me towards the plain scrubbed kitchen table laid with an assortment of ancient cutlery with yellowed handles that looks as though it was assembled from local junk shops. ‘Jennifer’s as bad as Khurshid when it comes to making things up.’  

‘Well, what are Swythings, then?’ I ask her, a little bemused. ‘Khurshid said it meant “easy to mow” or something.’  

‘What nonsense! It was a medieval land tax system. People could graze their cattle on “swithen” land for nothing, although they did have to donate a cow each Christmas to the Bishop of Bury St Edmunds.’  

‘You’re
such
a liar, my dear,’ Max tells his wife fondly.  

I can’t get the measure of any of this, like the victim of an obscure practical joke. I’m tired and hungry, too, what with the nervous strain and late arrival, although the g-&-t is
working
its customary magic. I suppose I was expecting something more along the lines of a formal dinner with maybe one or two household-name glitterati trying to be witty by candlelight. The sort of company where at last I could be myself and feel at home, maybe even shine a little in my modest way. Instead here we three are, sitting at the kitchen table, tucking into a large and succulent mutton roast. I should think that after a good searing this piece of friendly old sheep we’re eating must have gone into one of the cooler bottom ovens at around two o’clock this afternoon. In that enormous iron casserole with water in its sunken lid to keep the contents moist it would have been just about ready by seven. Max (as he insists I call him) has produced some bottles of Donnafugata’s’02
Tancredi
, a sumptuously glowering Sicilian red that looks almost black in the glass and makes me want to weep it’s so good, although that may be partly due to the gin that preceded it. I
can feel myself beginning to relax a little, especially when
Jennifer
compliments me on my suit. My exquisite corduroy sheathing, expressly designed to go with silver and heavy linen and august company, has actually been contributing to my unease in a subliminal sort of way. One does not take onto a building site seven hundred pounds’ worth of Blaise Prévert’s dark chocolate corduroy (or cordureine, as Derek
ungrammatically
and gratuitously called it this morning, jealous faggotino, he of the absentee bottom who couldn’t wear a suit like this in a million years). On every surface in this house one risks the contagion of plaster dust and worse. But now after a glass or two of the Tancredi I find to my surprise that I have begun to view the suit as having something in common with my late lamented bottle of
prosecco
in that it is proof of my taste and good intentions, and whatever its physical fate it has already made its point.

A further surprise is Max’s apparent disinclination to talk about music. This seems not to be the bluff, Elgarian
defensiveness
that insists on discussing horse racing while the
avoided
topic broods like a thundercloud above the table. Max’s attitude is more that of the man who doesn’t wish to consider work outside office hours. This is awkward, since I am
naturally
eager to establish my own musical credentials, such as they are; although I dare say there are not too many people who can sing most of
L’uomo magro
from memory, to say nothing of
I froci di Firenze
. So I tell Max how wonderful I think his Schumann symphonies are, trying to sound
thoughtful
rather than fulsome. I say I am particularly impressed by his going back to the autograph of the Fourth in its 1841 first version, which is so much more spontaneous and transparent in texture than Schumann’s overworked later version with its thick wind doublings.  

‘Oh,’ Max says modestly through a mouthful of mutton (though I can tell he is pleased), ‘I was only following the trail blazed by Nikolaus.’  

Harnoncourt, I presume, and am about to carry on with
what Brahms said about these two versions of the d minor symphony when Max abruptly changes the subject.  

‘You know the person I really admire?’  

‘Celibadache?’ I hazard.  

‘Sergiu, yes, of course; but I was thinking of Adrian. My brother-in-law. I always wanted to be a palaeobiologist, did you know that? I realize Adrian’s an oceanographer, which is rather different, but he manages to do a lot of field work. I’m envious.’  

‘When you say you always wanted …’ I prompt, with a glance at his wife to see how she is taking this. Is this to be another joke at the expense of their earnest, overdressed guest? But she is unconcernedly helping herself to mint sauce from a child’s porringer at the bottom of which some merry bears can be glimpsed cavorting dimly beneath the vinegar. It reminds me how easily my stomach can sometimes be upset by acidic food, and my new trousers do suddenly feel remarkably tight.

‘I mean it was what I always wanted to be as a child,’ says Max. ‘Only alas! my talents were all musical. When I was
seventeen
and already at the Conservatory I met this marvellous American scientist, Valeriy Bogdanov, who had been on a joint expedition to what was then Soviet Siberia to investigate the prehistoric animals buried intact beneath the permafrost. He was a scientist, all right, but he told me that at the time he’d really gone more as a clandestine missionary for one of those weird American sects – Jehovah’s Adventists or Seventh-Day Witnesses or whatever they are. But he became so fascinated by the perfectly preserved remains they found that he gave up hoping to spread his gospel and instead concentrated on the beautiful science.’  

‘Ye cannot serve God and mammoth,’ I venture. ‘It’s well known. It says so in the Bible.’