‘Sunil…’
‘His real name is Sachin, and he’s David’s closest friend,’ she said. ‘They met at school when they were eleven years old. Sachin was very fond of Valerie, too. If you’d ever listened to her, you’d remember his name.’
Jeremy swallowed. ‘So you’re not a trust-fund kid…’
‘I’m not an orphan either, or even a Canadian. David paid for everything; Sachin and I worked out the plan. David’s always blamed himself for not saving his sister from you. Once we’re back in Britain, he’ll finally be able to start over.’
‘And you’ll have your hands on his half of the inheritance,’ Jeremy muttered.
She smiled. ‘You should have listened to what I said in Dubai. You’re the one obsessed with money.’
‘And what do you care about?’
‘David,’ she said simply. ‘And I care about history, too. That’s why I told you the story of the Repentance Wood. So that, before the end comes, you’d understand why the past matters. Perhaps even feel some empathy. If only for those malefactors of old. The men left to repent their sins at leisure as they slowly burned to death under the unforgiving sun.’
A Mouthful of Restaurant
Martine Bailey
Naturally, I prepared my own reference of character in order to become manservant to young Lord Tilston. ‘Gould is the best of men to serve a gentleman on a foreign tour,’ I wrote in my best copperplate. ‘He will ensure his master dines well and carries a most serviceable box of remedies.’ Yes, every word of it was true – save the signature, of course.
Tilly, as I came to address him in the privacy of my mind, was then seventeen years old, sprawling before me in a suit of blue satin, the red pustules flaming on his lily-white face. His father, the duke, had granted him a year to visit Europe and I … well, I had a hankering to be gone from England and dine at another’s expense. Young Tilly quizzed me in his strangulated drawl: he could stomach none of that continental trash, those frogs’ legs and garlicked gizzards. I must feed him only plain substantials. And was it true I carried a discreet box of medicines?
His elder brother, the earl, sauntered in to inspect me. I am a stout man of thirty with something of the cherub to my rosy lips and sympathetic smile, and in a sober suit of clothes I pass pretty well for a gentleman. The earl leered at his younger brother and wished him a fine year’s travelling with such an amiable fellow at his side. And so I gained the promise of twenty guineas for the year and the perquisite of dining with young Tilly when he had no better company.
We rattled off down the turnpikes, and I directed the coachman to the best inns for eatables: the fig tarts of Lancashire, fine Cheshire cheeses, pork pies of Melton Mowbray and London beefsteaks. But across the English Channel we suffered at French hands, facing a barrage of bone-crunching songbirds, or on Papist days, naught but stinking fish or mashed eggs. Seeing my young lord sulk, I loaded my pistol and destroyed a family of coneys to create my edible tableau, ‘Rabbits Surprised’. Our dinners improved at Chantilly: the perch was exquisite and the chicken came dressed in yellow mushrooms, butter and cream. I developed a taste for truffled duck and Burgundy wine. Tilly was not a lad to bore himself with checking an inn’s account.
In Paris my master found new companions: rouged trollops with patched bosoms and hooped backsides. Many a morning I tripped over his prone body on the drawing-room carpet. Like a nursemaid, I ordered him to vomit in the pot, piss in the privy, and attend upon me to cure his pox.
My tools are clysters, syringes, and a razor-sharp scarifier to open a vein. Tilly’s blue blood was as scarlet as any pressed canard as it congealed in my basin. My tiny dose glass was also much in use. To treat my master’s clap, each night I gave him one ounce of brandy combined with Morphia’s Elixir. And it was then, while he lay tranced by the poppy, that I took a prowl around his chamber. Only fifty-four guineas remained in his travelling trunk. I bridled. I was in no position to be stranded penniless in a foreign land.
That year of 1773 the talk of Paris was a divine eating establishment that served Le Goût Moderne.
‘I hear rumours of a hellish fine place to dine, sir,’ I said, as I dressed my lord’s greasy hair with clay rollers. To handle his person was not a pleasant task. Crusty red scabadoes plagued his scalp, yet still he spent his nights cunny-hunting. And so I added, ‘All the prettiest mademoiselles parade there.’
The coachman drove us through the crowds; the revellers’ faces tinted green by the new-strung oil lamps. Down the Rue Saint-Honoré we found an impressive door beneath a sign proclaiming ‘Restaurants Divins’.
‘What is this place?’ young Tilly grumbled, eyeing a salon populated by rouge-faced men and bone-thin women lounging at small tables. A moment later we were seated in a chandelier-lit corner staring at cards listing fancy French dishes.
‘Damn you, Gould. Is this one of those foppish health-food places?’ He pressed his fingers to his pimply brow, suspiciously eying the other diners.
‘I believe it to be the first fashion of Paris, my lord,’ I insisted, studying the carte. The prices were printed quite openly and I fretted to see that a full supper cost five whole livres. The appeal was that they served all those healthful dishes so much vaunted by Monsieur Rousseau: Savoy milk fresh from the cow’s udder, and Alpine honey and fruits. It was the stuff from those novels of his that everyone pretends to read these days, but it intrigued me nonetheless.
They gave us quite a show. A handsome proprietress in a gown of spangled silk greeted us in English. ‘I comprehend you have most sensitive souls, messieurs,’ she cooed, as if she were our intimate of many years. ‘I prescribe for you a nourishing health supper to rebuild your physiognomies.’
‘Balderdash,’ my lord snorted, and called the waiter for another baluster of brandy. I took a long look around me, at the gilded ormolu clock, the heavy silver candlesticks and cutlery. I was making calculations upon the figure of five livres collected from each diner. It was a devilishly forward-looking business.
Our supper arrived and my master’s face turned sour.
‘Damn me! I never saw food so monstrously small. And overdressed.’
To him, the potage de santé was nothing but a plate of laundry water. As for me, if I forgot that my master was being fleeced abominably, the breast of pigeon was the best I ever tasted. As for the jasmine ice cream, the coldness numbed my tongue for a moment, and then a meadow of flowers blossomed on my palate.
After washing down yet more brandy, my master turned spiteful. ‘You, Gould, have a sly manner. I do not care for it.’ His watery eyes narrowed. ‘I engaged you to free me of all this flim-flam. Look at it!’ He waved his arm unsteadily. ‘I need an Englishman’s dinner: beef, pudding, a pint of wine.’ He banged his knife and fork, making the table rattle. The other diners nudged elbows and giggled at the drunken English rosbif.
‘And as for that medical box of tricks, what the devil use is that? Every day I grow weaker and more queasy. You are a junketeer, sir! I am done with you. Pack your goods and be off. You are no longer wanted.’
So, the puerile ninny planned to dismiss me? I had to restrain myself from knocking the boy’s empty head from his shoulders. ‘I would pay for supper myself,’ I said in a tone of ice, ‘only you, sir, have not yet had the courtesy to pay my fee.’
‘Pay you?’ he snorted. ‘Your belly has been paid tenfold at my expense. I should rather say that you owe me a fortune!’
I thrust back my chair and sprang away from the sight of him. I blundered through the first door I noticed and into the kitchen. The heat stunned me: rows of spitted meats revolved on racks before blazing fires. A number of man-cooks worked in the fog of steam, and even in my rage I saw there truly was a genius to the system of that place.
I backed away from the kitchen into a scullery and there I first sighted Cécile. She stood crouched over a chafing dish, a ripe kitchen rat of unknowable age, encased in a food-spattered apron. She raised two sloe-black eyes to me, entirely n
onchalant. Then, with the reverence of a nun before a crucifix, she reached for a teaspoon and tasted her concoction. Carefully her wide mouth chewed and tested the flavour, her face transported to a culinary paradise.
‘Quintessence,’ she whispered, her languishing eyes meeting mine again, with all the force of a coach and six slamming into my soul. She presented the spoon to my own mouth and I parted my lips.
I tasted unctuous meat juice, rich with the pungent flavours of the earth. I also tasted her own essence. My brainbox emptied of grammar-school French. I bowed, I announced my name. I reached to kiss her hand, which was as hot and slippery as a roasted eel. She pulled away and laughed, showing pointed, childlike teeth. Then, pointing to the timepiece hanging on a hook, she said with a lizard flick of her eyes, ‘À minuit?’
I considered a moment.
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘I shall return at midnight.’
Then, begging a small portion of bouillon, I returned to my master.
Back in the salon Tilly was fretting to leave for the carnal frolics of the Luxembourg Gardens. I set the bouillon down before him: a tiny cup to which I had added a few of my own soporific drops.
‘Here, sir,’ I said meekly. ‘Forgive me. This is gratis, their health speciality. I have summoned the coachman. Pray try it while you wait.’
He downed it in a twinkling and then watched me with disdain as I devoured a dish of enchanting biscuits du Palais Royal. Soon his eyelids drooped, his chin sank to his breast and he grew insensible. I caught him in my arms as he crashed across the table and then hailed a waiter to carry him outside. Within the quarter-hour he was loaded in the carriage and on his way home to a solitary bed.
At midnight I returned to enjoy Cécile’s liberty. We got no further than the outhouse in the yard. I wanted her as hot as I’d first found her, still smelling of animal blood, her skin moist with sweat and gravy. I tasted sugar on her teeth and sank my fingers deep into melted-butter slipperiness. Even before I plunged into her circle of bliss my mind was resolved. Here was a creature I could devour each night afresh. She murmured my name and I vowed to her in my foxed French that I would send for her, and do it soon.
It is a shame my young master cannot see his former man’s glory. The poor fellow was soon afterwards discovered by the concierge of that Paris apartment, stiff and silent in his chamber. Vomit had destroyed his gold-laced suit and blocked his windpipe. Naturally, I did everything in my command to assist the authorities. It was pronounced that my young charge had committed self-murder, no doubt overcome by the shame of the venereal buboes that uglified his person. The poor blockhead had mixed too great a quantity of Morphia’s Elixir with his nightly brandy. As for me, I was entirely exonerated, and to avoid misunderstanding, produced two witnesses who swore to seeing me that day in distant Lyon.
Tonight Cécile and I celebrate our first year as proprietors of the Hotel Sybilla, just beside Rome’s Colosseum. In the dining room Cécile is even now displaying her pièce montée, a sugar-paste Palace of Pandemonium dressed with miniature figures of fiends and she-devils. Yet always at the heart of our success is that doll’s sized cup of quintessence. The French call the bouillon a restaurant, for it restores the body’s vigour. A restaurant is also what they call those glamorous dining rooms of Paris now. By the time I sent Cécile money to follow me, all the innkeepers were clamouring to open one. The new rules of dining are these: at each table a person or family may sit alone; yet they are not alone – they are on display for all the public to observe. And the bill of fare must be listed on a paper – a carte or menu – and each guest may choose dishes according to their whim. And the bill is not shared, like at the harumscarum table of an inn: one pays only for what one eats according to the bill of charges.
I congratulate myself. I understood from the first how these restaurants were palaces of perception. To dine thus transforms the curious into the epicurean – for a few hours at least. Fashion, that ethereal will o’ the wisp, is captured, priced and, miraculously, ingested by the body. And consequently my fortunes are also restored to robust health.
Ah, here she comes, my own Cécile. See, she appears quite the lady now in gold brocade, her fingerless gloves masking years of scarring at the cook’s altar of fire.
‘Monsieur Gould,’ she whispers, that husky croak of hers whisking up my blood. She offers me a letter on a silver tray.
‘The Earl of Tilston will be honoured to attend tonight’s assembly,’ I announce after reading it. Naturally, my invitation to Tilly’s elder brother had not revealed my own identity. The men I pay at the custom house tell me his business here is of an investigative nature. He has been asking the whereabouts of an English manservant once engaged by his poor brother Tilly.
‘Cécile. Do you suppose you can tempt the earl with a taste of our special quintessence?’
She smiles at me; her carmine lips glistening, those little pointed teeth revealed.
‘The pot simmers. A reduction of beef, bones, and…’
‘…a secret addition?’
Her jet-black eyes flash with laughter.
Yes, my medicine box was also carried here from Paris, stocked with powders of mercury, lead, emetics, soporifics. I am forever grateful to that other former master who endowed it to my care, a physician who commanded large fees before he … Well, that is another tale. I rifle in its wooden compartments and find my dram glass.
‘I am wondering,’ Cécile asks, and her lips stay parted, breathless, ‘if the earl might succeed in finding … Tilly?’
Polishing the glass before the candelabra, I consider how I always serve my masters according to their merits.
‘If so, he will have reached his journey’s end,’ I announce, inspecting the flask of Morphia against the candle flame, its contents as tarry as molasses.
‘The merest mouthful of restaurant,’ I say, inserting the glass dropper in the flask, ‘and he too will cross the river of oblivion and be restored to his brother’s company for eternity.’
Cruising for a Killing
Maxim Jakubowski
In Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, the local population normally stands at around 2,660 people (plus hundreds of sharks in the neighbouring waters that you are requested not to feed, at any rate voluntarily). Once a week or so, however, a cruise boat swells this number by several hundred souls, who disembark at the jetty from the tender boats to the sound of a local haka and the beating of tribal drums, tasks that keep one per cent of the island’s inhabitants in work, dressed for the occasion in traditional attire they no doubt hate with a vengeance.
Since the boat had left Acapulco, we’d been at sea for nine days, so the prospect of solid land had us queuing like lemmings on the stairs leading down to deck three, where we could embark on the smaller crafts that would take us ashore, the cruise boat being anchored some five hundred yards away from the island, which, unlike our previous ports of call, lacked mooring facilities large enough to accommodate it.
I’d travelled on the M/V Magellan once before, as a guest lecturer giving, in my capacity as a crime writer, talks on Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Chandler, Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Morse. A nice, easy gig, even if on that occasion the audience had mostly consisted of retirees and geriatrics ticking off their bucket list by cruising the Amazon. Two elderly passengers had, in fact, died on that cruise – of natural causes. I was told by someone on the medical team this was not uncommon and that the boat’s facilities had enough suitable space to fit up to half a dozen dead bodies in between ports. It was a feature of the giant cruise ships the large companies who owned them declined to advertise in their glossy brochures designed to attract the older generation and their grey pounds (or dollars or euros).
On that previous cruise I’d become familiar with the vessel’s systems. On embarkation, every passenger was handed a personal cruise card, the size of a credit card, which he or she would use for all purchases and bar bills, which would
then be charged to their accounts. This card also functioned as an ID of sorts and was scanned every time the passenger went ashore and again when they returned on board, thus informing the ship’s main computer if anyone had been left behind. It seemed pretty foolproof and well thought out, until I discovered by accident that there was a serious loophole in the system.
So as not to have to carry the card in my shorts pockets all the time, when I didn’t need it I had made a habit of storing it inside the top drawer of the desk in my cabin, only to find one morning that it had disappeared. I assumed that I had lost it somewhere the previous day, when I’d used it to go ashore. Maybe it had fallen out of my pocket as I came back from my excursion into Recife, laden as I was with both my rucksack and a shopping bag of various souvenirs. I made my way to the reception desk to have it cancelled and to prevent any other passenger using it to charge drinks to my account. The Ukrainian blonde staffing the desk was all smiles, cancelled the card with immediate effect and, after checking her screen and confirming that no extraneous charges had been posted to my account, printed out a new one for me, no further questions asked.
My worries put to rest, I was placing the new card inside the desk drawer, when I noticed that the old, presumed-missing card, was in fact still there; it had simply slipped into a corner and jammed itself flat against the partition of the drawer, invisible to the naked eye from all but a certain angle. I breathed a sigh of relief but decided not to advise the reception desk, for fear of appearing something of a myopic imbecile. The old, cancelled cruise card would make a good bookmark, I reckoned, and a sober reminder to be more careful in future.
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