Rancid Pansies (18 page)

‘It’s either me or the old country that isn’t what it was.’

‘It’s not you,’ I tell her. Joan is possibly the last person in Europe to carry her own luggage. Not for her the wimpy little wheels and embarrassing
clackety-clackety
noises of suitcases that modern urbanites haven’t the strength or dignity to carry. She refuses my help and soon we are stowed in my rental car, her respiration rate unchanged. Mine, though, starts changing as soon as we’re aboard the sun-heated car and an astonishing canine bouquet builds up. But I turn the air-con on and soon we’re pounding northwards along the motorway and catching
up on events since Millie’s death. Clips of her fatal attempt to shorten sail that resulted in a lengthened neck have been
regularly
shown on satellite TV and Internet sites. It has been prime-time for ghouls of all nations during these last months. As her friend, Joan mourns her with seemly restraint. ‘Daft old girl!’ she says fondly. ‘But you know, Gerry, it felt to me as if there was something almost inevitable about the whole thing. She had probably gone as high as she was destined to go.’

To the masthead of her career, I think, but tastefully do not say. ‘You mean she’d peaked?’

‘I reckon so. And knew it, too, which was why she was so easily suckered into heading that Deep Blue caper. This around-the-world racing lark – you
can
only try to beat your own record, can’t you?’

‘Or look for novelty. The first unmarried mother to do it in a yacht going backwards. The first lone quadriplegic to do it with a parrot trained to peck at a keyboard to set the course and the sails. Stuff like that. The way all extreme sports are going, actually.’

‘Well, Millie did do it one-handed, bless her. But it really left her with nowhere else to go, especially as she was knocking on a bit. Late fifties. I ask you.’

‘But having acquired a taste for the limelight, she couldn’t bear the thought of it moving elsewhere and leaving her in the dark.’

‘Too right. Fame and Millie went together like vinegar and chips. But what about you, Gerry? All these film deals and things. How’s the limelight suiting you?’

‘Huh! I might ask you the same question. People like you and me only ever emerge from obscurity when we’re briefly lit by distress flares.’ And then, despite all my resolutions, I find I can’t resist telling her about the ghostly – or maybe saintly – apparition of the late Princess of Wales that is alleged to have saved my life and that of my guests last November. Joan reacts in reliable fashion.

‘A load of festering testicles.’

‘Of course. But all that festers is not mould, you might say. There are wheels within wheels here. Welcome to the land of plots, deals and stealthy accommodations.’

‘Sounds just like the Navy.’

Then, even more against my better judgement, I add that I’m working on an opera about the Princess. To my
amazement
Joan turns out to be something of a Diana fan. Maybe there weren’t too many republicans in the armed forces in Joan’s day or – more likely – there could be some sort of
sexual
undercurrent here.

‘Perhaps you’ll do her a favour and leave out the crap about visions. Then you can concentrate on what made her so
fascinating
, poor wee thing,’ she says. ‘I tell you, me and the girls watched her progress with keen interest. You know – how she started out as a naive kid working in a nursery school who could be bullied into anything, gradually took charge of a foul marriage and ended up telling the world what it ought to be doing about AIDS victims and landmines. Bloody admirable, actually. But here’s the thing. If you wanted a visual yardstick of her progress you couldn’t do better than watch her wardrobe. I’d think that would be ideal for an opera. As she gains in confidence and becomes her own person, you could have her costumes evolve from the gauche early days of Laura Ashley and Benetton to the full fuck-off Versace kit, just as they did in real life.’

‘Golly, Joan, I had no idea you were so fashion-conscious.’

‘Just because a girl’s no clothes-horse herself it doesn’t mean she mightn’t have wanted to be,’ my companion says with what fleetingly sounds like regret. ‘I just turned out to look my best in rubberised canvas, neoprene and a diving helmet. That’s the way it was and I’ve no complaints. But I like my gals feminine, and I’ve always been interested in what they wear. Still, what the hell do
I
know about operas? You’re the writer, Gerry. Sorry I mentioned it.’

‘No, mention it as much as you like. I would never in a
million
years have thought of moving a story along by means of
clothes. Cooking, possibly, but never clothes. It’s brilliant. A visual counterpart to her developing character … Yes, I can see it now. Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pick your brains quite a lot in these coming days.’

‘Happy to be of service. Do you mind if I smoke?’

Well, of course I
do
; but in the circumstances I simply boost the ventilation and put up with it. After all, the car belongs to Mr and Mrs Avis. But apart from that, I dislike the fashionable new priggishness even more than I dislike smoking, and her need plainly outweighs mine. Before long we reach town and I see Joan safely installed in her hotel. I’ll give her time to
recover
from the flight and adjust to her new status as Havant’s Most Hated Woman. Then in an hour or two we will have an early dinner in some nearby restaurant. I just wish I could cook for her myself. Under normal circumstances it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to devise a
sumptuous
and inventive dinner to celebrate our reunion. But I’m hopelessly inhibited by this Belgian’s kitchen, which would be paltry for a timeshare cottage in the Lofoten Islands. There is a three-burner stove designed for a small caravan; an
assortment
of cutlery that would allow two students to dine
modestly
out of opened tins; and a chipped pile of those egg-yellow plates, apparently made of plaster of Paris, that seem to haunt holiday homes. This is no workshop for a culinary genius.

You may also be expecting me to add that some of my
inhibition
stems from what happened at Crendlesham Hall when I last cooked for others. Well, it doesn’t. A misfortune out of the blue like that can strike even the greatest chef at any time. The more I think back to that evening the more I wonder whether it wasn’t an example of mass acting-up rather than mild food poisoning. It’s well known that the sight of someone being sick can induce nausea in perfectly healthy people. All it took was for that ancient turtle, Sir D. Monteith, to have a heart attack – as is perfectly normal when you’re a hundred and
twenty-seven
and have sent your blood pressure up by chivvying
innocent
walkers off your land. I’m sure I read somewhere that
heart attacks can induce vomiting, and all the other guests simply followed suit out of a kind of hysterical politesse. Later, all those dim-witted Mr Plods having ‘Aha!’ moments with bottles of alleged rodent poison was just so much post-hoc rationalisation.

And while we’re on the subject, I realise it’s a long time since I last gave the world some of my recipes that, I dare to believe, will one day ensure my name survives. However, until once again I have a kitchen of my own to play about in I can’t
perfect
the details; and as any cook knows it’s the exact
quantities
, temperatures and timings that make or break the greatest recipes. Still, creativity will out, and from time to time I divert myself with theoretical dishes, much as scientists conduct thought experiments. My current batch involves the linking of a public personality with a particular food so that it becomes associated with that person’s special glamour. If one can have
Oeufs en cocotte
Rossini, Peach Melba and Pavlova Cake then I suggest one can equally delight in Mutton Victoria Beckham, Stewed Ham O’Toole, Roly-poly Prescott, Thai Chicken Gary Glitter and Liver George Best (this last a new departure in offal cookery, involving a lengthy marinading in Scotch whisky). I am also toying with a Medlar Fool Blair that will be remarkable for its smoothness.

Our dinner is a happy occasion. We have no difficulty in agreeing that Italian cuisine is immeasurably more satisfying than the last meal we had together. This was aboard the
private
yacht of Lew Buschfeuer, Millie Cleat’s Australian
partner
, when the food consisted largely of vegetation: Korean water-weed, Papuan tubers stuffed with moss, steamed sago balls. Even now I can still taste the Balinese goat-berries. Despite being hungry Joan and I dined frugally that night. The other guests seemed to eat the stuff with pleasure but I suspect they were heavily influenced by a belief that it was full of rare, cancer-targeting vitamins, plus a snobbish assumption that toasted Amazonian pitcher-plant was bound to taste better than something ordinary like cauliflower, even though it
patently didn’t and soon demanded advanced techniques of sphincter control. A sense of virtue must never be brought to the table. It is the death of good eating.

Having seen Joan back to her hotel I let myself into the
Belgian’s
flat, whose decor as well as kitchen is seriously
beginning
to undermine my normally sunny disposition, and eagerly jot down some operatic notes. Our dinner
conversation
has triggered ideas for all sorts of new scenes. It’s
amazing
how a casual nudge from an external source can stimulate a surge of creativity. I have definitely reached the point where I need a name for this opera project. Most of my awful
biographies
of sporting heroes acquired working nicknames as I wrote them, names that predated the final title and
functioned
merely as handy labels for folders of notes and
computer
files. They tended to be ironic or just plain rude, expressing a deep disenchantment with both the subject and the job. For instance, I privately knew the burnt-out downhill skier Luc Bailly as ‘Lily’ since one anagram of his name is ‘A club lily’, which exactly described his priapic après-ski
presence
. Millie Cleat just became ‘Malice’ after her name yielded the entirely appropriate ‘I tell malice’. Until now I have been thinking that this opera of mine might be called
Princess of Hearts
, so with a nightcap of Fernet-Branca at my elbow I get to work. Some splendid phrases soon emerge. ‘I refract
poshness
’ seems apposite, ‘Horse-penis crafts’ rather less so, while ‘Preacher Fists Son’ has a tabloid grossness which, though I like it, is irrelevant.
Poshness
will do nicely as a working title; but just for interest’s sake I doodle around with
Princess Diana
instead and at once come up with ‘
Rancid Pansies
’. Oh yes! It may or may not turn out to have relevance but I can’t resist the assonance. And so to bed, where inevitably my brain refuses to shut down and spends half the night
compulsively
churning out anagrams. Some time after ‘Princess of Hearts’ has shuffled itself into ‘Free crap hits sons’, I at last fall asleep.

The day before the bulldozing is due to start I take Joan up to Le Roccie. She has expressed an interest in seeing not only where I used to live but the seat of this new Diana cult. I’ve not been up here for some time myself and there are ample signs that my old exclusive domain is well frequented. The footpath through the undergrowth that avoids the official
barrier
is now trampled flat and there are cigarette ends
embedded
in the mud. But the most telling indication is that the improvised shrine has grown considerably. Something like half a rubble igloo is beginning to take shape. Stones, rocks and the odd brick have been piled up and lengths of rusty iron secured with strategic blobs of cement support an
unstable-looking
sketch of a grotto roof. What it really resembles is the ruined stable in one of those Renaissance Nativity paintings where there are so many holes in the roof that the only real shelter over the subjects’ heads is provided by their haloes. The Princess’s photograph now stands on a proper little altar covered in a clean but elderly linen pillowcase. Next to it is a new vase with a spray of quite expensive plastic flowers to supplement the improvised bunches of wilting spring flowers scattered about. Propped on the altar is also an announcement in Italian, neatly printed and framed behind glass. On closer inspection it turns out to be a prayer, presumably composed by a supplicant.

‘Hey, get this,’ I say to Joan, translating it out loud as I read. ‘“O Glorious Diana, mother misunderstood and wronged, you nevertheless reached out to the unhappy and sick children of the world who laughed in your embrace. You transcended this life’s mortal stain and dwell now like a flower in the
radiance
of the Blessed Virgin, the archetype of all mothers. This very place witnesses that by Mary’s grace you do not forget to extend your hand to save your children from certain death. Intercede for us, we beg you, even as we pray for your
matchless
soul. Amen.”’

Silence. No birds sing.

‘Bleedin’ ’eck,’ Joan says at length. ‘Talk about over the top.
I mean, they’re treating her as if she’s already one of their saints. But she couldn’t be, could she?’

‘Not officially. But I’d say she’s well on the way to becoming a local one, wouldn’t you? Like one of those
sufi
saints in Islam. Popular appeal is its own form of canonisation. Believe it or not this place is still technically my property although you wouldn’t know it. Obviously it’s already been annexed by
anyone
who feels he can wander up and beg heavenly favours. Look at that tree.’

Just behind the shrine is a fine old stunted pear tree that until last year supported one end of the Samper washing line and provided a hardbitten variety of fruit that became the principal ingredient of an extraordinarily delicious and subtle pear and ginger relish I perfected some years ago. It goes
wonderfully
well with slightly dull, crumbly cheeses like
Caerphilly
. One day when I’m less preoccupied and properly settled in a house of my own I’ll give you the recipe. Today I’m touched to see my old pear tree dressed in new leaves, but less so to observe that its low spreading branches are now also hung with all manner of ribbons, pieces of material, cards with messages on them, plastic necklaces and trinkets. Even a few miniature teddy bears dangle here and there like unseasonal hairy fruit.