‘Well, it could be.’
‘Now, this book of yours . . . does it tell you about them things? You know, different ways, and such like?’
‘Yes,’ I said, cautiously.
‘Well, then — can I borrow it for a bit?’ he pleaded. ‘To improve me technique, like?’
How could I resist this pudgy, middle-aged man pleading for the text-book to improve his passionate overtures to his wife? It would have been sheer cruelty.
‘All right,’ I said, resignedly. ‘I’ll lend you volume two.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He grinned. ‘Cor! I’ll bet this’ll liven the old girl up. I’ll bet she’ll be ever so pleased.’
He was wrong. Two days later, as I was having lunch, he limped out of the kitchen and came over to my table, carrying volume two. His right eye was half-closed and swollen and of an interesting series of colours ranging from purple on his cheekbone to scarlet and pink around his eyebrow.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What have you done to your eye?’
He laid Havelock on the table with care.
‘I never done it,’ he said. ‘It’s the old woman wot’s done it. After all that nag, nag about bleedin’ sex, she up and catches me a wollop like a bleedin’ pile-driver. And d’you know why, sir?’
‘Why?’ I asked, fascinated.
He sighed, the weary sigh of a man faced by a woman’s logic. ‘’Cos I brought a dirty book into the house, sir. That’s why,’he said.
I decided that Havelock had caused quite enough problems and so I would call in all the volumes I had out on loan. Besides, I was leaving in twenty-four hours and, such was the success of Havelock as light reading, I was afraid that I might not get all the books back.
I had just been round the hotel leaving messages for Dennis, Gavin and Stella (a chambermaid who was worried about her boyfriend: ‘All ’e ever thinks about is sex. Honest, ’e doesn’t even take an interest in football.’), when I ran into the manager, Mr Weatherstone-Thompson.
‘Ah! Good afternoon, Mr Durrell,’ he said. ‘I understand that you are leaving us the day after tomorrow?’
‘Yes, alas,’ I said, ‘I have to get back to Jersey.’
‘Of course, of course, you must be so busy with all your gorillas and things,’ he laughed unctuously. ‘But we have enjoyed having you here.’
‘And I’ve enjoyed being here,’ I replied, backing towards the lift.
‘And the staff will all miss you,’ said Mr Weatherstone-Thompson, adroitly getting between me and the lift, ‘and I think they will even miss your little . . . Ha, ha! . . . library.’
I groaned inwardly, Mr Weatherstone-Thompson was an over-weight, wheezing, always-slightly-moist fifty, who smelt strongly of whisky, Parma violets and cheap cigars. He was married to a suicide blonde (dyed by her own hand) some twenty-five years his junior. She did not just have an eye for the men, she had a seine net out for them. Mr Weatherstone-Thompson had problems, but I was not going to let him borrow Havelock to solve them. Skilfully, I got round him and in line with the lift again.
‘Oh, yes, Havelock Ellis,’ I said. ‘A most interesting series of volumes.’
‘I’m sure, I’m sure,’ said Mr Weatherstone-Thompson eagerly. ‘I was wondering if perhaps, when the rest of the staff have finished . . . er . . . drinking at this fountain of knowledge, if I might . . .’
‘Oh, what a pity!’ I said, remorsefully. ‘You should have told me before. I’ve just packed them up and sent them on ahead to Jersey.’
His disappointment was pathetic, but I hardened my heart. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, well. Never mind. It can’t be helped. What I always say is that that sort of book is interesting in its way, but really, if you’re an experienced man like you and I are . . . well, there’s not much it can teach us.’
‘No, indeed,’ I said, ‘I should think it would take more than a book to add to your knowledge.’
Mr Weatherstone-Thompson laughed and his eyes brightened as he mentally reviewed his imaginary prowess.
‘Well, I’ll not deny I’ve had my moments,’ he said, chuckling.
‘I’m sure you have,’ I agreed, as I got into the lift. ‘In fact, you should be writing the books, not reading them.’
I left him (Casanova, Mark Antony, Ramon Navarro rolled into one) laughing protestingly at my compliment to his powers as a seducer.
By the following morning I had retrieved all my Havelock Ellis except the one I had lent to Gavin. Havelock, I found, was still weaving his spell. Dennis confessed that he was now thoroughly confused. Before Havelock, he had always thought there was only one sort of sex and that was chaste and pure. Stella said that, instead of Havelock making her boy-friend take an interest in football, it made him worse than ever, and she had had a terrible time the previous night retaining her virginity.
It only remained to get back the volume I had lent Gavin. This was the one dealing with normal sex, since Gavin had been working his way steadily through all nine volumes. They told me that he had gone up to Sheffield for the weekend but was due back the Monday morning I was supposed to leave.
The morning of my departure dawned bright and clear and I was awakened by the door of the passageway leading into the suite opening followed by a thump. Then the door closed again. I thought perhaps they had brought my breakfast.
‘Come in,’ I called sleepily, but there was no response. I decided it was probably some over-enthusiastic chambermaid, waiting to do out the room at the crack of dawn, rolled over and went back to sleep again.
It was not until I got up later to go and have a bath that I saw the copy of Havelock Ellis lying just inside the doorway in the hall. So it had been Gavin I had heard, returning volume eight. As I picked it up, a note fell out.
‘Thanks for book,’ it said. ‘Wish I’d never borrowed the bloody thing. Lent it to Rupert and got back to find him in my bed with a girl. Am giving up sex. Yours truly, Gavin.’
Havelock, game to the last, had struck his final blow.
The Michelin Man
Many years ago, when I first started to travel in France, a kindly friend pressed a copy of the Guide Michelin into my hands, rather in the spirit that prompts the Gideon Society to fill lonely hotel bedrooms with copies of the Bible. The Guide Michelin (known affectionately as ‘the Mich’) is to a traveller and gourmet what the Bible is to a Christian, the Koran to a Mohammedan or the sayings of Buddha to a large section of the world. It is your guide, mentor and friend when travelling in France. It is small, fat and red – like so many cheerful French peasants you see who have become well-padded and polished over the years by good food and wine. Within its scarlet covers are the dossiers of some two thousand hotels, pensions and restaurants, their inner-most secrets revealed.
A glance at the Mich and you know every reasonable hostelry within a fifty-mile radius of your position. It tells you whether the hostelry in question allows dogs in your room, whether they are ‘tout confort’ or dismissed as merely being acceptable; whether they have garages, telephones, private baths and other adjuncts of modem living; whether they are quiet (a red rocking chair as the inspired symbol) or whether they have a ‘jar din fleuri’.
But in addition to this almost Scotland Yard dossier on each place the Mich does something more: it tells you about food. France is an eminently sensible country where people take food seriously as an art form, which indeed the cooking and presentation of food is; an art form which has, unfortunately, become almost extinct in Britain. In France the choice of a dish is made with the same care as you would employ in choosing a wife, and in some cases even greater. Therefore the Mich has printed in its margins against the various restaurants certain symbols that guide and succour the person who takes food and its preparation seriously.
The first symbol is a small etching of crossed spoon and fork. One of these denotes a plain bu
t adequate meal, two or three mean comfortable or very comfortable while four crossed spoons and forks mean the presentation is of exquisite excellence. After this the mind becomes bedazzled.
Four crossed spoons and forks accompanied by a star mean you will have an ambrosial meal in ideal circumstances and are on the first rungs of the gastronomic ladder that leads to that Paradise where you discover a place with four crossed spoons and forks and three stars. There are, however, only four of these in France. Getting three stars in the Mich is considerably more difficult than obtaining the Victoria Cross, the Croix de Guerre or the Purple Heart, and to get even one is an achievement that would make any serious chef die happy.
Once you have assessed the culinary worth of a place by the spoons, forks and stars in the margin you may then move on to something else which the Michelin company thoughtfully provides. Under each entry they list the specialities of the restaurant and the wines of which they are particularly proud. This means that – having chosen your place of refuge – you can then spend five minutes or so getting your taste buds over-excited by reading the list of specialities that are provided for your delectation, toying mentally with gratin of fresh-water crayfish tails, or turbot poached in cream, lobster soup, or a Charolais steak accompanied by cépes, those marvellous wild mushrooms, black as sin, that look as though they should be witches’ umbrellas.
The Guide, therefore, is not merely a guide book, it is a gastronomic experience. Only once did I doubt this incomparable volume. Only once did I think – for a brief moment – that, in its zeal to leave no gastronomic stone unturned, the Mich might have overstepped the canons of good behaviour. This was some years ago when I was paying my annual pilgrimage to a small house I have in the South of France, to which I repair to try to pretend that Alexander Bell has never invented the telephone and to get some writing done.
That year Europe had crept out from under a warm, wet winter into a riotous, multicoloured fragrant spring. France, always one of the most beautiful of countries, was, in consequence, like a magnificent piece of embroidery, ashine and aglitter with flowers so that the countryside was as ravishing and as multicoloured as a Fabergé Easter egg. It was the time of the mustard as I headed south and so the car drifted down country lanes that meandered through a landscape as yellow as a nest of canaries, a delicate but bold yellow. So enraptured was I at the flower-bedecked hedges and banks, the vast yellow fields of mustard, the tiled roofs of the cottages looking in the vivid spring sunshine as crisp as gingerbread, that I drove in a sort of daze.
At noon I stopped in a village that encompassed some fifty souls and bought for myself wine, a fresh loaf of brown bread, a fine, brave cheese and some fruit. Then I drove on until I found a gigantic field of mustard curving over the rolling hills like a yellow carpet. Here I parked the car in the shade of some chestnut trees, took my provender and made my way into the delicate sea of yellow and green. I lay down among the fragile mustard plants and ate and drank, lapped in this sea of gold. Then, making up my mind that I must drive on, I fell deeply and peacefully asleep.
I awoke when the sun was getting low, slanting on to my bed of mustard, turning the pale yellow to old gold, and I realized I had driven without direction, slept far too long and now had not the faintest idea where I was. It was reaching that hour of the afternoon when all intelligent travellers on the French roads pull in to the side and start consulting their Michelins. But it was useless my doing this for I did not know where I was.
I got into the car and drove slowly along the road until, by good chance, I came upon a wagon piled high with fragrant cow manure being driven by a little man who looked like an animated walnut. With great good humour he reined in his two mammoth horses and showed me on the map exactly where I was, pointing out the very spot with a calloused forefinger brown with earth and sun. I thanked him and he clopped and jingled and creaked on his way, while I got out my Mich and started looking up every town and village in a thirty-mile radius. It was a fruitless task. Each one I looked up was treated frostily by the Mich and there was nothing of any gastronomic quality at all. I had apparently struck one of those curious blank spots in France where there was nothing – so to speak – Michelinable.
Then I spotted a village on the map some twenty kilometres away, but so tiny and remote I felt sure it would have nothing. I looked it up anyway since I was attracted by its name, Bois de Rossignol, the Nightingale Wood. To my astonishment the Mich informed me (almost quivering with delight) that the village boasted one tavern, ‘Le Petit Chanson’ (which in view of the Nightingales struck me as being pleasantly apposite). Wonder of wonders, it not only had six rooms but baths, telephones, a garage, a red rocking chair for serenity and a ‘jar din fleuri’. In addition it had three crossed spoons and forks and a star. It closed for the winter but had reopened on this very day.
I read the description again, hardly believing my eyes, but there it was in black and white. Underneath the description of the amenities was the list of specialities. This riveted my attention for they would have done credit to a large hotel on the Côte d’ Azur. The proprietor obviously made up his own names for his specialities, which argued a fine, free spirit. There were tails of fresh-water crayfish ‘in clouds of eggs’. There was beef in red wine, ‘For the Hunger of Theodore Pullini’. There was a ‘Tart of Wild Strawberries for the Delectation of Sophie Clemanceau’. I was enchanted and immediately made up my mind that I must, at all costs, stay at ‘Le Petit Chanson’. Slamming the Mich shut I started the car and drove with all speed to Bois de Rossignol, hoping to get there before all the other salivating gourmets on the roads should arrive before me and occupy all six rooms in the hotel.
The village, when I found it, was delightful. It consisted of some two dozen or so houses grouped amicably round a small, sunlit square, lined with huge plane trees that guarded a small and very beautiful fountain. One end of the square was dominated by a tiny and perfect little fifteenth-century church, which raised an admonishing, slender spire to the gingerbread roofed houses around it. Every available space on window ledges on pavements and on the tops of walls was covered by regiments of flower pots, window boxes, tin cans and, in some cases, wheel-barrows and old prams, all aglow and overflowing with spring flowers. I pulled up by a bench on which sat five old men, wizened, toothless, wrinkled as lizards, soaking up the evening sun, and asked them the way to ‘Le Petit Chanson’. Eagerly a chorus of quavering voices and a forest of gnarled hazel sticks pointed me through the village and out the other side. A few hundred yards along the road I came to a side-turning at which was a sign informing me that ‘Le Petit Chanson’ lay to my left. The road was narrow and ran beside a baby river, green and silver in the sun, bounded on one side by woodland, and on the other by vineyards, the vines like black, many-branched arthritic candelabras each with a wig of new green leaves on top.
‘Le Petit Chanson’, when I came to it, was no disappointment. The road curved between two huge oak trees and there, in a garden like a patchwork quilt of flowers lay the hotel, a long low building with a red-tiled roof blotched here and there with emerald cushions of moss. The walls and part of the roof were almost invisible under one of the most flamboyant and magnificent wisterias I had ever seen. Over the years it had lovingly embraced the building throwing coil after coil of itself round the walls and roof until the occupants had been hard pressed to keep it from barring the doors and windows. At ground level the trunk had a girth that any self-respecting python would have been proud of, and the whole complicated web of trunk and branch that had the house in its grip was as blue as a kingfisher’s wing with a riot of flowers.
In a small gravel square among the flower beds in front of the hotel neat white tables and chairs were laid out in the shade of six or seven Judas trees in full bloom. Their pinky-red blooms were starting to fall; the ground was red with them and the white table tops were bespattered as by gouts of dragon’s blood. Beyond the garden stretched woodland
and great skyward sloping fields of mustard.
I parked the car and, carrying my overnight bag, walked into the hotel. The small hall smelt of food and wine and floor polish, and everything was clean and shining. I was first greeted by an enormous hairy dog that, had you met him in the woods, you would have been pardoned for thinking a bear. He was, however, most amiable. I soon found that he had several delicious, ticklish spots behind his ears and had him groaning with pleasure as I massaged them. Presently a young waiter made his appearance and I asked him if they had a room for the night.
‘Certainement, monsieur,’ he said with grave politeness and taking my case from me he led me down a passageway to a charming bedroom whose window was rimmed with blue wisteria framing the distant fields of mustard.
After I had bathed and changed I made my way downstairs and out into the garden, floodlit now with the rays of the setting sun. I sat down at a table and started to think hopefully that a Pernod might be a not entirely unacceptable idea when the young waiter appeared.
‘Excuse me, monsieur,’ he said, ‘but monsieur le Patron asks whether you will drink a bottle of wine with him, for you are the first customer we have had this year and it is his custom to celebrate like this.’
I was enchanted by such a civilized idea.
‘Of course I will be delighted to accept,’ I said, ‘but I do hope that the Patron will come out and join me?’
‘Oui, monsieur,’ said the waiter, ‘I will tell him.’
I was anxious to meet the Patron for I felt sure that he was the one responsible for the quaint names of his various specialities, and I wanted to find out why they had been thus christened. Presently he appeared. His appearance was in keeping with the name of the hotel and the whole ambience of the place. He was a giant man, some six foot three in height, with shoulders as wide and solid as a café table. His massive face with an eagle nose and brilliant black eyes, framed in a shock of white hair, belonged to an Old Testament prophet. He wore an apron which was spotless and a chefs hat perched jauntily on the back of his head and in his huge hands, the joints cobbled by arthritis, he carried a tray on which was a bottle of wine and two very beautifully-shaped glasses. He was, I judged, in his middle eighties, but gave the impression of being indestructible. You felt he would live to be well over a hundred. He beamed at me as he approached as though I was a dear friend of long standing; his eyes flashed with humour; his delighted smile was wide and his face fretted with a thousand lines that the laughter of his life had etched there.
The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium Page 12