I removed the foil from the bottle’s neck to expose the rounded top of the cork the way I’d seen it done by the maître d in Rick’s Café Americain, the nightclub where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman met in Casablanca. I began to twist the cork, the wet bottle slippery in my hands, but couldn’t believe how tightly the cork fitted. Finally I managed to twist it slowly around when all of a sudden it shot out like a bloody rocket, flying up and hitting the ceiling. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ I exclaimed, almost dropping the bottle.
‘Oh, what fun! I’d quite forgotten!’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said. Bubbles began to foam from the spout. ‘Well done, Jack! Quick, into a glass,’ she cried, laughing and clapping her hands as if she were once again a young girl. I poured the champagne, then glanced anxiously at the ceiling where the cork had left a distinct impression. ‘I shall think of it as Jack’s mark,’ she said, her calm now completely restored. ‘Oh, what pleasant memories of China the pop of that cork brings back.’
‘I’m awfully sorry – I didn’t know it would pop out like that. I thought that was only a trick they played in the movies.’
‘You did splendidly, Jack. It’s really rather dreary and show-off to simply twist and pluck the cork from the bottle. After all, champagne should be a celebration and a properly popping cork is its first hurrah!’ Charming wasn’t the word! I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the stern, proper woman I’d known all my life.
We toasted the three of us in partnership, and then our thoughts went to Jimmy. ‘To James – godspeed, and come back to us soon,’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan offered, and we clinked our glasses once again.
I must say, I was already missing him a fair bit.
While Scotch and brandy might be likened to two irascible old men, different but always difficult and sharp-tongued, I discovered that champagne is like a lovely young woman captured in the first flush of beauty. It certainly didn’t take a lot of getting accustomed to. After the first glass I was led into a tiny dining room that contained a table that would only have seated four at the most. It was carefully set but the first thing I noticed was the absence of cutlery; instead, two sets of ivory chopsticks rested on a small porcelain cushion. Thankfully I’d first learned to use chopsticks in Japan and then later in the POW camp. Each place setting contained several bowls, a ceramic cup without a handle and a porcelain spoon. The dishes were a pale duck-egg colour with, at the centre, a brilliant goldfish motif with elaborate ribbon-like fins. Of course, at the time I had no idea of the why and the way of all the small containers. After the Chinese POW camp I’d associated Chinese food with the vile millet gruel eaten from a tin dish and I’d sworn, as long as I lived, never to touch chink food again.
In fact, when Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had promised to cook Chinese I’d almost gagged at the thought. At the last moment before leaving home I’d considered sending Cory to apologise and say I’d been taken ill and couldn’t come. Much as I wanted to sort out the fishing-boat business, I was afraid that I might disgrace myself by throwing up at the table. I was certainly in for a big surprise.
The champagne bucket had accompanied us to the table. ‘Not strictly correct but, oh well, that’s the beauty of champagne – you can drink it just about anywhere, at any time,’ my hostess remarked, as she filled my glass once again.
‘What we’re having tonight is called chrysanthemum fire pot. It’s a bit like a Swiss fondue – you cook it at the table.’ She didn’t mention, and I didn’t know at the time, that it took many hours to prepare.
I hadn’t a clue what a Swiss fondue was, and had never heard of food cooked at the table. It sounded a bit barbaric. ‘Chrysanthemum fire pot? Fondue?’ I asked, somewhat mystified. This was turning out to be a very different sort of evening.
‘Oh dear – perhaps it’s best shown, and not explained. Come, I need your help, Jack.’ She led the way into the small kitchen leading from the dining room.
The first thing I observed was that the kitchen benchtop was covered in dishes containing bits of raw food, all of it cut into small pieces. Fish in one, prawns in another, chicken in a third, followed by pork and beef in two more. Three bowls each contained what Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan called celery cabbage, chopped into three-inch lengths, and what I recognised myself as spinach leaves, while another beside them was half-filled with noodles.
‘The vegies are out of the garden,’ she said. ‘Lovely and fresh. I find vegetables lying around for even a day simply don’t taste as nice. Now, Jack, watch me,’ she instructed. She moved the small dishes aside to make room and then took two fairly large, flat square plates with the same fish design from a shelf above the kitchen benchtop. Working with amazing speed she arranged each kind of meat, fish and seafood and the noodles in slightly overlapping layers on one of the plates. ‘Perhaps you’d like to do the same, Jack, while I prepare the sauce?’
The plate she had arranged looked terrific – what I’d seen as bits of raw food had been transformed into fancy decoration. But I soon discovered it wasn’t quite as simple as it looked – pieces kept slipping out of place and the rows I made wouldn’t remain straight, while hers looked as if they were glued to the surface of the plate. In the meantime she mixed soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine into a small bowl, stirred in some beaten egg and served the result in two small bowls. I’d just about completed my own task when she finished but I must say, compared to her arrangement, mine looked like a terrible mess.
Next she poured boiling water from the electric kettle into a pretty teapot, its handle made from bamboo. ‘Green tea,’ she commented. ‘This one is named Dragon Well, sent to me from Hong Kong, and it is quite exquisite.’ She glanced at my plate. ‘Splendid!’ she observed. ‘Now, if you will please, Jack.’ She pointed to a large brass-and-copper pot sitting on the side of the stove on a stand with a handle on either side. It also had two handles at the top with a hollow brass cone protruding about five inches from the centre. She handed me two pot holders. ‘You may need to use these – the cone is filled with glowing charcoal and the stock around it is simmering and should be very hot.’
‘The chrysanthemum fire pot?’
‘Yes – a truly treasured item in any Chinese kitchen.’
I carried the chrysanthemum fire pot to the table and she followed me with the two square plates, then returned for the various bits’n’pieces, her final trip to bring the pretty teapot. ‘Well, doesn’t that look splendid,’ she said, holding the teapot and standing back from the small table now burgeoning with uncooked food.
‘It’s the colours,’ I replied. ‘I mean, it’s all raw food and already it looks delicious.’
‘Ah, the Chinese are a very aesthetic race – a properly prepared meal is expected to appeal to all the senses. The colours should be pleasing to the eye, the aromas tantalising and the ingredients nicely uniform and cut to be ideal for chopsticks. Knives are not permitted at any Chinese table.’ She pointed to the place setting at the far side of the table nearest the door to her parlour. ‘You’ll sit there please, Jack. An honoured guest always sits opposite the host and nearest the door.’ I moved across and waited until she sat down, unable to stand behind her chair to allow her to sit first, as the Women’s Weekly and Gloria would have preferred. She brought her hands together, smiling. ‘A fire pot is never used by a single person, and so this is a special treat for me as well. Shall we dine, Jack?’
She’d placed the beautifully arranged plate in front of me and the one I’d so poorly prepared she took for herself. We now sat opposite each other with the chrysanthemum fire pot between us to one side. ‘You’ll have to show me what to do,’ I said. ‘This is all pretty new to me.’
‘You do use chopsticks, don’t you?’ But before I could reply she added, ‘Of course you do, how silly of me. Well then, we’ll start with a little green tea.’ She lifted the teapot and poured a little of the light-greenish-coloured tea into one of the small glazed-pottery cups and handed it to me. ‘It’s served very hot but the end result is cool and refr
eshing and will aid your digestion with the fried food,’ she explained. Then, filling her own cup, she lifted it and said, ‘Yum sing – a toast to one’s honoured guest.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied, not quite knowing what to say. I tasted the tea, which I must say seemed rather bland, although the smell was quite pleasant – like the bush after rain. If anything, it was slightly bitter. Certainly nothing to write home about. ‘Nice,’ I said, not really meaning it.
But of course she wasn’t fooled. ‘Chinese tea is very subtle. Perhaps one day you’ll come to appreciate it.’ She brought her tea to her lips and I was astonished at the noise she made – a loud, slurping, sucking noise like a pig sucking from a trough, or a child draining the last drops of a milkshake through a straw. Coming from someone as posh as she was, I was pretty shocked. She placed the cup down. ‘The idea is to suck air into the cup at the same time to cool the hot tea. It’s quite polite to do it this way – noisy but, like so many things Chinese, really very practical.’
Next she picked up her chopsticks. ‘This is really very simple and a rather pleasant way to eat, and the nice part is that you only have to eat the things you enjoy.’ She picked up a piece of fish and placed it in a small wire basket with a handle, which she then dipped into the simmering stock. I watched as the stock bubbled around the morsel of fish. ‘Fish cooks very quickly – the pork and beef will take a little longer,’ she explained, removing the fish from the basket with her chopsticks and dipping it into the sauce she’d prepared. ‘Yum!’ she said unselfconsciously. Then, after swallowing, she added, ‘The Chinese would normally use sole or pike as the preferred fish, but this is a lovely piece of sea bass I got off Jim Blain’s fishing boat this morning.’ I was beginning to realise that she’d gone to an enormous amount of trouble on my behalf. If this veritable banquet was by way of an apology, then it was certainly working a treat.
Well, I tucked in and I discovered cooking at the table was lots of fun as well as being delicious. We talked about the boat we were going to buy. I did most of the talking, while dripping and cooking and chopsticking away, washing it all down with champagne so that pretty soon my square plate was empty and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan insisted I eat half of her food, which was no hardship I can tell you. Though I’m afraid I had to give the tea a miss.
Then, when I thought we were finished, I noticed that the noodles and the vegies hadn’t been touched. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan now placed them into the stock and cooked them for what seemed no more than a minute, then ladled a couple of spoonfuls into a bowl and handed it to me. ‘Soup is the last course,’ she announced, ‘The Chinese tend to do things differently.’
The soup, containing all the flavours of the previously cooked ingredients, was wonderful. I know a fair bit about food today, but at that time it was mostly just stuff on your plate you ate gratefully – usually meat and veg. After the POW camp everything home-cooked tasted good. But this was a truly fantastic meal.
‘I nearly didn’t come tonight,’ I admitted, pointing to my empty soup bowl and indicating the empty dishes that lay around me, as my host looked at me querulously. ‘Chinese food! I swore I’d never eat it again in my life.’ I then proceeded to tell her about the vile millet gruel in the various field hospitals and the prison camp.
‘Jack, how very unfortunate!’ she cried. ‘I could so easily have cooked a roast with all the trimmings.’
I grinned. ‘It couldn’t possibly have tasted as good as this. Honestly, it was fantastic.’
She smiled, her head to one side. ‘You are so very kind – really you are, Jack.’
With the help of the champagne, we were getting along like a house on fire. While in the years to come I would eat food cooked by some of the great Chinese chefs of the world, the banquet Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan prepared for me would always be special in my mind. By the end of the feast, having consumed the lion’s share of the champagne, I have to say I was feeling decidedly mellow.
‘Shall we retire to the lounge?’ she suggested, rising and reaching for the champagne bottle. ‘Oh dear, it’s empty!’ She giggled like a young girl. ‘I say, shall we have another?’ I wasn’t going to say yes, but then I wasn’t going to say no either. My head was feeling a bit light, but other than that I felt fine, and decided I’d definitely acquired a taste for the stuff. What’s more, I didn’t have the usual telltale signs of getting plastered. ‘Why not?’ she suddenly decided. ‘This is, after all, rather a special occasion. Such a pity James is not with us. Now off you go, make yourself comfortable in the lounge.’ She headed for the kitchen with the bucket and empty bottle. Little did I know I would never again taste champagne as good, and it would be many years before I could afford to drink vintage Krug again.
Back in the lounge with my glass replenished and bubbles dancing up my nostrils, life seemed pretty grand. I was still yakking away thirteen to the dozen – whether from the champagne, the splendid meal she’d made me think I’d helped to cook, or the comfortable atmosphere in which an entirely new Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan prevailed, I couldn’t say. It was time, I decided, to slam on the verbal brakes and to give someone else a turn to talk.
Emboldened by the champagne, I ventured, ‘You said earlier in the evening, when I opened the champagne, “Oh, what pleasant memories of China the pop of that cork brings back”. Well, I know Jimmy isn’t here, but it could be months before he returns. Would you consider telling me the remainder of your story, right up to when you came to the island?’ Before she could answer, I hastily added, ‘I have an excellent memory and I promise to tell it to Jimmy exactly as you tell it to me.’
‘Hopefully you’ll make a better fist of it, Jack,’ she replied modestly. ‘And yes, you’re certainly blessed with a good memory – you’ve just quoted a throwaway line I used at least two hours ago. I only wish my memory were as good. It seems to be getting worse lately – it’s curious how one remembers details from the distant past, yet one can’t seem to memorise a grocery list.’ She sighed. ‘Very well, but you will tell me if I get tedious, won’t you? There’s nothing quite as exhausting as being cast in the role of polite listener.’
‘It’s no hardship, Countess. Last time Jimmy and I were blown away!’
She ignored the expression, though I imagined I saw her flinch. ‘I’m not sure I remember quite where I ended last time?’
‘Your father . . .’ I was about to say ‘committed suicide’, but stopped myself just in time. ‘You had decided to make a new start in Shanghai. Did you, you know, meet up with Mr Yu, like he asked you to?’ ‘As’, not ‘like’, I corrected myself silently. I still hadn’t grown accustomed to not being picked up and scolded for such grammatical sins. Our dialogue had been peppered with her corrections for so long that they formed a part of our familiarity, and I found myself almost missing them. I poured myself another glass of champagne and noticed hers was still filled to the brim.
‘Big Boss Yu? Well, a comedy of errors there, but we’ll get to that a little later. Now, let me see . . . ah yes, I packed whatever I possessed, together with my father’s papers and a few song sheets I’d acquired from the nightclub, into one small cardboard suitcase. I attempted to sell my father’s clothes but the second-hand clothes shop near the nightclub wouldn’t accept them, claiming the clothes worn by Russian men were too large for the local Chinese population and there was no market for them among the refugees. I ended up giving them to Ah Foo, the rickshaw boy who’d faithfully waited each night to take me home from the nightclub, often refusing drunken patrons who may have tipped him generously. He said he didn’t have any personal need for the clothes, but he could sell them easily enough at the flea market. When I informed him of my intended departure he looked terribly distressed. “Ayee! But who will look after you and take you home safely at night?” he cried.’ She paused for a moment, and then said, ‘Westerners so often think of the Chinese as people who don’t show their emotions and who lack personal loyalty, when in fact they are exactly the opposite. For example, if you’
ve treated your number-one boy well – he is the manager of your household, much like an English butler – should you fall upon hard times, he will accept a cut in salary or even feed you from his own pocket. When I offered my rickshaw boy ten dollars as a farewell gift he refused it. “No, missy. You will need it – the clothes are enough. I wish you good joss.” They truly are remarkable people, often contradictory by western standards, but nevertheless an exceptional race.’
‘I thought they regarded all Europeans as gwai lo?’ I asked.
She looked at me, surprised. ‘You know what the term means?’
‘Foreign devil. It was frequently used in the POW camp by the Chinese guards.’
‘Well, yes, I admit gwai lo and gwai mui are common Chinese expressions to denote European men and women, although I’m not sure they carry the same malice as the translation.’
‘I’ve sidetracked you,’ I said, apologising.
‘No, not at all – it helps when you ask questions. Where was I? Oh, yes. Leaving for Shanghai. Well, I bought a second-class ticket on the train. By the way, there were five classes available. Second class was far from comfortable, so I’d hate to think how tedious fifth class must have been. We travelled for nearly four days, stopping frequently to pick up coal and take water and, of course, to allow more people into the already overcrowded carriages. I bought food from the peasants on the platforms at the various stations instead of using the second-class saloon, which served mostly European food. Most of the second-class passengers, like myself, were Russian refugees hoping to find a better life in Shanghai. I must say they were a motley lot, overwhelmed with self-pity and constantly comparing stories while, at the same time, lamenting the unfairness that had brought about their downfall.’ She paused and glanced at me. ‘Self-justification is one of the more odious characteristics among humans, don’t you think, Jack?’
Brother Fish Page 65