Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks (28 page)

4  But it was the wine, this time, and when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto him, They have no wine.

5  Jesus said unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

6  But his mother replied in this wise, saying, Who is talking about hours being come, this is no big deal, this is just one of your smart tricks with the wine, so that I am not ashamed of the son that I have borne, his catering is already a house-hold word all over.

7  And Jesus said, Trick?

8  And his mother said, All right, miracle. And she said unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

9  And there were set there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

10  Jesus said unto the servants, Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

11  And he turned to his disciples and he said, What kind of people throw a big function but do not lay on wine?

12  And Simon Peter said, How about people who never drink wine, Lord?

13  And Jesus said, Right in one, verily are there no flies on thee, Simon Peter, brother of Andrew. Thus shall the water be drawn from these water-pots and we shall pass among the guests with the cups, saying in this wise, It is a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

14  And he said unto the servants, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bore it.

15  And his disciples moved among the multitude, and very soon vast numbers in that multitude were saying, No more for me, it goeth straight to my head, and Good colour, lasts well, a plucky little wine, if a trifle farmyard, and Perhaps not quite forward enough yet, but well worth laying down a case or two.

15
After this there was a feast of the Jews: and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2  Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.

3  And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity, waiting for the waters of the pool to be moved by an angel so that he might step in and be made whole.

4  Because that was the kind of crackpot superstition Jesus had to put up with all his working life.

5  When Jesus saw the man lie, and knew that he had been a long time
in that case
, he said unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?

6  Because Jesus had been around, and he had learned a thing or two about psychosomasis; and he knew that
wilt
was half the battle.

7  And the man answered him, Sir, I was at this wedding at Cana a few days back, and they had this really good stuff there, I must have put away a firkin and I have this mother and father of all hangovers, my legs are like unto rubber, plus shooting pains all over.

8  And Simon Peter said unto Jesus, You were not wrong about the psychosomatic stuff, Lord. Wilt thou tell him, or shall I?

9  And Jesus said, You are only my registrar, this is a job for the consultant.

10  And straightaway he told the man about the water at Cana.

11  And the man said unto him Art thou serious?

12  Jesus said unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

13  And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the Sabbath.

14  Therefore the Jews said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy
bed
.

15  He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.

16  Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee take up thy bed and walk on the Sabbath?

17  And he answered them, saying: A doctor.

18  And the Jews said, A qualified man? That's different.

40
O Little Town of Cricklewood

I
do not expect you to remember it, but I have mentioned our new neighbours before. It is one of the small perks of being a hack that one can very occasionally vent publicly things that cannot otherwise be de-chested. I am not proud of it, but sometimes it is the only alternative to roping the throat to an RSJ and kicking away the bentwood chair. I hope you'll understand.

Not that the imminent occasion is anywhere near as dire as the last, when the thirteen children of, let us call him Chief Paramount, all came home from Stowe and Roedean for the summer hols and, slipping out of their First XI blazers and navy knickers and into initially rather fetching ethnic clobber, threw a party which went on next door for six days and nights and employed a good eighty per cent of all the steel bands east of Tobago. No shortage of instruments for late-arriving guests to have an amateur bang on, either, doubtless because Chief Paramount owns a sizeable whack of the Nigerian oil industry, and the drums just keep on coming.

He also enjoys diplomatic status. Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone who enjoyed it more. The family hobby is parking on zebra crossings, sideways, and building peculiar baroque extensions to their house which would not only require planning permission but also a Special Royal Commission on Suburban Blight if they were perpetrated by anyone not in a position to torpedo the next Commonwealth Games if he's not allowed to build a lighthouse where his coalshed used to be.

Thus, we do not complain. It would be un-neighbourly as well as futureless to do so formally, and it is difficult to do so informally because not only is Chief Paramount in Nigeria all the time, but there are three Mrs Paramounts. I learned this when I called to enquire which of their thirteen heirs had flattened the party-fence, and had a long and interesting conversation with what I had taken to be the lad's mother, only to discover that I had picked the wrong mother. I assume the Chief to be a Muslim, or perhaps just careless.

Anyway, this multispousal situation lies at the root of my present little difficulty. We have occasionally dropped a note in next door, inviting the Chief to a gin and Twiglet, but he has always been abroad; he will, however, be home for Christmas, we learned from his manciple (now living in a tasty Gothic folly which appeared at the end of the garden only quite recently), and since we throw an annual Boxing Day party for our neighbours, we have decided to invite him in.

Them in.

You see the problem immediately, I know. It occurred to
me
of course, only after, milliseconds after, their letterbox-flap had snapped over my note:
I do not know how to entertain
a man with three wives
.

They will come in. The room will be jovial, hot, mistletoe-hung, and full of guests mulled into a sense of false bonhomie. Do I say: ‘May I introduce Chief and Mrs Paramount and Mrs Paramount and Mrs Paramount? Or simply ‘This is Chief and the Mrs Paramounts'? In that case, other guests would naturally start attempting to establish which was his wife, which his mother, which his sister-in-law, to be followed by all kinds of embarrassments about who looked too young to be what, and so forth. Should I, therefore, take a positive, nonosense approach: ‘This is Chief Paramount and his wife. The lovely lady in the long puce number is his other wife, ha-ha-ha, and that's his third wife over by the bookcase, in the green silk suit.'

I know these silences that open up at parties. Some prat is bound to step into the vacuum and start wittering on about how civilised it is to get on socially with one's ex, oh you all
live
together next door, do you, how extremely sophisticated, you people can still teach us primitive honkies a thing or two, ha-ha-ha, would you care for a prawn cracker, tell me, is it true, don't be offended, that . . .

Worse (probably), is there a pecking order in a three-wife situation? Does the tall one in the puce, having brought the largest number of heifers to the marriage, get to be introduced first? Or is that the prerogative of the green silk suit, who happens to be the seventh daughter of the seventh son of a Witch Consultant? Maybe the one next to him is Top Wife, having borne him the first of the thirteen, who can tell?

Tread on the wrong corn, and they'll all be off next door again in unscalable dudgeon, on the blower to Geoffrey Howe and making plans to build an unpermitted heliport on the roof of the unpermitted Gothic butlerdome.

Which brings me to the Saudis on the corner. Moved in last August when the hitherto resident shirt manufacturer retired to Marbella, but not a lot of social contact since, couple of curt nods in September, a brief smile in October, I think it was, when a cat got run over and everybody came out to wonder which of us ought to peel it off the road (guess who drew the short straw), but that was only with
him
. Nothing from his wife, if that's what he keeps inside the black sheet I occasionally spot nipping in and out of his Mercedes. Just a pair of eyes over the veil, could be anybody in there, they might be gay for all I know.

Anyway, we've asked them in for Boxing Day, too.

How are they going to get on with the Paramounts? I suppose they're all Muslim, so there's an ice-breaker, but is that going to be enough, I ask myself? ‘Welcome, Mr and is it Mrs Ibn Ben Cornerhouse, I don't think you know the four Paramounts, did you realize you're all Muslims, there's a turnup for the book, ha-ha-ha, what a small world, do you have sprouts with the turkey in your country to commemorate the birth of the Prophet, I've always wondered, haven't I, darling, I don't think you know Mrs Coren, by the way. No, Chief, just the one, ha-ha-ha . . .'

The thing is, there are clearly different varieties of Mohammedan. Especially when it comes to wives. The Mrs Paramounts are all voluptuous, cheery, extrovert, whereas Mrs Ibn Ben Cornerhouse goes out in a shroud and avoids any eye-contact. There may even be half a dozen of
her
across the road, no way of telling, one length of black lagging is much like another, what do I do if six Mrs Ibn Ben Cornerhouses turn up and refuse to be distinguished, let alone introduced?

I bet none of them eats prawn dip, either. We shall have to watch the dietary strictures, or there could well be bloodshed. You know Arabs, very short fuses, plus great store set by social protocols and host-incumbency, my house is your house, all that: we shall probably have to get in sheep's eyes or something to pass round, and how can you tell if they're any good or not, I'm not tasting them, that's for sure, we shall just have to rely on the good name of Sainsbury's, they couldn't afford to put duff optics on their shelves, keeping the Arabs sweet is the only edge they've got over Marks and Sparks.

It's just occurred to me that Muslims don't drink. I think. There can be no other excuse for mint tea. I bet the Paramounts knock it back, mind, I still remember that week-long summer party, they had people laid out three-deep on their gravel drive, you don't get that way on Tizer, it's definitely a different branch, I was right. I hope to God they're not incompatible, I seem to recall something about Sunnis and Shi-ites, that's all I need on Boxing Day, big Muslim punch-up in the front room and the Ibn Ben Cornerhouses sprinting home to start lobbing mortars on the house next door.

I've just remembered dancing. Not that we plan it, it is simply that there is a gramophone, all right musicentre, we like to have a bit of background Albinoni to start off with, but after the first few bottles of Old Sporran have gone about their eviscerating business, someone or other of the regulars fishes out some warped Dixieland relic of my
jeunesse d'Ory
, lurches the pick-up arm onto it, and grabs someone else's better, or occasionally worse, half in that desperate Yuletide bid for a seasonally-endorsed grope, until, before very long, those unpartnered may stand quietly by the window, tactfully ignoring the Saturnalia at their backs, and watch the tiles coming off the roof.

I do not know how this will go down with Mrs Ibn Ben Cornerhouse.

Yes I do.

God knows how they order these things at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They probably have a book. In The Event Of A Dusky Husband Turning Up Mob-handed, The First Wife Receives A Cheese Football From The Host's Elder Unmarried Son, The Second Wife Has The First Dance With The Hostess's Youngest Brother From Lowestoft (Except During Ramadan), The Third Wife Is Shown The Host's Collection Of Great British Beermats, The Fourth . . . They must be up to their eyes in small etiquettular print, no wonder they didn't notice Galtieri's lads trundling their boats out. Put an inadvertent hand on a shapely bum at the annual FO tea-dance and you could be looking down the wrong end of an oil embargo in less time than it takes to tell.

Thinking of which, it occurs to me that I do not know Ibn Ben Cornerhouse's line of country, but it must, surely, be oil, too, in which case he and Paramount could well be at extremely nasty loggerheads. How do Saudi Arabia and Nigeria get on? Did they meet in the qualifying round of the World Cup, and if so, who won? Do they even recognize one another? Am I letting myself in for some fearful United Nations scene, all the wives snapping their reticules shut on a single prearranged signal, chucking their crisps in the air, and storming out
en masse
to draft Stern Notes to the premises across the road?

Words cannot adequately encompass (I have tried Roget, but he obviously lived in a different street) the bleak apprehension with which I face the season of goodwill currently rumbling towards me. I don't even have room left, fortunately, to tell you about the gown manufacturers, on the other side of us from the Paramounts, who think that Menachem Begin is an appeaser. They haven't met the Ibn Ben Cornerhouses yet.

They will on the 26th, though. I suppose there is nothing for it but to keep the fingers crossed and hope against hope for the best.

It is, after all, Christmas.

41
Just a Gasp at Twilight

Joseph Califano Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health, yesterday
called for a global campaign to end cigarette smoking by
the year 2015.