A Catered Affair

by Sue Margolis

  “Oh, I so did,” I said.

  Nana’s ears had pricked up. “I don’t understand. Why did you have to send Kenny Scotch?”

  “Why? … Oh, well, after you left that night, I felt a bit queasy and Kenny came to my rescue.”

  “Huh, I’m not surprised you felt queasy after all the drink you’d put away.” She paused. “Speaking of feeling queasy … You know, I’m not sure I’m up for dinner. I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

  “But you were fine a minute ago.”

  “It just came on. All of a sudden. I’ll get Millie to drive me home.”

  “What? Millie’s still got a driver’s license?”

  “She’s a very good driver, I’ll have you know.”

  “But she’s so small. She can barely see over the dashboard.”

  “Tally, stop fretting. Millie has no problem driving. You stay and chat with Kenny. Maybe the two of you could go out to dinner.”

  Wasting no time, Nana kissed Kenny and me good-bye and went in search of Millie Siderman.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” I said, turning to Kenny. “My grandmother isn’t always the most tactful of people.”

  “What about Aunty Pearl? Did you see the way her face fell when she thought you were married?”

  I admitted that I had.

  “Sorry I blabbed about the Scotch,” he said.

  “That’s OK—it’s just that I thought it best not to tell Nana or my mum that I spent the night with you … not that Mum would mind. She’s very liberal, but she has the habit of reading too much into things.”

  “I understand … So, your Nana can’t wait to get you fixed up?”

  “She means well, but she doesn’t seem to understand that dating is the last thing on my mind. I know I have to move on, but the way I feel right now, I’m not sure I’ll ever trust a man enough to have another relationship.”

  “It’s funny you should show up, because I was planning to call you to see how you were doing. I thought you might appreciate some support from somebody who knows what you’re going through.”

  “That’s really kind. So what happened between you and your girlfriend? You never said.”

  “Well, her name was Steph. I really loved her. There was me, thinking we’d eventually get married, and then one night over dinner, totally out of the blue, she announces she’s found somebody else and she’s leaving.”

  “God. That’s awful.”

  “It wasn’t great. So anyway, now she’s living with this bloke. He’s a cunnilingus teacher.”

  I burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not. He runs a company in Covent Garden called Lick. You can Google it.”

  I said I’d rather not.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I still feel that the breakup was my fault.”

  “I’m the same. You know it’s illogical, but you can’t help it.”

  “I can’t help thinking that, I must have been a crap lover. I mean, I always thought that, cunnilingus-wise, I was an eight out of ten. Nine on a good day.” He paused and ran his hand over his head. “That’s too much information, isn’t it?”

  “Just a tad, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed. I’m not usually like this—at least not until I’ve had a drink. It’s just that the breakup still feels so raw, I guess, and everything that happened is still swirling around in my mind. I keep offloading on people and making a complete arse of myself.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “I made a gargantuan arse of myself in front of you. You’d have to go a long way to match my performance.”

  He thought for a moment. “Actually, you’re right,” he said, grinning. “Hearing you say that has made me feel a lot better.”

  “You’re not meant to say that.” I laughed. “You should remain mortified for at least a month.”

  Just then a familiar voice piped up. “Right, I’ll be off, then. I’ve got a taxi waiting.” Aunty Pearl was standing in front of us with her coat on. She was holding two carrier bags, presumably filled with leftovers that she considered it a crime to throw away.

  Kenny wanted to know why she was taking a taxi and not letting him take her home.

  “You live in the opposite direction, for one, and for another, you’ve worked hard enough today. Now, come here and give your aunty Pearl a kiss.” Kenny not only obliged but went in for a bear hug.

  “And thank you for the wonderful tea,” she said. “People were so impressed. They can’t stop talking about it.”

  “My pleasure,” Kenny said. “Anytime.”

  At that point, Aunty Pearl turned to me and urged me not to forget what she’d said about getting back on the dating scene. I promised I wouldn’t.

  She turned to go and then stopped.

  “You know, I couldn’t help overhearing what you and Tally were saying just before.”

  Kenny shot me a look that was half amusement, half panic. “Really? What did you hear?”

  “The bit about the cunning linguist. You know who was a great linguist? Your uncle Sol, may he rest in peace. He could speak five languages.”

  With that she was gone.

  Chapter 9

  Kenny and I were in the middle of saying our good-byes when it occurred to me that it seemed a shame to waste the reservation at Deep Blue.

  “Look, I know Nana Ida set us up,” I said, “but we’ve both got to eat. Unless, of course, you have other plans.”

  “Only to go home to another TV dinner,” he said. “These days, I can’t face cooking for myself.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “And the food at Deep Blue is amazing,” he went on. “I’ve eaten there a few times. Did you know they’ve just got their second Michelin star?”

  I didn’t. It was settled. We were going out to dinner.

  Kenny said he needed to get changed and finish clearing up, so he suggested I go on ahead. “Get a drink. I’ll be ten minutes behind you.”

  We ordered Dover sole fried in butter and a bottle of Sancerre. When the wine came, the waiter asked if Kenny would like to taste it. He declined. “Just go ahead and pour,” he said. “I’m sure it will be fine.” After the waiter had gone, I asked Kenny why he hadn’t tasted it. “I hate all that pretentious swirling and sniffing. I just get embarrassed. The way I look at it, if the wine is bad, you just send it back.” When he finally took a sip, he didn’t announce that it had a powerful viscosity, a peachy, dried apricot nose and good “legs.” All he said was, “Wow. That tastes good. Really wine flavored.”

  When the food arrived, he rolled up his sleeves, squeezed lemon over his fish and started dipping his bread in the golden, buttery juice. “Oh boy. This is glorious.”

  I followed his lead and got squeezing and dunking. “Umm,” I said through a mouthful of bread and warm, lemony butter. “You’re not wrong.”

  “And see how the fish just falls off the bone?” he went on. He was really getting stuck in now. “And it’s ever-so-slightly undercooked. Perfect.” He dipped his bread again and took another glug of wine. This was how the French and the Italians ate—with gusto and delight and complete lack of inhibition.

  Jews were the same. So I guess Kenny’s enthusiasm was partly genetic. What was more, Jews—at least the ones I knew—were big on tasting one another’s food. Even cutlery was shared. “Here, Tally, taste these kung pao noodles—they’re to die for,” Nana Ida would say, practically forcing her fork into my mouth.

  “Come on,” Kenny was saying now, “why aren’t you eating?”

  “Sorry. I was miles away.” I started scraping fish off the bone. “You know, Josh hated eating fish. He couldn’t manage the bones. It’s weird. There he was, a highly skilled surgeon, and he couldn’t filet a fish.”

  Kenny said that Steph loved food and that they used to cook together most evenings. “I really enjoyed those times—messing about in the kitchen. That’s one of the reasons I can’t face cooking for myself. It brings back all those memories.”r />
  I could see he was getting upset, so I decided to change the subject. “So, how did the catering for the baby shower go? Did your poop turn out OK?”

  “Fantastic. Exactly the right consistency.”

  We looked up to see the waiter hovering with more bread. He was wearing a po-faced expression, pretending not to have heard. Equally po-faced, we each took a slice. The moment he’d gone we were giggling like a couple of kids who’d been caught telling smutty jokes in class.

  At some stage I asked Kenny how he became a chef. “Easy—my mother is the world’s worst cook. I got so fed up with her burnt offerings that I taught myself to cook and realized I had a talent. God knows where it came from. The talent turned into a passion, and by the time I was sixteen I knew I wanted to be a chef.”

  “So you never went to uni?”

  He laughed. “God no. Education has never been big on the agenda in my family. I was born in Hoxton—before it got trendy. There was never much money. My dad and brother own a market stall selling handbags. It was always assumed that I’d go out to work at eighteen. Dad is a firm believer that the best place to learn is at ‘the university of life.’ But I was determined to do a bit of traveling, so after school I spent a few months backpacking and ended up in Sydney.”

  “Where you got the job chopping vegetables.”

  “Yep.”

  I said that I didn’t understand why with all his experience at some of the world’s top eateries, he was running a catering business instead of his own restaurant.

  “Money. Chefs don’t earn much until they make it big. Since the recession, banks still aren’t lending to new businesses, so I started working for Stewart. We met in Sydney and have been best mates ever since. His business was already successful in Manchester, but he wanted me to develop the London end, which I’ve done. We’re doing really well, and now we’re fifty-fifty partners. Stewart’s in it for the long haul, but he knows that eventually my aim is to have him buy out my half of the business so that I can open a restaurant.” He took a glug of wine and then flipped his Dover sole and began scraping fish from the other side.

  “Very skillful,” I said re the flip. “If I’d tried to do that, the fish would have fallen to pieces and made a mess all over my plate.”

  He laughed. “It’s a knack.”

  The conversation moved from flipping Dover sole to the law. The day they’d met at the Park Royal, Nana had bragged to Kenny that I was a human rights attorney.

  “I can’t imagine what it feels like,” he said, “when you lose an asylum case and a deserving person gets sent home—to face prison or even worse.”

  I said it could be pretty tough on the emotions.

  “There’s this really appalling case I’ve been reading about. You must have come across it—the Iranian civil rights activist who’s facing possible deportation.”

  “Nasreen Karimi. She’s my client.”

  “No kidding. She sounds like one very brave woman. I can’t believe there could be any doubt about whether she deserves to be granted asylum. What do you think will happen?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. She has an excellent case. All we can do is pray that the judicial review goes in our favor.”

  “When will you know?”

  “It could be days or weeks. They just leave you hanging.”

  He wished me luck, and I said we were going to need it.

  “So, has Josh been in touch?” he said.

  I told him about the famous text.

  “Tosser,” Kenny said.

  “I know. But you know what? I still miss him. I think a bit of me still loves him. God, I’m pathetic.”

  Kenny laughed. “No, you’re not. All those mixed feelings are pretty much par for the course. I sleep with one of Steph’s sweaters because it smells of her. It’s the only way I can drop off. At least I’ve started eating now—even if it is only TV dinners.”

  I said that I knew the entire Marks and Spencer ready-meal line by heart. “Mind you, that first week after Josh dumped me, I could hardly get anything down.”

  “I was the same,” he said. “I lived off cold baked beans, straight from the tin.”

  “I couldn’t get out of bed.”

  “Me, neither,” he said. “And I went for weeks without shaving.”

  “God, if I do that my armpits start to look like I’ve got Art Garfunkel in a headlock.”

  His face broke into a smile. “There’s an image.”

  “All I did,” I said, “was watch cable TV.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Bridezillas.”

  “Weaponology.”

  “Wife Swap.”

  “Cannibalism: Extreme Survival.”

  “It’s Me or the Dog.”

  “World’s Wildest Police Videos. I had so many people who were there for me, but …”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You still felt lonely as hell.”

  “People do their best to understand, but nobody really gets it if they haven’t been through it. For me, nights are still pretty bad.”

  “I know,” I said. “When we’ve finished dinner, I’ll go home and cry myself to sleep while I listen to Cher singing ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).’”

  “I might stay up and torment myself by going through our photograph album.”

  “God, I’m feeling really miserable now.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “So what do you think? Shall we get together and do this again?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Chapter 10

  “It was just so good to talk to somebody who knows what I’m going through,” I said to Rosie the next morning, when I popped round for coffee.

  “But don’t you think I know what you’re going through?” she said, giving me this ever-so-slightly woebegone look that seemed to be saying, Aren’t I good enough for you anymore? I felt the need to reassure her that she wasn’t about to lose her best-friend status.

  “Oh, sweetie, of course you know what I’m going through. And you’ve been brilliant these past few weeks. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. The thing is, Kenny is going through it right now, just like me. It’s like we’re sharing a journey.”

  “Yeah. I suppose I can understand that,” Rosie said, pouring coffee into a couple of mugs. She handed one to me and we sat down at the kitchen table.

  “So you don’t think Kenny could be interested in you?”

  “What? No. We’re talking about somebody who sleeps with his ex’s sweater.”

  “And you’re not interested in him? I mean, don’t forget you’ve already propositioned him once.”

  “Yeah, when I was totally trashed—not to mention in shock and practically suicidal with misery. Rosie, you have to believe me—right now I don’t have a single romantic thought in my head. I never think about sex. My Rabbit hasn’t been out of its drawer since Josh dumped me.”

  Just then, we heard a key in the front door. Rosie said it was her mum and dad back from the park with Ben and Izzy.

  I’d known Frank and Pru for as long as I’d known Rosie. They were in their mid-seventies now. Rosie, who had two much older siblings, had been what Pru referred to as her “time of life” baby.

  Just before Rosie started university, the Thomases retired and moved from London to rural Scotland. They lived in a rambling stone farmhouse thirty miles from Edinburgh.

  During the summer vacation I would often go and stay for a week or so. The house was on the edge of a loch, surrounded by dark, treeless hills and mist. It was also five miles from the nearest pub or post office. Back then I used to get withdrawal symptoms if I was more than a mile from a branch of Topshop. For my first visit, I packed bikinis, tiny skirts, boob tubes and strappy sandals. Of course it poured all week and Rosie and I ended up traipsing round the loch, me sporting one of Frank’s old Barbours, a pair of Pru’s green wellies and something called a waxed bucket hat.

  It took me a while to get used to this land of long walks, roaring stags
and running salmon—not to mention the fear that at any moment, Macbeth’s three witches might emerge from the mist, full of screeching, toil and trouble. Eventually, though, I came to appreciate—even crave—the peace and tranquillity of the Scottish countryside.

  Pru baked the best-ever Dundee cake and went to church. She was a Methodist teetotaler who sang “Jerusalem” as she pegged out the washing and spent a great deal of her time complaining about all the sex and swearing on TV. She didn’t seem to mind the violence. Frank, who was pretty long-suffering—but didn’t lack a sense of humor—had long ago nicknamed her Prudence McPrude. He also made the point that she might feel less concerned about all the sex and swearing on TV if she didn’t sit glued to it each night.

  Frank spent his time driving from here to there in his ancient Land Rover, mostly running errands for Pru. If he got the chance he would stop off for a pint and a ploughman’s lunch at the local pub. In the afternoons—assuming he had a pass from Pru—he would sit in his study reading the works of the early socialist thinkers, like Robert Owen and Thomas Paine. (It was Frank who’d inspired Rosie’s interest in left-wing politics.)

  Ben came charging into the kitchen now, his face bright red from excitement and the August heat. He was wearing a T-shirt with I AM THE BIG BROTHER across the front. In his hands was a very large Tupperware container. This appeared to have something moving around inside it.

  “Mum, Mum. Granddad found lots of frogs. We put vem in my box. Granddad made holes in the lid wiv his penknife, so vat vey can breev. And Gran’ma says I have to call my penis my winkie.” He held up the container for his mother’s inspection.

  “Be careful,” Ben said, “or vey will jump out. They’re green speckled ones. Like in the song.”

  Rosie lifted a corner of the lid and peered in. “You’re absolutely right. Aren’t they lovely? I’ve never seen speckled frogs in real life.” She paused. “Ben, can we spool back for a second? What was that you said about calling your penis your winkie?”

  “Gran’ma says.”

  “I think Grandma may have got a bit confused,” Rosie said. “Your penis is your penis. We don’t need any other words. OK?”