Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (6 page)

Everybody looked at him.

“Vast numbers, I suspect,” said Rupert O'Brien, still glaring at Betty. “Young fish, old fish …”

“Well,” said the pianist cheerfully. “They're under no threat from me. I have never succeeded in catching a fish in my life. Not one.”

“I caught a big fish last month,” Fatty chipped in. “My friend Tubby O'Rourke and I went up to one of the lakes in the north of our state and I caught a very large fish. Tubby caught quite a few, but none of them very large. I think he was using the wrong sort of fly.”

“Oh,” said Rupert O'Brien.

“It was delicious,” said Betty. “I barbecued it. Fresh fish is delicious when barbecued with some lemon and butter.”

Niamh now made her first contribution.

“Poor fish. I do feel so sorry for them. One moment in those gorgeous watery depths and the next moment in the cruel air, gasping for breath.”

“Oh I don't know, my dear,” said Rupert O'Brien. “I expect that fish would catch us, if they could. One mustn't romanticise nature. I'm for Darwin rather than Ruskin. Survival of the fishes, you know.”

He burst out laughing, and Fatty, although he did not take the reference, immediately joined in.

“Ha!” said Fatty. “Ruskin!”

At this point the pianist sat down and began to play determinedly. This ended the conversation until Mrs. O'Connor returned to call them in for dinner.

I
T WAS THE CUSTOM AT
Mountpenny House for all the guests to dine together at one large table, as they would do if they were weekend guests in a country house. Individual tables were allowed at breakfast, when the desire to make conversation might be expected to be less pressing; and again weekend guests would have been expected to come down at different times.

Fatty and Betty were the first to go through, and established themselves in chairs near the window. They were followed by the pianist and her companions, who opted to sit at the other end of the table, leaving two vacant chairs next to Fatty and Betty. Thus when Rupert and Niamh O'Brien entered the room, they had no alternative but to sit next to Fatty and Betty.

Although there was no choice for dinner – the guests being required to eat what had been prepared – Mrs. O'Connor still copied for each place an elegantly written menu, which informed the guests of what lay ahead. Rupert O'Brien picked this up and read out to the table at large:

“Fish Soup, Mountpenny-style, my goodness, followed by
Scaloppine alla Perugina
, and then apricot tart
or chestnuts with Marsala. Wonderful!”

“I wonder what fish they put in the soup,” said Betty.

“From the lough, I expect,” said Rupert O'Brien. “Or perhaps from the sea. One never knows.”

“No,” said Fatty. “But either would be very satisfactory I'm sure.”

“Mind you,” Rupert O'Brien went on, “there are precious few fish left in the sea. Yeats was able to write a line about the ‘mackerel-teeming seas of Ireland.' He wouldn't be able to do that today.”

“What's happened?” asked Fatty.

“The Spanish have eaten them all,” said Rupert O'Brien. He turned to Niamh. “How do you think they do their
scaloppine
? Do you think it'll be the same way as they did them in that charming little hotel in Perugia? With croutons?”

“I expect so,” said Niamh. “Such
mignon
croutons; small and
mignon
.”

“Do you know Italy well?” asked Fatty.

“Tolerably,” replied Rupert O'Brien. “Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Ravenna, Siena, and Perugia. Oh, and Palermo too. But ignorant about the rest, I'm afraid. And you?”

“I plan to go there some time,” said Fatty. “It's difficult
for us to get away from home. We've been waiting for this trip for some time.”

“And tell me,” said Rupert O'Brien, breaking his bread roll over his plate, “where would home be?”

“Fayetteville,” replied Fatty.

“Fartyville?”

“Fayetteville,” said Fatty. “Fayetteville, Arkansas.”

“Oh,” said Rupert O'Brien.

“Croutons,” Niamh interjected. “They did use croutons. I remember now. And they served them with
crostini di fegatini
. We had them just before we were due to go off to Urbino.”

“Of course,” said Rupert O'Brien. “I remember that well. And we went to that marvellous little museum where they had the most surprising pictures. The Vincenzo Campi picture of the breadmaker, with all those marvellous loaves on the table and those perfectly angelic little children looking on while the baker dusted his hands with flour.” He turned to Fatty. “You know it? That picture?”

Fatty appeared to think for a moment. “I don't think so. No, I don't think I do.”

“Lovely textures,” said Rupert O'Brien. “Lovely rich colours. Vibrant. Positively edible. You know, my test for
art is this:
Do I want to eat it?
If I want to eat something, then I know it's good.”

“That's a good test,” said Fatty. He thought of washstands. Would it work for them as well?

“Mind you,” said Rupert O'Brien, “mediocre paintings of food can confuse the test. You may want to eat them, but for the wrong reasons. Take Giovanna Garzoni, for instance. You'll know his picture of the old man of Artimino, of course. You know it?”

Fatty shook his head.

“Well it's a remarkable painting. It hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence. You know the Pitti Palace?”

“No,” said Fatty.

“But you know Florence, of course?” went on Rupert O'Brien.

Again Fatty shook his head.

“No matter,” said Rupert O'Brien. “That's a mediocre painting of food. A lovely ripe melon, split open, a delicious-looking ham, a bird, some cherries, everything just asking to be eaten. But the composition is most peculiar, and the perspective is all over the place. In fact, it has an almost-Daliesque quality to it. Do you know Dali?”

“Yes,” said Fatty, with relief. “I know Dali.”

“Where did you meet him?” asked Rupert O'Brien.

“Oh,” said Fatty. “I thought you meant …”

“I met him at his villa,” went on Rupert O'Brien. “Pre-Niamh days, of course. She was just a snip of a thing at drama school then. I was in Barcelona for a couple of months and I was invited out to Dali's villa with some gallery friends. Peculiar place. Rather like–”

He was interrupted by the arrival of a young waitress, one of the girls from the village, who brought in the large bowls of fish soup.

“Gorgeous,” said Rupert O'Brien, sniffing at his soup. “Just the right amount of garlic, I can tell. Never put too much garlic in your fish soup. Robin Maugham told me that. You know him? Famous writer. He learned all about garlic in the soup from his uncle, Willie Maugham – Somerset Maugham, you know. Great enthusiast
pour la table
. Maugham
neveu
used to visit his uncle at the Villa Mauresque, where he had a famous cook. People used to do anything for an invitation to luncheon with the old boy because of Madame
dans la cuisine
. Apparently she used to cook for the Pope, but became fed up with the all those goings-on in the Vatican and returned to France. Mind you, it's a bit of a waste of time placing fine food before a pope. They really are most unappreciative of the finer things in life. Most of them are pretty unsophisticated
priests from remote villages with tastes to match. John XXIII was like that, I'm sorry to say. No understanding of art, I gather. None at all. Pius XII, may his blessed soul rest in peace, was the last pontiff of any breeding, you know. Terribly good family he came from; old Roman aristocrats. Mind you, he had a delicate stomach and could only eat polenta, poor fellow. Pity about his friendship with
il Duce
, but there you are.”

Fatty dipped his spoon into his soup. He looked at Betty, who was watching anxiously to see which spoon was being used.

“Such a beast, Mussolini,” said Rupert, between mouthfuls of soup. “Psychopathic braggart. And irredeemably
petit bourgeois
. I don't know which is worse, probably neither. Do you know that he tried to impress his people by performing so-called feats of bravery? He went into the lions' cage at Rome Zoo, just to show that he was unafraid. But the Italian press didn't say that they had drugged the lions and they couldn't have harmed a fly. It's all in that recent biography somebody brought out the other day. Frightful rubbish. Have you seen it?”

Fatty was silent. He had finished his soup, and would have liked to have more, but there was no tureen handy and he would have to wait until the next course was
served before he could appease his appetite.

“Tell me,” said Rupert suddenly. “What is your line of business Mr.… Mr.…”

“O'Leary,” said Fatty.

“Mr. O'Leary. What sort of business are you in?”

“Antiques,” said Fatty.

“How interesting,” said Rupert. “I pride myself on my own eye in that direction. I helped old Lord Balnerry sort his stuff out. You know his place? Down near Cork?”

“No,” said Fatty, adding, quietly, “I don't seem to know anyone. Except Delaney, that is.”

Rupert looked surprised. “Judge Delaney?” he said. “The Supreme Court man? You know him?”

“No,” said Fatty. “Joseph Delaney, the tailor. He fixed me up when my clothes were lost.”

“Well, there you are,” said Rupert O'Brien. “Friends are useful. I remember I was in Miami once and I lost my jacket. But I bumped into Versace at a party and I told him, and he said:
Funny – I'm a tailor! I'll fix you up
. And he did, would you believe it?”

Fatty looked down at his plate, and then gazed at the houndstooth trousers that Mr. Delaney had adjusted for him. They were made of cheap material and looked shabby beside the thick cloth of Rupert O'Brien's elegant suit.

“We're simple people in Arkansas, Mr. O'Brien,” Betty suddenly burst out. “But we do our best. And my husband is a good man. He always has been.”

“I'm sure,” said Rupert O'Brien smoothly. “I'm sure he is.”

“And just because we don't mix in the sort of circles you mix in,” she went on, “that doesn't mean to say that we don't amount to anything. We're still your company for the evening. We didn't ask to be, but we are. My husband is a good man. He may not have read everything or met everybody, but he's a good man. And in my book, that's what counts.”

A complete silence had fallen over the table. Spoons, which had been dipped into soup, were stopped, poised halfway to trembling lips; nobody moved.

“So if you'll excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien,” said Betty. “We shall find somewhere quieter to have our dinner.”

She rose to her feet and moved deliberately over to one of the unlaid tables at the other side of the room, taking her placemat and side-plate with her. Fatty, immobilised for a few moments, did nothing, but then, with an apologetic nod to the others, he too got up and went over to the other table.

“I'm sorry, my dear,” whispered Betty. “I couldn't stand it any more. I just couldn't.”

“That's all right,” said Fatty, reaching over to place his hand on hers, his voice uneven. “I'm so proud of you. And anyway, I would sooner sit here and look at you any time, than listen to all his highfalutin' talk through dinner.”

Betty smiled at him. She noticed that there were tears on his cheeks. She reached into her pocket and extracted a small, Irish linen handkerchief that Mr. Delaney, the outfitter, had given her.

“Here,” she said. “Use this.”

They sat in silence at their separate table. After a few minutes, the waitress returned to clear away the soup plates and bring in the main course. This she placed unceremoniously on the table, leaving the guests to help themselves.

“All the more for us,” said Rupert O'Brien, passing the serving spoon to Niamh. “Short rations for some, I'm afraid.”

Fatty leant over the table to whisper to Betty. “Did you hear that, Betty? Did you hear what he said?”

Betty nodded, and they both watched miserably as the main course disappeared at the other table. There was no sign of the waitress and they both realised that there was
nothing that they could do without losing face to a quite unacceptable extent.

“We shall simply withdraw,” said Fatty, after a while. “I'm no longer hungry.”

“And neither am I,” said Betty.

But her voice lacked conviction.

Upstairs in their room, they retired to their beds, separated by a bedside table on which back issues of
Horse and Hound
and two glasses of water had thoughtfully been placed by Mrs. O'Connor. They were both tired, and the light was put out almost immediately.

“Our first night in Ireland,” said Betty, in the darkness.

“Yes,” said Fatty. “I hope that tomorrow's a bit better.”

“It will be, Fatty,” said Betty. “It will be.”

Fatty was silent. Then: “Betty, I felt so … so
inadequate
beside that O'Brien person. He made me feel so
small
.”

“You're not small,” said Betty.

“No,” said Fatty. “I know.”

He paused. “Come and lie beside me, Betty. Come and lie on my bed and hold my hand until I go to sleep, like you used to do when we were younger.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Betty, slipping out of her bed and lowering herself onto the space prepared by
Fatty, who had rolled over to one side of the bed.

“Dear Fatty–”

She did not complete her sentence. The bed collapsed.

M
RS
. O'C
ONNOR WAS PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDING
about the broken legs of the bed.

“These things happen,” she said early the following morning, when Fatty sought her out in the kitchen to confess to the damage. “I remember, a few years ago, we had a couple of guests who …”