The Old Man and Me (4 page)

“Funny menus seem to be my fate in England,” I remarked, studying the one at the Half Moon Hotel in Abbington Lane near Shepherd Market where C. D. had decided to take me to lunch that day.

It was a decision that had not been lightly reached, artist at living that he was—all possibilities had been thoroughly explored and exhausted before arriving at it. It would have been too soon, for instance, for us to lunch again in Soho. And too soon for him ever to lunch again in one of those little Chelsea restaurants where, according to C. D., on top of the outward physical discomfort of sharing half a seat and being forced to choose between the roles of performer or audience (impossible, said he, with strangers virtually in one’s lap to be both) was the inward one of trying to digest the globs of tomato-and-garlic sauce invariably used to cover the mediocre food. Especially for one whose digestion, as he confessed, was not presently at its most robust. There were always, of course, the grand restaurants: the Reserve, the Mirabelle, the Ritz but as an American I’d no doubt seen dozens like them in my country. And the City had excellent food too, but the atmosphere of the business man’s lunch depressed him. We would begin fresh. We would lunch at a place neither of us had before. He remembered the Half Moon Hotel. It was small and quiet. He’d never lunched there but he liked the look of it and had heard good things about it.

We were sitting in its pleasant high-ceilinged dining-room at a table near a window overlooking the winding street with its enchanting view of flower boxes and flower barrows and fruit stalls, of gaily painted doors and glistening bay windows and highly polished brass; a view so quaintly, unmistakably,
aggressively
Olde London—a miniature Nation of Shopkeepers going on at one of the corners, shopkeeping old English antiques and old English First Editions and old English shoe-repairs and old English butcherings and bakings. And then picking up the menu I read:
Toast Radjar
,
Toast Ivanhoe
,
Ogorki Demi-sel
...
Crème Waldeze
...
Consommé Ecolière
...
Filet de Plie Orly
...
Poulet Braconniers
...something else
Champvallon
...
Charlotte Printanière
...

“What’s so funny about it?” asked C. D.

“Only that I can’t make head or tail of it. In America we generally get to know in advance what we’re eating. Like that menu at the Truite Bleue with all that offal. Ugh, it was
offal
,” I added wittily.

C. D. looked at me unsmiling. “You find it so odd? You must tell me about yourself. I really know so little about Americans—although I had an American wife. Did you know that I had an American wife? She died last Spring.” He seemed in a rush to get it all out. “It was very sad. We were only married four years. Pauly Saegessor was her name before. Perhaps you knew her?”

“No,” I said lying.

“I didn’t think you would. How did I get on to her anyway?”

“Something about food.”

“Oh, yes. I was wondering if all Americans shared the same lack of enthusiasm for food experimentation. Am I to conclude that civilized American eating habits are so very dissimilar to
European or English ones?”

“We tend to stick to what we like. I’d never dream of having anything but a hamburger for lunch back home,” I assured him.

He smiled, thinking I was kidding. I wasn’t.

“Oh, sometimes maybe a couple of hot dogs with an orange drink for a change if I’m near a Nedicks.
Delicious
.”

This made him less sure and he hid behind the menu. Suddenly he let out a bray. “I say, I hadn’t studied the thing very closely, it is pretty marvellous, isn’t it? Look at this sequence—down here on the right: Savarin Biscay—very exotic I’m sure—Coupe Othello—whatever
that
is—Pouding au Riz—now we’re getting closer—and plain old Baked Marmalade Roll. I simply must get some of this degarbled. Waiter,” he called, “waiter, what can the Coupe Othello possibly be?”

“Coupe Othello, sir? A scoop of vanilla ice cream with a scoop of chocolate,” came the answer deadpan.

“How charming. Mes compliments au chef,” purred C. D. “I think we’ll stop right there,” he said to me. “I suggest we order only the items we can’t guess at. I have a feeling suspense will be the better part of this experience. And a drink first. What would you like?”

I ordered a plain old dry martini adding that I wanted it very dry and with a twist of lemon instead of an olive to show that we Americans too can enter the gourmet ring.

C. D. ordered himself a Cinzano and we went ahead and chose our meal. I decided to start with Ogorki Demi-sel and go on to the Filet de Plie Orly while C. D. plumped for the Crème Waldeze followed by a Poulet Braconniers.

The waiter returned with our drinks and began placing them in front of us wrong way round. I’d noticed a kind of mad, satisfied gleam come into C. D.’s eye as he sat silently, watching the mistake to its completion, but nothing to prepare me for the explosion by which he let the waiter—and everyone else in the room—in on his view of the matter. “May I recommend that a little ordinary commonsense brought to your job might help you in overcoming your either real or psychological deafness, young man?” he bellowed. “Who at this table looks
young
enough to risk a midday martini? Who looks
wise
enough to choose an aperitif?” It was unexpected to say the least.

From every corner of the dining-room heads spun round on their swivels to get a good look at the extraordinary spectacle of someone raising his voice indoors.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” mumbled the waiter as he skulked away.

“I always think it helps the class war to insult a waiter while wearing an expensive suit, don’t you?” C. D. was saying to me blandly, not in the least discomforted by his moment in the spotlight. “Now, tell me about yourself. I want to know all about you. I’ve decided you could be a great success over here. I’m seriously thinking of launching you.”

“I might have launched myself last night only I had to whisk myself away before I could really get started.”

“If you mean Smithers—” he paused and gave a dismissive shrug. “I don’t think—your true happiness lies in that direction.”

“Oh? Then where does it lie?”

“Frankly, I had something much grander in view. A Brewery Baron or a Bookstall Earl. Doesn’t that appeal to you more? But I must know everything about you first,” a wicked smile. “Better come clean.”

Now, funnily enough—and this was a surprise even to myself—I found I was seriously considering doing just that. Coming clean, I mean, and throwing myself on his mercy. There was something to be said for the policy of honesty if only on such obvious grounds as wear and tear. Further considerations: Better a conscious friend than an unconscious adversary. Wasn’t it worth the risk appealing to his better nature? Or at any rate wasn’t it safe to assume by now that he liked me; that he could be—by his own confession—sufficiently interested in helping me at least as generously as he apparently helped other people, in his Patron of the Arts role, I who, as he would see, had far more claim upon his money? Logic upon logic, it swept my heart along and my head with it.

“All right,” I said. “All right! I’ll come clean. Only brace yourself because you’re in for the surprise of your life—”

But—“Waiter!” he barked suddenly, setting the English heads swirling again. “Waiter!”

“Sir?” He stood before us in dread.

“I wonder if you would be kind enough to break this bread roll for me.” C. D.’s voice was soft but ominous as he selected one from the bread basket at contemptuous random.

“I—I can’t sir,” said the poor thing finally, red in the face from trying.

“No. Of course you can’t.” C. D. carefully took the roll from him and threw it back in the bread basket in disgust. “Shall I tell you why? Because it’s stale, that’s why.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I might be able to cut it with a bread knife. Shall I get one, sir?”

“Certainly not. What you can do is go back to the kitchen at once and get us a basket of fresh rolls.”

“I don’t think it’s any use, sir,” replied the waiter with dull honesty. “I mean, sir, they’ll be just the same as these. It’s getting late, sir,” he added by way of explanation.

“But the Patron has not yet begun his siesta, I trust?”

“His what, sir?...No, sir.”

“Get him for me, then.”

“Yes, sir.” The waiter fled overjoyed at release.

The head waiter came, shrewdly appraised C. D., the age, the weight, the heaven knows what in the eye, and wisely conceded defeat, and the upshot of the matter was that someone—I don’t know who, a bellboy, maybe even the chef—was sent down the Lane to the bakery at the corner for fresh rolls.

By the time things had quietened down however and C. D. had turned back to me and was wanting to know what I meant by the “surprise of his life” as if nothing had happened, I’d had plenty of time to consider the monstrous dangers attendant on my projected decision to testify against myself. To consider and to reconsider and to reverse that decision. Those stale rolls, as I saw it, were manna from heaven plonked down upon our table as a warning for me to proceed with caution.

So, how to get out of it? The only thing to do seemed to be to track back to that other story, the one I’d invented in Soho of the sick chick.

“I mean that I’m sort of a nut,” I said with commendable forthrightness. “At any rate I’ve had a nervous breakdown. That’s why I came over here, you see. To get away from everything. And to be analysed.”

“By whom?”

“Huh?”

“Who is it? The name of your analyst.”

Wonderful how the unexpected always throws us. I was prepared for anything but a simple question like that. I had equipped myself with all possible kinds of false identifications and labels but the name of an analyst wasn’t amongst them. It had never occurred to me that anyone would come out like that and demand the name of an analyst; it was too terribly personal. On top of the confusion I was shocked, really shocked, and I indicated as much.

“I—I don’t think I ought to tell, should I? Isn’t it sort of like breaking the Hipocratic oath? You know, like if it’s all right for me to go around blabbing his name, then it’s all right for him to go around blabbing mine. And everything about me. See what I mean?”

“But my dear girl, I assure you this isn’t idle curiosity, you must know there are as many quacks in that field as there are in any other. I happen to be familiar with most of the good psychoanalysts practising in London. A health service I perform for my friends. Don’t laugh. I mean it seriously. It’s for your own good. I want to make sure you’re going to the very best.”

Well that was that. It meant I’d not only have to invent a name but a School to which he belonged and maybe even an address. Better start all over again. My Ogorki Demi-sel arrived and I was flabbergasted to see that it consisted of a dish of pickles—those baby cucumbers, the kind I hate, and a bit of cream cheese, the demi-sel—that had somehow, God knew how, detached itself from the hors-d’oeuvres proper and was masquerading as a first course. Nevertheless I nibbled away brooding over which tack to take.

“I haven’t actually started going to an analyst yet,” I said finally. “To tell you the truth, I’m afraid to. All my friends that go seem to get so much wackier”—this at least was true— “and I feel so much better now. You know, now that I’m over here and away from it all.”

“I do wish you’d tell me what happened,” he prodded me
gently. “I’m very good with stretcher cases.” He had, I noticed, stopped eating his Crème Waldeze, a flat grey soup—to give me his undivided attention.

Now I had chosen the name Honey Flood in the first place because it was the name of the girl who had been my roommate at boarding school and at college, my best friend, in short, the person I had known best. I knew her home and her family inside out. I knew her address in the East Seventies and her telephone number and the colour of her bedspread. I knew her mother’s first name and that of her father, and what her father did. But I had intended only to make use of her externals; her statistics, that is. It had never occurred to me until right then that I might find myself using her
story
as well: her breakdown as well as her hometown. Yet there it was, I realized, all set up—a real live nervous breakdown as right and ready-made for me as the rest of her.

However, as I embarked upon her story the strangest change came over me. I discovered that it was possible to be the sort of liar who comes to believe her lies almost the instant they spring from her lips. For no sooner had I begun to talk about myself as Honey Flood than I felt myself mysteriously osmosing into her: a harrowing experience.

Try telling a story in which you behaved in a somewhat less than exemplary fashion and try telling it from the point of view of the person you behaved that way towards
and
try laying it on thick for the sympathy of your listener, and see if you don’t find your real self in the disagreeable position of standing by and watching you becoming an absolute fiend.

I gave up the pickles, downed the dregs of my mouldy martini and began to recall events I had not thought once of for at least three years. Honey, visiting in Texas that summer she fell in love. I painted a large lush canvas and flung myself into it. I pictured us moonstruck, the boy and I, languishing in a tree-strung hammock under star-hung nights. And all her desperate, dangerous wonders of requited first love slipped in suddenly as if it were my real past. A hot wind blew through parched western plains, swimming pools glittered in the afternoon sun, organdie dance dresses crushed softly into the night. The summer passed, spun golden. How vividly it had all remained in Honey’s memory, so that I, who had never even been in Texas, could feel it flowing through me, could feel especially the boy, the silky, skinny, high-strung boy—who happened to be a multi-multi-multi-oil-millionaire as well.

And then, back to college in the autumn. It was, Honey remembers, Junior Year. A snow-storm of love letters from the boy. Some of them, says Honey, I show to my roommate, for we’ve always been so close, and she seems so happy for me. Oh, and a little amused as well, I know—she’s a bit of a cynic, this roommate. Well, not exactly a cynic, perhaps that’s the wrong word, but so sophisticated, and cool, and knowing. I can’t imagine, says Honey, what
she’d
ever be like head over heels in love so I don’t show her all the letters of course but enough, unquestionably enough that she can see how much we matter to each other, the boy and I.