LITMIR.BIZ

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eyes in a way that set his features into a constant frown, which was only dispelled by his loud laughs for which he threw his head back and opened his mouth at the ceiling. Uncle Silas presided over his luncheon party like a squire with his farm workers, but he gave no offence, because it was so obviously a joke, just as his posture as a farmer was a joke, despite all the discarded rubber boots in the hall, and the weather-beaten hay rake disposed on the back lawn like some priceless piece of modern sculpture.

      ‘They all come to see me,’ he said as he poured Château Pétrus ’64 for his guests. ‘Sometimes they want me to recall some bloody fool thing the Department decided back in the sixties, or they want me to use my influence with someone upstairs, or they want me to sell some ghastly little Victorian commode they’ve inherited.’ Silas looked round the table to be sure everyone present remembered that he had a partnership in a Bond Street antique shop. The taciturn American, Bret Rensselaer, was squeezing the arm of the busty blonde he’d brought with him. ‘But I see them all – believe me I never get lonely.’ I felt sorry for old Silas; it was the sort of thing that only very lonely people claimed.

      Mrs Porter, his cook-housekeeper, came through the door from the kitchen bearing a roast sirloin. ‘Good. I like beef,’ said my small son Billy.

      Mrs Porter smiled in appreciation. She was an elderly woman who had learned the value of a servant who heard nothing, saw nothing, and said very little. ‘I’ve no time for stews and pies and all those mixtures,’ explained Uncle Silas as he opened a second bottle of lemonade for the children. ‘I like to see a slice of real meat on my plate. I hate all those sauces and purées. The French can keep their cuisine.’ He poured a little lemonade for my son, and waited while Billy noted its colour and bouquet, took a sip, and nodded approval just as Silas had instructed him to do.

      Mrs Porter arranged the meat platter in front of Silas and placed the carving knife and fork to hand before going to get the vegetables. Dicky Cruyer dabbed wine from his lips with a napkin. The host’s words seemed to be aimed at him. ‘I can’t stand by and let you defame la cuisine française in such a cavalier fashion, Silas.’ Dicky smiled. ‘I’d get myself black-balled by Paul Bocuse.’

      Silas served Billy with a huge portion of rare roast beef and went on carving. ‘Start eating!’ Silas commanded. Dicky’s wife, Daphne, passed the plates. She worked in advertising and liked to dress in grandma clothes, complete with black velvet choker, cameo brooch and small metal-rim eyeglasses. She insisted on a very small portion of beef.

      Dicky saw my son spill gravy down his shirt and smiled at me pityingly. The Cruyer boys were at boarding school; their parents only saw them at vacation time. It’s the only way to stay sane, Dicky had explained to me more than once.

      Silas carved into the meat with skilful concentration. There were ooos! and ahhs! from the guests. Dicky Cruyer said it was a ‘sumptuous repast’ and addressed Silas as ‘mine host’. Fiona gave me a blank stare as a warning against provoking Dicky into more such comments.

      ‘Cooking,’ said Silas, ‘is the art of the possible. The French have been brought up on odds and ends, chopped up and mixed up and disguised with flavoured sauces. I don’t want that muck if I can afford some proper food. No one in their right mind would choose it.’

      ‘Try la cuisine nouvelle,’ said Daphne Cruyer, who was proud of her French accent. ‘Lightweight dishes and each plate of food designed like a picture.’

      ‘I don’t want lightweight food,’ growled Silas, and brandished the knife at her. ‘Cuisine nouvelle!’, he said disdainfully. ‘Big coloured plates with tiny scraps of food arranged in the centre. When cheap hotel restaurants did it, we called it “portion control”, but get the public-relations boys on the job and it’s cuisine nouvelle and they write long articles about it in ladies’ magazines. When I pay for good food, I expect the waiter to serve me from a trolley and ask me what I want and how much I want, and I’ll tell him where to put the vegetables. I don’t want plates of meat and two veg carried from the kitchen by waiters who don’t know a herring from a hot-cross bun.’

      ‘This beef is done to perfection, Uncle Silas,’ said Fiona, who was relieved that he’d managed to deliver this passionate address without the usual interjected expletives. ‘But just a small slice for Sally … well-done meat, if that’s possible.’

      ‘Good God, woman,’ he said. ‘Give your daughter something that will put a little blood into her veins. Well-done meat! No wonder she’s looking so damned peaky.’ He placed two slices of rare beef on a warmed plate and cut the meat into bite-size pieces. He always did that for the children.

      ‘What’s peaky?’ said Billy, who liked underdone beef and was admiring Silas’s skill with the razor-sharp carving knife.

      ‘Pinched, white, anaemic and ill-looking,’ said Silas. He set the rare beef in front of Sally.

      ‘Sally is perfectly fit,’ said Fiona. There was no quicker way of upsetting her than to suggest the children were in any way deprived. I suspected it was some sort of guilt she shared with all working mothers. ‘Sally’s the best swimmer in her class,’ said Fiona. ‘Aren’t you, Sally?’

      ‘I was last term,’ said Sally in a whisper.

      ‘Get some rare roast beef into your belly,’ Silas told her. ‘It will make your hair curly.’

      ‘Yes, Uncle Silas,’ she said. He watched her until she took a mouthful and smiled at him.

      ‘You’re a tyrant, Uncle Silas,’ said my wife, but Silas gave no sign of having heard her. He turned to Daphne. ‘Don’t tell me you want it well done,’ he said ominously.

      ‘Bleu for me,’ she said. ‘Avec un petit peu de moutarde anglaise.’

      ‘Pass Daphne the mustard,’ said Silas. ‘And pass her the pommes de terre – she could put a bit more weight on. It’ll give you something to get hold of,’ he told Cruyer, waving the carving fork at him.

      ‘I say, steady on,’ said Cruyer, who didn’t like such personal remarks aimed at his wife.

      Dicky Cruyer declined the Charlotte Russe, having had ‘an elegant sufficiency’, so Billy and I shared Dicky’s portion. Charlotte Russe was one of Mrs Porter’s specialities. When the meal was finished, Silas took the men to the billiards room, telling the ladies, ‘Walk down to the river, or sit in the conservatory, or there’s a big log fire in the drawing room if you’re cold. Mrs Porter will bring you coffee, and brandy too if you fancy it. But men have to swear and belch now and again. And we’ll smoke and talk shop and argue about cricket. It will be boring for you. Go and look after the children – that’s what nature intended women to do.’

      They did not depart graciously, at least Daphne and Fiona didn’t. Daphne called old Silas a rude pig and Fiona threatened to let the children play in his study – a sanctum forbidden to virtually everyone – but it made no difference; he ushered the men into the billiards room and closed the ladies out.

      The gloomy billiards room with its mahogany panelling was unchanged since being furnished to the taste of a nineteenth-century beer baron. Even the antlers and family portraits remained in position. The windows opened onto the lawn, but the sky outside was dark and the room was lit only by the green light reflected from the tabletop. Dicky Cruyer set up the table and Bret selected a cue for himself while Silas removed his jacket and snapped his bright red braces before passing the drinks and cigars. ‘So Brahms Four is acting the goat?’ said Silas as he chose a cigar for himself and picked up the matches. ‘Well, are you all struck dumb?’ He shook the matchbox so that the wooden matches rattled.

      ‘Well, I say –’ said Cruyer, almost dropping the resin he was applying to the tip of his cue.

      ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Dicky,’ Silas told him. ‘The D-G is worried sick at the thought of losing the banking figures. He said you’re putting Bernard in to sort it out for you.’

      Cruyer – who’d been very careful not to reveal to me that he’d mentioned me to the Director-General

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