Brother Fish (87 page)

‘Oh, do keep quiet, Vowelfowl!' Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan called out. ‘He's such an old curmudgeon. I'll have to put the cloth over his cage – otherwise he'll be interrupting us all evening. Excuse me please, Jack, I shan't be a moment.' I could see that this parrot was far from a simple pet that shared her life. They probably talked a great deal to one another, whereas she hadn't even drawn my attention to the three cats lounging about. I guess while a cat may agree to live with you, it's always on its terms.

Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan returned with a second green-velvet drape that she threw over the cage. ‘
Polly needs a pee!
' the parrot called out.

‘Oh dear. I really must apologise, Jack – Sir Victor Sassoon taught him that.' She didn't elaborate, but I tucked the name away for future reference. It was the second time she'd mentioned him and there weren't too many sirs around our neck of the woods – the only ones I'd ever met were the Tasmanian premier, Sir Robert Cosgrove, and the governor, both at the medal ceremony. This Sassoon bloke must have been close to her.

‘Let me get you a drink, Jack. Would you care for champagne?'

I hesitated, not sure whether to bluff it out, but decided to come clean. ‘I've never tried it,' I said, trying to sound offhand, as if the decision not to drink champagne had been of my own making.

‘Oh, then you must!' she insisted. ‘I've had several bottles tucked away for just over twenty years and while I turn them religiously, I've never really had an occasion to open one. One cannot drink champagne alone – it's such a joyous, sharing drink.'

Twenty-something years seemed a long time for a bunch of bottles to hang around the kitchen and I wondered how this particular champagne would taste after all that time. I began to question what I had let myself in for. First Chinese food, and now plonk that had been lying around since I was a boy. Then it struck me how sad her last statement was. How very lonely she must have been – in fact,
was
. She hadn't even had someone to share the few bottles of grog she'd had stored away all these years.
Why?
Why had a young woman with the improbable name of Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan arrived on Queen Island looking like someone from the cover of
Vogue
to live a life that had been busy enough, but completely isolated from all she'd previously known?

After removing the Tiffany lamp and placing it on the carpet, she brought the small lacquer table beside the couch to rest in front of me. The circle where the base of the lamp had stood was clean while the rest of the table carried a thin patina of dust. ‘Oh dear – I never seem to have time to dust!' she exclaimed. ‘Excuse me, won't you, Jack.'

‘It's only a bit of dust,' I said. ‘Can't harm you.'

She left the room but, instead of the duster I'd anticipated, returned with a silver champagne bucket from which protruded the foil neck of a bottle of French champagne. She placed it down within the clean circle on the table, almost as if that's what it had been intended for all along. Then she removed two champagne glasses from the cherry-lacquered cabinet. ‘Darn,' she said, ‘the dust seems to get into everything, I'll have to give these a rinse.' She returned a short while later with the two flat wide-brimmed glasses clean and polished. ‘Can't put champagne into a dusty glass,' she explained, then added, ‘I say, Jack, isn't this exciting? I haven't done this for years. In fact, it's been twenty-two years between glasses of champagne. How time flies.'

If she hadn't had champagne for twenty-two years the dust on the glasses had been allowed a fair while to settle, I thought to myself.

Pointing to the ice bucket, she said, ‘You do the honours, please, Jack.' I wasn't to know at the time, but the first glass of champagne I was ever to taste was a twenty-seven-year-old bottle of vintage Krug.

There wasn't any point trying to seem casual about all this – if I messed it up I'd look an even bigger fool. ‘I've only seen this done in the movies. I'm not sure I know how . . .'

‘Well, now is the perfect time to learn. I do hope there will be many more occasions like this for the three of us!'

I removed the bottle from the ice bucket, where it had obviously stood for some time as it was icy cold to my touch. Drops of water from the melted ice dripped onto the table and the carpet. ‘Oh blast! I forgot to bring a napkin,' she commented. ‘I really am too, too careless. Never mind, it won't do any harm. And as a matter of fact I don't think I quite know where the damask napkins are kept.' I suddenly realised that Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan was nervous, another first as far as I was concerned. But she wasn't alone – I was shitting myself, not knowing what to expect from the bottle I held. I'd seen champagne bottles explode against the hull of a ship in newsreels at the movies and make a fearful mess and she'd told me this bottle was at least twenty years old!

I removed the foil from the bottle's neck to expose the rounded top of the cork the way I'd seen it done by the maître d in Rick's Café Americain, the nightclub where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman met in
Casablanca
. I began to twist the cork, the wet bottle slippery in my hands, but couldn't believe how tightly the cork fitted. Finally I managed to twist it slowly around when all of a sudden it shot out like a bloody rocket, flying up and hitting the ceiling. ‘Oh, Jesus!' I exclaimed, almost dropping the bottle.

‘Oh, what fun! I'd quite forgotten!' Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said. Bubbles began to foam from the spout. ‘Well done, Jack! Quick, into a glass,' she cried, laughing and clapping her hands as if she were once again a young girl. I poured the champagne, then glanced anxiously at the ceiling where the cork had left a distinct impression. ‘I shall think of it as Jack's mark,' she said, her calm now completely restored. ‘Oh, what pleasant memories of China the pop of that cork brings back.'

‘I'm awfully sorry – I didn't know it would pop out like that. I thought that was only a trick they played in the movies.'

‘You did splendidly, Jack. It's really rather dreary and show-off to simply twist and pluck the cork from the bottle. After all, champagne should be a celebration and a properly popping cork is its first hurrah!' Charming wasn't the word! I couldn't help wondering what had happened to the stern, proper woman I'd known all my life.

We toasted the three of us in partnership, and then our thoughts went to Jimmy. ‘To James – godspeed, and come back to us soon,' Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan offered, and we clinked our glasses once again.

I must say, I was already missing him a fair bit.

While Scotch and brandy might be likened to two irascible old men, different but always difficult and sharp-tongued, I discovered that champagne is like a lovely young woman captured in the first flush of beauty. It certainly didn't take a lot of getting accustomed to. After the first glass I was led into a tiny dining room that contained a table that would only have seated four at the most. It was carefully set but the first thing I noticed was the absence of cutlery; instead, two sets of ivory chopsticks rested on a small porcelain cushion. Thankfully I'd first learned to use chopsticks in Japan and then later in the POW camp. Each place setting contained several bowls, a ceramic cup without a handle and a porcelain spoon. The dishes were a pale duck-egg colour with, at the centre, a brilliant goldfish motif with elaborate ribbon-like fins. Of course, at the time I had no idea of the why and the way of all the small containers. After the Chinese POW camp I'd associated Chinese food with the vile millet gruel eaten from a tin dish and I'd sworn, as long as I lived, never to touch chink food again.

In fact, when Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had promised to cook Chinese I'd almost gagged at the thought. At the last moment before leaving home I'd considered sending Cory to apologise and say I'd been taken ill and couldn't come. Much as I wanted to sort out the fishing-boat business, I was afraid that I might disgrace myself by throwing up at the table. I was certainly in for a big surprise.

The champagne bucket had accompanied us to the table. ‘Not strictly correct but, oh well, that's the beauty of champagne – you can drink it just about anywhere, at any time,' my hostess remarked, as she filled my glass once again.

‘What we're having tonight is called chrysanthemum fire pot. It's a bit like a Swiss fondue – you cook it at the table.' She didn't mention, and I didn't know at the time, that it took many hours to prepare.

I hadn't a clue what a Swiss fondue was, and had never heard of food cooked at the table. It sounded a bit barbaric. ‘Chrysanthemum fire pot? Fondue?' I asked, somewhat mystified. This was turning out to be a very different sort of evening.

‘Oh dear – perhaps it's best shown, and not explained. Come, I need your help, Jack.' She led the way into the small kitchen leading from the dining room.

The first thing I observed was that the kitchen benchtop was covered in dishes containing bits of raw food, all of it cut into small pieces. Fish in one, prawns in another, chicken in a third, followed by pork and beef in two more. Three bowls each contained what Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan called celery cabbage, chopped into three-inch lengths, and what I recognised myself as spinach leaves, while another beside them was half-filled with noodles.

‘The vegies are out of the garden,' she said. ‘Lovely and fresh. I find vegetables lying around for even a day simply don't taste as nice. Now, Jack, watch me,' she instructed. She moved the small dishes aside to make room and then took two fairly large, flat square plates with the same fish design from a shelf above the kitchen benchtop. Working with amazing speed she arranged each kind of meat, fish and seafood and the noodles in slightly overlapping layers on one of the plates. ‘Perhaps you'd like to do the same, Jack, while I prepare the sauce?'

The plate she had arranged looked terrific – what I'd seen as bits of raw food had been transformed into fancy decoration. But I soon discovered it wasn't quite as simple as it looked – pieces kept slipping out of place and the rows I made wouldn't remain straight, while hers looked as if they were glued to the surface of the plate. In the meantime she mixed soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine into a small bowl, stirred in some beaten egg and served the result in two small bowls. I'd just about completed my own task when she finished but I must say, compared to her arrangement, mine looked like a terrible mess.

Next she poured boiling water from the electric kettle into a pretty teapot, its handle made from bamboo. ‘Green tea,' she commented. ‘This one is named Dragon Well, sent to me from Hong Kong, and it is quite exquisite.' She glanced at my plate. ‘Splendid!' she observed. ‘Now, if you will please, Jack.' She pointed to a large brass-and-copper pot sitting on the side of the stove on a stand with a handle on either side. It also had two handles at the top with a hollow brass cone protruding about five inches from the centre. She handed me two pot holders. ‘You may need to use these – the cone is filled with glowing charcoal and the stock around it is simmering and should be very hot.'

‘The chrysanthemum fire pot?'

‘Yes – a truly treasured item in any Chinese kitchen.'

I carried the chrysanthemum fire pot to the table and she followed me with the two square plates, then returned for the various bits'n'pieces, her final trip to bring the pretty teapot. ‘Well, doesn't that look splendid,' she said, holding the teapot and standing back from the small table now burgeoning with uncooked food.

‘It's the colours,' I replied. ‘I mean, it's all raw food and already it looks delicious.'

‘Ah, the Chinese are a very aesthetic race – a properly prepared meal is expected to appeal to all the senses. The colours should be pleasing to the eye, the aromas tantalising and the ingredients nicely uniform and cut to be ideal for chopsticks. Knives are not permitted at any Chinese table.' She pointed to the place setting at the far side of the table nearest the door to her parlour. ‘You'll sit there please, Jack. An honoured guest always sits opposite the host and nearest the door.' I moved across and waited until she sat down, unable to stand behind her chair to allow her to sit first, as the
Women's Weekly
and Gloria would have preferred. She brought her hands together, smiling. ‘A fire pot is never used by a single person, and so this is a special treat for me as well. Shall we dine, Jack?'

She'd placed the beautifully arranged plate in front of me and the one I'd so poorly prepared she took for herself. We now sat opposite each other with the chrysanthemum fire pot between us to one side. ‘You'll have to show me what to do,' I said. ‘This is all pretty new to me.'

‘You do use chopsticks, don't you?' But before I could reply she added, ‘Of course you do, how silly of me. Well then, we'll start with a little green tea.' She lifted the teapot and poured a little of the light-greenish-coloured tea into one of the small glazed-pottery cups and handed it to me. ‘It's served very hot but the end result is cool and refreshing and will aid your digestion with the fried food,' she explained. Then, filling her own cup, she lifted it and said, ‘
Yum sing
– a toast to one's honoured guest.'

‘Thank you,' I replied, not quite knowing what to say. I tasted the tea, which I must say seemed rather bland, although the smell was quite pleasant – like the bush after rain. If anything, it was slightly bitter. Certainly nothing to write home about. ‘Nice,' I said, not really meaning it.