Pratt a Manger (19 page)

‘I said, “I don’t want to know his name,” ’ said Denzil. ‘ “I might start picturing him.” ’

‘I had a glorious week. In Siena, actually.’

‘Yes, so we heard,’ said Henry.

‘We … we went to that restaurant, actually, in the square, where you two met.’

Hilary gave an enormous, rather strange sigh.

‘That was an enormous, rather strange sigh,’ said Lampo. ‘Do you resent my going there?’

‘I have no reason to,’ said Hilary. ‘Denzil might. Not me. No, I suddenly thought, supposing we’d not met. I wouldn’t be here now, with Henry. The enormity of that shocks me. It’s very sobering.’

‘Very sobering,’ said Henry. ‘Could we have some more wine?’

‘Fill their glasses, Lampo,’ said Denzil. ‘He’s my legs now,’ he told them. He tapped nervously on a miniature Yugoslavian biscuit tin, purchased in Dubrovnik. ‘Go on, Lampo. Tell them it all.’

‘I loved showing him Italy,’ said Lampo. ‘It was weak of me, but … I am human. I fully intended to tell Denzil, on my return, that I was retiring. There would have been no more lies.’

‘I accept that,’ said Denzil. ‘I believe him.’

‘He wouldn’t speak to me for three days, when I got back,’ said Lampo.

‘I found it hard to believe that he hadn’t had a farewell party,’ said Denzil. ‘It narked me to have missed it.’

‘As if I would,’ said Lampo. ‘
So
banal.’

‘I accept that now,’ said Denzil.

‘I see the person with no name at least once every week,’ said Lampo. ‘Denzil accepts that, and asks no questions. I’ll never stay overnight again. Denzil doesn’t like that.’

‘It’s nerves, not sex,’ said Denzil. ‘I fear burglars. My biscuit tins … I couldn’t bear to lose them. There’s no sex in our relationship any more. He is repelled by my pale, thin, twisted, tired old body, my old man’s breath, my hollow chest, my scrawny pudenda.’

‘One should never be surprised that he exaggerates,’ said Lampo. ‘He was a journalist, after all.’

On Monday, 16 September, 1996, Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, said in his first speech in Stormont that he wanted to ‘make friends’ with Doctor Ian Paisley, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party; Frank Dobson, the Health Secretary, confirmed that Viagra would not be available on the National Health Service until further notice; and Henry Ezra Pratt, who didn’t wish to make friends with Gerry Adams or Doctor Ian Paisley, and had never needed Viagra, got into a taxi with a box of ingredients and a saucepan full of one he had made earlier.

The format of
Here’s One I Made Earlier
was really very simple. Two chefs were invited to create a dish. Each chef was allowed to bring a maximum of three examples of the dish at various stages of the cooking, and one which had to be the finished article. The two chefs talked their way through the cooking process, in turn, three minutes from one, then three from the other, then back to the first, etcetera. At the end the chefs tasted each other’s dishes
and
marked them, the technicians tasted the dishes, a celebrity visitor tasted the dishes, and three members of the public, chosen at random from closely vetted volunteers, tasted the dishes. Everyone who tasted the dishes gave marks, and a winner was declared. The winner took home a substantial prize. The loser took nothing.

Since the beginning of September Henry’s peace of mind had gradually burnt away like autumn mist. There was no getting away from the fact that his sense of control was slipping away, and he was becoming more than a little obsessed with Sally Atkinson. The thought of competing with her filled him with excitement, both sexual and professional, and with dread, also both sexual and professional. She had a Michelin star. He wouldn’t be able to compete. She aroused him terrifically, and he was a happily married man. He was a tiny raft, being bounced on converging tides and crosswinds, in a most perilous waterway.

If only Hilary could have come, to save him from himself, but she had another of her publishing engagements.

Be good, Henry, he told himself in the taxi. Be grown up. Don’t be a berk. Don’t cause distress to your family and friends. Don’t let your public down.

My public – the thought took his breath away, just as the taxi lurched rather too fast round a steep bend. He only just managed to cling on to the saucepan.

He leant forward very carefully.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Would you mind driving a bit more slowly? Only I’ve got the one I’ve made earlier here and I don’t want to spill it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m appearing on the show
Here’s One I Made Earlier
and you have to bring with you the one you made earlier, and I have.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about, squire.’

Perhaps the thought that he had a public to let down was a bit of an exaggeration. If he did have a public, it had melted away when he needed it. Perhaps that was what publics did. Suddenly he felt very insignificant. Suddenly he felt that he might be imagining that Sally fancied him. He’d reflected once or twice recently how strange it was that, after moments of desperation when he’d been convinced that no woman would ever fancy him, he had begun to believe that almost every woman did.

The excitement of his appearances on
A Question of Salt
had gone to his head. They were nothing. It was nothing. He was nothing. In the great world of the media, he was a speck, a pathetic, deluded speck.

As the taxi pulled up at the obscure studios of Protean Television – it had turned out not to be Protein Television after all – in a very obscure street in Brondesbury, Henry felt a little boy again. He felt desperately uncertain now about his choice of fish stew. He could imagine a communal ‘ugh’ going up from the viewers. Sally had a Michelin star. She had enjoyed the favours of several chefs. He didn’t stand a chance with her, publicly or pubicly. She would eat him for breakfast. As it were.

A cold London autumn morning. A plump, grey-haired man of sixty-one, clutching a saucepan full of cold fish stew. My public! Don’t be ridiculous.

He walked up to the young woman on the reception desk. He was very conscious that he carried around with him a strong whiff of fish. Today of all days surely one of the receptionists could have said, ‘Mr Pratt! Good to see you’ or ‘Good morning, Henry. I hope you don’t mind my calling you Henry. I feel as if I know you already.’ No. The receptionist at Protean Television sniffed and said, ‘You must be for the food programme. Name?’

They kissed, politely, professionally, two contenders in a TV game, but then his eyes took over and gazed suddenly at her eyes at the moment when her eyes shot an impulsive look at his. Both held the look for what seemed an eternity, but might only have been a few seconds in real time.

Henry was fascinated by Sally’s eyes. They were pale blue, very pale blue, and they were beautiful. However, what touched him most was the weariness in them, and what disturbed him most was their ambiguity. They seemed frank and evasive at the same time.

He turned away before she did. He’d known that he would have to.

‘Hilary not with you?’ she asked.

‘No. No. I … I wanted her to come …’

Their eyes met again – briefly, this time.

‘… but she has another engagement. Actually, as it’s not a studio audience sort of set up, she might have been a bit of a … er …’

‘… spare prick.’

‘Exactly. As it were.’

‘Yes. Not really very appropriate. Well, to work, then. Good luck. May the best chef win.’

‘Oh, I hope not, but I’ll not be too upset if you do.’

‘What are you cooking?’

‘Well, I …’ Oh God. I feel so ashamed of it. It’s fine to knock up a great fish stew for supper, but as the subject of a TV show, what possessed you? ‘… I … I thought that with you having a Michelin star and everything …’

‘Oh God. It’s a millstone round my neck, Henry.’

‘… that I’d go for something really simple. It’s my special … er … fish stew … fish casserole, I mean. That’s part of the trouble, I don’t know what to call it.’

‘Prattabaisse.’

‘What?’

‘Like bouillabaisse, only yours.’

‘Sorry. My brain must have seized up. Sally, I just wish I wasn’t here.’

‘Good God, man, don’t you think I do too? I’m a private person. I’m a dedicated, professional chef. Poncing around on TV isn’t me, but there aren’t enough prosperous gourmets in Dorset to fill my place, and the exposure doesn’t half bring the punters in. Anyway, we’re here, we’ve agreed to do it, so it’s pointless to moan.’

Henry felt about two foot high. Sally touched him on the shoulder, gently. ‘Utterly professional, eh?’

‘Absolutely. I … I haven’t asked you what you’re making.’

‘Well, I thought I ought to make something a bit challenging, a bit technical, a bit messed about, a bit Michelin star. I mean, this is what today’s about, isn’t it? The Michelin Star versus the People’s Chef.’

‘I hadn’t looked at it that way.’

‘I’m making a guinea fowl and pistachio galantine, with a tarragon and chablis reduction.’

The studio was quite small, and seemed very bare after the big BBC job. It was like working in a barn. You had to make your own glamour.

There were seats for the three chosen members of the public, and there was a paper door through which the mystery celebrity would burst.

The members of the public weren’t called for the rehearsal, nor was the mystery celebrity, who was played in the run-through by the stage manager.

Henry discovered, to his horror, that they actually did cook the dishes on the run-through. He should have brought the two that he’d made earlier. Sally had piles of stuff, as she was introducing three different stages, all of which she had to have ready twice.

‘You didn’t read your bumf, did you?’ said the presenter, Dermot Wolfstone, he of the indefatigable smile, soon to become runner-up to Tony Blair in the ‘Smiler of the Year’ competition.

‘No,’ admitted Henry sadly, ‘I didn’t read my bumf.’

This was terrible. Was he to start every new TV project feeling like this?

‘It doesn’t matter in your case since you aren’t really going through any stages as it’s all in one,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘You’ll just have to mime your casserole.’

The run-through was a nightmare to Henry. He lacked all conviction. Sally, on the other hand, was professional, detached and poised.

He felt a real fool, miming preparing his fish, miming chopping an onion and two cloves of garlic, miming frying them, miming the addition of white wine and pernod and a tin of tomatoes and hot paprika and saffron and star anise, miming taking it all off the stove and lifting the lid.

‘Wow,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘Those aromas! And now, our celebrity guest. Top model, Samantha Hamstring, with her gorgeous long legs and elegant, shapely breasts, and how
does
she keep that stomach of hers so taut and tight?’

Through the paper door – no expense was spared – burst the paunchy, hairy form of the stage manager, so everybody fell about. Henry pretended to find it funny too, and hoped that Sally was only pretending.

‘Well,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘That honestly really was … average.’

There was no Green Room at Protean Television, but Sally had brought a bottle of rioja.

‘Fancy a drink in my dressing room?’ she asked.

Don’t, Henry. Don’t be a berk. Think of Hilary. Besides, there will be plenty of time for a drink afterwards, and it would be very unwise to indulge beforehand.

‘I honestly don’t think I dare,’ he said.

He hoped that she would believe that he was talking about the drink.

In his dressing room, which was actually somebody’s office, Henry told himself again and again, ‘You have a wonderful wife. You have a wonderful family. Don’t throw it all away. Don’t don’t don’t.’

Oh God, he wished it was over, his wretched fish stew forgotten, Sally and he parting with a chaste kiss. If he’d
never
met Hilary and yet had ended up here with Sally this evening – an unlikely scenario – he knew that she would have been the perfect woman for him. But he already had the perfect woman.

He had to accept, as he thought about Sally, that he was feeling sexier by the second. He didn’t fancy his chances of persuading himself to part with just a chaste kiss. This made him feel more and more tense.

Only one thing could release him from his tension and desire. He slid off to the loo, hoping nobody was watching. He felt as if he was back at Dalton College again, but even if he met somebody on the way, they wouldn’t know why he was going to the loo. Nobody need ever know.

There was no harm in imagining that he was doing it with Sally. Yes, there was!

He would do it with Hilary. He would feel all the better for that. Nobody would ever know, but it was important to him.

He thought about his first meeting with her, in Siena, about the times in Durham, about the reunion after he’d been to Peru, about moments when he had been bursting with love just as now he was bursting with lust.

He conjured up his beloved in all her grave beauty, and gave her a right old seeing to in that unlovely toilet in Brondesbury.

He felt happy.

He felt good.

He felt virtuous.

He felt far too knackered to even contemplate cooking a bloody fish stew.

*

It was only an unimportant little TV show.

Everybody he knew and cared about would see him making a complete fool of himself.

It would be the end of his TV career.

He didn’t care about his TV career.

It was rather fun, though.

Sally looked utterly composed.

The programme began. The opening credits and music were played on the sole monitor.

‘Good evening, and welcome to another edition of
Here’s One I Made Earlier
,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘What a battle we have in prospect today. A battle between man and woman. A battle between – dare I say it? – professional and amateur. No insult intended, Henry.’

Henry forced a smile, a poor echo of Dermot’s.

‘A battle between a posh Michelin starred restaurant and a homely café. Ironically, the posh restaurant is in Dorset and the café is in Soho. It promises to be a
fascinating
contest. Ladies first. Sally Atkinson, of the Dorset Knob restaurant near Bridport, what delight are you making for us today?’