by Ian Wedde
He saw again the silver-haired woman flick a glance up at his window from beneath the cover of her small red umbrella. He saw, earlier, the maître d’ remove the reservé sign on the window table – ‘M’sieur ... pour vous ... pas de problème ... bon appétit ...’
‘Do you understand?’
Oh yes, he was beginning to.
‘So, then, after Antun indicate to me when I come in that the window seat is uncompromised ...’
‘Antun?’
‘He is the maître d’ of that restaurant. He arrange some things for us. Soon I have to explain some more about him. But listen.’
The man’s imploring gesture as he, Christopher Hare, galloped towards the stairs throwing his table-napkin to the floor – the solitary diner whom the man didn’t even know as the famous food and restaurant critic, even though he’d removed the reserved sign from the table just as Christopher Hare had come to expect over the years. Yes, that had seemed odd at the time.
‘So, at that moment, Antun is thinking, who is this man? Maybe he, Antun, make a mistake? So, to protect himself, he cannot stop you – or he do not know how to act? What are you, a police? So he is very confused and also afraid. Afraid he make a mistake, afraid the police think he is involved. And then, the police tell him that somebody else see you jump in the taxi. So, of course ...’
Or.
He concentrated on watching her expression while she spoke. She was trying really hard to be clear and simple. It mattered to her that he understood. Understood what? The direction of his future. She was explaining that because the police now believed he was involved in the murder – he had, after all, run down the stairs with her bag and jumped into the taxi – he was now in the position of being an unreliable member of their – she struggled for the word – ‘... équipe, cadre, vous comprenez?’
Yes, he understood.
... and that as a consequence, being unreliable, he was a great danger to them at this time. And therefore.
He understood.
... and also, that Antun would now require a solution to this problem of unreliability. Because now the police were looking at him, Antun, also, with a certain interest. To answer some questions that he could not, with ease. Did he understand?
Yes, that he also understood.
And now he felt a little sick – was he tired? Or was it because of his fear coming towards him from the future? From the future moment when his protection would be lifted, like the box off Nana Gobbo’s tranquil rooster?
She was looking at him with that expression at once impassive and demanding – one he’d begun to know well. He sensed a concealed urgency in her. Which of course was about him, as a deadline. He felt the familiar word, his old foe, fall into two parts in his mind. Dead line.
‘You have a deadline, of course?’
Her flinch was minimal. ‘Dead line?’ Her pronunciation of the unfamiliar word separated it, just as his thought had, but she concealed her alarm with a frown.
‘Yes.’ He fumbled for the French word. ‘Un délai, une date limite. I think I’m it, aren’t I? Where the buck stops? I mean, obviously.’
‘In the morning, quite early, we have to go.’ That was all she was going to say. But there was something else going on there, in that tired, haughty face, that he couldn’t get the hang of.
‘So,’ she said, shrugging again, ‘an impasse.’
There was no point letting the ‘dead line’ thought inside the perimeter of his calm, but there it was. Along with a kind of nausea.
‘What do you want me to do?’ He risked pointing at her. ‘And you haven’t told me your side of the story. Like you promised.’ Her impassive look. ‘Why you did it.’
‘I suggest you occupy yourself a little time with some thoughts about your situation, as I have explain it. Maybe some people you like to contact. Maybe this Thé Glacé. Who is your wife, I think. I can arrange for you a contact.’
No more Christopher he noticed. Well, that was short-lived. She stood up carefully, with her gun hand in her jacket pocket, as if she half expected him to make a move of some kind.
‘Where are you going?’
That little smile, a tightening of her cheeks, without humour. ‘It is very charming, under the circumstances, to discuss philosophy with such a famous food writer.’ She was still angry, after all. ‘Unfortunately I have some preparations. Please, think what you would like.’
What would I like?
Then, in that smoothly striding way, she crossed the room and went out. He heard the key turn in the lock.
Would he like to contact TG? What about Bob? What would he say? ‘Help – I’ve succeeded in kidnapping myself?’ This was, after all, his last assignment for Bob – his last trip, his swan song.
It’s been marvellous, Chris. Bloody marvellous. I can’t thank you enough.
No, what would Bob really say? ‘Well, I hope you can raise your own ransom.’ Very funny, Bob, but what would you care? ‘It’s a tough old world, Chris, and you’ve had a damned good run.’
There was the mineral water moment. Nasty chilly February day, he went into the Thurloe Place office knowing something or other was up, and Bob had two bottles of water on his desk.
‘Tell me, Chris, what’s the difference?’ No time wasted.
‘Come off it Bob, don’t piss me around.’
‘How’s Mary?’
‘How should I know?’ So much for the pleasantries.
Then Bob’s patronising fucking little talk. The industry had crossed a line. A ‘Rubicon’. On one side magazine sales were down, on the other some were holding or going up. But it was tough all round. On the downside were, so to speak, specialist mineral water sommeliers, if they could be dignified with the term; on the up was tap water. On the up was traditional but not with duck fat. The Prince of Wales’s organic eggs, Chris, for God’s sake – Waitrose supermarkets had a special Royal Organic section, hadn’t he noticed – from The Estates? Farmers’ markets, your grandmother’s handwritten recipe for piccalilli, those wizened ex-models growing their own Swiss chard in window boxes, Fair Trade coffee and, of course, all that 100% Pure nonsense from, where was it again, Chris? Middle Earth? Even, God help us, reminders of frugal household hints from World War Two. How to make your own soap, Chris, from lard. Mid-to-low range Spanish and Chilean wines, you wouldn’t believe the rubbish that was being written about them. Jamie Oliver’s school lunches. Explore your region, Chris, your suburb – Camberwell was it? Plenty of ethnic stuff over there, jerk pork – no, come to think of it, too fatty.
‘And the downside, Bob?’ He was trying to keep his temper.
The thing was, it was a tap-water market these days. They’d had to re-think the look-and-feel of the graphics, take that glisten off the images: too much resemblance to well lubricated sexual organs, Chris. ‘Gastro porn’ was the ridiculous tut-tut term being bandied about. But it was true, the big money advertisers were going underground. Their cheese people, their seasoned-game suppliers, their importers of andouillette. The chic readers wanted photographs of lettuce and bleached khaki shorts. Preferably lettuce in bleached khaki shorts, ha ha, Chris.
‘And, Bob, your point?’
There were two points. One was that gusto was passé, especially when the colourful food being eaten with gusto was in exotic but impoverished places where the wistful faces of starving children kept haunting the copy.
‘You know what I’m talking about, Chris.’
He did, as a matter of fact. TG’s photographs. He also knew what the next bit was going to be about.
Sure enough.
The second point was that Christopher’s magic was part of a double act and that, of course, wasn’t happening any more, as Bob hardly needed to remind him. No one was sadder about that than Bob, but what was he expected to do? He’d made the silly girl his project for long enough, and then look what she did.
‘Sorry, Chris, just not the same without Mary, with all due respect, and on top of that our readers are telli
ng us that you are past your use-by.’
‘I’m forty-five, Bob, you prick. I made you rich.’
‘You could have made yourself rich, too, if you hadn’t stuffed handfuls of it down the toilets of the exotic food Meccas with which your brand is now associated, so don’t get high-and-mighty with me, Chris, after all ...’
Yes, yes, after all it was he, Bob, who’d given Christopher his break a decade ago, don’t forget it, and – violins – ‘It’s a tough old world, Chris, and you’ve had a damned good run.’
The water in the glass on the table in front of him, among the dirty cups and the empty Coke bottle and cigarette butts, was certainly mineral water, but the situation didn’t feel too fucking much like the new brand with the sexy shine taken off the lithe, entwined pappardelle, TG’s pale limbs glazed in sunlight on the bed last time he saw them, neither of them spring chickens any more, but all the same.
‘Come on, Bob. I’m on my arse. One last run.’
So – here he was. He sipped slightly fizzy water from the heavy glass. Thank Christ the people in the house hadn’t been subjected to Bob’s pious lecture and given him tap water to drink, or he’d be trying to get his arse over the hole in the floor across the landing any time now.
He eased the image of TG’s languid, pasta-pale limbs from his mind. For some time now the image had always come with the same caption: Not much use to you if you can’t eat it or fuck it, isn’t that so, Christopher?
Always Christopher, even after ten years. Chris-to-pher.
But what did she expect him to say? Every single image in her now-famous exhibition was like a kick in the nuts. The great slag-heaps of wet, cascading food collaged from places where the two of them had hooked little fingers over the table and coo-cooed like doves; the huge, purple, bulging arses cunts and breasts made out of piled aubergines they’d probably enjoyed together in a simple aubergines à la lyonnaise. Worst of all, the ultimate betrayal, the gross forest of erect pricks with impaled fleshy mushroom flanges sticking up out of the mess of what must have been a Cappon Magro. Now it looked like a pile of vomit, intact scampi peering out of it with black, beady eyes on stalks.
‘But the Cappon, TG? For the love of God.’
‘What about it?’
‘That was when we ...’
‘No, Christopher, if you remember, that was when you. It was usually when you. Invariably.’
‘No, it was when we. That was the night we decided to get married. In case you’ve forgotten. That night with the Cappon. In Genoa. Christ, TG, you could have warned me. I had no idea. How can we work after this?’
‘Well, perhaps we can’t, Chris-to-pher.’
She had the knack of making him feel like a hick, just by the way she stood. A kind of weariness in the shoulders, one slinky hip stuck out. After all these years. There was a buzzing and squawking of comment and conversation in the gallery, and excited faces kept inserting themselves into his view of TG, over her shoulder or from the side, apologetic but keen, grinning, wide-eyed – but then retiring because they could see that she was having a bit of a tiff. Wasn’t that her husband, the food writer?
‘Not much use to you if you can’t eat it or fuck it, isn’t that so, Christopher?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, does it always have to be about you?’
You’d have had to be really close to hear her, she had the knack of spitting the words through her teeth, with a kind of precision, straight into him, but it felt to him – it felt as if she might as well have been yelling at the top of her voice to the whole gallery-full of people, over the chatter, the rattling glasses, the music that was playing, something Cuban.
‘But you never told me what you were doing, TG.’
‘And why the fuck should I have, Christopher? Gosh, I wonder what you’d have said then? Please don’t do this to me, TG.’ Her mimicry was spot on – even the pout. ‘This is my exhibition, Christopher, it’s my gig, I’ve waited twenty years for this, I spent the first ten trotting in and out of rehab and the next ten being your Thé Glacé. Well, it’s not about you, it’s not about us. Why can’t you let me have it? Try saying, Congratulations, sweetheart, well done darling, bloody marvellous. What a surprise!’
He knew her well enough to see the tears lurking back in there somewhere, but when he began to shape the words ‘I’m sorry’ and reach out a hand towards her, she just hissed, ‘Fuck off, Christopher. Just leave me alone. Just ...’
Probably, they could have patched it up. But probably not. The exhibition reviews were incredible; TG was doing interviews for the same colour sections and lifestyle fold-outs that were putting Bob’s gastro-porn magazine out of business; she was being blogged by both Charlotte Higgins and Jonathan Jones in the Guardian, she got into Flux magazine, there was a live interview on Radio 4. Then their flat began to get calls in Italian, French and Asian accents. She got a dealer in New York and another in Berlin. Her London dealer talked past him and never once asked about his work. Not once. Quite a lot of the reviews hinted archly that she’d had ‘a long apprenticeship’ – photographs of her had that recovered-junkie look. Some of these mentioned her twenty-year career as a ‘food photographer’ and depicted her as an elegant anorexic. Most of these made humorous references to her husband, ‘the well-known food writer, Christopher Hare’. Christ almighty, she ate like a horse! Hoeing into that Cappon Magro!
And who the hell was Christopher Hare? The dope didn’t really exist anymore – let alone his pathetic understudy, Rosenstein! Hare was back in the mediocre restaurant in the off-season where the maître d’ called Antun had planted him in the window table reserved for some goon who didn’t show up, which was why Dr Habash had crossed the road and shot the fat guy and the tarty-looking woman. Rosenstein might as well still be there, too, for that matter, like some kind of shop-window mannequin. In fact, he was. He was there.
Was this what he’d always done? Leave himself behind? He, Christopher Hare, even seemed to have walked out on, run out on, his Maori uncles and cousins with Italian names up there on the Coast in the ‘Bay of Plenty’. ‘Plenty of what? – Plenty of bloody Eyeties!’ was how the joke used to run around Nana Gobbo’s table when he was a kid. And ‘Hare’? The man who gave him that name was unknown to him, and just as well, according to his mother. She took her Italian mother’s maiden name when Hare shot through. Mietta Gobbo was in the ground not far from Nana Gobbo in the graveyard with a sea view; Mietta went there first. All he remembered was the lovely down on her cheeks, like a peach – his little-boy lips pouted to brush back and forth across that tiny tickle. Now the people who loved him were gone, or he’d left them. In his heart he knew that the people he thought of as ‘friends’ were more interested in getting good reviews than in him – they might as well have been interested in that ventriloquist’s dummy, ‘Rosenstein’.
What would I like?
He didn’t have a clue. What was the point of wanting anything? Really, all he wanted was to be here, in this dull, smelly room, inside the rooster-box of the present, waiting for the moment when someone would lift the cover off to let the sunshine in. But that was crazy.
It was crazy thinking Dr Habash might release him. But he couldn’t help it – he could taste his own hope, feel the shape of his crowing.
Just for a moment, he saw himself as Dr Habash might – his lips pushed forward in a silent ‘doodle-doo’, the uncontrollable tears making his eyes glisten appealingly.
CHAPTER 5
Food is love, food is love, food is love!
She could picture herself with her hands over her ears, going ‘La la la la la la!’ Not hearing you, Christopher.
In her empty flat.
With the memories. And turning up the same old music.
Next after the beef cheeks at Le Baratin was Franck Cerutti’s stewed salt cod at Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco. Sounded utterly vile, the cod anyway.
‘You’ll love it!’
‘Brilliant, brilliant!’
Maybe it was the lemon sauce.
No, she knew what it was. By now.
She fought off his fork when it came back a second time. They were children having a sword fight. Even the reproving waiters were smiling.
She knew by now what it was with Christopher: a disarming magic, a transformation. A performance he could do, between naiveté and a confidence trick. It was both attractive and frightening.
Somewhere in the vicinity of the cigarette-smelly, clanking lift from the grubby first-floor residential next to the Opéra in Nice and the white and gold luxury of the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, on the train they’d walked back across Nice to catch, or on the walk from the gusty station in Monaco, he transformed. He assumed this confidence. He brought it out, sulkily, like a costume, then he put it on.
And then he grinned. Shameless. Ready for anything.
This bully-boy Christopher challenged you to doubt him, the act of himself, to puncture his confidence, but nobody did. Like a classic confidence trickster, everything on the cheap, and then – ba-boum! His crumpled suit, his mop of hair, his travel-weariness after the TGV from Paris and too much wine with the beef cheeks at Le Baratin – transformed. Careless, confident, not stylish, but what was the word?