The Reluctant Cannibals

by The Reluctant Cannibals (mobi)

  ‘Oh the box, that’s just to allow me to assemble everything on the punt.’ ‘Christ, that’ll sink it.’

  ‘Nonsense, Augustus, now let’s get going. I’ve just got delivery of my new motor. She’s an absolute cracker.’

  ‘Hold on, Hamish. There is just one more thing to get ready: this turkey. Now how do you suppose we get these ashes into it?’

  ‘No better man to work that one out than you, Augustus. I’ll just bring down this gramophone here and get Vanessa loaded up.’

  ‘Vanessa?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve christened her Vanessa, my car. She is truly gorgeous.’ True to his word Hamish grabbed the old gramophone in one hand and the mysteriously smoking metal case in the other and with great relief launched himself down the staircase. He had no desire to see or assist in the entombing of Arthur’s ashes within the fragrant fowl that sat on Augustus’ table.

  It would have been simpler to have had Arthur’s ashes mixed with the truffed stuff-ing before cooking, but it was too late for that. Augustus sat at the table in front of Arthur’s urn and his soon to be culinary sarcophagus. Like a master chess player, he surveyed the options in his mind. A thick dusting of ashes would be simple but not in keeping with Arthur’s will. A vision of the dust lingering on the surface while the turkey fell to the depths was suffcient to completely dispel that plan. The ashes had to be con-cealed within without making an almighty mess. Augustus took to his feet and started pacing the foor. Pausing at the small alcove that served as his kitchen, he spied a narrow jar of capers recently purchased and still unopened. Considering that Arthur had rather unusually chosen to have his ashes deposited at three different locations, the jar, though small, would ft the bill nicely.

  Emptying the contents of the jar into a mug, Augustus scanned for something that would serve as a funnel. There was certainly nothing intended for the purpose of funnel-ling human ashes, though that is perhaps not altogether unsurprising in the rooms of an Oxford don. What is never lacking in such a room is paper, stacks of loose sheets and journals covering most available horizontal surface. So the creation of a funnel came down to the choice of the correct piece of paper. One might imagine that this should depend on the physical properties of the paper, its size and rigidity and such like. For Augustus, his sense of academic decorum dictated that Arthur’s ashes should only slide down a piece of paper adorned with words of a suitable subject matter. After several minutes of indecision, he felt that a page from a review he was writing on the medical benefts of monastic herbal liqueurs would be ideal. After carefully decanting a portion of Arthur’s ashes onto the title page of his manuscript, Augustus rolled up the page to let Arthur slip into the jar. The fnal stage required some hands-on rearrangement of the turkey and sadly the sacrilegious loss of some of the stuffing, but after a few more mo-ments of ungainly shoving, one of Arthur’s resting places was ready for its fnal voyage.

  *

  Augustus arrived in the lodge with the turkey and walked into what resembled the base-camp for a Victorian exploration. The stone fags were stacked high with the two wicker cases from his room and several more besides, a gramophone, assorted rugs and Ham-ish’s strange-looking scientifc equipment. His fellow faculty members were nowhere to be seen but he could hear Hamish’s enthusiastic tone. Walking through the gates he discovered his colleagues being instructed by Hamish in the delights of his new motor vehicle. Although motor cars carried little fascination for most of the faculty, Hamish’s infectious enthusiasm resulted in the curious sight of four Oxford dons admiring the en-gine of his brand new Jaguar E-Type 2+2.

  For George, Theodore and Charles, this was the frst car engine they had ever been forced to examine in detail. They were running out of suitable adjectives and devoid of any technical knowledge that might guide a relevant question, so the arrival of Augustus was met with general delight. All the more so when he proved able to pass an informed comment about the challenges of balancing the triple carburettors of such cars. With that, the bonnet was clicked back into position with the two elegantly curved chrome handles restoring ‘Vanessa’ to her full curvaceous glory.

  Two rugs and a single hamper were squeezed into the boot upon which Charles vo-lunteered the opinion that they probably wouldn’t all ft in. After a little more debate on the topic, he returned to ask Potts to call a cab.

  ‘On its way already, sir. I guessed you wouldn’t all be ftting into that little car,’ said Potts with a deferential tap on the edge of his black bowler hat with his fnger, leaving an impressed chaplain to return to the throng outside.

  ‘Smart fellow that Potts,’ said Charles on his return. ‘He’d already called a cab. I don’t know what we’d do without him.’

  ‘Excellent! You lot take the cab,’ said Hamish. ‘Augustus and me will head on up to the boathouse and get the punts ready.’ Hamish achieved the apparently impossible task of squeezing himself into the driver’s seat and fred up Vanessa, who roared to life be-fore settling into a throaty purr. Augustus, being of a lighter frame, ftted easily into the passenger seat and cradled the turkey on his lap. Theodore Flanagan stood shaking his head disapprovingly as Vanessa departed into the warm April sun, ‘Augustus and I … Augustus and I … ’

  *

  By the time Hamish rolled Vanessa’s shining blue frame into the yard of the Cherwell boathouse, the others were already there. Hamish hadn’t been able to resist the urge to show off his new toy to Augustus, so the route included several circuits of Oxford’s landmarks. A heavily laden punt was already tied up but still only partly loaded with the picnic hampers. With the installation of the last hamper, the remaining members of the shadow faculty took their places. There were only seats for four, but George had already taken charge of the punt pole and positioned himself at the stern, so two empty seats remained. One might imagine that telling the stern of a punt from its bow should be a simple matter, but it is an issue curiously complicated by geography. In Oxford, the stern is located at the opposite end to the platform called the box, which is also more cryptically known as the ‘till’. Confusingly, the till is the stern in Cambridge, and one stands on it to punt in defance of all logic. The smallest amount of water combined with a poor choice in footwear can spell disaster, with the punter inevitably sliding off the till into the water. As there is no navigable waterway from Oxford to Cambridge, thankfully punters are spared the challenging question of exactly where on a journey between these two eminent university towns to change ends.

  George expertly guided the punt into the stream. They made quite a sight passing down the Cherwell with the sides of the craft perilously close to the water line. Hamish’s steel container gave the craft the appearance of a comically fattened Thames steamer with a steady fow of smoke-like vapour trailing back along the punt. The frst instalment of Arthur’s ashes lay within the turkey, which was cradled on Augustus’ lap. The gramo-phone had been lashed with rope to the top of the till for safety.

  Although made to seem like a complicated art by generations of hapless tourists and new students, punting is a simple but enjoyable activity once a few basic rules are un-derstood. The principal secret of punting is how to steer. In skilled hands this appears to happen miraculously without any human intervention and in the absence of any mechan-ical steering device. The trick is in the gathering of the pole. After each push the skilled punter leaves the pole trailing in the water, appearing to admire the scenery but in real-ity during these moments slight movements of the pole provide the effect of a rudder. Only once the punter is happy with the direction of the punt will he start to gather back the pole. Once gathered, the next common mistake is to lower the pole at an angle hand over hand. This leaves the novice grasping onto the very end of the pole while the punt continues to move forward. The skilled punter has the pole vertical before letting it drop through the hands. In a moving punt this produces the correct angle of the pole by the time it reaches the riverbed. After a gentle push comes the fnal twist which is done im-perceptibly a few seconds bef
ore the pole needs to be lifted. This clears the pole from the mud beneath or at the very least alerts the punter that he may require more force to free the pole before disaster strikes. Therein lies the most visually entertaining mistake in punting; slavishly hanging onto a pole that is stuck in the mud as the punt moves for-ward. The poor unfortunate is left suspended for a few agonising moments before slid-ing or falling into the water.

  Naturally, George Le Strang had mastered all these and many other fner points of punting. At the start he was punting masterfully, but when they approached Parson’s Pleasure the boat started to rock as he changed his stance. Parson’s Pleasure was a gen-tleman’s bathing area located on the River Cherwell, where distinguished senior mem-bers of the university could rest and swim unencumbered by a swimming costume. More exhibitionist members would sit on the bank trailing legs and anything else lacking sup-port over the edge, entirely immune to the sniggering hoards of undergraduates punting past. This had been a favourite summer haunt of Arthur Plantagenet and indeed the place where he and George Le Strang had frst become friends, despite their wildly dispar-ate personalities. While Arthur made no secret of his love of Parson’s Pleasure, for Ge-orge it was an unspoken pleasure. The appearance of punt-loads of thrill-seeking ladies from Somerville or St Hugh’s always served to accentuate their diametrically opposite response to almost any situation. Arthur would merely lift his book a little higher, leav-ing the rest of his Neronic physique on full view. George would instinctively reach for a towel or, in the absence of that refuge of decency, cover his privates with his hands. Ar-thur always maintained a logical superiority in such situations, claiming with undoubted veracity that most people recognised him by his face rather than any other part of his anatomy. Covering one’s face was therefore the only reasonable action to spare one’s own blushes.

  The cause of George’s sudden punting diffculties was Professor Henrik Olsen, an eccentric and voluble friend of Arthur who would most certainly recognise George and attempt a conversation across the watery divide. George had therefore turned his back on Parson’s Pleasure and was attempting to punt on his left-hand side, contrary to his usual custom. This caused the punt to veer from side to side and shake with sudden and unpredictable tilts to port or starboard. Despite some glances and mutterings between Hamish and Theodore on George’s sudden loss of punting skills, the plan worked and Henrik Olsen remained in rapt conversation with the self-consciously contorted young man with whom he was sharing a bench.

  When Parson’s Pleasure was well out of sight, Charles Pinker made a discreet cough to gain his fellow punters’ attention. George left the pole trailing in the water behind, and the others sat up in preparation for the ceremony. Charles sat for a few long seconds with his eyes closed and then, in his chapel voice, intoned his oration for Arthur Planta-genet.

  ‘Dear Lord, I commit this son of Adam to your care. The parents of the human race were forced to leave paradise for an apple, what would they have done for a truffed tur-key? In tribute to Arthur Plantagenet we leave his ashes in gastronomic paradise inside such a creature and commend his soul to you.’

  A stunned silence followed these words. To a man they were expecting Charles to speak for much longer and with a more ecclesiastical tone. A fick of the chaplain’s eye-brows in the direction of Augustus gave the signal for the turkey containing Arthur’s ashes to be released into the water beneath. Augustus lifted the plate and Hamish obliged with the gramophone lowering the needle onto the recording of Stabat Mater . With a gentle nudge, Augustus sent Arthur’s unusual sarcophagus slipping into the green waters to the crackling bass tones of the Pro Peccatis from the gramophone. For the briefest of moments the dull green glint of the bird could be seen descending through the water. Then it was gone.

  No-one could think of anything else to say and after a few moments they fell into a respectful silence, all apart from George who was singing quietly along with the gramo-phone. After the last notes from the gramophone faded, the chaplain intoned the last words of the Stabat Mater .

  ‘ Quando corpus morietur, fac, ut animae donetur paradisi gloria. Amen .’ Seeing the rather blank look on Hamish’s face, Charles obliged with a translation, ‘When my body dies, let my soul be granted the glory of Paradise. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ the small foating congregation intoned back. ‘Now, anyone thirsty?’ asked Hamish after a decent interval which he had cut as short

  as decency allowed. Not waiting for an answer he turned around and hoisted his myster-ious casket onto his lap and started pulling out its contents.

  ‘Theodore, if you would be so kind as to hold this jug and the bottle of Pimms.’ Then Hamish pulled out a bottle of Gilbey’s gin containing a suspicious green liquid that looked decidedly un-gin-like and a steaming fask.

  ‘Dare I ask what the green liquid is?’ said Augustus, hoping desperately that it wasn’t more Chartreuse. Ever since the séance, even the smell of Chartreuse had left him with a sense of foreboding.

  ‘Gin infused for a full week in crushed cucumber skins then fltered. You’ll love it. Now Charles, get the glasses ready.’ Charles duly rooted for the martini glasses while Hamish decanted the entire bottle of cucumber infused gin into the mixing jug. He then added a small glug of Pimms before handing the jug back to Theodore for stirring. Then he opened the steaming fask and shook a few white pellets of dry ice into each glass.

  ‘Theodore, would you like to pour?’

  Theodore poured the green liquor into each glass, causing a torrent of boiling fog to pour over the edge of each glass.

  ‘Gentlemen, I present to you the cucumber Pimmtini,’ said Hamish, holding his glass high in a toast. ‘To Arthur.’

  It was a concoction of alcoholic and theatrical perfection and Hamish sat back vic-toriously sipping his Pimmtini and admiring the nugget of dry ice that danced in his glass and the mist tumbling down over the stem.

  ‘Congratulations, Hamish,’ said George. ‘Perhaps I could offer a small hors d’oeuvres as an accompaniment to this fne drink? Have a look in the top of that hamper.’

  Hamish lifted the lid and cooed with delight before passing around the bowl of boiled quails’ eggs.

  No reasonable and otherwise caring person should spend too long thinking about the common human practice of eating the unborn eggs of birds. It is not after all a practice that will bear up to deep moral inquiry when compared to the protection we offer our own children, but anyone with an aesthetic soul can only marvel at the glorious colours on the outside and especially the inside of a quail egg. It is one of the great mysteries of nature why, under luckier circumstances, a quail chick develops inside a vault of such a divine blue-green. A colour that is hidden from the world until the egg is opened and discarded. These particular eggs were shelled with due admiration of their colour and then the conversation tumbled on, turning naturally to memories of Arthur, recounting phrases that were quintessentially his own. One by one they bit into their eggs with cas-ual disregard, only to be brought up short by the explosion of favour from the still soft yolk.

  ‘Heavens above, George,’ spluttered Hamish, ‘these eggs are outrageously good. Where in God’s name did you get them?’

  ‘My own dedication to Arthur, a quail laid them but I humbly improved them.’ George smiled down the punt, relishing the next round of comments and accolades. ‘But how?’ spluttered Augustus.

  ‘The eggs were cooked for 2 minutes 45 seconds in gently simmering water, cooled in running water and then injected with a tiny volume of a mixture of Worcestershire sauce and truffe-scented oil into the cooling but still liquid yolk. I used those fne hy-podermic syringes you kindly gave me last year Augustus when we were experimenting with brandy injected bananas.’

  George gave a small bow in acknowledgement of the applause and popped one of the eggs into his mouth. With gentle pressure of the tongue against the roof of his mouth he released the fragrant yolk onto his taste buds. No Roman emperor had ever tasted any-thing so exquisite. Sadly neither
had Arthur Plantagenet, not in this life at least.

  Chapter 29

  ‘So Mr… what was your name again?’ asked Detective Inspector Granger. ‘’Ogarth. Frederick ’Ogarth.’

  ‘Mr Hogarth,’ replied the policeman, emphasising the ‘H’. ‘That’s what I said, ’Ogarth.’

  ‘Good, now we have that cleared up perhaps you could explain why one of my con-stables found you at fve o’clock this morning in the deer park at Magdalen College with a rope and large meat cleaver.’

  ‘Trying to look after my nearest and dearest. Meat don’t grow on trees, you know.’ ‘Indeed, Mr Hogarth. An accurate biological statement but I understand you are in em-

  ployment. I would suppose therefore that you are able to purchase meat as a normal per-son might rather than steal it in the middle of the night.’ The inspector looked down at the notes on the desk in front of him. ‘You are a mortuary assistant at the Radcliffe Infrmary. Is that correct?’

  ‘And proud of it. Still, hard to support a family on them wages. Anyway it’s not like they’d miss a deer or two.’

  ‘Your family are fond of venison, I take it?’

  ‘Look, meat is meat. In a pie a deer tastes as good as a cow in my book.’ ‘So, can I take it that you admit to attempting to steal a deer from Magdalen College?’ ‘Well, you can’t blame a man for trying. But as I didn’t kill anything I can’t be done

  for nothing.’ Mr Hogarth sat back with a satisfed smile on his face. He was not unfamili-ar with the ways of the law and fully expected to be released with no more than a caution.

  ‘Oh, let’s see. Three months for aggravated trespass on private property. Resisting ar-rest. Let’s not forget threatening a police offcer with a cleaver… ’

  ‘I didn’t threaten no-one. Can’t say I was too chuffed being caught, but well, when you’re nicked you’re nicked, ain’t ya?’