The Reluctant Cannibals

by The Reluctant Cannibals (mobi)

  ‘Professor Plantagenet?’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Barringer, I presume.’

  ‘Exactly, now do come in.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Barringer. I must say I never cease to be amazed at why professional men are so attached to these accursed Vanity Fair prints. My doctor’s waiting room is full of them too.’

  ‘Much the same as schools of fsh I suppose; safety in numbers coupled with a well-honed lack of imagination.’

  Arthur was already starting to like Mr Barringer. ‘Now, Professor. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like to make a will.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Always good to be prepared. Now I need a little information from you and I’ll be able to draw up a standard enough will in no time.’

  ‘I’ve just a couple of questions frst, if you don’t mind.’ ‘Of course, fre away.’

  ‘I presume what we discuss here will remain totally confdential until I die and indeed after?’

  ‘Of course, Professor, our job relies on discretion and total confdentiality is guaran-teed.

  ‘Very good, very good. Now my next question is about my executors. Are they leg-ally bound to do what I ask? I mean do they have to deal with my body in exactly the way I ask?’

  ‘It is a very serious undertaking being an executor and they are duty bound to follow your instructions to the letter.’

  ‘Marvellous. Now I’ve got some notes here about what I want to happen on my death. I hope that is all right.’

  ‘Oh, more than just all right, that is ideal. If only all our clients could be so organised and decisive.’ Mr Barringer smiled across the table.

  Arthur, on this topic at least, was certainly decisive. He listed the complicated ar-rangements he required after his death as fast as Mr Barringer could note them down. He then formally appointed all his fellow members of the shadow faculty of gastronom-ic science as joint executors before taking leave of Mr Barringer with a great load lifted from his mind. Mr Barringer, for his part, was left at his desk in a state of inner turmoil. Much to Mr Barringer’s dismay and indeed horror, this was by no means a standard will.

  Chapter 14

  The fnal tasting meeting of the term had been scheduled for eleven o’clock that morning. With all the time wasted in hospital and the shadow faculty of gastronomic science dinner in less than a week, Arthur had no time to lose. So just after nine o’clock, he gathered up his letters, calabash pipe and a small shopping bag and made for the lodge. This bag contained a bottle of whiskey along with some of his recent research on topics as diverse as spiritualism and an obscure group of Buddhist monks from Japan. Arthur paused as he reached the road outside college to light his pipe, an action he was fnally mastering.

  Arthur’s pipe and the associated cloud of pollution that accompanied it was becoming a familiar site around college and Oxford. He was even thrown out of the Bodleian library the previous week for lighting up in the middle of the manuscript room. While the pop-ular image of pipe smokers was in a rocking chair by a stove, Arthur had found that smoking while walking briskly around town was a particularly pleasurable combination. So he was looking forward to this morning’s tasks: a quick visit to his solicitor’s offce to sign his new will, a purely social visit to his physician Dr Pierce, and then onto the more enjoyable part of the morning, getting supplies for the tasting meeting. After a joyously polluting amble along Cornmarket and Magdalen Street, Arthur made a slight detour to have a rest on his favourite seat in the Ashmolean Museum. He sat on the green velvet-covered banquette surrounded by the armless statues of antiquity until one of the guards felt obliged to ask him to extinguish his pipe or leave. It was a simple decision.

  *

  After consulting Country Life for half an hour in Dr Pierce’s waiting room he was fnally called in, by which time the waiting room was thoroughly fumigated.

  ‘Arthur, come in. Good God, what are you doing with that pipe?’ Arthur looked at his calabash with mock surprise. ‘I do believe I am smoking it, Dr Pierce.’

  ‘Take a seat, Arthur, and let’s see where things stand,’ replied Dr Pierce with a sigh of resignation.

  Dr Pierce let Arthur sit before taking his right wrist and feeling the pulse for what seemed to Arthur to be an unreasonable length of time, even for a doctor.

  ‘So far so good, Arthur. Any palpitations or fainting attacks since we let you go?’ ‘Not at all, been ft as a fddle,’ Arthur lied with perfect grace and confdence. ‘Well if you start getting anything like that I want to know about it. Now, I want

  to talk to you seriously about the option of a pacemaker. I know you rejected the offer when you were in hospital… ’

  ‘Reginald, I appreciate the fact that you have my best interests at heart, excuse the pun, as does dear Augustus who has already tried in vain to convince me. I really have no desire to let anyone meddle with my heart with some electrical contraption. I’m rather enjoying my own treatment regime,’ said Arthur, waving his pipe.

  ‘Arthur, taking up a pipe is not a treatment. It is nothing short of folly for a man in your condition.’

  ‘Dear boy, you have proposed a treatment which I have graciously declined. Without this treatment you say I have no chance of surviving more than a few months at best and weeks at worst. If I have no chance of surviving, how much less a chance could I have than that? So enjoying myself with good food and a fne tobacco seems the only logical course of action – quod erat demonstrandum, QED .’

  ‘ Dulce et decorum est pro gastria mori ?’

  ‘I do believe the word gastria is Greek rather than Latin, so it should be pro ventre mori ,’ beamed Arthur in response. ‘But good effort and you’re quite right. I’d rather die for my stomach than my country.’

  *

  On the home stretch, Arthur crossed the threshold into Benjamin and Sons, the wine im-porters, to collect his order of a range of obscure European liqueurs. Then he moved to the covered market for pickled walnuts, some Stilton cheese and fg jam. The most chal-lenging of all was a source of ripe pears, but here too the gods were smiling on him, as he came across South African pears in Gough’s greengrocers that were perfect.

  Laden with bags and troubled with only the occasional skipped beat from his ailing heart, Arthur made his way back to college and headed straight to the kitchen cellars, re-luctantly tamping out his pipe as he went. The rest of the shadow faculty of gastronomic science had already gathered around the makeshift table.

  ‘Arthur, just the man,’ said Hamish McIntyre. ‘We were trying to decide whether either of these German eiswein s are worthy of serving at a dinner.’

  ‘Excellent, let’s put them to the test,’ Arthur said, and started handing out the contents of his bags, delegating the tasks of slicing the pears and extracting the Stilton from its porcelain jar. Within a few minutes all six members of the faculty had on their plates a small tower with a slice of pear as the foundation stone, then fg jam, Stilton and a pickled walnut.

  Eiswein s are made from frozen, almost shrivelled grapes that must be picked at sub-zero temperatures well after normal grapes are harvested. This results in an explosive concentration of favour and sugar. Combining the wines with Arthur’s hors d’oeuvres was a triumph, with the sole dissenter being George Le Strang who stuck to his Gallic roots, agreeing with the offcial line in France that whatever this drink was, it wasn’t wine.

  Once the remnants of the Stilton had been cleared up, Arthur started emptying out his small bottles of spirits onto the table.

  ‘Now, Gentlemen, I need your help in deciding which of these liqueurs would be best for pickling me. I’ve been experimenting with Chartreuse but I thought I better check out some others too.’

  Arthur emptied the contents of his bag, which represented half a millennium of distil-lery expertise from the different monastic traditions. He placed the bottles of Benedict-ine, Trappistine, Carmeline and La Senancole triumphantly on the table.

  ‘Literally or metaphorically, Arthur?’ asked Theodore as he
lifted the unfamiliar bottle of La Senancole for inspection.

  ‘Oh, literally. You see I’ve discovered that humans can indeed be marinated while alive. I’ve been reading about these Shingon monks from the Yamagata region of Japan who can mummify themselves while alive by drinking special teas that dry out their bodies. By the time they die from hunger or boredom – I haven’t worked out which – they are mummifed.’

  ‘I do hope you’re not going to mummify yourself, Arthur,’ said Charles nervously. ‘The thought crossed my mind. That way I could ask in my will to keep attending the

  dinners rather like that Bentham fellow in University College London. But I think my original plan is better – to leave you, my fellow gastronomic explorers, to answer the question that no-one dare ask. Everyone seems to like asking big questions these days, such as why do I exist? And what is the purpose of life? But why does no-one ask, what do I taste like? So, as I announced at our last meeting, I’m donating my body to gast-ronomy and I want to make sure that I give myself the best possible favour with these liqueurs.’

  Augustus sat quietly shaking his head. He had already been through the stage of dis-belief in Arthur’s grand plan and realised its apparent inevitability. So he alone could appreciate the impact of these words on his colleagues.

  ‘Arthur, I’m sure you’ll be the fnest-tasting Englishman who has ever died, but I be-lieve a Frenchman would taste better.’ George good-naturedly lifted a glass of Benedict-ine in toast.

  ‘Thank you, George. A very kind offer,’ replied Arthur with a smile curling on the corner of his lips as George look baffed.

  ‘I presume you too mean to donate your body when you die so we can make a taste comparison. Excellent idea. I know you’re only half-French, but it should give us some idea.’

  It took Charles and Theodore several minutes to calm George down. He was verging on the apoplectic as much at the slur of being only half-French as at the thought of being eaten by the remaining Englishmen and an Irishman who would survive the double de-mise of Arthur and George. Hamish sat with tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks, leaving Augustus to fully appreciate the moment. Augustus then tried to defect Arthur with an alternative plan.

  ‘Arthur, I think I have a gastronomic challenge that will afford beneft to a greater range of gastronomes. After all, as wonderful or awful as you do or don’t taste in the fesh, I don’t think cannibalism is likely to prove popular.’

  ‘Anthropophagy, please, cannibalism is such an ugly and etymologically unsound word,’ replied Arthur, intrigued as to where his friend was going with his new challenge.

  ‘Well, I don’t think anthropophagy will be popular either – far too much of a mouth-ful. Now what commonly used ingredient tastes divine but causes some people concerns about the animal husbandry involved in its creation?’

  ‘Veal?’ offered Hamish, only to be met with a faint shake of the head from Augustus who had inadvertently slipped into tutorial teaching mode.

  ‘ Foie gras !’ exclaimed the chaplain.

  ‘Exactly, now Arthur, I suggest that you offer to make recompense to the geese that you may meet in the next world by being force-fed in the manner of a goose being raised to make foie gras .’

  ‘How would appeasing geese help the cause of gastronomy?’ said Arthur. ‘It is certainly a matter of valid gastronomic enquiry. It would allow us to see what

  happens to the human liver under the same circumstances and how long a human can survive this diet. If the suffering proves too severe then the experiment can be stopped early as the answer will have been already found.’

  The room fell silent as they waited for Arthur’s verdict. Arthur’s many chins stayed elevated for an agonisingly long time in the position that usually indicated an impending announcement. He fnally gave his response.

  ‘Augustus, my dear chap, I can’t believe that you are telling me to commit suicide by overeating just to make yourself feel better about eating foie gras .’

  Augustus took a deep breath to recover his poise and tried to use Arthur’s own brand of logic against him, now more determined than ever to defect Arthur from his stated plan.

  ‘All right, Arthur, you seem more eager to answer your big gastronomic question than the rest of us. But to complete your grand experiment, you will inevitably have to die. As you will never know the answer, why bother?’

  The murmurs of ‘hear, hear’ from around the table faded into expectant silence as Arthur pondered his reply.

  ‘Elementary, my dear doctor, having been across the great divide and returned I know there is life beyond death. So with the aid of a medium I was rather hoping you could call me up after my death and tell me that I was right, that I tasted divine.’

  ‘A medium?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Those clowns wouldn’t know a spirit if it came up and kicked them in the goolies,’ offered Hamish in his inimitable style.

  ‘Do you really believe in those charlatans?’ said Charles. ‘No, I believe in my own experience,’ continued Arthur, unperturbed by the hostility

  around the table. ‘There are certainly clowns pretending to be mediums, but the spirit realm exists – of that I’m certain. If I can reach it and come back I don’t see why a proper medium couldn’t communicate with spirits. In fact I’ve just invited one to next term’s dinner, a certain Thaddeus Rhymer who is greatly respected within the spiritual community. If I can see how mediums do it from this side, then when I’m on the other side I can tune in much better. I thought we could practise by calling up Gordon Max-well.’

  ‘An excellent plan, Arthur, I’m sure,’ said Theodore. ‘But of course you have to con-vince us to go along with your plan.’

  ‘Certainly, Theodore, but I trust you all to do the right thing when the day of my de-parture arrives. Now George, why don’t we try some more of that foie gras I see over there?’

  With those words, the normal convivial atmosphere of these meetings was restored, with most members of the faculty taking Arthur’s words to mean that by humouring him in life they might avoid having to eat him in death. Replacing the blue cheese on Arthur’s pears with the foie gras produced an hors d’oeuvres which all agreed reached new heights. To do this combination true justice, George disappeared into the cellars on a mission to recover a bottle of Muscat de Rivesaltes and was rewarded by being vic-torious in a vote on Franco-German supremacy of sweet wines. All seemed well in the world of gastronomy.

  Chapter 15

  Gerard, the senior parlour scout, passed around the room lighting candles and laying out the menus. This term’s faculty dinner was being held within the Master’s lodgings. Ar-thur Plantagenet had been so impressed by the Master’s expertise in the feld of exotic fruits at their last meeting that he’d invited him as his guest. On accepting the invitation, Lord Faulkner had proposed the Harlaxton room as it was both a suitable atmosphere and far enough from prying eyes to afford complete privacy. The vice-chancellor had yet to follow through on his more outrageous threats to have the shadow faculty disbanded, but it seemed prudent to follow the Master’s advice and not have the dinner in one of the more public areas of the College.

  The dark panelled room was glowing with light from candles and the wood fre that burned in the vast stone freplace. The fne Irish linen tablecloth was adorned with the best of the College’s extensive silver collection. By electric light, polished silver could look a little brash, but by candlelight, the assorted collection was resplendent. Alchemists had for many years tried to transmute metals into gold and here, unnoticed by Gerard, the process was achieved: silver into burnished gold with the simple addition of burning beeswax. Gerard afforded himself a surreptitious glance at the menu. Although he didn’t know the contents of every dish, he was reassured that there were no obviously poisonous dishes being served tonight. Rattlesnake fricassee had sounded rather hazardous a couple of years back, and, while not a culinary success, at least the members of the faculty and their guests were alive to discuss its failings after t
he event. There was a frm consensus at that dinner that snakes were punished by God for their meddling in the Garden of Eden not only by being forced to crawl on their bellies but also by having the worst-tasting fesh of all his creatures. Having said that, Gerard hadn’t suspected any undue risks at last term’s dinner, but the memory of poor Mr Tokoro’s last laboured gasps still haunted him. Once the table was dressed he looked to his next task, the preparation of the aperitif. Tonight’s opening beverage was to be an absinthe martini. Successful preparation of twelve martinis single-handed was a signifcant challenge, but Gerard had rehearsed the sequence in his head and, as soon as he heard the frst voices in the hall outside, he com-menced. All twelve pre-chilled glasses were already lined up in a row and the eleven cocktail olives and single cocktail onion skewered on Georgian silver hatpins lay on a

  plate at the side. He started by pouring a generous measure of absinthe into the frst two martini glasses and, with one in each hand, swirled them just fast enough to make the liquid rise to the lip of the glass without a drop being spilt. He then poured out the re-maining spirit into the next two glasses and repeated this fne display of wrist control until all twelve glasses had a fne coating of absinthe on the inside surface.

  He then drained the last remnants of water from the two mixing jugs of ice before adding frst the French vermouth, Noilly Prat, and then the Booth’s House of Lords gin the requested 1:8 ratio. This was the best compromise the faculty could agree on between the dryness of Winston Churchill’s martini, who famously preferred to bow in the direction of France before supping his glass of pure chilled gin, and Arthur Plant-agenet’s very un-dry martini. It was Arthur’s grand notion that the gin to vermouth mix should mirror the dimensions of the Parthenon in Athens, approximately 1.618:1. This apparently insignifcant number will be recognised by mathematicians and ancient Greek scholars as the golden ratio or golden mean. Although possibly a fne proportion for a temple, the rest of the faculty agreed it was an appalling way to make a martini.