Ancestral Vices (5 page)

‘As a matter of fact for most of the year it is,’ said Croxley and opened a door. ‘After you.’

Yapp went through and was surprised to find himself back in the present. The drawing room was as unostentatiously comfortable as the rest of the house was the opposite. A russet carpet covered the floor, a colour
television flickered in a corner, there was a wood fire burning in a stainless-steel hearth and in front of it a low table and a large modern sofa.

‘Help yourself to a drink,’ said Croxley, indicating a cabinet in the corner. ‘I’ll fetch the old man.’

Left to himself, Yapp looked round in amazement. The walls were covered with modern art. Klee, Hockney, a Matisse, two Picassos, a number of abstracts Yapp couldn’t put a name to and finally, most astonishingly of all, a Warhol. But before he could convert his surprise into disgust at this financial exploitation of the art world, Walden Yapp’s emotions were sent reeling again. Through a side door beyond the fireplace there came the sound of a querulous voice, a pair of bedroom slippers and the chromium spokes of a wheelchair.

‘Ah my dear fellow, how good of you to come all this way,’ said Lord Petrefact, lending even less enchantment to Yapp’s view than the abstract
Nude In Pieces
by Jaroslav Somebody he had been studying, by attempting to smile. To a man of greater experience of reality that smile would have come as a terrible augury: to Walden Yapp’s deep commitment to compassion and concern it heralded a courageous attempt to ignore physical suffering. From one moment to the next Lord Petrefact was transformed from a capitalist bloodsucker to a Senior Citizen with a disability problem.

‘Not at all,’ he muttered, desperately trying to sort out the tangle of conflicting emotions to which Lord Petrefact’s sorry appearance had subjected him; and without
quite realizing what he was doing he was shaking the limp hand of one of Britain’s wealthiest and, in his previous opinion, most ruthless exploiters of the working man. The next moment he was sitting on the sofa with a whisky and soda while the old man prattled on about how rewarding it must be to give one’s all to young people in a world which sorely lacked men of Professor Yapp’s dedication.

‘I would hardly say that,’ he demurred. ‘One does one’s best of course but our students are not of the highest calibre.’

‘All the more reason why they should have the best teaching,’ said Lord Petrefact, clutching a glass of milk with one hand while wiping an eye with a handkerchief in the other the better to study this gaunt young man who represented in his view the most dangerous species of hypocritical ideologue in the modern world. If Yapp had his preconceived notions of capitalists, Lord Petrefact’s prejudices were as extreme about socialists, and Yapp’s reputation had led him to expect something more formidable. For a moment his resolution faltered. It was hardly worthwhile setting on a man who looked like a cross between an inexperienced social worker and a curate to make life a misery for the family. The sods would eat him alive. But then again, Yapp’s appearance might be deceptive. His arbitration decisions, particularly his ninety per cent pay rise for cloakroom attendants and urinal maintenance personnel, had been so evidently motivated by political prejudices, while the parity
payments with hospital consultants he had claimed for road-sweepers had been so monstrous, that they left no doubt that Yapp, whatever he might appear, was a very considerable subversive force. Lord Petrefact made these assessments while continuing to sip his milk and discuss the need for greater training opportunities for young people with a muted enthusiasm tinged with a melancholy he didn’t feel.

In the corner, uncomfortably conscious of his Harris tweed jacket, Croxley listened and watched. He had seen Lord Petrefact in this role of philanthropic invalid before and it had inevitably led to extremely nasty consequences. In fact, by the time he had given Walden Yapp a second whisky and had seen him swallow it as the contract butler announced that dinner was served, he was beginning to take pity on the poor fool. Against such sympathy he had to remind himself that Yapp couldn’t be quite the imbecile he appeared to have risen so high in the academic world and Croxley, who had been born and raised before the introduction of free university education, begrudged Yapp his opportunities and success.

At least Croxley had been able to mitigate the more indigestive consequences of the meal. The turtle soup had come from a tin and he had made certain that the game pie was as low as possible. Only the sucking pig remained a problem. What the butcher had delivered had clearly not been dragged from its mother’s teats – or if it had the swine had never been weaned. It was in fact
a full-size boar and was so far beyond the dimensions of the oven and the experience of the chef that it had only been by cutting the middle section out of the beast and sewing the head and the haunches together that the thing had been cooked at all. Croxley, who had checked its progress, had been in two minds whether or not to have it brought in with an apple between its tusks. In the end he had decided as usual to do approximately what he was told, but he wasn’t looking forward to Lord Petrefact’s reaction.

Now as he followed Yapp into the dining-room he was tempted to have a last word with the chef, but already Lord Petrefact had taken his place at the head of the table and was eyeing the turtle shell with genuine regret.

‘I’m afraid I can’t join you,’ he told Yapp. ‘Doctor’s orders, you know. And in any case I feel strongly that wildlife should not be massacred for mere human consumption.’ He turned a baleful eye on Croxley. ‘I’m surprised you ordered genuine turtle soup.’

Croxley looked balefully back and decided that enough was enough. ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The shell came from the Aquarium at Lowestoft and the contents from Fortnum & Mason.’

‘Really?’ said Lord Petrefact, managing to smile at Yapp with one side of his face while glaring at Croxley with the other. But it was Yapp who saved Croxley from further harassment by launching into a disquisition on the origins of mock turtle. He was beginning to enjoy himself; whatever reservations he had about the source
of the Petrefact wealth, and they remained as unequivocal as ever, had been salved for the moment by the thought that he was seeing how the rich really lived. It was, as Croxley had said, like visiting a museum, and if he came away with nothing else he would have gained fresh insight into the socio-domestic psychology of the capitalist class at its most refined. He was particularly struck by the quirky relationship which existed between Lord Petrefact and his confidential secretary. It was almost as though the old man demanded or provoked defiance from Croxley, and a strange camaraderie of mutual dislike seemed to bind them together.

‘No, I won’t have another helping, thank you,’ Croxley said when he had finished his soup. But Lord Petrefact insisted. ‘We can’t have you wasting away, my dear chap,’ he said with his disturbingly lopsided smile, and the secretary suffered the indignity of having his plate filled by one of the waiters. It was the same with the caviar. While Lord Petrefact toyed with what looked like boiled fish fingers and Yapp had thoroughly enjoyed two helpings, Croxley clearly hadn’t wanted three.

‘You ought to know by now that I always have a light supper,’ he said, ‘I can’t sleep on a full stomach.’

‘You’re fortunate to have a stomach to sleep on. I lie awake trying to remember when I last had a thoroughly good dinner.’

‘About the time you ate that oyster,’ said Croxley, a remark that evidently had some esoteric significance because it produced from Lord Petrefact a smile so
reptilian that even Yapp could see that it was not entirely spontaneous. For a moment it looked as though the old man was about to explode but he managed to control himself.

‘And how do you like the wine?’ he enquired turning to Yapp. Yapp considered the wine for the first time.

‘I’m not a connoisseur but it goes very well with the caviar.’

‘Does it indeed? Not too sweet?’

‘If anything a little on the dry side,’ said Yapp.

Lord Petrefact looked from him to the decanter dubiously and finally to Croxley.

‘Chablis,’ said Croxley cryptically.

Again a glance of venomous significance seemed to pass between the two but it was with the arrival of the next dish that Lord Petrefact’s shrunken figure seemed to swell and grow as monstrous as his reputation.

‘And what, pray, is that?’ he demanded. Yapp noted the archaic use of ‘pray’ and also that Croxley seemed to have taken the advice. Only then did he look at the extraordinary object that the headwaiter was holding with some difficulty on a silver platter beside him. Even to Walden Yapp’s eyes, inexperienced as they were in the oddities of haute cuisine, there seemed to be something fundamentally wrong with the roast animal and for a moment he had the distinct impression that he was seeing things.

Lord Petrefact certainly was. His face had ballooned out into an awful purple. ‘Sucking pig?’ he yelled at the
waiter. ‘What do you mean “sucking pig”? That thing’s no more a sucking pig than I am.’

‘I daresay not, sir,’ said the waiter with a courage Yapp had to admire, ‘I rather think the butcher must have got it wrong.’

‘Wrong? He didn’t just get the thing wrong. He must have got it from the same place he got that damned turtle shell or more likely some circus specializing in deformed animals.’

‘By wrong I mean he got the message wrong, sir. The chef definitely asked for sucking pig on the telephone and possibly the butcher thought he said . . .’ The waiter stopped and looked pathetically at Croxley for help. But Lord Petrefact had already got the message.

‘If anyone’s telling me that whatever’s on that platter fucked anything they’re out of their tiny minds,’ he yelled, obviously almost out of his. ‘Look at its back bloody legs. It’s a wonder it could hobble about, let alone fuck. It must have tripped over its own bleeding snout all the time. And where’s its bloody stomach?’

‘In the refrigerator, sir,’ mumbled the waiter. Lord Petrefact goggled at him.

‘Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?’ he bellowed. ‘You bring me a roast dwarf of a pig and . . .’

‘Porg,’ said Yapp, feeling rather unwisely that it was time to come to the waiter’s assistance. Lord Petrefact looked at him full-face.

‘Pork? Of course it’s pork. Any fool can see it’s pork. What I want to know is what sort of pork it is.’

‘I was referring to your use of the word “dwarf”,’ said Yapp adamantly. ‘It’s not a term I would expect to find used in polite company.’

‘Wouldn’t you? Then may we have the privilege of learning what you would like to hear used in polite company? And take that fucking apparition of a stunted pig out of my sight.’

‘Person of restricted growth,’ said Yapp.

Lord Petrefact stared at him dementedly. ‘Person of restricted growth? I get handed a pig that looks as though it’s been concertinaed and you start blathering about polite company and people of restricted growth. If anything’s ever had its growth restricted that poor damned animal . . .’ He gave up and slumped exhausted in his wheelchair.

‘The term “dwarf” has pejorative overtones,’ said Yapp, ‘whereas Person of Restricted Growth, or Porg for short—’

‘Listen,’ said Lord Petrefact, ‘you may be a guest in this house and I may be impolite but if anyone mentions anything even vaguely reminiscent of pigs again . . . Excuse me.’ And with a whirr he turned his wheelchair and sped from the dining-room. Behind him Yapp heaved a sigh of relief.

‘I shouldn’t let that worry you,’ said Croxley, who had warmed to Yapp for diverting Lord Petrefact’s fury. ‘He’ll be as right as rain by the time we’ve finished here.’

‘I wasn’t worried. I was simply interested to observe the clash of contradictions manifested in the social
behaviour of the so-called upper class when confronted by the objective conditions of experience,’ said Yapp.

‘Oh really. The foreshortened pig being an objective condition I suppose?’

They ate the rest of the meal in silence interrupted only by the occasional sound of raised voices from the kitchen where Lord Petrefact was investigating who precisely was responsible for the deformation of the pig and his own breach of good manners.

‘I think I’ll nip off to bed if you don’t mind,’ said Croxley when they finally rose from the table. ‘If you need anything in the night just ring for it.’

He slipped out into the corridor and left Yapp to return to the drawing-room. Yapp went reluctantly and with every intention of telling his host exactly what he thought of him if he spoke one rude word again but Lord Petrefact, having discovered the unnatural origins of the species he had been presented with, was in no mood to quarrel with Walden Yapp.

‘You must excuse my outburst, my dear fellow,’ he said with apparent geniality. ‘It’s this confounded digestive system of mine, you know. It’s bad enough at the best of times but . . . do help yourself to brandy. Of course you will. I think I’ll have a small one myself.’ And in spite of Yapp’s protest that he had already drunk more than he usually did in a month, Lord Petrefact propelled himself across to the cabinet in the corner and handed him a very large brandy.

‘Now sit yourself down and have a cigar,’ he said. This
time Yapp refused firmly on the grounds that he was a non-smoker.

‘Very sensible. Very sensible. Still; it calms the nerves, so they tell me.’ And armed with a large cigar and a sizeable brandy he manoeuvred his chair so that his relatively benevolent side was uncomfortably close to Yapp.

‘Now I daresay you’re wondering why I’ve invited you down here,’ he said in an almost conspiratorial whisper.

‘You mentioned something about my writing a history of the family.’

‘So I did. Quite so,’ said Lord Petrefact with every effort to appear absent-minded, ‘but doubtless you found the idea more than a little perplexing.’

‘I wondered why you had chosen me, certainly,’ said Yapp.

Lord Petrefact nodded. ‘Exactly. And taking, let us say, the extreme poles of our political opinion, the choice must have seemed mildly eccentric.’

‘I did find it unusual and I think I ought to tell you here and now that . . .’