The Reluctant Cannibals

by The Reluctant Cannibals (mobi)

  ‘That meddling saved your life, Arthur.’

  ‘Yes, but having got a second chance I don’t want to ruin it by being miserable until I die, which of course I will as sure as eggs.’

  ‘Quality not quantity, Augustus. I’d rather live my life than merely endure it. Now if you really want to help me, start by bringing in some food. The stuff in here is slop and there’s so little of it a hummingbird would starve. As for this no salt thing, God that really is purgatory.’

  ‘Okay, I know we won’t change your diet. But the pacemaker, that’s a sensible op-tion.’

  ‘Not for me it isn’t. Having some machine stuck inside my chest? No, this ticker only has so many ticks left and I’ll enjoy each one as it comes, no more, no less. Anyway it was a wonderful experience.’

  ‘What was wonderful?’

  ‘Almost dying. Take the most extreme nightmare, but change the fear into peace and you are not even halfway there. I was foating above my body at the start. I saw all the commotion with Gerard, Potts and then you. What was all that pounding on my chest about?’

  ‘Trying to get some blood pumping, that’s probably why you remember it. It got some blood circulating to your brain. You were in some semi-conscious state.’

  ‘Don’t be so damn… physiological, Augustus. I’ve been unconscious every night of my life. Drunk myself semi-unconscious on an occasion, or two. Even been knocked un-conscious when I fell off a horse on that fox hunt with Theodore in Ireland. But this was completely different. After that I left the room and foated through a tunnel and ended up in this glowing white mist. Do you know who was there? Gordon Maxwell 4 , as alive as you are and asking if I’d brought any books with me, would you believe. Then I was surrounded by images from my life: the whole shooting match few past in seconds, but I could remember every day. Imagine being able to relive every moment, remember every book, every conversation, every mouthful. It was beyond comparison. I felt more alive being dead than I do now lying here. Then I was being pulled back through a crowd as they called to me. I can tell you now, Augustus, at that moment I’d have rather stayed where I was.’

  ‘Aren’t you glad to be alive?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I realise now there are a few things I need to sort out and plan. But when the day comes again, I’ll be happy to die.’

  Augustus sat stunned, looking at the smiling visage of Arthur Plantagenet, who des-pite lying in a hospital bed with possibly only months to live, was clearly happier than Augustus, wanting for nothing more than a decent meal.

  *

  That night at dinner in the senior common room parlour, Augustus announced Arthur’s remarkable recovery and tried to do credit to his description of dying, though he couldn’t come close to matching Arthur’s extraordinary enthusiasm for this usually unpopular activity. This naturally led to a long academic discussion on everything from religion to UFOs as the prodigious powers of random-thought association of Oxford dons surged into action. For his part, Augustus didn’t know what to make of it. He hoped it might be true but he was, as Arthur had pointed out on more than one occasion, at times too physiological for his own good.

  As the dinner drew to a close, the dons agreed to visit Arthur at regular intervals over the next few days. As the offer of a pacemaker had been rejected by his patient, Dr Pierce had no need to keep him in hospital for long and knew better than to try. Augus-tus suggested that they might all bring a book or two and something small, exotic and tasty to keep Arthur’s spirits up. Arthur had already placed an order with Augustus for a copy of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and a rather obscure book on Victorian Spiritual-ism. Even with Arthur’s remarkable recollections from his recent brush with the beyond, Augustus remained puzzled as to why he should be so interested in séances, considering he was still alive. The other requests were certainly more understandable – Turkish de-light, a box of crystallised dates and a small hip fask of Cognac. 4 Professor Gordon Maxwell, erstwhile Professor of Modern Languages at St Jerome’s College, was a founding member of the shadow faculty of gastronomic science who died a fne Proustian death by choking on a Madeleine several years previously.

  Chapter 12

  As soon as Augustus heard that Arthur Plantagenet was back in his rooms, he went straight around, creeping up the ancient stairs to Arthur’s door with the careful deference afforded to sick and sleeping children. He listened for a second to see if Arthur was alone, knowing full well that it would be quite impossible for Arthur to have an audience and not be talking at them. Hearing only a faint rustling noise, he knocked.

  ‘Enter… ’

  ‘Good God, Arthur, what are you doing?’

  Augustus entered the room to fnd his good friend peering into a packing case full of wood shavings. The atmosphere was thick with perfumed smoke emanating from a large walnut calabash pipe with a gleaming meerschaum bowl.

  ‘Enjoying myself, dear boy.’

  ‘But… but you should be resting, and when did you start smoking a pipe?’ ‘It arrived yesterday from London along with some supplies. A beauty, isn’t it?’ Arthur had spent most of yesterday morning hiding in his room while he tried to teach

  himself the art of lighting and smoking a pipe. The two most important aspects of light-ing a calabash pipe are long matches and patience – both of which Arthur lacked. The end result had been burnt fngers and several empty boxes of matches. Finally admitting defeat, he’d been forced to head to Mallards & Son, Purveyors of Fine Pipes and Tobacco in Turk Street, for guidance. He was discreetly chaperoned into the back room and Mr Mallard senior spent a very enjoyable hour teaching Arthur the art of pipe-lighting. The frst lesson involved packing the pipe. Arthur, it turned out, had made the typical mistake of packing the pipe too tightly. To correct this he had been handed a glass of water and a straw. Once he had a sense of the slight pull required to drink through a straw, Mr Mal-lard allowed him to try packing his pipe with tobacco. Arthur then had to smoke his unlit pipe, loosening or packing the tobacco until the resistance to the fow of air was just right. Only then was he allowed on to the next step of lighting. After the frst light, pulling the fame down with his breath, Arthur was instructed to lightly push down on the tobacco to make the pipe go out. Only then with the scorched tobacco properly prepared could the real lighting begin.

  ‘Just about got the hang of it now. Fancy a puff yourself?’ Arthur offered the pipe to his friend.

  ‘Absolutely not. And why on earth are you smoking anyway?’ ‘All part of my grand plan, Augustus. As are these little beauties.’ Arthur then pulled out several small bottles of a dark-green liquid, which he passed

  to Augustus with great reverence.

  ‘The original concentrated elixir v é g é tal from Chartreuse. This is the exact recipe that Maréchal d’Estrées gave the monks in 1605. A secret elixir of life and even better than the normal green stuff I’d been trying. You were quoting Hippocrates at me before Christmas, let “medicine be thy food and food be thy medicine”, well this is the drink version.’

  ‘Sixty nine per cent alcohol! You think this will cure you before it kills you?’ ‘Of course it will cure me. I shall die a fragrantly favoured death suffused with the

  best ingredients that nature and human ingenuity have gathered over the last two millen-nia.’

  ‘How will it cure you if you end up dead?’

  ‘Not cure in your meddling doctor way, Augustus, Cure with a capital C, a gastro-nomical cure. The pipe will help with the curing too. Like a fne smoked salmon I shall be perfumed with aromatic smoke. Do you like the smell? It’s my own combination of A&C Peterson Caledonian mixture with a hint of Irish peat soaked in whiskey, then dried and crumbled. Fancy a puff? You’re never too young to start smoking a pipe.’

  ‘Or too sick, apparently,’ said Augustus, falling into the lowest chair in the room to take advantage of the slightly clearer layer of air close to the ground. ‘Arthur, you’re not still talking about your crazy idea of donating your body to gastronomical science, surely?’ />
  ‘Of course, I am even more determined now than I ever was. When I was over on the other side I realised this would be the perfect culmination of my life. I also realised that the spirit world exists, so I thought I’d like to invite Gordon Maxwell to our next dinner.’

  Augustus looked at Arthur with concern and utter bemusement. This was surely all caused by the lack of blood to his brain while he was unconscious.

  ‘Arthur, I know you came back, but Gordon died, so how can we invite him?’ ‘With a medium. Good God, there are times when you are slow on the uptake, my

  dear friend.’

  Augustus sat back for a few moments watching Arthur rife through his treasure chest of new supplies. He hardly recognised him as the same man that he had found half-dead barely a week ago. There is a lot to be said for the curative powers of enthusiasm.

  Despite his delight at having Arthur Plantagenet back within the college walls, Augustus was more than glad to get back to the fresh air when he fnally took his leave. As not even thoughts of cannibalism could put Augustus off his lunch, he headed to the senior common room parlour. Charles Pinker, as always the frst to get to lunch, was already seated at the table with a glass of sherry in hand.

  ‘Good day, Charles,’ said Augustus, taking a seat beside the chaplain. ‘You will be glad to know our patient is alive, well and still barking mad. His new-found interest in spiritualism shows no signs of waning, unfortunately.’

  Augustus was spared what he sensed from the chaplain’s unimpressed visage was a sermon in the making by the arrival of George Le Strang and Theodore Flanagan. With-in a few minutes they had all been provided with bowls of the very presentable lob-ster bisque and after the usual climate-related pleasantries, the conversation inevitably turned back to Arthur Plantagenet.

  ‘He’s made a remarkable recovery. From the time I visited him in hospital to today when I saw him bustling across the quad, you wouldn’t think he was the same man,’ said Theodore.

  ‘Well there have been moments when I thought he wasn’t quite the same man,’ re-joined Augustus. ‘He seems even more determined to donate his body to gastronomic science and now he’s into spiritualism as well. He just told me he wanted to bring along a medium so he could invite Gordon Maxwell back to the next dinner.’

  ‘He can’t be serious?’ said Charles.

  ‘Oh, he certainly is,’ replied Augustus. ‘He has piles of books on mysticism and all that hocus-pocus in his room.’

  ‘No, I mean the bit about us having to eat him,’ said Charles, now quite fustered. ‘He is still convinced that is a marvellous idea, though I’ve no idea how he expects

  us to go along with his grand experiment if, God forbid, he does suddenly die on us,’ said Augustus.

  ‘You can lead a horse to the dining table but can’t make a decent man eat it,’ said Hamish, thoroughly pleased with his scrambled egg of a metaphor.

  George Le Strang gave an enigmatic smile at this comment and seemed quite un-troubled by talk of Arthur’s grand experiment.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about Arthur. If we just wait a week he will have another great plan to distract him.’

  George did have a point. Arthur was a man renowned for intense but short-lived bursts of fancy. Charles and Theodore were only too glad to accept George’s assessment of the situation. Augustus was less convinced of the fckleness of Arthur Plantagenet who on this occasion, seemed to possess a preternatural determination to follow through with his bizarre plan.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, Augustus once again climbed the stairs towards Arthur Plantagenet’s rooms. The smell of pipe smoke had been replaced by an odour that changed with each step from a puzzling, hard-to-pin-down impression to a full-out assault on the olfactory nerves. Acrid, fshy and fetid would describe the overall smell but words couldn’t capture the brutal intensity that met Augustus as Arthur opened his door.

  ‘Holy God, Arthur. What are you doing?’

  ‘A bit of Roman cooking.’

  ‘So what’s that bloody awful smell?’

  ‘Garum. Roman fsh sauce, it is sometimes called liquamen. Almost every recipe in Apicius’ De Re Coquinaria needs it. I’ve been trying out different ways of making it.’

  ‘Was Apicius any good as a cook? This garum smells disgusting.’ ‘Marcus Gavius Apicius was a giant of ancient cuisine. Almost everything we know

  about Roman cooking we’ve learnt from this one man.’ ‘I’ll take your word for it. What exactly is in this sauce, Arthur?’ ‘The best garum was supposed to be made with the livers of red mullet, but most of it

  was made from fermenting mackerel intestines with salt and a few herbs. I’ve just opened this jar of mackerel intestines that I sealed up in the summer and forgot about. It’s perfect. Fancy a taste?’

  ‘Do I have to eat this?’

  ‘Well I don’t think they ate it on its own. It was really a favouring and I assume cook-ing mellows the taste a bit. You’ll fnd out at the faculty dinner. I’m making some for that Roman food chap you’ve invited from Magdalen. I’ve got another little gem here which is a bit pongy as well.’

  Augustus almost choked as the utterly different but equally awful smell was presented to his nostrils from a small jar that Arthur was thrusting into his face.

  ‘Nearest thing left to the herb Silphium apparently. The Romans loved the herb so much that they ate it into extinction as it only grew in one small area around the ancient city of Cyrene in North Africa. They literally ate the stuff faster than it could grow.’

  ‘This will have to improve a lot with cooking if you want me to eat any of your Roman recipes. What’s this stuff called?’

  ‘ Asafoetida is the proper name, but the French have a more evocative name: merde du diable .’

  ‘Devil’s shit, well that about sums it up.’

  ‘Still, very popular in India. It’s meant to have great medical properties, excellent for fatulence apparently.’

  ‘Probably just masks the smell. Anyway, talking of medical, I want to talk to you about your medical issues. I’ve been speaking with a cardiologist at the Radcliffe Hos-pital. He was explaining about these new pacemakers that Dr Pierce has recommended. You really should think about it.’

  ‘Augustus, I know you mean well but believe me I have no intention of letting you or your friends meddle with my innards. In sympathy with Peru I’d rather eat a guinea pig than become one. Did you know they’ve always been just food over there? The painting of the Last Supper in the cathedral in Cusco even has Christ and the apostles tucking into plates of guinea pig. It’s only us sentimental fools that treat them as pets.’

  ‘Arthur, don’t change the subject. I’m trying to be serious. You’d rather die than re-ceive help?’

  ‘When you die, Augustus, and I dearly hope that it is many years away, would you wish it to be swift, peaceful and painless?’

  ‘I suppose we’d all like that.’

  ‘So you see I’m right to do it my way. The day my heart forgets to beat is the day I’m meant to die. A death that will be as quick and painless as fainting.’

  ‘But rather more serious.’

  ‘True, but we shall all be dead for a very long time. A fact that many people seem to forget while they are alive.’

  When Augustus fnally resurfaced into daylight he flled his lungs with the best tast-ing air he had ever inhaled. He had never really thought about tasting air before, but his senses seemed to have been heightened by Arthur’s Roman experiments. Perhaps these ancient types were onto something after all.

  *

  ‘Potts, exactly the man I’ve been looking for.’

  ‘Morning, sir. You’re looking well today if you don’t mind me saying.’ ‘Feeling very well too, Potts. Now I never got around to thanking you properly for

  your swift actions last term which probably saved my life, so here is a little something.’ Arthur thrust the bottle of whiskey into his hands despite Potts’ protestations. ‘Really, sir, I couldn’t
accept this. Really I couldn’t.’ ‘Nonsense man, take it. Now, this ticker of mine isn’t up to much and next time it

  might well be too late, so I’ve been making a few plans.’ Arthur thrust the letters into Potts’ free hand.

  ‘They are all addressed but they are to be delivered by hand on the day I die. Is that understood?’

  ‘I think you’ll live to an ’undred the ways you’re looking now, sir.’ ‘Well if I do, don’t forget to deliver those letters as you may be a bit forgetful yourself

  by then.’

  Arthur winked at Potts and headed off on his next mission. *

  Arthur Plantagenet was in truly fne form when a few hours later he strode out of the small courtyard of the Turf Tavern after going back to sample his favoured lunch as an undergraduate many years ago: pickled onions and a pint of bitter. He headed down Broad Street, gathering his thoughts for the forthcoming meeting. He’d awoken from a bizarrely vivid dream a few days earlier and since then, a plan had been growing and crystallising in his mind. He was now ready to convey this to the professional gentleman whose job it was to look after the details of such an undertaking.

  He passed the door of the King Edward Hotel on the promise to himself of afternoon tea if all went well, and entered into the peaceful elegance of St John’s Street. With fne houses and the brass plaques of the professional classes, it was a street for ambling along after escaping the busier, more commercial side of Oxford. As you approach the square at the end you would often hear birdsong during the middle of the day, an excellent an-tidote to the noise and fumes of St Giles that ran parallel to it. Arthur paused at the door of his physician, Dr Reginald Pierce. He entertained the idea of popping in to let Pierce know how well he was doing in putting the good doctor’s advice into practice, but he had more pressing matters to attend to.

  A few doors down he stopped at an almost identical door before crossing the threshold of Cragsworth, Cawl and Barringer, solicitors at law. He was ushered into the waiting room, William Morris wallpaper on this occasion but still adorned with Vanity Fair prints of great legal fgures from the past. For possibly the frst time in his life he was early, so he passed the time reading a translation of Petronius’ Satyricon that he had been carrying around with him for the past few days. On the stroke of half-past two an-other door opened.