Cooking With Fernet Branca (14 page)

As I neared Marta’s house I could hear peculiar noises from within. It was as though a really awful Italian tenor were practising high notes and always failing to reach them. It seemed to be a recorded performance, too, since there was an orchestra in the background.
‘Uffa
…
buff
a
…’ At the back of my mind the impression formed that somewhere, sometime, I had heard this incompetent before. Maybe he was the male equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins, a self-deluded amateur rich enough to hire his own orchestra and Carnegie Hall? With difficulty I made my knocking on the kitchen door audible above the demented squalling and peeped in.

The Voynovian vamp was seated at the table wearing a rumpled beige night dress with embroidery over its mountainous regions, no doubt a galumphing peasant attempt at the baby-doll effect. She was also wearing the headphones we had seen the previous night. Before her on the table was a keyboard, a screen and a computer. The music was coming from beneath the usual pile of old bedsheets, scarcely muffled. Marta was just then leaning forward intently to correct something on the tall sheaf of music paper propped on the keyboard’s stand. Her awesome bosom, barely contained by the
babushka
chic, depressed several keys at once, not to mention her distracted visitor. There was a gigantic yelp of sound. She glanced up, saw me, and with what looked like a guilty start killed the music and snatched off the headphones. Silence fell.

‘Good morning, Marta,’ I said with my customary civility. ‘You must excuse my barging in like this and interrupting your, er, work, but my guest and I were just wondering if you
had noticed a helicopter around these parts last night? Not that it’s any of our business, of course. Round about eleven o’clock? Very low, it was. We were sitting out on the terrace and we thought it was going to hit us but then it seemed to come over in this direction. Did my vine no good, I’m afraid. Rather a pity, considering the effort I’ve made to train it the way I wanted it.’

If I had hoped this horticultural mishap would jar loose some vestigial sense of responsibility in her, I was mistaken. With a brazenness one had to admire she merely shook her head, her rank frizzy mop oscillating like those slo-mo sequences of wet retrievers shaking themselves on emerging from a river.

‘No, Gerree. Helicopter? But no, I hear nothing. Last night, you say? No, very quiet night so I am bedding early. I see far off your lights and thinking, “Lucky Gerree, he have companion and they make fooding together.” It is true, Gerree, it is not good always to be alone. Sometimes we all are needing what we say in Voynovia,
close
muscle
.’

Even the meaningful simper which accompanied this bizarre vulgarism was eclipsed by the aplomb with which she had delivered her monstrous lie. I could quite see that if she were in the habit of quietly opening her midnight door to some gamy peasant youth – a charcoal-burner’s son, as it might be, strayed in from the forest in stout denim with twigs in his hair – Marta could reasonably deny it. But a helicopter landing in one’s back garden is a difficult thing to keep hidden from a neighbour, especially one as alert as the last of the Sampers. Yet so thoroughly was she simulating wide-eyed innocence that just for a split second I did wonder if after all the whole episode had been a dream or even a sort of hypnotic illusion to which Nanty and I had fallen victim as a result of too much wine and UFO talk. Then I thought again of having watched Marta embrace the black-clad pilot while wearing the very headphones even now around her neck. That was not something I could ever have invented.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘No helicopter, then?’

‘I am hear nothing,’ she repeated, looking me straight in the eyes.

Another, lamer, silence fell and suddenly I could think of nothing to say.

‘Well, I’ll be off then. Sorry to have troubled you. You can get back to your, er, music.’ I eased the door open. ‘Curious stuff, incidentally, if I might say so. I mean, what you were playing as I came in just now. Though actually I could hear it
some
way
before I came in.’

‘Ah, is
satjriski
,’ said Marta. ‘For a filming.’

‘Satirical, eh?’ I withdrew, thinking it sounded no more improbable than anything else Marta did or was. Next time I was on the internet I would have to find out if Voynovia really existed. As I think I mentioned before, geography has never been my strong point, and if she had told me she came from Szlutvya I would have had no reason to doubt her. ‘I am Szlut, Gerree, puremost of blood’ sounded quite as plausible. Behind me as I walked back through the trees the awful, strained tenor began again. ‘
Uffa
…
buff
a
…’ I wished I could put my finger on why it sounded familiar, a conundrum I still had not solved when I reached home to find my guest had finished his offshore negotiating.

‘We didn’t dream that helicopter last night, did we, Nanty?’

‘Dream it? It wigged the willies out of me.’

‘Well, mad Marta across the way denies all knowledge of it.’

‘She was the slut-o-rama snogging the pilot?’

‘Exactly. Either she’s a liar or we’re both nuts.’

‘She’s a liar. She’s one of them.’

For the rest of the morning a withdrawn mood settled on my guest that even a mid-morning slice of my iced fish cake failed to relieve. In an effort to be businesslike I tried sounding him out about the autobiography he wanted me to ghost but he was less forthcoming than I had banked on. His burst
of confidence over breakfast about Druid abuse at Hampton University seemed to have been an aberration. As I started to lay the table for lunch on the terrace he suddenly stood up and announced his departure.

‘Going? Where?’

‘Home. Sorry, Gerry, yeah? Tell you the honest truth, there’s no way I’m spending another night up here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, mate, great place, ace host and that. But last night, that was something else. I nearly shat myself. That neighbour of yours,
she
’s something else, and I’m not kidding.’

‘You still think she’s from Betelgeuse, Nanty?’

‘All I know is she’s not from this planet.’

‘She’s from Eastern Europe.’

‘Europe, shmeurope. Those were not human beings we saw last night, Gerry. No way. And it was no more a helicopter than it was a Volvo estate. Until you went over to see her this morning I was sort of going along with your version, demon lover or whatever you said. But when you said she denied the helicopter, man, that was it for me. Then I suddenly remembered what they’d stopped me from remembering last night.’

‘Nanty, listen to me: this is loopy. The only thing that would have impaired our memories last night came in bottles, not helicopters.’

But he was clearly too frightened by his own story to be reasonable any longer. His face took on an adolescent petulance.

‘OK then, smartass. When that pilot took his helmet off, what did his face look like?’

I was about to give a patient description when I realized I didn’t have one to give. I had been so stunned to see Marta in headphones and night dress walking into his arms like a somnambulist I’d paid him little attention, whereas I could remember her exact expression – one that mingled fright, relief and familiarity.

‘You see?’ said Nanty triumphantly. ‘You can’t describe him. And you know why?’ He stopped and I was flummoxed to see his eyes suddenly fill with tears. ‘Because he hadn’t
got
a face, that’s why.
No
fucking
face!
When he took off his helmet his head was blank, like one of those shop window mannequin things. Just a smooth knob on top of his body … I’m sorry,’ he sat down abruptly and mopped his eyes. ‘Just a reaction I have. Whenever I start talking about scary supernatural or other-world stuff my eyes start watering, I don’t know why. Do yours?’

But I was still trying to remember the impression I’d had of the pilot’s face. A young man, definitely. Dark hair pressed flat by the helmet, vaguely handsome if you were Barbie and happened to fancy Ken dressed for hi-tech action. It was true I couldn’t recall his features, but then it had been the middle of a dark night with only intermittent flashes of light from his helicopter and Marta’s torch. It came to me that I was now standing in my kitchen with a madman, and nothing between us but a table and the rather pretty Deruta bowl in which I was hoping to create a nifty salad when I was allowed to get back to important matters. If ever I had been prepared to manufacture an interest in this bald dolt, the mood had definitely passed. It was one thing to be bored by singleminded and humourless sports personalities who were still too young to have become interesting, but I could see no excuse for Nanty Riah, ex-heavy metal wannabe turned teen idol. Not only was he older and a graduate of a university of sorts, he was making a flamboyantly successful career in what nowadays passes for mainstream British culture. All I could see in him was yet another juvenile, vapid and lost. Even the language he spoke had no – what would they call it these days? – core identity? It was an aleatory mess: dated hip, mockney, midatlantic, Southern Californian, all over the place. ‘Paraffin budgie’, I ask you. Royal Navy slang dating from at least the seventies, I’d think, later migrating with the pilots to North Sea oil platform roustabouts. Less than trend-setting in 2003
and anyway, what was it meant to prove? That this bewigged craven who took farting teddy bears to bed with him for comfort was on can-do terms with the rufty-tufty world of the armed forces?

But the real clincher was Nanty the Counter-culture student – even, God knew,
graduate
– who was so hysterical or paranoid with drug residues he was about to be driven out of my house by the conviction that my fat-arsed neighbour was an alien. Apart from which, anyone who could be talked into believing in screaming potatoes was hardly fit company for a single breakfast, let alone for the duration required to write his biography.

So I drove my kid guest back down the mountain. His spirits visibly lifted the further we descended until he became apologetic with relief on the motorway to Pisa. I don’t do cliché so I didn’t actually grind my teeth but I was aware of a private, clenched sensation familiar from a lifetime’s social disasters.

‘I mean, sorry,’ Nanty was blithering on, ‘but, like, that was my very first UFO. What a
blast
! I knew Timothy Good was right all along. They really are among us.
Really
.’ (And on and on.) He was gazing happily towards the range of hills now safely away to our left. ‘This changes everything.’

‘Too right,’ I thought to myself.

‘From now on the group’s re-born. Bye-bye Freewayz, hello … What?’

‘I didn’t speak.’

‘No, I mean what are we going to call the group? We’re going to have a makeover.’

I winced. ‘I’m not sorry you’re getting rid of that awful name.’

He glanced at me. ‘You’re not fifteen,’ he said sagely.

‘Bits of me are, but obviously not the right bits. Anyway, when you’re choosing your new name, nothing with the word “encounter” in it is my advice, Nanty.’

‘What about “meeting” then? “Strange meeting”, that’s kinda … Yeah, “Strange Meeting”.’

‘It’s the title of a poem by Wilfred Owen.’

‘Who? No copyright on titles, is there? And anyway,
Wil
fred
? Can’t be serious.’

How long, O Lord? I thought to myself and was answered by a sign for Pisa airport saying 11 km. Certainly the whole gruesome episode demanded to be commemorated in a special culinary creation, something that would capture last night’s flavours and associations. Alien pie, perhaps. There would have to be a place in it for smoked cat as well as for potatoes and beetroot in memory of Nanty’s vegan guru. Maybe if –

‘Go on, what are you thinking?’

‘I was thinking about alien pie, actually.’

‘That’s a
great
name, Gerry.’

‘I meant as a dish.’

‘
Great
name for a group. “Alien Pie”. Oh yeah, I can see that. I’ll try it on the boys first but maybe we’ll go with that. You’ll get an acknowledgement, promise. You can do the liner notes for our next album. So what about this project of ours?’

‘The book, you mean?’ I was hoping he’d forgotten about that. How awkward. On the other hand, turning down work can be less embarrassing in the long run than taking it on. As far as I was concerned this spurious juvenile fidgeting in the passenger seat wasn’t mildly dotty, he was moon-baying crazed. ‘You know, Nanty, on second thoughts I don’t think it’s going to work.’ Ah, that British diffidence! It was exactly the tone one uses for fending off unwelcome sexual liaisons. Or would use.

‘What do you mean, “not going to work”? I told you, I really dig the way you write.’

‘I think the world you move in is too different from my own,’ I heard myself say primly.

‘Nah, nothing but the odd detail. Fix that, easy.’

‘You do want the airport, I assume?’ I changed the topic with my tone. ‘You were in such a hurry to leave you haven’t got a flight booked today, have you? Point being, there’s a motorway exit coming up and I shall have to commit. If you want a hotel in Pisa proper for the night instead of the airport, now’s the time to say.’

‘Make it the airport,’ said Nanty, adding confidently ‘I never have problems getting a flight.’
Also
sprach
Brill.

As we swung down towards the terminal I told him I would talk it over with Frankie. ‘My agent, you’ll remember. And I’ll give it some thought of my own in the next day or two.’

‘You’re not narked that I shan’t be staying, are you? A UFO, man, I mean, for Chrissake, who could ever have foreseen that?’ Somewhere between the buildings on our right the jocularly painted tail fin of a newly landed BA aircraft was slicing towards its allotted stand. ‘Not to worry. Next time we’ll go somewhere more … You know what I mean: less …’

‘Remote? Scary?’

‘In town, anyway. London. Amsterdam. New York. LA. Who knows? But soon. I’ll be in touch, don’t worry. Been great. And thanks again for “Alien Pie”. Well random.’

He retrieved his bag from the back seat, settled his dark glasses on his nose by way of disguise and disappeared into Departures, blending without difficulty into that afternoon’s collection of British mums and dads and Crispins. I had a feeling he was about to forgo the anonymity of the Ryanair common herd, and with it the inconvenience of Stansted, and instead would produce a platinum credit card and ensure himself a First Class seat to Heathrow on BA. But then I realized he’d most likely given one of his gofers a call and told him to fix a flight. That was probably what he’d been doing in his bedroom in the middle of the night. Beam me up, Scotty. I drove away, subdued. No question, my instinct was to blame
Marta. None of this could have happened had her house either been empty (as that shifty little agent Benedetti had led me to believe) or lived in by a normal member of the human race. Who but a Fernet-swigging sloven – or maybe Slovene? – would have a late-night rendezvous with a helicopter? And then, mark you, lie in her teeth and deny it even though the machine had practically stripped the leaves from an entire hillside and made a noise like Farnborough air show.

On the way back along the motorway I admit I allowed rising antipathy to displace onto Marta’s dandruff-speckled shoulders the responsibility for what I secretly recognized as a narrow escape. Really, I ought to have been feeling grateful that her amorous midnight liaison with a parcels courier had revealed my guest’s true self before it was too late. Instead, I began indulging in luxurious indignation that she had finally crossed the line of mere colourful eccentricity and was now actively jeopardizing my professional life. By frightening off a prospective client she was making it impossible for me to earn a living … It was too much. Drastic steps would have to be taken.

But what steps, exactly? That’s the worst of having the Samper imagination. The mind comes up with various scenarios for dealing with impossible neighbours but races ahead all too easily to see the inevitable outcome: escalating warfare with both parties becoming steadily more entrenched in the conviction of their own righteousness and with ever more aggro and distraction. Ought I to do some pre-emptive fence mending – even though I was manifestly the wronged party – and confess that I and my house guest had actually watched her greet the helicopter pilot? True, this would expose her as a liar; but if it were done with the right degree of manly openness and with apologies for what might seem to have been our snooping, surely Marta would come clean (an outstandingly inappropriate image)? I saw her suddenly opening up … Well, no. To be frank, what I saw her opening up was a bottle from her bottomless Fernet Branca cellar, albeit in a convivial spirit of neighbourliness. ‘Ah, Gerree, I
cannot ‘ide it from you, you wicked boy! Zat was my lovaire!’ No: wrong accent. Far too Brigitte Bardot. What she really does is lapse shockingly into fluent American. ‘OK Gerry, let’s cut the crap. I work for the CIA. Right – that composer act was just a cover. Trust my luck to get someone for a neighbour who really knows about music, but it was a risk we had to take. There wasn’t time. I’m gonna have to trust you. I guess you’ve heard of Al Qaeda …?’

With a start I realized I was even then overshooting the Viareggio exit. Goddamn it! Not being Italian I unfortunately lacked the nerve to stop and back up along the hard shoulder and have another go. Now I should have to go all the way to Forti dei Marmi and come off at the Pietrasanta exit and it was
all
Marta’s
fault
. Only she had the power to cause me such upset and distraction. Did I mention fence mending? Can this be the last of the Sampers talking? Fence
building
is what I needed to be doing. That had to be the answer: ten-foot high beech panels topped with razor wire. Actual electrification would be going too far as yet, but a good solid fence between us would solve a lot of problems. A pity to inject precisely the suburban note one had moved to the mountains to avoid, but there seemed to be little choice. Where was the nearest garden centre or DIY place? I could order the fence right away and have them deliver the panels and posts the following day. Plus some gravel and cement to bed them in. Question: would it be worth hiring one of those two-stroke hole borers that look like motorized corkscrews? A lot easier than –

That
can
’t have … That
was
the sodding exit! God’s buttocks and earlobes, at this rate I would be in Monaco for dinner. I couldn’t believe what that woman was doing to me. Now I would have to come off at Massa. But that did it. My mind was made up. One good stout fence, and a phone call next morning to Frankie to tell him the Nanty Riah project was a non-starter. He could call the kid celebrity and tell him so in person. That was what one paid an agent for.