Three Courses and a Dessert: Being a New and Gastronomic Version of the Old Game of Consequences

Three Courses and a Dessert

being a new and gastronomic version of the old game of

“consequences”

The first course by Christopher Dilke Out of the bright sunshine of July, Captain Jervis stepped in one pace into the restful obscurity of the hotel. He stopped, hoping to hear some sound which would indicate the whereabouts of the person left in charge. There was silence. His arrival had occasioned no curiosity or even notice. He walked through the hall and found himself in a cocktail bar of which the bar was closed and locked. Further still, he emerged onto a covered terrace with glass panes overlooking the harbour.

It was disappointing to find no one about the place. He had had on the tip of his tongue the phrases, a little grandiose, in which he would have ordered dinner for five. Four of the five, after all, were persons of some importance, the chief actors in a drama of war and treachery. The fact that he, the fifth, had so minor a part in the affair—little more than the ordering of dinner—

was what inspired his desire to seem important. He knew well that once the others arrived he would be unimportant enough, a person to make a note, to hurry up the dinner, or to answer the telephone. He was intelligent, the Brigadier thought a great deal of him, he had not done at all badly in the Army, but he was still only the Staff Captain. His job was to keep quiet and obey orders.

Through the large windows he could see out over the harbour and away beyond the headland to where a smudge of smoke announced the return of the little expeditionary force. That meant that three of the diners were on

their way. It confirmed the news which had reached Jervis earlier through the hands of the cipher staff. Acting on his orders, he had at once called the Foreign Office on the telephone. A Mr Fitzwilliam was apparently not much excited, but signified his readiness to catch the 4.42 from London. Mr Fitzwilliam was presumably now not much more than a hundred miles away and this distance was rapidly decreasing.

The Brigade Major, it had been decided, would look after the disembarkation. The Brigadier, the lady, Mr Fitzwilliam and of course himself would have the honour of dining with the gentleman who had put them all to so much trouble. It was strange, thought Jervis, that his government should spend thousands, perhaps millions, of pounds for the purpose of capturing one person. And no doubt they would put this person, who had killed many innocent civilians, into a comfortable prison for a number of years.

But the Silver Fish Hotel remained empty of any sign of life. Captain Jervis glanced at his watch. In ten minutes it would be opening-time. He walked back into the hall. Under a quiff of fair hair his blue eyes were bright and watchful. He was convinced that someone must be in the hotel.

From the hall, swing doors opened into a long dining-room. Small tables were neatly arranged for four and two diners. A conically folded napkin and a finger-bowl awaited each client. Above the mantelpiece was a picture representing the Silver Fish in days gone by. An old salt, charmingly posed in the foreground, lent colour to the idea that it was some old fisherman’s inn. Jervis made for a screen, which blocked one corner of the room.

Behind this screen were more swing doors, the type of doors which in all well-conducted restaurants lead to the kitchen. And at this time of day, thought Jervis, there must be someone in the kitchen. But it was a scullery which he entered next. On the table stood a can of cream. He stopped and dipped his finger. The cream formed a smooth film. He licked it off and turned to the baize door in front of him.

When he pushed this open, here at last there was someone. John Jervis, aged twenty-four, and having spent his whole adult life as an Army officer in wartime, was neither experienced nor blasé. Now he felt as tongue-tied and ingenuous as he had ever been. He might have been back at the Eureka tennis club, five years ago, watching the nymphs who played patball on summer evenings.

It was a young girl with dark red hair and a pale, creamy complexion whom he saw. Her eyes had very long lashes and her hair was dark where it clustered against her neck. She wore a pale green summer dress, and since she was leaning back this did not conceal the lines of her body. The unusual length of leg might have appealed to a connoisseur. By Jervis it passed almost unnoticed in the general impression. She had perhaps been shelling peas, for a heap of pods was on the table beside her. She was leaning against the encircling arm of a man in the uniform of a chef. This man was of generous stature and had a fair beard nearly a foot in length. He looked the kind of person whom one should know by sight. The girl had been looking up into the chef’s face, but as Jervis entered she turned her greenish-blue eyes towards him with a look of inquiry. At the same time she disengaged herself from the chef’s arm and came a step forward from the table. She fumbled with the knot of her apron behind her waist.

“You want the bar?” she asked. “I shan’t be many minutes opening up.

Sit down on the terrace a minute while I get ready.”

Her voice was musical and held a trace of country accent. Jervis could not help but notice that it contained no particular friendship for him.

“I want to order dinner,” he said, “for five.” He made little attempt, now, to claim any special importance for this dinner. It might have been any friendly or sporting occasion rather than the historic happening that it was in fact.

“Five,” the girl repeated after him. “I don’t know that we can manage five.” She looked inquiringly at the chef, who shook his big head and his

cascading beard.

Forced to declare himself, Jervis spoke humbly rather than peremptorily, and without taking his eyes from the girl:

“I’m a staff officer. I’ve been ordered to make arrangements for this dinner. It is for a high-ranking officer and his guests. We shall need a private room in view of the importance of one of the party. I hope you’ll be able to manage the affair for me without making any difficulties.”

“So? I thought so.” said the chef, and turned from the range. “All right, certainly we cook for five. We give you the St Germain of the new peas made with stock from the ham bone and finished with farmhouse cream.

After that, we give you…”

The girl broke in, watching with amusement the chef’s enthusiasm for his own cooking: “You’ll enjoy your meal. He was at the Lombardy until it was bombed.”

“Why did you leave the West End?” Jervis asked. “I should have thought a chef was safe enough in a basement kitchen.”

Whilst he was speaking the girl had left the room, presumably to open up the bar. The chef did not answer at once. He picked up a long wafer-thin carving-knife with a concave blade and began to sharpen it with a stone.

“I cook when bombs fall on the Hotel Lombardy,” he said, never looking at the flashing knife. “One bomb has fallen through nine floors onto my sauce cook. Dinner for five hundred peoples was all wasted. I could not sleep for one week with thinking of my poor sauce cook and all the other cooks who are dead. I escape because I fall on my face behind the bain-marie. After that I cook where there are no bombs. If there will come bombs here I will go to America.”

The chef’s hand flickered to and fro with amazing speed. His eyes were clouded with memories above the large nose and sardonic lips half concealed in his beard. His pronunciation was pure French in sound and Jervis could follow him only with an effort.

Presently the chef laid his knife down and said: “We drink a glass together.”

From a little cupboard he took a bottle and two glasses, which he filled carefully with a bright yellow wine.

“A la victoire,” he said, as they touched glasses. A look of cunning flitted momentarily across his face. It was difficult to know what he understood by victory. Perhaps, thought Jervis, it was not especially an English victory that he meant, but any victory so that he might cook again in peace with the materials which a cook requires. A few drops of wine lodged like crystals in the chef’s beard. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Victory,” Jervis said confidently as he drank. He had never tasted anything quite like this wine, and the colour gave him no clue to its identity.

“This is good,” he added. “I don’t suppose you have a bottle you could spare? My chief has quite a palate.”

Abruptly, from a certain distance, a woman’s scream was heard. The sound was lightly pitched and in no way frightened or anguished. It had, indeed, a note almost of pleasure. Jervis had the strange sensation that he had been waiting for this sound, and he ran his tongue apprehensively over his lips.

The chef, at the moment of opening his mouth to speak, had stiffened with the sudden strain of listening. Then he took the knife from the table and, moving with extraordinary speed and silence for so big a man, went out through the green baize and the swing-doors into the dining-room.

Captain Jervis followed blindly. Each door in turn slammed against him in the wake of the chef. Once in the dining-room, anxiety overtook him that he might be too late, and he began to run. Distinctly he heard a voice say: “I hate you. You never think of anything else.” The door into the bar was open.

Whether he actually paused or not, Jervis was able to take in the scene as a single picture, every detail of which was clear to him. The red-haired girl,

her figure showing again to glorious advantage, was bent back over the chromium rail of the bar. The chef appeared to have forgotten his knife, which hung loosely in his left hand. He was swearing in a furious mumble as he advanced upon the girl and the man who held her pinned against the bar. This man, since Jervis had not seen him before, at once fixed his attention. At first sight he appeared like one of those obscure film heroes whose name no one knows. Small, smartly dressed in blue, with a military moustache and neatly brushed hair graying above the ears, he had the ruthless expression of a small-town man of the world. His complexion was drab and unhealthy, though, and he looked frightened under the Camouflage of his dapper turn-out. It occurred to Jervis at once, through some association of ideas, that this man was the manager of the Silver Fish.

Jervis jumped forward and struck the knife out of the chef’s left hand just as the manager released the girl, raised the hinged end of the bar and darted behind its cover.

“Back, Quimerle. I order you,” he said.

The chef had rounded on Jervis in fury and thrust him back against the opposite wall of the room. Jervis, half the breath knocked out of him, came forward uncertainly again to try and retrieve the knife from where it lay at the foot of one of the bar stools. But the manager had reached his hand under the bar and now a bell began to sound insistently in the hall of the hotel. The manager seized with his right hand one of the squat bottles of liqueur on the shelf behind him. The chef was on his knees grovelling for the carving-knife.

A waiter, evidently he for whom the bell had been rung, came quickly through the hall. His tailcoat was half on and half off and he had no tie. It was apparent that he was no stranger to this kind of action, for without any hesitation he trod on Quimerle’s hand and kicked the knife into the corner of the bar.

Then Jervis made up his mind. It was almost as if his part had been written for him and he had only to take his cue. He reached forward, caught hold of the girl’s hand, and drew her away through the hall and out of the hotel. She gave no sign of resistance. As they turned onto the cobblestones of the pavement Jervis’s ear caught the sound of splintering glass.

The sun still shone. Its evening light spread a patina of quiet beauty over the harbour. The broken pier, the half-sunken ammunition ship and the shattered submarine on the rocks assumed old-established and friendly shapes. Far out at sea, ships’ hulls were now visible under the pall of smoke from the funnels.

Jervis took the girl’s arm and steered her down a flight of steep steps towards the beach. In a few seconds they were hidden from sight by semi-tropical shrubs and trees.

“This is lovely,” the girl said, “running away like this. Let them manage their own silly bar. They’re always fighting, and anyone can tell you that’s no good for trade.”

“Who are you?” asked Jervis humbly. “And who are they, and what’s all the trouble about?”

A deep vibrant hum filled the air and reverberated above the cliffs and buildings. Miles overhead, so high that the eye could only distinguish them because of their number, fighters were flying out to sea. Jervis glanced at his watch, and the position of the hands told him that the planes, otherwise scarcely identifiable, were Spitfires from Tetlow airfield. Three squadrons of them were on their way out to maintain the air umbrella over Brigadier Miles and his men.

“My name is Belle,” the girl said. “I don’t like the manager much. You can’t help admiring him, though, in some ways. He certainly knows the world.”

“What about Monsieur Quimerle?” asked Jervis. His heart almost stopped beating as he waited for the answer.

“He may be a Frenchman,” said Belle, “but he’s clever all right, and you’d be surprised how strong.”

Gloom fell on Captain Jervis. The conversation was disagreeable to him.

Why he had expected anything better he no longer knew. But Belle’s hand fell on his arm, and he turned to see her looking at him with parted lips.

Once more they were startled by a sound. A hundred feet below them, where a small jetty ran out to sea, a powerful marine engine roared into life.

Manned by naval ratings, a motorboat purred away from the wharf and accelerated quickly, steering out to sea towards the approaching ships. Soon only the streaming wake was visible against the blue of the deep sea.

***

The Prisoner of State came ashore first. The collar of his coat was turned up to conceal the lower part of his face, and his hat pulled down to conceal the upper. Mr Fitzwilliam of the Foreign Office was waiting with Jervis on the jetty. He shook hands with the prisoner, murmured a few words to introduce himself, and at once led him away. He had no wish to be involved with

“that military lunatic”, as he styled Brigadier Miles.

The Brigadier was in great form. He tripped neatly out of the motorboat onto the jetty and extended a hand to the lady. “Come now, a little courage,”

he said. “Only one step and you’re on dry land.”

The lady jumped with a great swaying of bust and hips and landed successfully on the jetty. She was a beauty of the old school, an Edwardian demi-mondaine brought up to date. She wore a full-length fur coat of extravagant value and a circular fur cap in the Russian style. The Brigadier introduced her.

“Hullo, John. This is Captain Jervis, my Staff Captain; Miss Lily Latour.

Run on, John, and see that fellow doesn’t escape. We’ve been in enough trouble getting hold of him.”

The Brigadier had discarded his tin hat to come ashore. He wore a red-banded peaked hat with his battledress. On his upper arm was the title of a Guards Regiment and the badge of the Airborne. He was just five feet two inches, bald and volatile. He had jet eyebrows and moustache. A volcanic energy was concealed in his small frame.

As soon as Jervis had gone ahead of them, Lily Latour said: “He knows I betrayed him. Or if he doesn’t know he suspects so strongly that nothing would persuade him of the contrary.”

The Brigadier took her arm. “You’ve done a good job,” he said. “I know it’s all a bit unpleasant, but you’ve been a good girl and everyone’s pleased with you.”

No one but this “military lunatic” would have dared to treat so famous a woman like a small child. But his flippant manner consoled Miss Latour.

Even a little gaiety came over her features as she walked with him up the steep steps to the Silver Fish Hotel.

“I hope that young puppy has managed to order a good dinner,” the Brigadier said. “This Foreign Office fellow can look after His Excellency, and you and I will have a good chat over our bite of food. Then I must go down and see my men ashore.”

At the top of the steps they turned and looked back. Against a red-streaked sky the fleet was now approaching harbour. The leading vessels were only three miles from shore. Transports, landing-craft and escort vessels in their dapper camouflage dotted the sea for miles. High overhead the fighter cover was still maintained. The destroyers, their work done, lay ten miles off the harbour, ready to proceed back to their home port as soon as all the craft were within the protection of the shore batteries.

The hotel was busier than when Captain Jervis had first called there. The manager, his weaselly face wreathed in smiles, was waiting at the door.

“Show this lady upstairs,” said the Brigadier. “I’ll go in the bar for a minute. Where are the others of my party?”

“In the private room, sir. You’ll excuse my asking, but is the gentleman in the gray coat—”

“Which way to the bar?” snapped the Brigadier. “The party has been booked in the name of my Staff Captain, Captain Jervis. I want no discussion at all about my guests.”

Lily Latour smiled as she allowed the manager to shepherd her upstairs.

Ten years as the toast of three or four capital cities had not damped her appreciation of a man. Most of all she liked powerful men. Perhaps it was only the most powerful man of all who could have persuaded her to carry out today’s job. It was six weeks since a Daimler had turned the wide corner from Downing Street into Whitehall and carried her to a secret embarkation point on the coast. Six weeks in which to persuade His Excellency to revive the joys of the past in a small seaside resort where the facilities for guarding him were none too adequate. The rest of the story was a little distasteful to her. She felt, not without reason, that her part in it had been contemptible.

But that did not affect her admiration for the Brigadier.

In the private room, Mr Fitzwilliam was having the time of his life. The conversation, he felt, was historic. It would be many years, at least in Foreign Office circles, before it was forgotten. The first step, naturally, was to get rid of the Staff Captain. The Army was useful as an instrument of policy, but not to be trusted when any degree of tact was required. Captain Jervis was sent to inform the Brigadier that an interval of half an hour before dinner would be appreciated, to give him time to carry out a preliminary interrogation. That killed two birds with one stone. It got rid of Jervis and it stalled off the “military lunatic”.

“You may remember,” said Mr Fitzwilliam, “that when we were both staying at Fouracres”—this was the house of a well-known political hostess

—“I gave it as my opinion that you were closer to Great Britain in thought and feeling than any of your countrymen. As Ambassador to the Court of St

James you were in a position to appreciate our determination to oppose the domination of the Continent by any single power.”

His Excellency hardly listened. He wished to talk, but not along the lines suggested by Mr Fitzwilliam. He drank a glass of the yellow wine provided by the good offices of Monsieur Quimerle.

“From the Jura!” he commented. “It must be rare to find in your country now any wine that a man of discrimination can drink. By occupying the French vineyards, the Führer dealt a shrewder blow to your ruling class than any invasion of Poland or Greece.”

Mr Fitzwilliam was scarcely perturbed by the change of subject. Bland and elegant, he adapted himself at once to the new topic.

“I remember a delightful place in the Jura,” he said reminiscently: “a place named St Amour. In point of fact I spent my honeymoon there in

’33.”

“And if,” said the Prisoner of State, “you had the chance to go back now to St Amour, would you be disappointed, do you think, or would you find something which for ten years has been lost?” He showed surprising animation. His heavy-lidded eyes for once lost their weariness. It seemed as if he really required an answer. Then he fell back in his chair and turned the glass in his hand. “I went back to Grivenchy,” he said, “because that is the only place where I have been happy in all my life. What I wanted was to be lovers again with Lily, who spent a week there with me many years ago. In those days she was an unknown dancer at the Bal Tabarin. I was a secretary in the Paris Embassy. It was a week of exquisite pleasure. On my return I said nothing to my colleagues. I kept the memory to myself. I married, had children, but always I remembered that week at Grivenchy.”

“And then?” asked Mr Fitzwilliam, hardly daring to breathe in case he should interrupt this flow of reminiscence. “What happened when you did go back?” He refilled the glasses to soften the impact of his question.

The Prisoner of State was staring into space with the expression of a prophet. He twirled the glass unceasingly in his hand.

“We were lovers again,” he said, and there was a trace of Germanic coarseness in his tone. Even the German accent had crept back into his voice, which was ordinarily that of a native, whether of England or France.

“It is all that I wanted. When the parachute troops came I was not even surprised. I had no wish to escape or to return to my post in the Reich. I was only”—he hesitated—“a little jealous perhaps that someone else had persuaded Lily to do this to me.”

Mr Fitzwilliam intervened promptly, as was only his duty. “I hope no one, Your Excellency, has given you the impression that Miss Latour was concerned in the raid on Grivenchy.”

The Prisoner of State smiled sadly. “You English,” he said, “have an apt expression in such cases. You say, ‘Let’s play silly beggars!’”

For once in his life Mr Fitzwilliam was a little taken aback.

Jervis, meanwhile, had made the journey out to the kitchen again, and was trying unsuccessfully to pump Quimerle about the details of his quarrel with the manager. He had gone to find the Brigadier to deliver Mr Fitzwilliam’s message. He had found him heavily preoccupied. In the bar, the Brigadier had succeeded in capturing Belle’s interest. From his pocket he had produced a card bearing a geometrical design which you had to look at for exactly two minutes. The Brigadier’s half-hunter was open on the counter and Belle was giggling as she concentrated her attention on the card. It appeared to Jervis highly improbable that Mr Fitzwilliam would be troubled within half an hour, so he left the message undelivered.

Quimerle lifted a saucepan from the fire, and with an abrupt change of subject inquired:

“Now you’ve got him, what you do to him?”

“I can’t talk about that, I’m afraid. I’m not allowed to discuss the matter at all.”

Quimerle was undisturbed. “I tell you,” he said. “You put him in nice quiet country house with officer to look after him, wine and chicken for dinner, and if he want what you call bit of fun you wink the eye to oblige him.”

“After the war,” said Jervis, “he will be brought to trial in an international court for the crimes he’s committed.”

“And the charges they are dropped as it happened last time. But what I would do,” Quimerle continued, “I would cut his throat so, quickly, while I serve him his dinner.”

A little pale at the thought of this dreadful scene, Jervis went back to the hall to wait for Miss Latour to come down. He was forestalled by Brigadier Miles.

“Go down,” said the Brigadier, “and have a look at the hotel air-raid shelter in the basement. See that it’s open and make sure you know the way.

I have a feeling the Hun may still start something. Also get hold of the Gun Operations Room and tell them to give us a warning over the G.P.O. line if there’s any hostile activity at all. We don’t want to rely on the sirens.”

“Will they do that, sir?”

“If I say so they will. I’m going to get Miss Latour now and we’ll have dinner in five minutes.”

***

Brigadier Miles took the head of the table. On his right sat the Prisoner of State and on his left Miss Lily Latour. Mr Fitzwilliam sat at present alone at the foot of the table, for Jervis had not returned from his mission. Halfway up the cellar steps, Belle was telling him:

“The manager’s frightened of Quimerle, but he doesn’t dare to sack him or he’d lose half the trade.”

“Do they know about us?” Jervis asked.

“Not a thing. The manager thinks I went up to my room.”

“You must go back to the bar, Belle, or someone will start breaking the place up.”

Jervis went straight to the telephone. It was a public box just inside the entrance. He made the call the Brigadier had ordered and then left the box.

On the point of entering the private dining-room he decided to telephone Port Control. It was advisable to leave a message for the Brigade Major that the Brigadier would be seeing the men before they dismissed. When he re-entered the telephone box the line was dead. He could get neither the number he wanted nor the exchange. He returned to the dining-room.

Soup was being served. He slid into his place as the silver tureen came round. A small bowl containing dice of fried bread accompanied it. He gave himself a generous helping and stirred the smooth green fluid with his spoon. He promised himself to try the telephone again in ten minutes’ time.

Meanwhile life was very pleasant. In the private dining-room the theme of a silver fish was constantly repeated. On the undrawn curtains, the napkins, the crockery and the spoons the same fish leapt and curved over before falling back into a sea conventionalized in one curling wave. Jervis allowed his gaze to play round the room. Four spoons were already dipping in the soup, but a number of mirrors, inset in the furniture, reflected a whole company of spoons which rose and fell rhythmically. As Jervis began his meal he saw out of the corner of his eye a fresh platoon of spoons join the main body.

His Excellency, crumbling a piece of bread in his left hand, said:

“Crème St Germain. One might never have crossed the Channel. There is nothing better than the taste of the young peas.”

“I must apologize,” said the Brigadier, “for the lack of wine. With the exception of a rare bottle one is condemned nowadays to the products of a number of British firms. What raw materials are used, and who decides whether the concoction is port or sherry, I have not discovered. I prefer to drink whisky and soda unless I have good reason to do otherwise.”