Rancid Pansies by James Hamilton-Paterson Read Free Book Online

I fly downstairs to make sure my horsd’oeuvres will be in readiness – it being elementary etiquette that one does not keep gorillas waiting for their food – the creature is sitting at the kitchen table with a gin and tonic in his furry fist, chatting with Max. Josh is in his dinosaur pyjamas by the Aga, his arms entwined in its chrome rail for safety , one pink foot standing on the other, nervously entranced. Max introduces me to the man in the ape suit, who is a clarinettist with the Colchester Symphony Orchestra that Max has so brilliantly built up to be one of the world’s best by luring just such instrumentalists away from the Berlin Phil. and elsewhere . When you’re in the market for the best available talent it doesn’t pay to be overly fussy if it turns out eccentric.
    ‘Nice suit,’ the gorilla says to me, raising his glass. His mouth looks obscenely wet, like that of a bearded man.
    ‘Thanks. Ditto.’ One tries to be civil to these wind players.
    ‘I was telling Max that I’ve just been molested by my taxi driver. He wanted to feel my perineum.’
    ‘Ah. If he was a Pakistani it was the same fellow who drove me out here last year. He suggested we stop and explore the local scenery, which he pretended to know intimately.’
    ‘Khurshid,’ says Jennifer from the stove. ‘So he should. He was born in Suffolk, which I imagine is more than any of us in this room can claim. His parents were from east Pakistan as was, which I suppose makes him a Bangladeshi by descent. But he’s entirely East Anglian. I know all this from the local paper. He did six months in Colchester for feeling men’s bottoms, or similar. But he’s a good reliable driver, for all that he’s a fantasist about the landscape hereabouts. He told Gerry that a low hill on the way here is known as “the Crendle” and was where they used to execute horse thieves. Something like that, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Exactly that,’ I say. ‘Whereas when I arrived you told me the Crendle was a stone monument that figures in one of Constable’s paintings.’
    The gorilla empties his glass. ‘According to him just now, the hill is named after an Anglo-Saxon monster who lives underneath it in a huge cave, sleeping until the sea rises towake him, which this driver seems to think will be soon, what with global warming.’
    ‘East Anglia must be the sort of landscape that begs you to invent stories about it in order to give it some interest.’
    ‘Mummy,’ interrupts Josh, who is tying himself in embarrassment -displacing knots while hanging from the Aga’s rail, ‘why does this man feel men’s bottoms?’
    ‘ What a good question,’ I breathe, with all the insouciance of one not obliged to answer.
    But at this moment there’s more banging on the front door and Jennifer hustles her son off to bed. His question floats with piercing clarity on the air behind him like a waft of Chanel Number Five or some other equally identifiable scent. Max takes the ape off into the sitting room so I can get on with some serious dishing-up. I’m beginning to worry about my mouse vols-au-vent. It’s hard to know when to transfer them to the top oven: they can so easily dry out. At this moment a stocky workman wearing a faded blue boiler suit wanders in.
    ‘Evenin’,’ he says. ‘Name’s Spud. Did the missus tell you where she’d left me beer and butties?’
    ‘Beer and …?’
    ‘Me sandwiches. Corned beef, usually.’
    ‘Corned beef? Are you quite sure you’ve come to the right …? I mean, I doubt if … Corned beef? ’ I repeat faintly. Even in dear Emmeline Tyrwhitt-Glamis’s recipe book, penned as it was in the depths of wartime, there is not a single mention of this substance. Maybe like pemmican and biltong it retains a sort of gritty chic among the unshaven adventurer set as they fan up the camp fire to keep the jackals at bay. There again, there is a Protestant continuum in Britain and her ex-colonies – including the United States – in