Dinner at Mine

by Chris Smyth

  ‘That’s all right. I don’t mind people assuming that. I can always put them right if I need to. Can’t do that if it’s the other way round.’

  ‘I suppose Barbara must be the youngest here,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re what, twenty-seven?’

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ Barbara replied without emotion.

  ‘A good age,’ Stephen said wistfully. ‘Old enough to feel mature and settled, but young enough to still feel unrushed.’

  Barbara looked unimpressed. Stephen said nothing more. Rosie wondered what was wrong. Sometimes he got like that, but not usually after so little wine. She hoped he would enjoy himself tonight, get into the swing of things. It always cheered him up if he could end the evening thinking he’d been witty and talkative.

  Sarah looked tired. Was work getting her down? Or was it something else? Rosie felt like a bad friend for not knowing. She resolved to find out. Probably not this evening, and this weekend would be difficult . . .

  ‘What about you, Marcus?’ Stephen asked with a touch of relish. ‘Does anything about the inexorable slide towards decrepitude and death bother you at all?’

  ‘Oh you know, not really,’ Marcus said with studied casualness. ‘Nothing beyond the usual waking up in the middle of the night sobbing over regrets and lost chances. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Marcus gets depressed every birthday thinking about what he hasn’t achieved,’ Sarah said brightly. ‘Comparing himself to other people and the things they have done by that age.’

  ‘What do you mean? Like, by my age Alexander the Great had conquered half the world?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Not even Alexander the Great,’ Marcus replied. ‘I mean, you know, Norman Foster. Now that is depressing.’

  ‘Do you know what I always think when I worry about getting older?’ Justin said.

  Something about his tone made Rosie very reluctant to hear the answer.

  ‘I think that, by my age, about a fifth of men in sub-Saharan Africa have already died.’

  ‘Well, I can see how that would cheer you up,’ Marcus said.

  ‘It’s a serious point. For one, it puts things into perspective, makes me feel lucky to have everything that I have. But it also makes me angry at the unfairness of it all. Drives it home to me that it’s our job to go out and do something about it.’

  No one seemed to know where to take the conversation after that. Rosie noticed that Charlotte was grimly emptying her glass. Of course, she probably was the oldest, Rosie realized. How old was she? Rosie wasn’t sure. Thirty-five, perhaps? Did she look it? Well, probably not. Not until you thought about it anyway. There weren’t too many lines on her face, but the plumpness helped with that.

  Was that a bitchy thought? No, it was true, wasn’t it? She was flushed red now, which was giving her skin an uneven, blotchy quality, but it was probably just the wine.

  Certainly, she didn’t look middle-aged, though. Not like Marcus. He was going bald at the front of his head and grey at the sides, and he had that odd, angular type of face which it was hard to imagine ever being young. Those glasses didn’t help either. He looked about forty, but then he had done ever since Rosie met him. Maybe he would look exactly the same in thirty years and people would start remarking on how well he looked for his age.

  Sarah seemed so worn as well. It wasn’t really anything physical, although her skin was definitely sallow, but it was the expression her face had relaxed into as much as anything. Careworn and nervous. Like fun wasn’t her natural state any more. Rosie wasn’t sure whether to feel sad that someone her own age could look so youthless, or secretly pleased that she looked much better.

  The conversation hadn’t restarted. After a while Matt stood up. ‘Has everyone finished? Shall I take the plates?’

  Rosie watched him stand up. His face was naturally craggy, and his skin had a rough, worn sheen to it, but it was still taut. There was just such a focused, contained quality to him that young people didn’t seem to have. Matt had always had it, though. There was none of the doubt that so many people had when they were young, and none of the buoyancy you saw in others.

  Matt piled up all eight plates and began washing them up. Rosie realized these must be all the plates he had.

  Charlotte wasn’t getting up to help him. What did that mean? Had they had some kind of falling out already? No, Rosie didn’t think so. When Charlotte didn’t like someone, it wasn’t hard to tell. There was none of that tension. She was just distracted.

  In fact, the body language was quite good. They had been sitting next to each other for a start. Close together too. Angled slightly towards each other. Wasn’t that a good sign? That’s what it said in Marie Claire anyway. They weren’t quite touching, but there had been a couple of glances that suggested a private joke. They were definitely getting on well.

  It would be so much more convenient if they became a couple. Then Rosie could start inviting them to ordinary dinner things. It wouldn’t be a special effort to see either of them any more; there’d be no more single-friend awkwardness. They could start going to the cinema together, or even the theatre. Rosie allowed herself a moment’s pride. Perhaps it had been some sort of instinct.

  Charlotte snapped out of whatever trance she had been in. ‘Who wants some more wine?’ she asked.

  Thirteen

  Justin looked round the table, silently asking if anyone wanted to take up his offer of a discussion on global inequality. No one did.

  Marcus enjoyed the hush. Matt and Charlotte were over at the kitchen worktop and the others seemed content to let the conversation drift. He was in good spirits. It had been a satisfying day at work; they hadn’t won the competition for the flats in Nottingham, but Piotr had agreed that they probably would have done if they’d gone with Marcus’s idea in the first place.

  A cloud of hot spice-laden air filled the room as Matt opened the oven. It was a thick, fatty scent that seemed almost edible itself, and Marcus realized how hungry he was. The starter had been quite pleasant. He had been assuming that Matt would trip up somewhere along the line, but it was competently done. Nothing special, of course. There was no complexity to the flavours, just a pleasing unity of fishy, lemony freshness.

  But Marcus hadn’t been expecting much, and he had enjoyed it. Now he was looking forward to the lamb. The fish had been insubstantial, and a hearty lump of roast meat seemed a good way to follow. Not much in the way of fine cooking, no, but that was ideal really; Marcus could enjoy a tasty dinner without worrying whether he could match it.

  ‘That smells gorgeous, Matt,’ Rosie said as Matt took the leg out of the oven and perched it on the front of the hob, swaddling it quickly in silver foil. ‘And it looks amazing. I’m surprised you could fit it into the oven.’

  Matt laughed briefly. ‘It was a bit of a struggle.’ He took the two odd plates off the drying rack and carefully loaded them up with paella from the casserole dish wedged behind the lamb at the back of the hob. He handed them silently to Charlotte, who plonked them down in front of Justin and Barbara with all the enthusiasm of a geriatric nurse distributing bedpans.

  ‘Smells great,’ Barbara said. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Vegetables,’ Charlotte replied.

  ‘Peppers, onions, aubergine, fennel, artichokes, a bit of saffron, turmeric, parsley. That sort of thing,’ Matt clarified, still facing away from them as he took another tray out of the oven – was that avocado Marcus could see roasting in there? – and tipped the contents into the salad bowl that occupied the only free bit of worktop. He handed that to Charlotte and she put it on the table.

  ‘What’s this?’ Justin asked.

  ‘Salad,’ she replied.

  ‘Avocado, alfalfa, lettuce, some Monterey Jack . . .’ Matt tailed off as the lamb teetered on the edge of the hob as he removed the foil.

  ‘Do you need a hand with that?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘I think I’ll have to do it on the table.’ Matt picked up the leg of lamb on its carving board, manoeuvred it over a
n empty spot on the table, then put it down heavily in front of a startled Justin and Barbara. Justin couldn’t keep his eyes off the steaming lump of meat.

  ‘It’s very . . . leg-like, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘It is a leg,’ Charlotte replied.

  ‘Sorry to dump it in front of you,’ Matt said. ‘But there wasn’t really space to carve over there. I hope you don’t mind.’

  He picked up the carving knife and plunged it into the haunch, releasing a bubbling spurt of bloody juice. Justin flinched.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Well, actually, you know, I’d rather . . . but no, it’s fine.’

  Marcus was a little disappointed to see politeness win out.

  ‘You sure?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  But Charlotte persisted: ‘No, what? What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on, what?’

  ‘Well,’ Justin shifted in his seat. ‘I suppose it’s just that I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that in front of us.’

  ‘Nearly done,’ Matt said, doling out hunks of meat on to plates.

  ‘What, roast lamb offends you, does it?’ Charlotte asked, leaning back and folding her arms.

  ‘We’re vegetarians, you see.’

  ‘I’d noticed.’

  ‘So, you know, yes, we prefer not to have dead animals in front of us.’ Justin’s tone became a little less apologetic.

  ‘It’s not a dead animal. It’s roast lamb,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘I certainly hope it’s dead,’ Matt said.

  ‘Looks pretty dead to me,’ Marcus agreed.

  ‘Yes, but it’s cooked,’ Charlotte insisted.

  ‘That doesn’t make it any less dead,’ Justin replied.

  ‘But that’s not the point, is it? That’s like saying that your paella is just a bowl of dead peppers and dried-out rice grains.’

  ‘That rice is not dried out,’ Matt interjected. ‘I’d say it was succulent.’

  ‘Yes, it looks very nice, Matt,’ Justin said.

  Matt continued quickly: ‘Charlotte, could you serve out the beans?’

  This seemed to be the moment to break the tension. Matt began apportioning the lamb and Charlotte seemed fully occupied adding fava beans and flatbread to the plates and sending them round the table.

  Marcus watched his own portion approach as he weighed up his options. The argument had threatened to ruin the atmosphere of the whole evening – he didn’t want to see such promise go to waste. Clearly, if Justin and Barbara became embroiled in a bitter argument about meat-eating, they were unlikely to give the meal top marks. And for everyone else, a tense confrontation wasn’t going to help the evening run smoothly. Rosie already looked uncomfortable, and Sarah too seemed on edge. If this carried on, she was unlikely to resist Marcus’s attempts to mark Matt down. He would be right to do so. That was before they had even tasted the meat, which was never going to seem at its best during an argument about whether or not it was murder.

  ‘Please start,’ Matt said as he moved the hacked-up lamb to one side. Half the bone was now picked clean, gleaming whitely between hunks of gristle.

  No one said anything as they took their first bite of lamb. It was, in fact, pretty good, Marcus thought: tender, juicy, well-infused with interesting spices. Of course it lacked a bit of subtlety, just sitting there on the plate with beans, salad and flatbread, but for what it was, it was good. The silence continued. It wasn’t obvious how to compliment the lamb without restarting the argument.

  Marcus said: ‘Matt, Charlotte, this is really good. Tender and flavoursome.’ He nodded. ‘You vegetarians are missing out.’

  ‘We can smell it, actually,’ Justin said.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s rather invasive.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ Charlotte asked quietly, filling her wine glass to the top.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Annoying you, is it?’

  ‘It is a bit. Barbara, what is it that Samina calls it?’

  ‘Passive meat-eating,’ Barbara replied.

  ‘What!’ Wine slopped over the rim of Charlotte’s glass.

  ‘Yes, it’s when you’re given no choice about ingesting particles of meat because they’re ambient, like smoke, in the air.’

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life,’ Charlotte declared.

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t like it, but it’s true,’ Justin said firmly. ‘You’re making me breathe in meat.’

  ‘It’s tasty, though, isn’t it?’ Marcus said. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a slice, now that you’re eating it anyway?’

  ‘Marcus . . .’ Sarah warned.

  ‘Come on, it was just a joke. Tell me, is it a moral or a health issue for you?’

  ‘Both,’ Justin said.

  Charlotte snorted.

  ‘Barbara, what do you think?’ Sarah asked.

  It took her some time to respond. ‘I guess everybody has to make their own choices about killing animals. But I just don’t think that I could ever eat meat. It’s so heavy, and greasy, and full of stuff that’s bad for your body.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Charlotte said. ‘We’ve evolved to eat meat.’

  ‘You know, I think we’ve evolved to make choices. And I want to choose not to eat meat.’

  ‘Well said, Barbara,’ Justin commented, in a way that Marcus thought was faintly patronizing.

  ‘What about my choices?’ Charlotte jabbed her fork towards Barbara.

  ‘I’m not criticizing your choices . . .’

  ‘Yes, you bloody well are! You called it passive meat-eating! As if we were all sitting here with twenty Bensons each on the go, wafting them under your nose.’

  ‘We’re not saying it’s necessarily equivalent to smoking in the health sense,’ Justin said. ‘It’s more in moral terms, about what we want to eat or not eat.’

  ‘What, so it’s only in moral terms that I’m a baby-killer?’

  ‘I didn’t call you a baby-killer . . .’

  ‘It’s what you think, though.’

  ‘Well, a living creature has died for your meal . . .’

  ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ Charlotte shouted in triumph. ‘You come into my house and call me a murderer . . . !’

  ‘This isn’t your house—’

  ‘But I’m still a murderer?’

  ‘Look, I’m not saying . . .’ Justin’s tone lost a little of its edge.

  ‘How can you condemn it without even trying it?’ Charlotte demanded.

  ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t taste nice . . .’

  ‘Because it does.’

  ‘I’m saying we shouldn’t kill other animals for our own pleasure. I don’t need to try it to know that. Just like you don’t need to try killing people to know that’s wrong.’

  ‘You see?’ Charlotte pointed her fork at him accusingly. ‘He is calling me a murderer!’

  ‘Ach!’ Justin exhaled in frustration. ‘Like Barbara said, it’s about choices. We choose not to make animals suffer and die for our dinner. You choose to do so.’

  Matt interrupted. ‘Maybe I choose to change the subject.’

  Justin laughed politely. ‘Perhaps that’s—’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte insisted. ‘I haven’t finished. I’ve just thought of something. Why is it only you who gets to choose?’

  ‘We all get to choose.’

  ‘No, I mean tonight. You come over here and make me – Matt, anyway – cook you a whole other meal. It’s not even the same thing without meat in it; it’s a whole other meal.’

  ‘And very nice it is too, Matt,’ Justin said. ‘Very tasty.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So why doesn’t it work the other way round?’ Charlotte continued. ‘Why can’t I come round to your house and demand that you cook me a steak? Or a nice joint of rare roast beef?’

  ‘It’s not really the same thing.’ Justin’s voice was tetchy again.

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s exactly the
same thing. You don’t want to eat meat. I do. Why do you get to have a special meal cooked for you and I don’t?’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous.’ Justin’s head quivered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can eat vegetarian dishes. And if you just tried them, you would probably really like them, because actually there are some great recipes . . .’

  ‘But you know what would make them better? Meat.’ Charlotte filled up her wine glass again.

  ‘That’s the difference, you see?’ Justin said with clear exasperation. ‘You can eat something without meat. We can’t eat something with meat. So we have to have something else or we would go hungry.’

  ‘You said it was about choices.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well, I’ve made my choice. I choose sausages. When I come round to your house, I want a plate of big, juicy, pork sausages.’

  ‘All right, Charlotte,’ Matt murmured.

  Justin laughed very deliberately. ‘No, it’s OK . . .’

  ‘I’m serious. Big, glistening sausages. Or a chop. There’s a choice for you. I’d settle for a grilled lamb chop with a good bit of bloody pinkness in the middle. That’s what I want.’

  ‘Charlotte, come on,’ Rosie said in a soothing tone. ‘You know it doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘But why not? That’s my point. I think it should. Sausages or chops. Got that, Justin?’

  ‘Yes, I heard you.’

  ‘Good. So we’re agreed. You’re going to do it?’

  ‘No, Charlotte, I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I think meat-eating is wrong and I find meat disgusting.’

  ‘You’re not going to get a very good mark off me if that’s your attitude.’

  ‘If it’s a choice between a bad mark and my deepest values, I think I’ll just have to take the risk.’

  Sarcasm didn’t seem to come naturally to Justin. The intonation was all wrong. Marcus thought he must be really angry to try it. In fact, it was probably Justin’s equivalent of overturning his chair and storming out.

  Marcus, naturally, was delighted. The atmosphere was truly ruined now, and clearly Justin would make sure this evening didn’t win the competition. But the bonus was that Justin and Barbara’s night was almost certainly out of contention as well, if Charlotte kept up her threats. There was always a chance of her apologizing, it was true, but somehow Marcus couldn’t see that happening. At worst, she would glower scornfully and mark down whatever vegetable concoction she was made to eat. At best, the whole row would start again next time.