The Reluctant Cannibals

by The Reluctant Cannibals (mobi)

  ‘Charles, as you well know I prefer the term “anthropophagy” myself: fewer moral overtones. The word cannibal was created as a mighty slur on the Carib tribe and was used mostly as an excuse for far more immoral massacres of noble savage races by the ignoble English and Spanish invaders. After all, chaplain, does the Bible forbid canni-balism?’

  ‘Good grief, Arthur, you are incorrigible. The Ten Commandments should cover it I think.’

  ‘Nonsense. They just say “Thou shalt not kill”, not “Thou shalt not die and be volun-tarily consumed”. I think the Bible is stricter on shellfsh and pork than eating people.’

  ‘Well… Leviticus does seem to ban certain creatures for Jews, such as pigs and shell-fsh… ’

  ‘And some lesser known creatures, such as camels, falcons and ostriches, but not, it seems, humans, isn’t that so, Charles?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t read that chapter in a while,’ muttered the browbeaten chaplain. ‘I would strongly recommend chapter eleven of Leviticus; a very interesting chapter,’

  continued Arthur, now frmly in his stride and clearly unstoppable. ‘It suggests some other good things to eat, such as locusts, grasshoppers and people. Then there is Leviti-cus 26:29: “And ye shall eat the fesh of your sons, and the fesh of your daughters shall ye eat”, or Jeremiah 19:9: “And they shall eat every one the fesh of his friend”.’

  ‘Bravo, Arthur. Thirty–Love.’ The Master joined in, entirely convinced this was all said in good fun. This was just the sort of well-chiselled academic sparring that he had hoped for on coming to Oxford.

  Having won the religious argument, Arthur took on the law of the land. ‘So Theodore, is there any law in the judicial system of England that forbids volun-

  tary anthropophagy?’

  ‘Er, well, now you mention it I don’t think there is, at least not in English law… or any law as far as I know.’

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘Game, set and match to Arthur,’ said the Master, clapping furiously. ‘Now how about brandy and cigars in the drawing room?’

  5 It is remarkable that even though at the time of this dinner there must have been innumerable people alive who had lived through the birth of the martini somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century, the exact origins of this quintessential cocktail have been lost. While etymolo-gists favour a derivation from the Martinez, a mixture of sweet vermouth with a smaller amount of gin and a dash of bitters, they are poles apart in cocktail terms. No-one who has tasted both could countenance such a link. Although the obvious derivation from the Martini Company in Italy has been discounted as in America, the undisputed birthplace of the martini, this company was a minor player in the vermouth world and French vermouths are favoured by martini afcion-ados. A bartender from the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, a certain Signor di Arma di Taggia has been credited with inventing the modern martini in 1912. As martinis are referred to in print before that date, this theory sadly also falls by the wayside. 6 They ransack all the elements for new favours.

  Chapter 16

  Mr Potts began his morning inspection of the college just before dawn. The cold Decem-ber night was on the wane, leaving the grass of the quadrangles coated with a thin white frost and the surrounding paths treacherous. This daily round always revealed some clues to the events that took place under cover of darkness. The frequent beer glass, infre-quent but unwelcome pools of vomit and the occasional fractured branches from the trees along the boundary wall signifying an illicit exit or entrance. On occasion in the summer months there might even be an undergraduate in various states of undress pinned to the grass of the quadrangle by croquet hoops.

  Passing the senior common room, Potts saw a light on. It had been a late night after the dinner at the Master’s lodge. He’d heard Dr McIntyre singing his Flanders and Swann songs as he staggered off to bed at three o’clock in the morning, so he knew they had a good time. Looking in to check all was well, Potts saw Professor Arthur Plantagenet fast asleep in his favourite leather chair, still in his evening fnery, snoring gently. Potts smiled. In his mind, Arthur was exactly what an Oxford professor should be. The rest of the room was in its expected state of disarray. He’d get Gerard to tidy up frst thing and bring in some breakfast for the professor. Leaving Arthur to sleep off the excesses of the previous night, he turned off the light and gently closed the door.

  *

  For Augustus Bloom, every hangover was a curse and a blessing. A curse as naturally no-one could relish the skull-wrenching headache and gastric ill-ease. It was also an annoy-ance for any logical being to fnd oneself making the same mistake over and over again. Lashing into brandy after midnight and continuing until almost 3 a.m. without the barest attempt at rehydration can only have one result. The slowest laboratory rat can learn the route through a new maze in a few trials and avoid the path leading to an electric shock. After several decades of adulthood, Augustus was showing little progress up the ‘per-ils of brandy’ learning curve. The pleasure that mollifed the pain for Augustus was the research opportunity offered by every really cracking hangover. One of Augustus’ more whimsical projects was his little black book of hangover cures. For over a decade he had tried a new remedy for each hangover.

  One or two hangovers each term had provided suffcient research material to fll a small black leather notebook Augustus had purchased in Florence during his travels with Arthur. Beftting its origins, it boasted hand-painted marbled paper on the inside covers and the frst contribution was made in the café at the top of the Uffzi gallery. After a very late night investigating the delights of Italian wines and an early morning start at the Uffzi to miss the crowds, Augustus had mutinied and insisted they go directly to the café before he’d look at a single painting. The café was situated at the very end of the gallery with a terrace on the rooftops overlooking the Piazza della Signoria but still over-shadowed by the huge tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Arthur ordered a caffè cor-retto alla grappa for them both. A small intense espresso with a cover of brown velvety crema and a dash of grappa. The effect was rapid and dramatic, though sadly short-lived. The intense beverage lifted their hangovers like the lifting of the curtain at the opera and started Augustus on a new research endeavour. It is ironic that Italy, the country that gave Augustus the frst entry in his little black book, has no word in its language for hangover.

  Over the years the exploration of other potential cures turned out to be a very broad-ranging exercise with every potential avenue considered from the weird to the poten-tially poisonous. The strangest to date, and certainly hardest to track down, were two types of coffee: caphe cut chon from Vietnam and kopi luwak from Java. These coffee beans were not unique in their horticulture or in terms of the type of tree, but solely in terms of where they had been. Before being prepared for coffee-making, these beans are hand-picked as berries by a small civet, a spotty cat-like creature. The animal is famed for only picking the best coffee berries; unfortunately they then eat them. So they can only be collected once they have been through the digestive tract, a process that is sup-posed to remove the bitterness from the coffee. By ‘through’ this really does mean all the way through and out the other end. The half-digested beans are collected from the droppings of this animal. They are then lightly roasted to complete the transformation. In the spirit of experimentation, Augustus had sought out both types of these bizarrely expensive coffee beans, only to discover they are no more effective as a cure for a seri-ous hangover than coffee plucked from a tree.

  The most poisonous so far had been Nux Vomica . This delightfully named herbal remedy has as its principal active ingredient a poison that was popular in Victorian times, namely strychnine. A little strychnine is claimed to stimulate an alcoholically paralysed stomach, though too much puts all the body’s muscles into spasm and induces convulsions, leading to death. The herbal extract had proved passably effective for un-derstandable physiological reasons, though it tasted fairly vile. Being an open-minded sort, Augustus had also tested the ho
meopathic version of Nux Vomica . This proved to be entirely ineffective at alleviating the symptoms induced by an evening comparing the aniseed-based liqueurs from across Europe, though one can fairly claim this was a par-ticularly challenging test for homeopathy.

  After examining individual remedies for many years, Augustus had recently turned to exploring the effects of mixtures of previously successful ingredients. He fumbled for the small book to see what he had noted down as the next combination. After each tri-al of a new treatment he would write down notes regarding palatability, level of symp-tom relief and the duration of that relief. Then he would write the next concoction to be tried as he assumed, not unreasonably, that in the throes of his next hangover his critic-al facilities would be so impaired as to prevent any meaningful thought on the subject. He was narrowing down on the ideal cure and was by now certain that it must contain ample quantities of liquid, salt, sugar and fat. He was as yet undecided about the merits of adding alcohol to this list of ingredients. After that it was just a question of getting the most effective and palatable combination. Surprisingly, the next combination he had noted down in his book at the end of the previous term was exactly what he felt like eating at that moment.

  Getting up he crossed the gently rocking foor to the cupboard that hid Augustus’ dirty little culinary secret. Taking down the jar, he set about creating this morning’s cur-ative preparation, pausing for a second to wonder why this little dark jar with a yellow lid held such sway over a man with otherwise refned tastes. For Augustus was afficted by that uniquely English vice – a love of Marmite. Today’s trial involved a fried egg in a sandwich made from buttered toast covered with Marmite and marmalade. All washed down with Earl Grey tea. Sophisticated? No. Exotic? No. Palatable? Extremely for a dedicated marmitophile and disgusting for the rest of the population. Effective? Augus-tus returned to his bed to fnd out.

  *

  For other members of the faculty, the morning after such a feast held a range of experi-ences. The chaplain, for all his outward nervousness, had the internal constitution of an ox and a liver to match. In a few short hours his prodigious internal organs had absorbed, processed, disassembled and eliminated all the alcohol and more destructive congeners – the associated range of complex chemicals that are the real villains of any hangover. By the time any of the others were even conscious he had awoken in rude good health, and completed a walking circuit of Christchurch Meadow with the aid of a key given to him by the Dean of Christchurch, in gratitude for one of his more exceptional organ recitals performed in the cathedral. He had then headed off to hall for a large cooked breakfast with the undergraduates. He was widely admired for these intermittent pastor-al visits to the low table breakfast, as it was rare for fellows to mix with the undergradu-ates outside tutorials or formal events. His motivations were less pastoral than gastric, as the undergraduate breakfast was served an hour earlier than that in the senior common room parlour and, by the time he returned from his walk, he was always ravenous.

  Hamish had more of a bear-like constitution, better suited to hibernation with a slow but steady metabolism. He would typically not wake up until early evening the follow-ing day, amnesic to all events after midnight, ravenously hungry but otherwise in fne shape. He would rise and head off to evensong before heading straight back into hall for dinner. Today was no exception and, as the day’s events unfolded, they did so without the involvement or awareness of Hamish McIntyre.

  George Le Strang had inherited his appetite from his aristocratic French father but unfortunately had inherited his liver from his waifike English mother. This was a source of much distress for Le Strang as he was always reminded of this constitutional confict on mornings such as this. His solution was a bath of such searing heat that it operated on a similar principle to a distillery. Le Strang would lie in the hot bath with alcohol forced out of every pore and mixing with the impenetrable fog that soon flled the bathroom. The vaporous alcohol would then condense on the windows, which were usually the coldest surfaces. Many a wandering spider or trapped fy has died an inebriated death at the hands of the condensation on Le Strang’s bathroom windows.

  The fnal member of the declining dining society, Theodore Flanagan, was more con-ventional in his morning-after habits, usually with more success than some of Augustus’ more dubious efforts. He was taught his solution in the form of a rhyme as a young stu-dent while visiting the Galway oyster festival, and he had lived by it ever since.

  If a hangover you wish to lack ,

  Take a pint of water before the sack .

  A bottle of Guinness on rising from bed

  And you’ll start the day without an aching head . *

  While Arthur Plantagenet remained slumped in his chair in the senior common room, a select group did manage to assemble in the parlour for breakfast. This included Profess-or Le Strang and Theodore Flanagan, who were the only conscious and hungry mem-bers of the gastronomic faculty at that time. They were accompanied by the few guests from the previous night who were staying in college as they had travelled from outside Oxford: Reginald Morton, Gascoigne Percival and Monsieur Lemprière. The Master did not join them, taking his breakfast as usual in his study in preparation for tackling the Times crossword. Being hungover had only a slight impact on his completion times provided he had absolutely no other distractions. The assembled few were a very differ-ent group compared to the previous night. Then, they had been united in gastronomic delight and, of course, wine. This morning they were a somewhat bedraggled and in-ternationally disparate group for whom the silence hung heavily between each stilted attempt at conversation.

  Unusually they were served by the housekeeper, Mary O’Sullivan rather than Gerard, who had served them so expertly the night before. Although at this stage an old college retainer, Gerard had in fact attended St Jerome’s coming up as a student in 1939 be-fore enlisting in 1941. The war had taken a heavy toll on Gerard. He had been left a broken man after being pulled half-dead from under the bodies of the rest of his platoon who were killed when one of Rommel’s Panzers rolled over their dugout in the Battle of Gazala in North Africa. He had not uttered a single word since. In 1946, he was fnally discharged from the wartime psychiatric services at the Royal Victoria Military Hospit-al Netley, where Dr Watson of Sherlock Holmes had supposedly once worked. Word of Gerard’s plight had been brought back to college as war-worn students returned to fnish their degrees. Gerard was in no ft state to complete his studies, but was offered a job at St Jerome’s in the library as it was considered that his lack of speech would be a posit-ive asset in that environment. The thoughtless impatience of students had been hard on his nerves and he had fnally found peace as the senior steward, a job he had performed fawlessly for such a length of time that no-one even remembered his surname any more. This made his absence today all the more remarkable.

  Sadly, breakfast was as undistinguished as breakfast always was at St Jerome’s: kippers, toast and over-poached eggs. The highlight was undoubtedly a black tea that Theodore Flanagan had brought back from a recent trip to Istanbul. This was brewed in an extravagant Russian silver samovar that took pride of place on the elegant Georgian sideboard in the parlour. This samovar had been donated to the college by Tsar Alex-ander I of Russia in 1814 when he visited Oxford with King Frederick William III of Prussia to meet the English Prince Regent and celebrate the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, a little prematurely as it turned out.

  Gerard’s absence from the senior common room parlour, which was his frst in over twenty years as he had never been known to have a single day off, was equally inexplic-able to Mr Potts. As the cardboard kippers were being pushed around the plates, Gerard was sitting ashen-faced and shaking in the porter’s lodge. When Gerard had arrived in a state of great distress a good half hour earlier, Potts had offered him the customary pencil and notepad with which Gerard communicated all messages that couldn’t be conveyed by hand or eye movements. On this occasion, Gerard’s hands were shaking so much he couldn’t ma
nage a legible word. That didn’t stop him from writing pages of spidery il-legible scrawl. His frustration at not being understood seemed to make him even worse. So Potts had reverted to his cure-all concoction of strong sweet tea and whiskey.

  Slowly the sugar and whiskey infused into Gerard’s blood stream and then fnally reached the parts of his brain that were in such profound turmoil. Only then did his breathing start to regulate and tremor subside enough to make another attempt at com-munication. The words were still barely legible but when Potts read them out loud, Ger-ard started nodding his head wildly before collapsing into a pitiful bout of sobbing. Potts always had a problem when women turned on the waterworks, but he really couldn’t cope with it from grown men. As shocking as the news from Gerard was, Potts was de-lighted to be able to leave the lodge and all that emotion behind him as he ran to the senior common room.

  There, in the same chair, in the same position, was a motionless, silent and deathly pale Professor Plantagenet. Potts slowed to a more deferential walk as he approached the don. He tried a gentle shake of the shoulders before a sequence of ‘sirs’ from the quiet and expectant to the bellowing and frankly desperate. Arthur’s skin was cold and clammy to touch and Potts was compelled to agree with Gerard’s assessment of the situ-ation. To gather his thoughts he took the unimaginable step of sitting down in one of the senior common room’s chairs, his sense of the social order overwhelmed by the enorm-ity of the situation. Then Potts spotted a silver goblet at Arthur’s feet. He gazed at the shining goblet for a few moments, puzzled at why his mind was demanding he attend to it. Then it struck him. He grabbed the cup and, after brushing it frantically on his sleeve to a mirror-like sheen, held it over Arthur’s nostrils and watched intently before rushing out of the door to locate Dr Bloom.

  It was gone lunchtime when Augustus got back to college after accompanying Arthur to hospital. He was offcially pronounced dead on arrival and transferred straight to the morgue, leaving Augustus sitting numbed in an empty cubicle in the casualty depart-ment of the Radcliffe Infrmary. On his return, he was met in the lodge by Mr Potts who asked the only question he needed to ask with the barest rise of his eyebrows and was answered with the faintest shake of the head by Augustus.