Rancid Pansies by James Hamilton-Paterson Read Free Book Online Page B

‘You’re looking so much better than when I last saw you. And what a lovely suit!’
    This disarms me, of course, just as she intended. Crafty as ever, that’s our Marta. ‘Marta, darling,’ I greet her. ‘You’re looking wonderfully well. I’ve so missed you this last couple of months.’ I begin distributing the dishes. As I do so Max gets to his feet and introduces me graciously as a friend of the family and the author of the recent bestseller, Millie ! , whose subject died so dramatically at Christmas aboard her yacht in Sydneyharbour. He also mentions that the film rights of his book have been sold for ‘a substantial sum’. He then sits down and people make obligatory clapping gestures. I expect I blush prettily.
    ‘This substantial sum of yours,’ observes a man with a costermonger’s face and a dreadful gold Rolex, ‘I’d hang onto it with both hands if I were you. Otherwise old Max here will have it off you toot sweet.’
    Amid sycophantic laughter Adrian introduces the costermonger to me as yet another knight: Sir Barney Iveson, who seems to have been the CSO’s principal financial benefactor and all-round good fairy while Max was building up the orchestra. I suppose transfer fees are high these days and I wonder how much Max had to fork out to lure the ape away from the Berlin Phil. or wherever he talent-scouted him. ‘You know Barney’s the inventor of the Shangri-Loo?’ Evidently my expression conveys bafflement because as I hand around the last glasses of liver smoothie Adrian explains to the barrow boy that I’ve been living abroad in Italy for years, otherwise I would surely be familiar with the huge success story of the Shangri-Loo , the exotic lavatory that has become an indispensable part of the modern British bathroom. ‘The new millennium’s equivalent of the jacuzzi,’ he finishes, provoking in my imagination images not wholly compatible with gourmet dining.
    An ape, a lavatory manufacturer, a nonagenarian black sheep and Marta: is this really the dazzling gathering of intellectuals with whom I was hoping the Samper wit might cross swords? And Adrian was spot-on about my being overdressed . If the lavatory king’s trousers aren’t polyester I need my eyes testing. Even old Marta seems to have forgotten what little dress sense she acquired in America and has reverted to her old babushka chic, being bundled up in a shapeless frock of midnight blue netting sewn all over with glass beads and sequins. She looks like the wife of a Communist Party official on holiday at a Black Sea resort in the 1960s. I feel I should write a note to Signor Zaccarelli apologising for his beautiful suit’s exposure to such ignominious slumming. And as I finallytake my seat I’m further annoyed to find I must have miscounted somewhere and have no mouse vol-au-vent of my own. Presumably I’ve given somebody two by mistake since I seem to have two After Eight Minces. It’s in the nature of things that chefs often never get to eat their own creations and must rely on less discerning palates to learn how successful they are.
    The full irony of this last statement only becomes apparent some twenty minutes later when the second course, two magnificent roast legs of lamb, is well under way. Beneath the influence of my brilliantly inventive starters, whose ingredients I refuse to divulge despite all entreaties, conversation has been animated and convivial. Given the peculiar and ill-assorted company, however, it has been less than intellectually dazzling. The creaky old baronet who chivvied me off his patch of Eden has been giving Marta some detailed reminiscences of his Bloomsbury friends of seventy years ago, and serve her right. Judging by overheard snippets of the Bart.’s conversation his set were people of excruciating inconsequence and I can’t imagine Marta has the vaguest idea who they were, any more than we would be familiar with the leading lights of Voynovia’s Vorticist movement in the 1930s.