The Devil's Larder by Jim Crace Read Free Book Online

sea, preferring universe to self, she will survive unscathed.
    There are no shores. There are no rescue boats. No rain.

18
    N OBODY THOUGHT it wise or necessary to invite the director to my backward-running dinner party for colleagues on my twenty-seventh birthday. He was not
the sort to much enjoy our kind of levity. He wouldn’t be amused, we thought, by the reversals that I’d planned. I was not keen that he should see me – his ambitious
protégé – in this minor, playful mood, in which digestifs came before aperitifs and cutlery was dirtied in topsy-turvy order.
    But he came nevertheless, and was announced with some embarrassment by the steward at the private club room just as we were finishing cigars and Calvados and looking forward – backward?
– to our meal. He indicated that we should not rise from our places; the evening was informal, and he was hungry only for some company. He had, he said, good news. For one of us.
    He pulled a chair up to the angle of a table end and passed some pleasantry about it being just as well that he had missed dessert. The director took the uneasy volume of laughter which greeted
his remark to be a friendly acknowledgement of his spreading waistline. We assured him – bravely frivolous – that he had not missed dessert at all. I dared not catch his eye.
    The director hung his jacket over the back of the chair, accepted a small cigar and a liqueur for himself, and started to address the other seven at the table. ‘I have been
honoured,’ he said, ‘not only, of course, by your hospitality this evening but also by the Board of Governors . . .’ He produced a fax from his jacket pocket and waved it at us.
‘Brussels, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I am to be Director Europe, Forward Planning.’ We rewarded him with some applause.
    ‘It is possible, of course, that my preferment might provide some opportunities for my young friends,’ he continued. ‘Which one of you gentlemen has the finest creases and the
straightest back? At least one of you – I should not tease – has so impressed me with his gravitas that I can imagine him established as my aide in Belgium. And there are further
possibilities. So best behaviour, gentlemen! We’ll see who benefits on Monday.’ He turned to place his empty glass on a side table and raised both eyebrows. ‘Who knows?’ he
said, smiling directly at me, and ‘We shall see.’
    His good news silenced us. No one spoke until the trolley with desserts was brought into the room. ‘Desserts?’ Director Europe said. ‘They’re rather late.’
    He put his spoon into his cream gateau. He nodded, smiled and added, ‘Now I smell the flavour of the meal.’ Then, ‘I am reminded of my grandmother, when she was in the nursing
home. I went with my older brother one evening to visit her. She’d ordered hot mint water as an aperitif and then, when the nurse had settled the tray of food across her bed, she insisted on
eating her meal in reverse order, starting with chocolate mousse and ending with the soup. “I am eighty-three years old,” she told me and my brother. “Life is uncertain. Eat the
pudding first.” ’
    He put the dessert spoon into his mouth and hummed with pleasure at the taste. My prospects were restored by him. Forward Planning seemed a possibility again. Outside, the waiters lined up with
the meats. And, in the kitchen, our soup was simmering on low and patient flames.
    I’m twenty-seven years of age today. Life is uncertain. Leave the soup till last.

19
    A FTER SHE HAD caught food poisoning from the soft cheese at the cafeteria (but before any of the symptoms had appeared), she had made love to her
boyfriend and then to an old acquaintance she’d encountered entirely by chance, and then had kissed (though only playfully, but using tongues) her special friend in her local bar, a
homosexual man, in fact.
    She fell ill that evening, fever, headache, vomiting. And the three men caught up with her early next