The Italian Affair (31 page)

“Don’t
worry, I’ll roll it in here, but smoke it outside,” he smiled at me, giving me the ritualistic speech.

I
rolled my eyes at him, and pushed an ashtray towards him to catch the stray bits of tobacco and grass that would fall onto my table.

I
found it best never to talk to Jace, or any of the boys about their dope smoking. Their feeble minded rants about the medicinal and or political properties of ‘the weed’ made me lose the will to live. The only thing that I knew for sure was that it made anyone who smoked it very, very boring. It also, for some strange reason, made them slip into a black worm hole of ancient vocabulary. ‘Man’, ‘Crash’, and ‘Dude’, seemed to go hand in hand with it. Very worrying.

“Any
more news than, Jace?” I asked. I loved the gossip that all the boys bought with them, but Jace usually had a certain pithy style to the telling of it, which always had me weak with laughter.

He
narrowed his eyes in consideration. “Well, you know about Breadpuddin’?” he asked.

Indeed
I did. She was a newcomer to the village. Why she had been nicknamed Breadpudding, I really don’t know, but most people had a nick name here, and the roots to most of them were lost over time. She caused a near riot when she had hired a fork lift to remove an ancient standing stone from her front garden. All the locals were so up in arms about it they had got together a petition, and when that hadn’t worked they had simply used their own farm machinery and plonked it right back where it belonged. Then they had all formed a circle at midnight (just after chucking out time at The Ram) and had circled the stone, chanting ‘A curse on all who touch the stone.’ It had sounded great fun, and apparently a good time was had by all, ending up back at The Ram for an official lock in.

“What’s
she done now?” I asked eagerly.

“She’s
only tried it on with Will, that’s what.” Jace sat back to watch my reaction with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

“What?”
I screeched, obligingly.

“Yep,
proper scared, he was. Came out of her front door lookin’ like a dog’s dinner, all done up in some see through night dress or somethin’ and asked if he would help move her bed. Fair jumped on him. He said he wouldn’t mind that so much, but he’d only gone there to see if he could flog ‘er some dodgy duck eggs!”

I
snorted with laughter. The image was irresistible. Will was a strapping boy, but very shy. He got tongue tied in the presence of any female, God knows what he’d been like in the face of naked lust on Breadpudding. Who, I must tell you, resembled the original hennaed lady, with a simply enormous shelf like bust. Her poor little husband quivered behind her, looking very like one of those husbands depicted on seaside postcards, a tiny pale excuse for a man, permanently living in dread of her awful temper.

“I
do hope Will didn’t oblige,” I said, spluttering with giggles.

“Nah…
although he did wonder, ‘cos of the eggs, see.” Jace said confidentially.

“Yes,
I see.” I said, straightening my face.

It
was easy to forget just how poor some of us are here. Cornwall is deceptive. Everyone associates it with clotted cream, childhood holidays spent on glorious sandy beaches, gingham curtains blowing in the breeze and well kept fishing ports, servicing the wealthy tourists. But it’s really not like that. It’s the poorest county in England. Nearly everyone has two, or even three jobs to try and keep the wolf from the door. The tin mines are gone, and tourism has stayed. Sort of.

“So,
has Will recovered from his shock?” I said.

“I
reckons so. He’m beat me at arrows last night,” Jace said with a grin.

Jace
wandered out the back door to sit on the steps and lit up. A breeze wafted through the kitchen, making Nelson look up suspiciously. He glared at me, and shuffled around a bit.

It
did seem very unfair, I was the only person I knew who had two bad tempered pets. Nelson had been in this house since I was a baby, and had very over developed ideas of who was actually in charge. He was a lovely looking bird, and would occasionally, when the wind was blowing from the west, deign to perch on my shoulder and gently nuzzle my ear. He was, if I am truthful, just as likely to take a nip at you. He also spoke, usually at really inopportune moments. He had repeated (ad nauseam) at my parents funeral wake, “bugger off you lot” in his loud screechy voice, which reduced Nancy and me to tears of mingled grief and laughter, but I don’t think the multitude of grieving aunts and cousins, not to mention the vicar, was impressed.

Baxter, on the other hand, whom I’d had great hopes for, were slowly being eroded. He was a westie, given to me by Nancy for a birthday present. A lovable bundle of white fur with two boot button eyes. He too, was distinctly gruff in his manner. A bit like a very old man in a gentleman’s club in St James’s, who discovers that some young cad is sitting in his seat. Oh well, perhaps now summer was nearly here they’d both mellow out a bit. Oh God, I was sounding like the boys, ‘
mellow out’
? I went to shut the kitchen door. Perhaps the fumes of Jace’s joint were slowly but surely addling my brain.

From
the side window I saw Baxter pulling Nancy along on his lead. Nancy had gathered a bunch of flowers, and was clasping them to her chest with one hand, whilst allowing the dog to drag her up the hill. Her silver hair had completely come undone in the wind, and was blowing wildly around her face, and her long silk scarf was in danger of throttling her. In fact, she looked pretty much like everybody’s idea of an aging bohemian: amber necklaces, home spun skirt, flapping sandals and all. That’s where the surprise came, I think. She
looked
like an old hippie but
spoke
like the leader of the sensible tribe from planet kindness.

She
was my mother’s older sister, and had somehow never left Penmorah after my parents funeral fifteen years ago, for which I was profoundly thankful.

Nelson
shuffled on his perch, and then gave a screech. I knew what that meant, and sure enough, two seconds later, the phone rang. I never knew if the parrot had supernatural abilities, or maybe his hearing was so acute he could pick up on noises inaudible to us mere humans. Whatever it was, it was disconcerting.

“Hello,
Fin, darling. What’s the weather like in glorious Cornwall?”

It
was the angel of darkness, otherwise known as my manager, sparring partner, guru, and general all round bossy boots, Harry.

The
only reason he wanted know what the weather was like so that he could taunt me with the game. The game involved him trying to catch me out. I had to give the correct lunch time soup to fit the general weather and circumstances of our day. You know, if it was a perfect autumn day where the crisp golden leaves were drifting round the foot of the beech trees, willing you to be five years old again and roll around in them, and there was just a hint of chill in the deep blue sky, well, that was easy. It had to be wild mushroom, didn’t it?

“Hmm,
let me think.” I looked out of the window again, noting the scudding clouds and the pale blue sky. “Oh, OK, got it. It’s watercress soup, with a hefty dollop of cream swirled round in the middle, alright?”

“Hmm,
well, not a
lot
of thought went into that one did it? Anyway, I’ll let it go, just because I’m that sort of magnanimous person –“

I
snorted derisively.

“I’ll
have you know, I
could
have chosen the soup that Napoleon, when he was pining away on Elba craved, which was his childhood chestnut and goats milk concoction.” I said tartly.

I
like to throw in a bit of food history with Harry, so he doesn’t think I’m a complete idiot. Actually, in a fit of authenticity I’d made it once. It was truly disgusting.

“
– and I am afraid my darling I am the bearer of bad news.”

Oh
God, the last time Harry had said that I’d had a particularly gorgeous clam chowder rejected. I’d spent month getting the recipe and quantities right, not to mention working to a ridiculously low budget.

“Come
on then, out with it, don’t leave me in suspenders. It’s that bloody cheese and spinach pie, isn’t it? I
told
you that –

“No.
No, it’s not the pie. It’s worse than that.” Harry sounded horribly smug, and not unamused.

“I’ll
thcweam and thcweam until I’m thick, just tell me! “ I said warningly.

“Oh,
alright, alright Violet Elizabeth. He wants to come down and meet you.”

“Who
does?” I said.

“The
TV chef, that’s who.”

I
detected a note of glee in Harry’s voice.

“I
hope you told him that it was impossible,” I said, sternly.

“Well,
no not really, you see, he’s
insisting
.” Harry said, trying to smother the laughter in his voice.

“Well,
he can insist all he bloody well likes, the answer is no. I’m not running some bloody B&B for bloody TV bloody chefs, am I?”

Harry
snorted with amusement.

“No,
Harry, I mean it. He is
not
coming here.”

It
was as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

“The
thing is Fin, this is a really,
really
large contract for us, and well, he is the star, and he’s
insisting
. Anyway it’s not for a week or so. Besides, it’ll do you some good. Shake you up a bit. You never know, you might like him. Besides, you and Nancy have loads of rooms, so it’s not exactly a problem is it?”

We
ended the conversation with me accusing Harry of being a swine and a bounder and him blowing kisses down the phone to me.

Nelson
cocked his head on one side and I went to stroke him. He ducked his head down appreciatively as I ruffled his neck feathers.

“Oh
Nelson, I don’t want the bloody TV chef here. What shall I do?” I whispered.

Nelson
winked at me and continued to bob up and down.

It’s
not that I am averse to company, it’s just that I know from experience what cooking is like with another person. Hell – to sum it up in one word. It’s not that I’m a control freak, you understand, although I do like things the way I like them – but, hey, who doesn’t?

I’m
not very scientific, or that hygienic, some prissy fools would say, having a dog and a bird in the kitchen with me. But I get along fine by myself. I have notebooks scattered all over the kitchen and I make comments in them as I see fit, and then and only then, when everything is right, I’ll write the recipe up.

Harry
once had to do it for me and swears that it drove him mad, trying to decipher my handwriting and wondering about the comments I’d written in the margin.
Add the bishop’s nose
for instance had nothing to do with the clergy, it was the name of the local cheese I was using. Same with
knobby russet
– it was just a reminder to use some more of the apples of that name. I hope you gather from this description that I am not, and never will be, an elegant Elizabeth David genius in the kitchen, but more a bumbling amateur that has struck lucky.

TV
chefs wouldn’t stop for an hour to separate Nelson and Baxter from a near death grapple, or want to listen to Nancy reminisce about the time she met Quentin Crisp. TV bloody chefs would want to talk about portion control and fat content.

“Bloody,
bloody TV chefs,” I said indignantly to Nelson as I banged around to make Nancy a cup of tea and to find a vase to put the flowers in that I’d seen her carrying.

I
heard Nancy and Jace laughing outside the kitchen door, and I carried out Nancy’s tea to her, and joined them sitting down on a bench that was against the sunny granite wall of Penmorah House.

“Thanks,
Fin. We had a lovely walk, we went the cliff top way, Baxter chased two rabbits, but luckily did
not
catch them.” She said, swapping me the tea for her bunch of wild flowers and grasses, and untangling her scarf and necklaces.

I
bent down to stroke Baxter. He wriggled under the bench and lay on his side. He obviously considered that he had earnt a well deserved rest. I pulled some burrs from his coat, and he deigned to lick my hand, but then settled back to his snooze.

Jace
handed Nancy the joint and she puffed in contented silence for a while. It always struck me as being hilarious that Nancy at the age of seventy had none of my anti-dope feelings, but then I was a mere stripling of thirty eight.

Perhaps
it was something I’d grow into?