Last Writes (14 page)

‘I can tell you that one,’ said his brother-in-law quietly after Wendy had left the room. ‘In the language of flowers it means war.’ He puffed out some tobacco smoke. ‘I remember that because one side used the name as an emblem in a training exercise we did in the Territorials in 1913.’ He sucked on his pipe again, casting his memory back. ‘The other side chose lobelia for malevolence. Our side lost.’

‘There were some lobelia flowers in that wreath, too, you know,’ said Henry soberly, ignoring the mock battles of men playing soldiers in peacetime.

‘I reckon, Henry,’ agreed Tim Witherington tacitly, ‘that someone in Cartainia was trying to tell you something.’

‘Monkshood,’ said Wendy, coming back into the room with her finger keeping a page in a book open, ‘means “Beware, a deadly foe is near”.’

‘And bilberry?’ asked Henry, scribbling away now.

‘Treachery,’ she said.

‘What about Guelder rose?’ he asked.

Wendy’s expression lightened. ‘Oh, that’s easy. In the language of flowers that just means “winter”.’

‘I think,’ said Henry, ‘that in the language of flowers having it next to the
Achillea millefolia
might mean something.’ Another thought besides ‘war in winter’ came into his mind. There had been unusual flowers either side of the bilberry. ‘Tell me what betony stands for, Wen.’

‘Surprise,’ she said after consulting her book.

‘And begonia?’

‘Beware.’

Henry regarded his scribbled notes. ‘A winter war following treachery. That’s clear enough but who by, with or from? There must be a message here but what it means, I’m blessed if I know.’

‘Have you told us all the flowers that were in the wreath?’ asked his sister practically.

‘I memorised them from the top,’ said Henry, shutting his eyes and thinking back. ‘Clockwise. I think I can remember them all. Oh, I didn’t mention anemone did I?’

‘Fading hope.’

‘Or stephanotis. There was some of that there. Quite a lot, actually. It stuck out.’

‘I don’t need the book for that,’ Wendy said, smiling. ‘I can tell you without looking it up that it means “happiness in marriage”.’

Tim Witherington waved his pipe in the air. ‘Can’t see where that fits in with the general tenor of the rest of
the message, old chap. Odd man out in that lot, rather, happiness in marriage, wouldn’t you think?’

‘It is, Tim. And that’s important.’ Henry put his pencil away. ‘I think I can place it now,’ he said. ‘I’ve just remembered the name of the Cartainian Foreign Secretary. He’s called Stephan Kiste and I rather think we’re heading for a war with him in the winter.’ He got to his feet. ‘Do you mind if I just telephone the Duty Officer at the Foreign Office?’

The waiter, Italian and dramatic, bounced into the restaurant kitchen. ‘This man, he tells me that the table is booked in the name of Mr John Smith. Why, I ask you, not just say that he is Mr Smith?’

‘Perhaps the lady is not Mrs Smith?’ suggested the sous-chef helpfully.

‘Perhaps he isn’t Mr Smith at all,’ said Danny, the kitchen boy, an aficionado of the wilder side of crime fiction.

‘John Smith,’ exclaimed the waiter scornfully. ‘Everybody in England is called John Smith.’

The maître d’hôtel, more experienced, had come into the kitchen at this point, and overheard them all. ‘He has the book in his pocket,’ he said with indrawn breath. ‘I could see it when I took his coat.’

There was no need for the maître d’hôtel to say which book was in the man’s pocket. Its title was
The Good Cooks of Calleshire
and it had been striking terror into the heart
of every restaurateur in the county ever since it had been published. The requirements for an entry in it were stringent indeed, its inspectors quite merciless in their judgements and, unlike the judicial system, there was no appeal. Appearance in the publication, though, guaranteed a steady stream of hungry customers throughout the year to every restaurant mentioned in it. The Ornum Arms restaurant in the little Calleshire village of Ornum had never achieved such a mention, something that had always rankled with them.

And cost.

‘I’ve got the pair of them seated at table two in the window with the menu,’ said the maître d’hôtel to the waiter. ‘Give them half a moment, Giovanni, and then see what they want to drink. Don’t be too pressing, and you, chef, be ready for anything.’

‘As soon as I’ve seen to table seven,’ said the chef pointedly. ‘They were there first.’

‘Oh, the old lady with the four young people,’ said the waiter, who was young himself as well as Italian. ‘They’re drinking sherry – everything from sweet to dry. I heard the old lady tell them they should have an aperitif and like it. Stirred up the digestive juices or something. They’ve ordered Vouvray and a Gaillac with their meal.’

‘The party who came in early.’ The chef liked diners who came in early so that he could get started.

‘They’ve got to get back to their college tonight,’ said Giovanni. ‘The old lady told me that when they arrived.’ She wasn’t in fact old but the waiter was young and in the way of the young thought she was.

‘They came in first,’ repeated the chef, a stickler in these matters.

‘And they all want something different for starters,’ sighed Giovanni, ‘except for the girl in the party and she doesn’t know what she wants yet.’

‘That may take a little longer,’ said the chef sarcastically, knocking up a plate of prosciutto ham as he spoke.

‘She still doesn’t,’ said Giovanni. ‘She said she needed to think first.’

‘All that students ever need to do is think, not work,’ said the sous-chef richly. He had left school at the earliest possible opportunity and worked ever since. ‘That’s what they’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Think.’

‘That girl had better make up her mind soon,’ said the chef briskly, ‘or she won’t get a first course at all. I can’t afford to hang about if there’s a man from that book around checking up on us.’

The maître d’hôtel sighed, knowing better than to upset his chef by suggesting changing the order of serving at a crucial point in the evening’s cooking. ‘Right, then, just get on with the first job quickly so that we can get Mr and Mrs John Smith whatever they want.’

‘With knobs on,’ said the sous-chef who was English.

‘And when they want it, too,’ insisted the maître d’hôtel, who had his authority to maintain. He was a worried man. If Mr Smith was indeed an inspector from the Calleshire guide he, the maître d’, was in for a hard time. The restaurant could expect unreasonable demands, undeserved criticism and – trickiest of all – uncertainty, all arising out of a visit from an anonymous inspector from the county eating-places guide. He corrected himself in his mind: an inspector who was meant to be anonymous. The maître d’hôtel though, like all his kind, was a man of the
world and knew better than to believe that the letter of the law was always adhered to. Rules, in his well-thumbed book of life, might not have been made to be broken but in his experience they usually were.

‘We’ll know for sure if he’s an inspector,’ said Giovanni, ‘if he and his wife …’

‘If she is his wife,’ said the sous-chef again.

‘If they each want something different for every single course,’ finished Giovanni. ‘That’s always a sign. And a different wine with each one.’

‘When I began working,’ reminisced the maître d’hôtel briefly, ‘the woman always used to let the man chose the menu as well as the wine. That saved a lot of bother.’

Misogynists to a man, they all nodded in agreement with this good practice.

‘This girl who can’t decide what she wants to eat says she is a vegetarian,’ Giovanni informed them, rolling his eyes.

‘Didn’t have many of them when I started either,’ said the maître d’hôtel, ‘let alone customers with allergies. I was told that in the old days if you had a food allergy you weren’t expected to accept an invitation to a grand dinner in the first place or accept it and eat the dish and be ill afterwards.’

‘It isn’t like that any more, I can tell you,’ muttered the chef, who had a shelf full of gluten-free flour. He sniffed. ‘Mind you, they hadn’t invented coeliac disease then.’

The maître d’ considered saying that coeliac disease had been discovered not invented but thought better of it.

‘And we would have to go and have not one but two vegetarian dishes for starters on the menu tonight, wouldn’t we?’ persisted Giovanni. ‘All this girl has to do is
choose between the honey-roasted shallots and the warm ratatouille tartlet with pesto dressing. I ask you, what could be easier than that?’

‘I expect they taste much the same anyway,’ said the kitchen boy, not often privy to eating such things after closing time.

‘They do not,’ said the chef, rising to the bait. ‘You wait, Danny-boy, when I’ve got time I’ll make you eat them both blindfold and …’

‘And nobody’s got any time for anything like that now,’ said the maître d’hôtel briskly. ‘Giovanni, you ask the Smiths about their drinks and I’ll get that girl to make up her mind.’ He added to himself, ‘That’s if she’s got one.’

Miss Celia Sparrow certainly had got a mind and was exercising it now. ‘You see,’ she said, smiling winningly at the maître d’, ‘it all depends on what I’m going to have afterwards.’

‘And what are you going to have afterwards?’ he asked, carefully avoiding calling her either ‘madam’ or ‘miss’, aware that you never knew with young women of her age which was the better. Neither probably. Instead he flourished the main course menu in front of her. ‘Let me see now – the vegetarian dish we have on the menu tonight is dolcelatte cheese and spinach risotto.’

‘That’s all, is it?’ she asked.

‘That’s all,’ he said firmly, forgetting all about calling her ‘miss’, and thinking her instead a right ‘madam’. ‘Unless,’ he added, struck by a sudden thought, ‘you would like the fish. Tonight it’s supreme of halibut with a lime butter sauce.’

‘Fish feel pain,’ she said soulfully.

‘How do you know that spinach doesn’t, Celia?’ asked
one of the boys at the table. ‘They say that cauliflowers cry out when they’re cut down.’

‘That’s the trouble with people studying philosophy, Tristram,’ said Miss Sparrow sweetly. ‘They only ever ask the questions. They never answer them.’

The older woman at the table, clearly the hostess, smiled and said, ‘That’s a good question, Tristram. How are you going to answer that one?’

‘I don’t have to, Aunt Marjorie,’ he replied, taking her seriously. ‘It’s quite wrong to suppose that philosophy has all the answers. You could say that realising that particular fact is lesson one.’

‘Then why study it?’ countered Celia Sparrow swiftly.

Suppressing a strong urge to inflict some pain on the girl, let alone on the fish or the spinach, the maître d’ coughed and said that in this case madam only had to decide which starter went best with the risotto.

The girl ran a well-manicured fingernail down the first-course menu. It hovered for a moment over the shallots and then took a sudden dive towards the ratatouille tartlet. The maître d’ snatched the menu back from her with unseemly haste and made for the kitchen at speed.

Giovanni, the waiter, was already there. ‘That Mr Smith, he called for the wine list and,’ he lowered his voice, ‘now he is making notes from it.’

The maître d’ muttered something profane under this breath. ‘That clinches it. Stand by for them to inspect the plumbing before they go.’

‘The plumbing’s all right,’ muttered the chef. ‘It’s the food I’m worried about.’

‘Calm down,’ said the maître d’. ‘We can only do our best. Now get on with this girl’s tartlet and that’ll leave you free for doing Mr and Mrs Smith’s starters.’

‘They’re not the only people who are going to be eating here tonight,’ the chef began truculently, ‘and if you think I’m going to …’

‘I think you’re going to do what you always do,’ said the maître d’ in a dangerously calm voice, ‘and cook very well indeed for everybody. Now get on with it.’

Two more couples came in after that and then a quartet of older diners. The four were obviously long-standing friends, not so much interested in the food as in what they each had to say to the others. One of the two couples only had eyes for each other, the other pair sounded as if they were spoiling for a fight.

The chef produced the starters for Miss Celia Sparrow and her friends and turned his attention to Mr and Mrs Smith’s first-course requirements, juggling pan-fried duck foie gras in puff pastry with a sherry vinegar dressing for one of them alongside breadcrumbed goujons of lemon sole served with a Béarnaise sauce with tomato for the other.

‘That’ll keep them quiet for a bit,’ he hissed at Giovanni as he handed them over.

‘Don’t you believe it’ said the waiter. ‘They’re just making sure the white wine’s properly chilled.’

‘They’ve quizzed me about the pistachio nuts and wanted to know why we didn’t have macadamia ones as well,’ said the maître d’, coming into the kitchen. ‘And then they had the nerve to ask me where the olives had come from.’

‘Tell them they grow on trees,’ suggested the sous-chef, already deep in preparing the second course for the table of
students. ‘Anyway I’ve got Mr and Mrs Smith’s roast rack of lamb in port wine and the fillet of venison in the oven as well for them when they’re ready.’

‘We mustn’t rush them over their starters,’ the maître d’ warned the waiter. ‘I’ll just keep an eye on their plates and then I’ll give you the OK when to serve their main course.’

‘Righto,’ said Giovanni, his Italian temporarily displaced by an English expression.

‘And,’ the chef reminded them, ‘we mustn’t forget those people on table seven who were here first. They all want something different, too. At least three of them do. The old lady and one of the boys both want the fillet of beef.’

‘Her teeth are all right, then,’ remarked Giovanni, whose own grandmother had lost hers.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded the chef combatively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the beef. It’s prime Scottish fillet with a special black peppercorn and garlic sauce.’

‘All right, all right,’ said the waiter pacifically. ‘I’m going to serve their wine now. I bet you they won’t ask if the Vouvray is properly chilled.’

They didn’t. Miss Celia Sparrow took a sip of it from her glass and pronounced it excellent while Miss Marjorie Simmonds tasted the Gaillac and nodded her approval.

Meanwhile though, Mr Smith declared that his white burgundy had not been chilled long enough. As Giovanni restored it to the ice bucket without comment Mr Smith remarked that he had particularly wanted to drink it with his goujons of lemon sole. Giovanni offered to take the dish back to the kitchen. Mr Smith said that reheating would spoil it.

The maître d’, sensing a stand-off, sailed up to the table and suggested more ice in the bucket.

Giovanni retreated to the kitchen, muttering that in Italy the craft of a waiter was held in high esteem. In a country as benighted as England a waiter was merely thought of as a postman delivering parcels of food to people too ignorant to know good food from bad.

The sous-chef offered to put sugar instead of salt on the man’s venison.

‘Or vinegar instead of that red wine jus you’re always going about,’ suggested the kitchen boy. ‘He probably doesn’t know the difference.’

Giovanni, remembering his heritage, drew himself up proudly and said, ‘I would rather be like the Borgias and serve him poison.’

‘That’ll do,’ said the maître d’, coming back into the kitchen at that moment. ‘Just get on with your work, all of you, while I see what everyone else wants. We’re going to be busy tonight.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Giovanni. ‘The woman on table three is playing up because we haven’t got any background music. I expect she wants it to cover up what she’s saying to her husband. At it hammer and tongs already, they are.’

‘And she’s not going to have any music either,’ said the maître d’. Music might be the food of love but at the Ornum Arms you had the food without it.

‘At least that means that Mr and Mrs Smith can’t complain that it’s too loud,’ said Giovanni.

‘They’ll find something else to moan about,’ said the maître d’, before resuming his professional smile when he left the kitchen. Table seven, he noted in passing, were now tucking in to their main course with all the gusto of hungry students.

‘You should come over to Ornum more often, Aunt Marjorie,’ he heard the one called Tristram say.

She beamed. ‘It’s not every day you win the Almstone Essay Prize, my boy. It calls for a celebration so you must all feel free to have exactly what you want to eat and drink.’

The maître d’ smiled inwardly. The words were music to his ears and the only sort of music he liked to hear in any restaurant. What he heard next was not to give him so much pleasure. A peremptory wave of an arm called him back to the Smiths’ table.