Amazing Disgrace

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  *

  I go to bed glummish and vaguely apprehensive but wake seven hours later to a different world of morning sunshine and mountain silence that has been wheeled into place overnight by the celestial scene-shifters. I’m not clear how this happens. Solitude and fresh coffee anyway make me cheerful of a morning, and not being in a London flat is a further bonus. People like Derek are naturally metropolitan, of course. Like rats they live in cities at great ease. They scamper through their daily mazes with no obvious sign of boredom, amply rewarded by decent food and a good deep litter in which to pup. Not that that particular detail is much of a selling point with Derek; but there’s no doubt his monumental empress-sized bed covered in fabrics from Heal’s represents about as much comfort as anyone could reasonably expect when vertically separated by a mere nine feet from somebody else’s colonic irrigation. It’s the being so much on top of everyone – or beneath them in Derek’s frequent case – I find so hard to bear in cities. That and the constant din that wears me down so that merely going out to interview a leathery yachtswoman in her Hilton suite for an hour makes me feel, by the time I’m home again, as though I’ve run a marathon (Oh, rat-man!). No, give me the fluent silence of these hills where I can hear myself think, not to mention cook and sing.

  The next ten days or so I rise early and steadily compose a graceful and also disgraceful new short chapter to insert in Millie!, in between waxing operatic and breaking for exquisite little snacks. I even indulge in a limited amount of DIY: domestic tasks I generally perform for reasons of thrift that are somewhat more fun to have done than they are to do. That being said, I would be falsely modest if I pretended not to have a knack for them. People expect writers to be effete creatures whose skills in the world of practical activity go little beyond falling off bar stools in the Groucho Club. In extreme cases these skills may extend to changing a light bulb, but this nearly always means the writer is a lesbian. (Super-lesbians like Ernest Hemingway don’t really count as writers.) It is true that when it comes to the higher reaches of joinery and craftsmanship my own skills are merely those of the experienced amateur. But I’m neither afraid nor too proud to have a go, that’s the point.

  All of which means you won’t be surprised to learn that I have decided to change not only my own front door lock but that on Marta’s back door as well. The more odious the idea becomes of strangers wandering around her house at will in my absence, the more I feel protective of both our properties. Meeting Baggy and Dumpy has reminded me that I could have many worse neighbours than a frumpish composer from beyond the River Vltava. Which reminds me, I wonder if hers is also Smetana’s neck of the Bohemian woods? I still have no real idea where Voynovia is. I think it must be to the east of Ruritania: Hentzau and John Buchan country, but not quite as far as the thirty-nine steppes. I’m told the European Union’s latest expansionist pounce has recently brought even Voynovia within its shining bounds, although of course that still doesn’t mean it’s in Europe in any meaningful sense. After all, some of the more addled denizens of Brussels seriously consider Turkey as part of Europe despite Europe having for centuries repelled hordes of dervishes and janissaries who came in waves to bombard the walls of Vienna, seeking to expand their cruel empire. Even today an Austrian oath is Kruzitürken! And Turkey, mind you, a country of eighty million Muslims that only recently abjured torture and honour killing in order to qualify for EU membership, not because it thought them wrong. Think Osmin in Il seraglio. As Derek once remarked, the only good Ottoman is one you can lie on. I suppose by comparison Voynovia could easily come to feel as unassailably Old European as France. Anyway, so far as I’m concerned Marta’s real home is her slatternly castle here at Le Roccie rather than that of her family in the distant shadow of a mountain called Sluszic, and like any castle it deserves a good lock on its back door. So I go down to Viareggio where I buy something that looks more appropriate for a bank vault, with tungsten bars that simultaneously shoot upwards and downwards into sockets at the turn of a most peculiar key with raised pimples on it like a plucked turkey thigh.

  While I’m down there I find I’m in the mood for culinary adventure and drop by the butcher for some calves’ brains. Last night before falling asleep I dipped into one of my favourite bedside books, Emmeline Tyrwhitt-Glamis’s Emergency Cuisine, written in the dark days of 1942 when heavily rationed Londoners had accustomed themselves to an unusual diet, and stray cats and dogs had all but vanished from the city’s streets. These dumb chums were pressed into service as extras in the general drama of the war effort, passing through a thousand trusty Radiation gas ovens while acting out their selfless, unauditioned parts which might accurately be described as casserole-playing. Dame Emmeline (as she later became in recognition of her bravery while working in the resistance to Woolton Pie) believed that austerity could be taken too far. From her house in Berkeley Square a stream of recipes poured forth, the less eccentric often being espoused by the Women’s Institute and published in popular magazines. She regularly netted the gardens in the middle of the square to produce, according to season, owl tartlets, pigeon strudel, a fudge of robins, blackbird pâté and, on one notable occasion, nightingale fritters. She discovered that the anti-aircraft battery gunners in Hyde Park were attracting rats with their National Loaf sandwiches and latrine pits, and it wasn’t long before she was trapping the rodents in sufficient quantities to bake the celebrated Pied Piper pies she then sold to Fortnum & Mason, donating the revenue to the Red Cross. The animals’ pelts Dame Emmeline cured with alum in her airing cupboard and turned into a cloak and mittens for her chauffeur, who was too old to be called up and was living in some discomfort in her vast Hispano-Suiza, up on blocks in a mews garage in Peckham for lack of petrol.

  This sterling and free-thinking spinster was unafraid to try anything, having inherited the scientific curiosity of her distant relative Frank Buckland, the nineteenth-century naturalist and experimental gourmet who had sampled nearly all the British vertebrates and lepidoptera. She agreed with him that while earwigs were foully bitter and bluebottles unspeakable, woodlice were a plausible alternative to potted shrimp. Emmeline Tyrwhitt-Glamis was undoubtedly the first Englishwoman to prepare and use cockroach purée in any quantity, naming it ‘Victory Paste’. In her journal she herself described Victory Paste as having the flavour of ‘peanuts and vanilla, with a faint suggestion of sealing-wax; altogether agreeable’. It was a popular addition to servicemen’s wartime diet, especially in the Royal Navy where it became a staple as a sandwich filling for officers during action. Emergency Cuisine, first published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office in 1942, is a collector’s item these days, its rarity enhanced when most of the first edition was destroyed by an incendiary bomb strike on the Hackney warehouse in which it was awaiting distribution. I treasure my own copy as much for the breezy Tyrwhitt-Glamis style as for her inventive recipes and her popular cry of ‘Buns Against Huns!’.

  When next you look [she begins her instructions for making squirrel dumplings] at a majestic beech tree or a spreading horse chestnut, spare a thought for all the mighty energy locked up in beech mast and conkers. Now think of the sprightly squirrel, his fur gleaming with health as he performs his lithe acrobatics high in the topmost branches. Whence comes this unstinting ebullience? Why, from the nourishment he draws from eating the seeds containing the embryonic forests of tomorrow! His little body is a veritable powerhouse; and it behoves Britain’s fighting housewives to avail themselves of this energy. Have one of your estate workers procure you a brace or two of these nutritious rodents …

  And so it is that while I’m down in Viareggio I buy calves’ brains and one or two other impulsive odds and ends. Then, deciding I may as well eat down here, I have a delicious light seafood lunch on the front and watch the world pass by. The restaurant overlooks the beach and in the noonday glare the women come and go, probably not talking of Michelangelo but of Botox and liposuction. Nor, to judge from their expressions, do their escorts appear to be earn
estly discussing the Mammon of Unrighteousness or even the problematic orchestration in the second act of L’uomo magro. Their whole demeanour is that of males who wish quite soon to enact the ancient ritual of passing on their DNA and are wondering how much they need spend on their girl’s lunch to ensure it happening. No one seems to have done much swimming. The beachwear of all three sexes is outrageous, revealing acres of broiled flesh and graceless bulbosities creakingly restrained by wisps of designer nylon. It all reminds me uneasily that my own highly personal problem of packing more veal is going to have to be faced sooner or later. But still, time’s a-wasting; so with my calves’ brains in my cool-bag and some costly ironmongery to render both our homes Benedetti-proof in the boot of the car, I drive back up to Le Roccie with a sense of virtue and purposefulness.

  12

  Anybody who knows me at all will acknowledge that single-mindedness is a salient character trait of mine. I am not one of those people – and Derek, I fear, is – who channel-hop their way through life with attention spans that make bacteria look thoughtful. Today, for example, my priority is definitely door locks; so I put the calves’ brains in the fridge for later and take a condensation-beaded bottle of prosecco and a glass out onto the terrace. The afternoon is hot and the wine I drank at lunch has induced a slight drowsiness that needs chilled refreshment to chase away. Take a tip from Samper: when planning lock-smithery and the like the trick is never to rush but to get into the right frame of mind for the task ahead. So I sit and calmly peruse the instructions for fitting these two identical but complex locks that I’ve bought. In response to the usual cutaway drawings with arrows I fetch a Phillips screwdriver and remove flanged knob ‘A’ on the inside of the lock, exposing the slotted arms for attaching the two long bolts that will secure the door top and bottom. Dead straightforward. Child’s play. Time passes in which I reflect on the many successes of my DIY past. The prosecco is beginning to hone my concentration to a fine point so that I am able to read and reread each sentence of the instructions, which are written in the bizarre dialect reserved for such things. ‘Important: Knurled screw “F” is mounting in association for downstriker plate “L” only.’ What could be clearer than that? I read it many times with my enhanced attention and understand it in its fullest and deepest sense. Time for action! Leaving the empty bottle and glass on the table I dig out my toolkit, buckle on my tool belt with the power-drill holster, find the key to Marta’s back door and sally forth to her hovel.

  I keep saying ‘hovel’, but in all fairness there is nothing flimsy about Marta’s cottage. Like mine it is built of stone and to judge from its worn thresholds it has seen centuries of peasants come and go, a tradition her occupancy in no way interrupts. In common with many Italian houses the ground-floor windows are protected by iron grilles, making it look impregnable. Still, what is the point of iron bars if in your muddleheaded Voynovian way you leave the back door unlocked? I let myself in and pause in the gloom, inhaling that familiar scent I shall for ever associate with Marta: mildew and shonka, a lethal Voynovian sausage, as well as a deodorant she uses called ‘Witch’, a pungent example of a cure that is worse than the disease. I check the front door, which already has a decent lock as well as one of those patent little deadbolt security things that require a separate key. I’ve no idea where that is. I think she never used her front door so it’s really only the back door that needs attention. I spread my tools out on the floor in an orderly fashion and crack my knuckles like a flying doctor preparing for a bush amputation. Technically, I suppose, it might be taking a liberty to install a lock on one’s neighbour’s door without her permission, but really: this is someone capable of walking out of her house for days, weeks, months at a stretch, leaving doors unlocked and gas rings alight. I’m betting the old bat is going to be pretty pleased by this token of neighbourliness.

  The door itself is absurdly stout: massive chestnut planks that I can see are going to need intensive drilling to take the barrel of the lock. Hoping to throw much-needed light on the job I click the switch. Nothing. No lights anywhere. I find her fuse panel and all the switches are up as they should be. It then becomes obvious: with her stunning domestic incompetence Marta has omitted to arrange to have her bills paid by banker’s order every two months and ENEL have cut her off. I check her telephone which I eventually find beneath a pile of unironed laundry. Dead. Same problem, no doubt. Telecom Italia have lost patience. I don’t blame them. Wearily I trudge back to my house to fetch an extension cable and see if it will reach. Needless to say it doesn’t, not by twenty metres or so. I find some other lengths of cable that will if someone can be bothered to join them all up. Sitting on the grass outside I busy myself with cutters and strippers and insulating tape. Absolutely typical, the whole thing. You get all keyed up to do a job but then find yourself having to spend hours laying on basics like electricity. To the end of the cable I wire in a block of three sockets so at least I can have light and use the drill at the same time. When finally it’s all assembled I discover it just – and only just – reaches. Good enough. At last I’m set to make a start, although by now it’s considerably later than I should have preferred.

  However, I won’t be hurried. The Samper watchword is ‘methodical’. By the time I have it all marked up and the hole has been drilled in the iron-hard door I notice that late afternoon has elided into early evening. I return to my own house to collect another bottle of prosecco, which I definitely feel I have earned. Obviously I’m not one of those slightly pathetic types who need to disguise the seriousness of an alcohol dependency by whimsically referring to the sun as being over the yardarm. Not having a drink problem myself, I certainly don’t watch the clock. Many days go by when I drink nothing but water. But sometimes a glass of prosecco gives a little fillip to the flagging DIY man who wants to finish a job and go off to cook his supper. Anyway, half the people who use the expression have no idea what a yardarm is. As the author of Millie! I can enlighten you. It is the pole attached at right angles to a mast from which a sail hangs. In northern latitudes the sun would have been high enough to clear the topmost yardarms of a square-rigged ship at around midday. The glass of prosecco that I’m now appreciatively sipping, sitting back on my heels in a scatter of wood chips and a small glow of achievement, is more of a sundowner. I contemplate the job I have done so far and, like the old Hebrew deity, see that it is good. The central lock is impeccably installed, if I say so myself, the keyhole outside with its brass surround neat and straight. All I need do now is cut the two bolts to the right length so they will slot neatly into the stonework top and bottom, and that will be that. Chalk up another item in the Samper tally of doing good by stealth.

  Mind you, when I say ‘all I need do now’, I’m making light of the difficulty of sawing tungsten steel tubing. When I slip back to my house to fetch the angle grinder I notice how dark it’s getting. Somehow this project has swallowed up the entire afternoon. With patience and showers of sparks I eventually manage to cut the tubes to the right length, attach them to the stubby arms that flanged knob ‘A’ will eventually hide, and mark where to drill the sockets into which two metal cups (‘S’, provided) can be fixed with instant cement. I drill the holes in the stonework and painstakingly clean them up with a little chisel. The cups easily fit into them, so I close the door to see how well the bolts are going to slot in. There is nothing as satisfying as that oiled snock! of a piece of mechanism shooting home, in this case the central latch. It is a snug, precise sound that, as it echoes around Marta’s grim hallway behind me, is a tribute to one’s craftsmanship. In order to examine the top bolt better I tug the inspection lamp to get a last inch of play in the cable running in under the back door through the hollow of its worn threshold. The wretched thing promptly goes out and I am plunged in darkness. Goddamn. I must have pulled the plug out of the block outside. I’ll have to go out and plug it in: I only need another few minutes’ work here before I can clean up and clear out. I scrabble at the lock to let myself o
ut but can’t find flanged knob ‘A’. In fact there’s no knob at all, just a hole. The knob is, of course, on the table on my terrace eighty metres away where it has been ever since I removed it. And I have nothing else with which to turn the tumblers of this very technical lock that so satisfyingly latched itself not thirty seconds ago.

  There then occurs one of those peculiar moments when the brain splits into two. One half goes whirring around like a trapped moth, mentally visiting the locked back door, the locked front door and the barred windows in swift succession as realization slowly dawns that there may be no easy way out of this, while the other half remains strangely unsurprised as though it had known all along it was hopeless. By the time the two halves of my brain have united once more I am in no doubt that things have not gone according to the Samper plan. I still can’t treat this as anything other than a mild inconvenience, though. It’s simply a matter of letting myself out of one of the upstairs windows. A bit undignified, perhaps, but there’s no reason why anyone should ever find out. However, once I have groped my way upstairs and opened a window I become seriously discouraged. It is a moonless night and the ground below is a dim blur. True, this top floor is not very high, and if I hang from the window sill before letting go the drop shouldn’t be much more than two or three metres. I try to remember what’s underneath, but can’t. My impression is that there’s a certain amount of Marta’s junk scattered about. I’m not at all keen to risk jumping down without being able to see what I’m jumping on to. I have a vision of breaking an ankle on a brick or a lump of rock and having to crawl eighty metres through a pitch-black garden to my own house. It’s a risk one would take only in a dire emergency such as fire. The obviously sensible thing to do is to wait for rosy-fingered dawn. So well done indeed, Samper. You now have to spend the night in Marta’s unlit and unaired den, with no supper and probably nothing to drink. Nor can you call anyone for help because the phone’s dead. There may not even be any water, since I’m pretty sure she has one of those systems that work on demand and require electricity for the pump. True, she might have left a bottle of something somewhere and maybe there will be a fossilized piece of shonka or other Voynovian delicacy that I can gnaw at, but the prospect is vastly different from the one with which I was planning to reward myself and to which I had been looking forward.