Amazing Disgrace (8 page)

Admittedly this theory is my own invention, based simply on trying to read between the lines she spouts with a faraway look in those sun-bleached eyes of hers. We are sitting in her new Hilton suite – this time with a view over nothing more sensitive than the rooftops of Mayfair. I notice her telescope has vanished and with it her Horatia Nelson persona. Today she is rather plain and earnest, rambling on without coming up with any new information. She merely repeats that on her record-breaking voyages she has often felt as though she were in the hands of a benign, powerful force. This is not much in the way of grist to the mill of a malign, powerless biographer, but we work with what we’re given.  

‘The Canaries,’ I say when at last there’s a lull. ‘The other day you asked me to remind you to mention the Canaries. What was that about?’  

‘Oh yes. You know I told you that on the last leg I
sometimes
felt it was like somebody else’s hand on the helm?’  

‘Um,’ I say cautiously. ‘As I understand it, Millie, for most of the time you didn’t exactly have your own hand on the tiller anyway. Wasn’t it under computerized control?’ The next thing we know, she’ll start hoping to see her Autopilot face to face / When she has crost the bar.  

‘There you go again, Gerry. I don’t
literally
mean I felt
something
had taken over the steering. More that it felt as if my fate was out of my hands.’  

‘Or hand, to be precise,’ I stopped myself from saying. ‘And this happened around the Canaries, is that it?’  

‘To the south. About a day before I reached La Palma. I
suddenly
felt we could do no wrong, me and
Beldame
. We’d picked up the wind just where I’d predicted and we were
really
beginning to fly. It was as if the wind and the sea had joined forces just to get us to the Solent quicker than I could ever have managed on my own. Really. But there, I’ve always been super-sensitive to the ocean’s living principle. You see, Gerry, I’ve absolutely no doubt that the sea is alive in some
mysterious
way. A sentient entity with a mind of its own. And I think that we, the human race, are committing the utmost folly in the way we are rubbishing the oceans, polluting them with chemicals and noise and trashing the animal life for our own selfish and short-sighted ends. I’ve always believed this, Gerry, and it’s missing from your book. It’s a vital part of what makes me the world’s best. When I sail, I sail with humility and respect. And it pays off. The ocean knows I’m on its side.’  

Golly, what hubristic poppycock! How right I was! The old girl’s been got at. A year ago it was all ‘She’ll be right!’ and blistering curses she must have picked up from Antipodean friends and boatyards. Now it’s ‘the ocean’s living principle’ and ‘a sentient entity’: the pashmina phrases of people who have dabbled their fingers in the Age of Aquariums. ‘We, the human race.’ Blimey.  

‘Okay,’ I say in the brisk and businesslike tone of the
cosmetic
wordsmith called in to advise on a difficult case, ‘we can fix that. But can you give me any idea of when you first felt this coming on? I remind you that you never mentioned it last year. It’s all new to me.’  

‘If I never mentioned it in so many words, Gerry, it must be because it’s so much a part of me. There never was a moment when I “felt this coming on”, as you put it. I just am by nature a spiritual person and always have been. I can’t help it.’

‘Fine. Well – I’m thinking aloud here – how would it be if, instead of my trying to shoehorn little reminders of your native spirituality into the book as it stands, we were to write an entirely new short chapter about it and stick it in the
middle
? Something with gravitas and weight to give stability to the rest of the text? Like lowering a centreboard,’ I add with the offhand ease of a master of metaphor. Maybe after all it is G. Samper who is the reincarnation of W. Shakespeare.  

‘Brilliant, Gerry!’ exclaims Millie, and would have clapped her hands. ‘That’s a marvellous solution. A chapter all about my soul and its relationship with the sea, and let that speak for the rest of the book. Good. How soon can you do it?’  

You may be thinking that, despite wanting to get shot of Millie and her wretched book in the shortest possible time, I am letting myself in for far more work. Surely writing an entire new chapter will be much more laborious than inserting snippets here and there? No, actually. It could take for ever to add soulful asides without doing grave damage to the overall tone, which is one of ghastly can-do breeziness masking a steely determination. It will actually be far easier and more plausible to change gear radically somewhere in the middle to invoke a different Millie, a hitherto unsuspected Millie, a
Millie
full of spiritual rapport with the oceans she sails over. It matters not that I can feel my breakfast borne upwards on a surge of gastric reflux at the thought of the piffle I shall have to write. This is the professional’s way forward. And it is also part of Samper’s master plan.  

‘You know, Millie,’ I say in a tone somewhere between earnest and deeply moved, ‘maybe you and I have more than a little in common after all. Tell me, do you believe in Neptune?’  

‘Wasn’t he the ancient god of the sea?’  

‘Quite right. Neptune was the name the Romans gave the much older Greek god Poseidon. When the universe was
divided
up between his brothers and sisters, Poseidon was given the sea to rule. He was also the god of the winds and earthquakes and was notoriously temperamental. When in a good mood he
made the sea calm and commanded new land to emerge from it. In bad moods he would strike the land with the gigantic trident he carried, causing earthquakes, storms at sea, shipwrecks and drownings. He lived in a palace on the seabed off the biggest of the Greek islands, Evvoia, where he kept his chariot and a stud farm for breeding horses.’  

‘Seahorses?’  

‘Not at all. The real things. Poseidon seems to have been the god of horses as well, and he certainly identified with them. When he wanted to have sex with his sister Demeter she turned herself into a mare in the hopes of thwarting his advances. She should have known her brother better because he simply changed into a stallion and advanced all the same. Some time later she gave birth to a foal. They led complicated lives in those days.’  

Millie is giving me a puzzled look. ‘Why are you telling me this, Gerry?’  

‘Because if you’re interested in the sea being, um, sentient and divine, mightn’t you want to reflect on your own feelings having ancient roots common throughout pre-Christian
history
? Maybe those are what you’re tapping into now. A sort of Jungian thing. Of course, I’m only throwing this out as an idea for bulking out this new chapter I have to write. A different Millie and so on, in touch with primordial deities.’  

Now she becomes a bit more animated as the implications begin to dawn on her. ‘But that’s marvellous, Gerry darling. It means I didn’t imagine it and that people have always felt like me. I can relate to that, all right. I don’t mean the palaces on the seabed stuff, obviously, though I know lots of people who believe in Atlantis.’  

I bet she does. ‘Most of them probably think Atlantis is an archaeological site they hope will be found one day. A sort of drowned city where a fabulous civilization once lived. No doubt the very looniest are expecting there to be people in togas strolling its streets beneath two thousand fathoms of water. Forget Atlantis, Millie. It’s a complete red herring.’

‘Right. Of course I don’t believe myself in people walking about on the seabed. But the idea of Poseidon being some sort of …’

‘… Gaia figure …?’

‘… Gaia figure, exactly, Gerry. A spirit of the deep, a sacred principle of the sea. And those with the right sensitivity can harmonize with it. And that’s what happened to me off the Canaries. That’s why I broke the record. It was the strangest sensation.’  

‘Well, anyway,’ I say, thoroughly disgusted with myself but thinking that several pages of wacky discourse along these lines will enable me to polish off this new chapter in fairly short order, ‘I’ll just leave you with these thoughts. Oh, and with this as well,’ and from my briefcase I produce my
rolled-up
printout of ‘The Face’. Without unrolling it I say: ‘This is a picture taken from a sonar scan of the seabed off the Canaries. It was made during an oceanographical survey that was taking place as you passed through. Remember – in the book you thought the ships you saw might have been cable-laying vessels? They were actually doing a big seismic and bottom-profiling survey. On one of the passes they made they saw this on the seabed over a thousand metres down.’ This is, of course, a lie: the scan came from somewhere off Hawaii. But what the hell, what I need is the effect. With quiet drama I unroll the poster and hold it up. And I must admit that even I feel a curious chill as the creature’s eyeball and haunted gaze stare out across Millie’s Hilton suite with its baleful charisma. ‘Strange, isn’t it? It’s just an artefact of the technology – a trick of the way the sonar pulses were scattered around the rocks on the bottom. I can’t remember the scale offhand but that image will be several hundred metres across, maybe even half a kilometre. Anyway, I’ll leave it with you and see you again in a few days’ time when you’ve had a think about things.’  

On this disreputable mixture of cod mythology and
half-truths
, exit G. Samper.

You catch me in sunny mood today. Not only do I not have to see Millie Cleat but Adrian has called to say I shall soon be able to meet the great Max Christ. His sister Jennifer has promised to arrange a dinner either in Suffolk or up here in London at their pied-à-terre. The mere prospect of meeting Christ makes my knees suddenly weak. I fear I may not be worthy of him. It’s preposterous. Can you imagine Gerald Samper in a crisis of confidence? The man whose Norman ancestors, on encountering British cuisine for the first time at Hastings, earned the name ‘Sans Peur’? Nevertheless, I’m
fearful
of my own anxiety. I’m anxious to make a good impression and for my professional life to take a steep upward turn, and there’s nothing more potentially disastrous than wanting something too badly. I do hope Jennifer lets me know in good time where our dinner will be because I shall have to go
shopping
first. The one thing one learns from living in Italy is the paramount importance of clothes. It’s not that they say
anything
important about you, but that people believe they do.  

While in London I’m staying with Derek, a complete slut and old friend who works in Josiah Corcoran’s, the Jermyn Street hair salon so fashionable that people wait for months for an appointment, by which time heavy-duty scissorwork is necessary. For all that Corcoran’s trades behind discreet gold lettering as befits the generally austere, bespoke dignity of Jermyn Street, it is informally known to its employees and certain of its customers as ‘Blowjob’. Derek’s life is seriously haywire and most of the time I have his flat to myself, where with my customary kindness I carry out the basic
maintenance
and DIY work he’s utterly incapable of. Last night he stayed out, no doubt to bump uglies, so this morning I can
take my measurements in the bathroom without fear of
interruption
. By some magical synchronicity today also happens to see me rupture the very last hymen of silver foil on the very last bubble pack of ProWang’s Pow-r-Tabs
^TM
. I should never live it down if Derek were to burst into the bathroom at this critical juncture: it would simply confirm his fantasy that I’m vain. Mind you, anybody wanting to maintain a minimal
presentability
would appear vain to Derek. We’re much the same age, give or take, but to be brutally honest you would hardly know it to look at him. It surely can’t just be genetic. It must have something to do with our respective lifestyles: his in the fleshpots of the metropolis and mine in the pure outdoor spaces of a Tuscan mountainside. I once lent him a pair of my treasured Homo Erectus jeans when he wanted to cut a dash, poor lamb, and instead of their denim contours filling nicely with the accustomed trim Samper posterior they just hung on him so that his buttocks looked like a couple of grapes in a paper bag, creases and crinkles everywhere. Being one of nature’s diplomats I assured him he looked marvellous, and off he pranced to Wimbledon Common or Hampstead Heath or somewhere too dark for it to matter. Somehow Derek seems to have reversed the old adage and has managed to use it
and
lose it. But he’s good company in small doses and I now think he should seriously consider a course of silicone shots in his bottom.  

These light-hearted thoughts grow a little heavier as I ply the tape measure and suddenly become relieved that my own course has ended. Since I have conducted this scientific
experiment
on my own behalf and not on yours I decline to give exact figures. I will say, however, that overall growth has been consistent and still shows alarmingly few signs of slowing down. I should emphasize that things were perfectly
satisfactory
in the first place and it was only sheer curiosity that induced me to try out the Chinese couple’s miracle pills. Like all people of sensibility I’m a great believer in the aesthetic appeal of perfect proportions. One has one’s new Stiff Lips
jeans to think of, and enough veal is enough. I’m content to settle for the happy medium, or
Epimedium
in this case. It’s the orchic substance that’s worrying. I think it may have set off a storm along that endocrine coastline of mine. I can all too vividly picture the waves of hormones breaking along the grim cliffs of the thyroid isthmus, the islets of Langerhans now hidden behind scudding curtains of spray. For the first time I’m wondering if there’s an antidote.  

But the thought that I shall soon see Christ banishes these few trivial clouds, and as I go about preparing something with which to greet Derek when he deigns to come home (for house guests have certain obligations), I find myself singing. Did you ever see
L’uomo magro
when they did it at the ENO as
The Thin Man
? It was one of Ficarotta’s early short operas and it’s sometimes paired with
Cavalleria rusticana
or
I pagliacci.
Good plot, with all sorts of Sicilian banditry and lost
inheritances
to spice things up, but the central story is that of Lieutenant Gasparo who wants to marry Cinzia. Gasparo has recently returned to his town after a year away fighting the Turks, but hardly anyone recognizes him because he has become prodigiously fat. Last year’s willowy young officer now resembles Monty Python’s Mr Creosote. His military campaign was highly successful and his troops won all sorts of victories and booty, which included a number of eager, hairy women and a Turkish delight factory. But Gasparo has a weakness that soon betrayed him and, leaving the women to his equally hairy and eager men, he took to spending entire days in the deserted factory, pining for Cinzia and
comforteating
his way through hundredweights of sugar-dusted,
gelatinous
cushions of
lokoum
. The result is that when Cinzia first glimpses him rolling like a dirigible across the town square she is so horrified by his appearance she swears a solemn oath she will never marry him until he is once more as slender as when they had first met by moonlight. To that end his family, keen on her dowry, walls him up in an old fort, leaving a single entrance to his cell so narrow that only a thin man could
squeeze through. Until he loses enough weight to come forth as
l’uomo magro
, Cinzia will remain unwed.

Normally the role of Gasparo is played by a tenor wearing a fat costume, and after his spell in the fort they pull his bungs out behind the scenery and he whistlingly deflates in time for the triumphant last wedding scene. There is a great studio recording of
L’uomo magro
by Pavarotti and Muti with the La Scala orchestra, but for obvious reasons Pavarotti has never been able to play Gasparo on the stage. The aria I like best, and the one I choose to sing this morning as I bustle about
trying
to spruce up Derek’s grubby little kitchenette, is Cinzia’s ‘Seguire’, which she sings to Gasparo outside his cell one night. It is an aria of plaintive longing and encouragement, while not lacking in a degree of admonition. She is a very determined young lady who doesn’t relish the prospect of waiting so long for him to slim down that she loses her looks before he can regain his. ‘Seguire,’ she urges him, ‘seguire un’alimentazione quotidiana sana ed equilibrata è importante per mantenersi in forma.’ Towards the end her words are punctuated by her starving lover’s pitiful howls from inside the cell in a masterly tragi-comic duet.

As I sing and scrub away my mind is busily flicking through a mental card index of recipes to find something suitable for greeting Derek on his return from work. He has pretensions to being a gourmet, despite the condition of his stove which he has certainly not cleaned since my last visit many months ago. Remembering that he particularly likes fish, and recognizing that it will require some deft shopping in the excellent fish shop around the corner, I decide on a Samper classic:

Eels Flottantes

Ingredients

 

1 kg eels

Whites of 5 eggs

400 gm samphire

Thumbnail-sized lump of fresh ginger

2 large sticks of rhubarb

Small piece of nutmeg

400 gm okra

1 tbsp gelatine

Lime juice (optional)

The eels I find this morning are alive but disheartened and, back in Derek’s kitchen, squirm sullenly in their mucus. It is possible that by some misunderstanding you have formed the impression that Samper’s approach to the natural world is
callous
and uncaring, especially where it intersects with
gastronomy
. This is a calumny, as will be evidenced by my concern to take these poor eels’ lives in a way that causes me no pain even as it kills them instantly. I reject at once both the commonly used methods. The first is to put them in a deep bowl and sprinkle them liberally with salt. This is claimed to do for them inside two hours and to remove much of their slime as well. I submit that any method of execution that takes up to two hours to work is dismally inefficient. Also, it is improper to punish still further any wild creature that has already had the misfortune to wind up in a zinc tank off Marylebone High Street. What is more, eels that have been ‘brined’ in this way have often been found still alive eighteen hours later. They are vertebrates with an advanced sensory system and it is safe to assume they suffer. A more popular way of despatching eels is simply to chop their heads off, probably using for the first time that chopper bought on impulse in a supermarket in
Chinatown
because it looked so professional and was so cheap. It will come as a shock, however, to learn that severed eel heads may still be showing signs of life up to eight hours later. That’s what comes of anthropomorphism. We assume that what seems to kill us quite reliably will do the same for any other creature. You will note I say ‘seems’ to kill us, because in 1905 an unsqueamish French doctor named Beaurieux conducted experiments with the freshly guillotined heads of condemned
murderers. One involved a convict named Languille with whom Beaurieux had previously agreed a code whereby the victim promised to try to respond to questions by opening and closing his eyes. The blade fell and the doctor addressed
Languille
’s head, twice calling out his name. Languille’s eyes duly opened twice. On the second occasion, ‘the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time.’ (This is a true story, although I grant it’s an odd coincidence that Languille is French for ‘the eel’.) Presumably if a very sharp blade transects the spinal cord precisely between two cervical vertebrae,
thereby
causing minimal physical shock, consciousness would not necessarily be lost instantaneously. All of which goes to show that cooks should think twice before reaching for their
Chinese
choppers and lopping off bits of live animal under the impression that they are being humane. They should try to imagine what goes through an eel’s mind when it suddenly finds itself missing from the neck down and then swept away into the aromatic darkness of a kitchen pedal bin, being
intermittently
doused with showers of onion peelings and coffee grounds for eight hours until things mercifully begin to fade.  

To kill eels instantly, strike them smartly on the back
two-thirds
of the way down with a rolling pin.
Then
cut their heads off. Wash the headless corpses thoroughly in cold water for up to half an hour, carefully scraping the slime off. Gut them
normally
, not forgetting to prolong the cut to an inch beyond their arseholes because a sort of kidney-like organ is lying doggo down there. Wash them again and cut into slices about as thick as the length of the top joint of your middle finger. Now
lightly
boil the okra, samphire and rhubarb separately in barely enough unsalted water to cover them, in the samphire’s case until the leaves slide off the stalk (probably 10 mins. but depends on the season). When all three are done, put them without draining into a liquidizer together with the small lump of root ginger, blend them, add salt and pepper with a sparing hand (samphire is already quite salty) as well as a squeeze of
lime juice if you have any, and put the mixture aside to cool in a large bowl you would not be ashamed to see on a dining table. The colour will be predominantly greenish; the shade can be intensified by stirring in a few drops of food colouring.