‘What do you fancy?’ Marvel inquired as we peered at the menu through the artificial twilight.
‘It’s in French!’ I whispered indignantly.
‘Ignore it!’ Marvel said, with a little wag of his hand. ‘Merely designed to intimidate and irritate the gastric juices.’
‘But I can’t understand a word of it.’
‘Allow me to translate.’
The menu, once it had been unscrambled, was daunting and dangerous. There were boars’ brains with skunkweed pickle. Poached sweetbreads. Rolled tongue. Stewed lungs. Pigs’ ears stuffed with truffle.
‘What do you suggest?’ I said.
‘I suppose you might chance the fish…’ he said without enthusiasm. It was curious that he seemed to have lost all appetite for lunch but he was, it must be confessed, a very curious man.
‘The mackerel wrapped in salt cod with lobster giblet sauce?’
‘Yes. Or the sturgeons’ stomach salad with fermented apricots.’
I glanced nervously at the prices — no attempt here at Frenchification. They were printed bold and black in the local currency. ‘Isn’t this rather expensive?’ I whispered across the table.
‘Perfectly obscene,’ Marvel said. ‘For the price of an omelette in this hell hole you could buy enough chickens to start your own poultry farm.’
The Snooty Artichoke was not the most fashionable restaurant in town. The most desirable address at that time was Curly Colon’s Hamburger Bash. It was a restaurant that dealt exclusively with celebrity food. Hamburgers, hotdogs, ribs and milk shakes. Anything that didn’t require the skills of a knife and fork. It was a place of pilgrimage for film stars, sports stars, singers and TV hosts who needed to be seen clutching their hotdogs and laughing. Curly Colon had been a big rock-and-roll star until rheumatism had forced his retirement. His Hamburger Bash was a three-ring circus, a photo opportunity, a popular tourist attraction. The Snooty Artichoke, by contrast, was a strictly traditional temple to food, retaining all the old customs and rituals, where grave men in dark suits made appointments to eat their money.
‘Shall we try somewhere else?’ I suggested. I knew that he wasn’t a wealthy man and I didn’t want to embarrass him.
‘Courage!’ he whispered. ‘You may rest assured that we’re not required to pay for this folly in anything but risk of injury to our stomachs.’
I blinked and waited hopefully for some kind of explanation. But Marvel said nothing. He must have felt that the circumstances were obvious. ‘Perhaps you should explain,’ I said at last.
He stared at the ceiling. He glanced around him. ‘Think of me as a kind of agent,’ he murmured, leaning towards me.
‘Secret agent?’
‘Confidential. More of a confidential agent.’
‘You mean, like a private detective?’ I said. The mystery was solved! I was meeting Marvel the gumshoe. A man in pursuit of Nazi diamonds, hidden hoards of dangerous drugs, smuggled babies, stolen children; tormented by gangsters and tattooed hoodlums.
He shook his head. ‘We can’t talk here,’ he whispered.
I looked again at the menu. ‘What are you having?’ I asked him.
He sucked a tooth and frowned. ‘I suppose I’ll attempt the stags’ liver in oak apple sauce,’ he said finally, casting the menu aside, and then shook his head as if he already regretted it.
‘I’ll have the mackerel,’ I said cheerfully. A light lunch. Something simple. Cheap and cheerful.
‘And for an hors d’oeuvre?’
‘Is it required?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s cervilles de veau au beurre noir?’
‘Boiled brains.’
‘Oursin?’
‘Sea urchin.’
‘Knobbards avec garniture Anglaise?’
‘Knobbards?’ Marvel said suspiciously. He scowled again at the menu. ‘They’re whelks! Plain and simple. Whelks with brown bread and butter.’
‘I’ll have ’em!’ I said, much relieved.
The sommelier appeared at Marvel’s shoulder. He was old and crumpled and gave off the sour smells of the cellar. His eyes were no more than clouded glass buttons. His lips were blue and his nose very bulbous, the nostrils packed with tufts of hair. He wore a heavy silver chain about his neck and a row of medals at his chest. His chain of office seemed to weigh on him, forcing him forward, directing his gaze towards the floor, which he viewed with a bored contempt.
‘Might I recommend our Cabernet Sauvignon, monsieur?’ he murmured confidentially, tapping a finger against his nose. He might have been trying to rent out his sister. ‘A wine of great and noble vintage, aged in wood and shipped directly from the Krikova Winery on the far shores of rugged Moldova exclusively for the Artichoke. Voluptuous and bold by nature yet without a hint of vulgarity. Inquisitive yet never intrusive. Devoted yet barely dependent. Trusting yet far from innocent. Pungent yet hardly pugnacious. Confusing yet rarely confounding. In short, the perfect lunchtime companion.’
‘We’ll have a bottle,’ Marvel said and slapped the wine list shut. ‘And your largest bottle of Vichy water.’
The sommelier smirked and crept away through the undergrowth.
It seemed to take a very long time to be served with any morsel of food. The wine was presented, opened and tasted. Marvel nodded mournfully and watched the sommelier fill our glasses. I’d hoped to talk about Dorothy but the mood at the table discouraged me from trying to start a conversation. The atmosphere was stifling. The restaurant was filled by a hushed and whispering congregation, full-grown men and women, heads bowed to their plates in prayer.
We sipped at the wine in silence. I knew, from watching TV shows, that wine should taste of apricots, geraniums, walnuts, rhubarb, figs, nettles, raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and vanilla. A glass of wine was the promise of summer, the flame of winter, a kiss of sunlight, the hint of twilight, a rumour of laughter, a rush of passion. But perhaps you had to be dangerously drunk before these allusions came to mind. The wine in my mouth was terrible! Sharp as vinegar. Dark as ink. It skinned my tongue, scorched my throat and quickly started to burn my brain.
‘I don’t drink a lot of wine,’ I said, hoping I might be spared the misery of a second glass.
‘Count your blessings,’ he said.
The knobbards were finally served with ornate tongs and a slender snailing fork. They didn’t taste too bad. The narrow slices of bread and butter helped soften the sound of the sand crunching between my teeth.
When I had finished I picked at the crumbs on my plate and watched Marvel still working at a little bowl of softboiled brains.
‘How do they taste?’ I asked him.
He shook his head and belched. He lay down his fork, wiped his face and greedily rinsed his mouth with water.
The mackerel was delivered with much pomp and circumstance beneath a polished silver dome. When the dome was raised I was left with a grey and gelatinous sausage in a pool of pink sauce on a large white plate. The plate had been further embellished with burnished cockle shells, strands of peppered bladderwrack, gull feathers, lobster whiskers in nautical knots, kelp curlicues, octopus eyes and the claw from an unknown Dublin Bay prawn.
‘How do you find the mackerel?’ Marvel inquired, as he watched me slicing into the sausage.
‘It’s very artistic,’ I said.
‘And how does it taste?’
‘Strong,’ I said, to please him. ‘A strong taste of mackerel.’
‘And the salt-cod wrapping?’
‘Salty.’
‘And the lobster-giblet sauce?’
‘Pink,’ I said. ‘Unusually pink.’
‘Conclusion?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, for example, would you describe it as appealingly simple with charming rustic overtones / deeply defined / dramatically balanced / broadly amusing / an embarrassment of astonishments?’
‘It’s more like a mouthful of bones!’ I confessed, picking the needles from my
tongue.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘An honest opinion!’
‘How do you like the liver?’
‘It’s strange but it seems to have acquired the smell of an army latrine,’ he declared. ‘And squirts blood at the prod of a fork.’
‘And the gravy?’
‘A dark and loathsome puddle,’ he said, with slightly more enthusiasm. ‘A spread of filth. A pestilence. A concentration of misery.’ He set down his knife and fork and paused to wash out his mouth with wine.
I picked at my mackerel skeleton. The meal was clearly not a success but to my surprise he didn’t seem in the least concerned. He wasn’t disappointed. He looked as if he’d expected it. And then, from the far corner of the restaurant, the owner of the Snooty Artichoke appeared with an anxious waiter pulling frantically on his sleeve. There was no mistaking him! It was Chester Chumley-Blight. His face was everywhere. He twinkled from cookery columns. He sparkled on game shows. He was a newspaper personality. He was a TV celebrity. He served seafood to stars. He tossed pancakes for charity. The waiter pointed in our direction and whispered urgently into Chumley-Blight’s ear.
‘What’s wrong?’ Marvel said, sensing my alarm.
There wasn’t time to answer him. Chumley-Blight had reached the table and was prodding Marvel in the fat of the neck with a long and beautifully manicured finger.
‘What’s your game?’ he growled. He plucked away Marvel’s napkin and threw it angrily to the floor.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Marvel said, twisting around to confront him. He sounded most indignant but I caught a glimmer of fear in his eyes.
‘We don’t take kindly to your sort of riffraff in this establishment! We don’t want it! We don’t need it! We’re in the Michelin Guide! Do I make myself understood, sunshine?’ Chumley-Blight shouted. He looked furious. He was trembling with rage. A fan of the famous black hair fell about his ears.
‘Are you asking me to leave?’
‘No! I’m telling you to piss off and don’t come back!’ Chumley-Blight shrieked, shaking the back of Marvel’s chair. A fat woman yelped and clasped her necklace. A brace of young businessmen grunted in protest. Waiters came running from every direction.
‘Now, wait a moment!’ I said, banging my fist against the table and making the cutlery jangle. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Don’t get smart with me, Sunny Jim!’ Chumley-Blight sneered as he shook Marvel from his chair. ‘I’ve launched my own range of pasta sauces!’
‘But we haven’t done anything…’ I protested. A waiter wrapped my head in his arm and pulled me to the floor.
‘Shut your gob!’ Chumley-Blight shouted.
‘I’m warning you!’ I blustered, as I found myself carried across the restaurant. ‘We shall want a written apology!’
‘Enough!’ Marvel spluttered, breaking away from his captors. ‘Enough!’ But he was quickly overwhelmed. Chumley-Blight had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him savagely from the table. A waiter took hold of his arms and another took charge of his feet. He pleaded and struggled in vain as they carried him away and tossed him into the street.
39
We took a taxi home. Marvel was in a poor condition. His stomach bubbled and churned, his knuckles were bruised and one of his old, brown brogues had been split from stem to stem. He sat in the back of the taxi cab, clutching his paunch and breathing hard.
‘What went wrong?’ I said, bewildered. ‘Why did they throw us out?’ I hadn’t been hurt in the scuffle but the wine had damaged my brain and was spreading a pain that drilled my teeth and smouldered behind my eyes.
Marvel merely rolled his head, nursed his stomach and stared vacantly through the window. ‘I’m too old for this game,’ he muttered sadly.
We staggered into the house and tried to creep to our rooms but mother came squelching from the kitchen, demanding an explanation. She might have been prepared to hold Dorothy responsible for my earlier mischief but I was to take the blame for bringing Marvel home sweating and seasick. I struggled with my apologies and took to my bed for the rest of the afternoon. She scolded me at supper and refused to believe my account of our rumpus at The Snooty Artichoke.
But the next day something so peculiar happened that even mother was forced to agree that Mr Marvel was a marked man.
It was a dismal morning with a mountain of cloud rolling over the city and a threat of rain from the east. The house felt unusually gloomy. Dorothy had abandoned Belgium. Franklin had been on a drinking spree with one or two faithful cronies and was languishing still in a room at Grouchers. Marvel was sleeping. I was loitering in the kitchen. Janet, sweet Janet, honest and reliable, went off to work as usual, busy as a clockwork mouse.
I fed her Shreddies and cups of black coffee and followed her through to the hall where she stopped to rummage in her bulging handbag. Lipstick, mascara, address book, manicure set, tampon, Kleenex, house keys, loose change, attack whistle, discount card, department store identity badge.
‘I’ve forgotten my Katie Pphart!’ she complained.
‘Where is it?’
‘I must have left it in my room.’
‘Shall I fetch it for you?’ I said, wanting to be helpful, anxious to win her trust again.
She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘No time!’ She was flustered, impatient, three minutes late. She rushed across the hall but as soon as she was through the front door she stumbled and shouted.
‘What is it?’ I said, running at once to her rescue. I found her standing on one leg, surprised and angry, rubbing an ankle.
‘There!’ She hopped from foot to foot and scowled down at a large paper parcel left abandoned on the doorstep.
‘It’s for Mr Marvel!’ I said, lifting the parcel into my hands and peering at the scratchy, hand-written label. I gave it a shake. ‘It’s heavy!’ But Janet had already gone, running away down the street.
I took the parcel into the front parlour and left it on the table beneath the window. It was the shape of a shoe box, wrapped around with brown paper and fastened with a mess of adhesive tape.
It was nearly lunchtime when Marvel emerged from his room and painfully plodded downstairs. He appeared in his dressing gown and red felt slippers. His eyes were bloodshot and he needed a shave. He shuffled into the kitchen and begged for a pot of hot, strong tea.
‘It’s too late,’ father grumbled. He’d been ordered into the kitchen to repair the glass shade on the ceiling light, cracked during Dorothy’s flight. He was balanced on a pair of stepladders with a toolbox in his hand. He was having some trouble unthreading the broken plastic collar that held the shade to the socket.
‘It’s no trouble to make him a pot of tea,’ mother said gently, smiling, nodding Marvel towards the table.
‘I’m much obliged,’ Marvel murmured and sank thankfully into a chair.
‘There’s a parcel for you this morning,’ I said, as I filled the kettle and searched the cupboard for cups.
‘A parcel?’ He looked startled.
‘It was left on the doorstep. I’ve taken it into the front parlour.’
‘No!’ he cried fiercely. ‘No!’ He jumped from his chair with such violence that father nearly fell from his ladder.
‘Steady!’ father shouted. ‘Steady!’
‘But it’s not possible! No, there must be some mistake,’ Marvel said, trying to compose himself again.
‘There’s no mistake,’ I said cheerfully. ‘It’s clearly addressed to you.’
He gave a little cry of despair and hurried from the kitchen with such an expression of horror on his crumpled face that we thought it best to follow him.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ mother inquired, as we gathered around the table and peered at the packet.
‘No!’ He shook his head. ‘Take it away. Take it away and bury it!’
‘Why? What is it?’ father demanded.
‘I’ve no idea!’ poor Marvel confessed. He clutched at his dressing gown and tottered in circles
about the room.
‘Well, shall I open it for you?’ I suggested helpfully. I was burning with curiosity. Whatever the parcel contained, I felt sure it was something that might throw some light on Marvel’s curious circumstance.
‘Don’t touch it!’ he barked. ‘It could explode!’
‘Damned nonsense!’ shouted father, the seasoned pyromaniac. ‘Pull yourself together, man!’
But Marvel could not be pacified. ‘I’ve been discovered!’ he muttered, as he staggered up and down the carpet. ‘Quick, Skipper, lock the doors! The devils are upon us again!’ It was terrible to watch. All his old suspicions and fears seemed to come flooding back again.
‘What are you talking about?’ father snapped. He was wasting his time. He wanted to fix the kitchen light and hurry away to the cellar. He didn’t have patience for Marvel’s dramatic performances. So he rushed forward, forced his fingers beneath the bandages of tape and quickly broke the parcel apart.
‘Oh, filthy!’ he gasped. ‘Filthy! Disgusting and filthy!’ He jerked back his hands in disgust and wiped his fingers against his apron.
We gathered around to peer into the wrappings and there, at the bottom of the box, resting in scraps of shining, wet paper, skinned and bloody, grotesque and grinning, was a peeled sheep’s head.
‘Horrible!’ mother shuddered, clasping a hand against her mouth. She sat down hard in a chair, went very pale and fingered her cardigan buttons.
‘What does it mean?’ father whispered. He stood transfixed. He couldn’t believe it was happening. He stared down at the glistening muzzle, the mad, bulging eyes, the flared and blood-caked nostrils.
‘Throw it away!’ Marvel cried in despair.
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Look, there’s something caught between its teeth…’
‘He’s right!’ father said, but he made no move to investigate. So I summoned all my courage and using no more than a finger and thumb, plucked a damp wad of paper from the clutch of the animal’s jaws.
It looked very much like a newspaper cutting. I gently unfolded the scrap and tried to decipher its message. The newsprint was damp and flecked with blood but I saw enough to confirm my suspicions.
Mr Romance Page 18