(Inspired by parts of Right Ho, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters, and Clustering Around Young Bingo)
I had barely crossed the threshold of the dining room when I perceived Aunt Dahlia at the table, morosely tucking into salmon mayonnaise.
Being a keen observer, I could make out that she was in a sorrowful mood. A pall of despondency hung over her. It was as if she had been handed out a harsh sentence of thirty days without the option by a stern-looking beak.
She gave me a sharp look of the kind a person gulping down her last bit of coffee would give to a dead beetle at the bottom of her cup. She sighed and waved a depressed fork at me.
‘Hullo, Bertie, howsoever sad the circumstances, I thought I would never find you far away from the food. Try some of this salmon.’
‘Anatole’s?’ I queried.
‘No. I do not know why he has suddenly gone AWOL. Missing in action since the past two weeks, leaving all of us twiddling our thumbs. Poor Thomas, his digestion has already gone for a toss. I was so desperate to touch him for some vitamin M for Milady’s Boudoir. But I have had to put that proposal on hold.’
Well, Uncle Thomas, when his gastric juices have been giving him the elbow, is not his genial and benevolent self. To touch him for some funds then would be akin to waking a lion from its slumber.
‘Somehow, the new kitchen maid has struck an inspired streak. It suddenly seems to have come home to her that she isn’t catering for a covey of buzzards in the Sahara Desert, and she has put out something quite fit for human consumption.’
‘You never know with these temperamental French cooks,’ I chipped in on a sympathetic note, while mouthing a forkful of the salmon on offer.
‘Of late, he did seem a bit moody. Luckily, he left at a time when the new kitchen maid was just about to arrive. We are somehow…’
She broke off. The door had opened, and we were plus a butler.
‘Hullo, Seppings,’ said Aunt Dahlia. ‘Was there something you wanted to see me about?’
‘Yes, madam. It is with reference to Monsieur Anatole. He is on a video call on your laptop. He is desirous of having a word with you.’
‘Yoicks! Tally Ho!!’, she exclaimed excitedly.
I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now displayed. She rose like a rocketing pheasant and was out of her seat and the room making for the instrument which was bracing itself for an acrimonious exchange of views between a hunting field expert and the typical Queen’s language laced with liberal doses of French which the God’s gift to our gastric juices deployed. And feeling that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened after her, Seppings following at a loping gallop.
‘Hello, hello…’
Anatole’s round face popped up on the screen and one could discern a noisy air-conditioner growling in the background.
‘Where are you calling from?’, Aunt Dahlia bellowed.
‘From India, Ma’am’.
‘What? India? What made you go to that God forsaken country?’
‘Sacre bleue! This is one pretty place – I am in Pondicherry, of which Madame is aware, I doubt myself.’
‘Pondicherry? Where the hell is that?’
‘Name of a dog, Madame! You don’t say! You are not serious! You haven’t heard of Pondicherry? It was a French colony years before.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘I am ze most famous chef, Madame – know this! Even ze Indians know me. Several hotels here gave me jobs on ze platter.’
There was one of those long silences. Pregnant, I believe, is what they’re generally called. Aunt looked at butler. Butler looked at aunt. I looked at both of them. An eerie stillness seemed to envelop the room like a bubble pack for a silver cow creamer in transit.
‘But how can you leave us suddenly? It would have been nice if you could have at least told us about your plans,’ she said with as much politeness as she could muster. I couldn’t have believed that her robust voice could sink to such an absolute coo. More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else.
‘Je suis vraiment désolé, Madame .’
‘It’s quite all right. What are you doing there?’
‘Listen. Make some attention a little. I bring my recipes. I add many new French dishes for a premier hotel here.’
‘New dishes? Introducing French cuisine for some hotel?’
Anatole perked up a bit. His soup-strainer kind of a moustache was quivering a bit. Like an artist’s who is showing his first ever painting to a connoisseur of art.
‘They already have places where you can find pastries and breads like the French baguette, croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux amandes, macarons, crèmes caramel, etc. You pay little attention? I tell what I introduce here.’
‘Sure, I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will,’ cooed the aged relative.
He then went on to rattle off several of his culinary achievements.
‘I introduce ze Boeuf bourguignon, Steak-frites, Poulet rôti, Ratatouille, Soupe à l’oignon, Bouillabaisse, Croque-Monsieur, Croque-Madame, Crêpe, Quiche Lorraine, to say a few. And, of course, many of which they never hear before, like Veloute auxfleurs de courgette, Consomme aux Pommes d’Amour, Sylphides a la Cremes d’ecrivesses, Mignonette de poulet Petit Duc, Pointes d’asperges a la Mistinguette, Supreme de foie gras au champagne, Neige aux Perles des Alpes, Timbale de ris de veau Toulousaine, Salade d’endive et de celery, Le Plum Pudding, L’Etoile au Berger, Bombe Nero, Friandises, and Diablotins.’
Of course, all this made me drool like never before. I imagined the lavish spread Aunt Dahlia and I had discussed while we were at Totleigh Towers quite some time back. I had then graciously offered to undergo thirty days in the second division in lieu of Anatole’s services being transferred to Pop Bassett. Luckily, I had been dismissed without a stain on my character.
I went weak in my knees, imagining putting down the hatch some of the delicacies mentioned by him.
The irony of the situation also hit me hard. God’s gift to our gastric juices whisked off by a Third World country from right under our noses. The wizard of the cooking stove cocking a snook at us? My sister in Calcutta once did mention to me that this century belonged to countries like India and China, but I never took her seriously. If all our valets, butlers, chefs, and parlourmaids decided to migrate to one of the emerging economies, what would the harvest be? The British upper classes will be left behind twiddling their thumbs trying to figure out how to lead their lives. God save the Empire was the thought which I was ruminating upon, while Aunt Dahlia came direct to the nub of the matter.
‘That sounds great. When do you think we could sample these dishes here at Brinkley Manor?’
‘All in time desired. For the instant, I am content here. It is the beautiful life here. They give me big house with glass pyramid on top. I have a car with an Indian chauffeur. The beach is at distance of march from my house. It is just like Côte d’Azur. It is a place to make dream.’
‘You must be exaggerating – surely the place can’t be as beautiful as Brighton?’
‘Au contraire, Madame! There is a beautiful promenade with a tall statue of an old man walking with a stick in hand – Gandhi is his name, I think. Listen and take note – full moon evenings are magnifique here. You should make one visit here. In the evenings, lovely demoiselles in silk dress with gold jewels and fleurs de jasmin in their lustrous hair come for walk. Good heavens, do I give them company? You bet your last dime no. Hélas, I am too busy with my work. Me, I am French – work is sacré for me.’
‘Oh, so you are quite comfortable there, are you?’
‘Eh bien oui, Madame. I have a lady colleague – she teach me many South Indian dishes with strange names: dosa, idli, sambhar, rasam, vadai…Cest incroyable – they have amazing variety of plates in India. Like what, to each county her cuisine.’
‘The perfect life, eh, Anatole?’
‘I take some rough with some smooth, Madame. Behold and lo, in each man’s life, some rain must fall. The weather is hot and humid here. Often, intolerable. However, late afternoon onwards, sea breeze starts blowing in, bringing some comfort. Also, the place has very many people. A noisy city.’
When it comes to milk of human kindness, there are indeed times when Aunt Dahlia’s kindly overtures do leave me, as Roget would put it, amazed, astonished, astounded, blown-away, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, jolted, and rendered speechless.
‘Is there anything you need from here?’
‘Kind of you to ask, Madame. Le soleil ici est très dur. Could you manage to send across one of my favourite chapeaux? Seppings can find one in my room. I shall let him know the address and the care taker’s phone number which he may need.’
‘Monsieur Anatole, thy will shall be done.’
While leaving, Aunt Dahlia cast a venomous look at the laptop, much like an Indian resident would eye a cobra, had she found it nestling in her bathtub. Seppings took over the dialogue, as we retired to the dining room. The pall of gloom had deepened considerably. My aged relative was fanning herself with a reproachful fork. She appeared to have aged a lot.
‘What do we do now?’, she looked at me enquiringly.
Before I could respond, there was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves had materialized, much like an Indian fakir.
‘Jeeves, do you know of the calamity that has befallen us?’, I asked.
‘Perhaps you allude to the prolonged absence of Monsieur Anatole from our midst, sir?’, he responded, unflappable as ever.
‘Tetigisti nub materiae, Jeeves. What do you suggest?’
Aunt Dahlia gave him a reverential look, pleading with her mute eyes.
‘Allow me some time to give the matter some thought, sir.’
‘Sure, Jeeves. Have as much fish as you need. A crisis has arisen in the affairs of Brinkley Manor. We need to come to the aid of the party.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ he bowed respectfully and withdrew.
Life at Aunt Dahlia’s lair would have become a tad boring had it not been for the sudden arrival of my cousin Angela from one of her trips to Cannes. We spent a good deal of time together in the open spaces, she lampooning Tuppy Glossop’s conduct at Cannes in no uncertain terms, while all I had to do was to make sympathetic noises in the interim.
Funny thing, talking to females, if you know what I mean. You need to utter only one sentence, switch over to a silent mode, and start thinking some beautiful thoughts of your own. You merely hear the party of the other part, without necessarily listening to it blowing off steam on whatever issue happens to be tormenting it at the time. More of a monologue kind of a thing. Bringing anything sideways into the so-called dialogue is as perilous as offering a juicy lamb sandwich to an enraged tigress.
Meanwhile, Aunt Dahlia went about her daily routine in a listless, morose, and disgruntled manner. Uncle Tom kept complaining about the lining of his stomach registering frequent protests of a rather strong kind.
But the mood of our Guardian Angels suddenly turned benign. A miracle of sorts happened on the sixth day. A taxi pulled up, and, lo and behold, Anatole was amongst us! Back home. Duly tanned and dulled, possibly by the excessive heat and humidity braved by him while at Pondicherry. There were dark circles below the eyes. The moustache was drooping, Sure enough, his soul was bruised.
When told of the return of the prodigal chef, Aunt Dahlia perked up like a member of the canine species being offered a fish slice. However, one glance at Anatole’s visage led her to steady herself against the sideboard. She spoke in a low, husky voice:
‘Are you fine, Monsieur Anatole?’
‘I do not think so, Madame.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘I told you I was put up in a house with a glass pyramid on top.’
‘Oh, kind of a skylight?’
‘Yes. Honest to God, I liked it a lot. I used to look up at it and take in the moonlight sipping my post-dinner port.’
‘So, what went wrong?’
‘One night, I saw someone making faces at me through the glass pyramid.’
‘You mean someone was sitting on the roof?’
‘Oh là-là. You can say that. There was a walkway around the pyramid. This horrible man was standing on it, I guess. And I say, this is not true – jolly well no. But he kept staring at me making some faces. His eyes were bulging, and his mouth was open and tongue sticking out. Did it upset me? By Jove, you bet it upset me like anything. He looked like some rare fish in an aquarium.’
I must say that he had the complete attention and sympathies of the audience. Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, relishing his late-night snifter, thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in an easy chair, hoping to look at the moon, and suddenly becoming aware of a frightful face menacingly peering at them. A thing to jar the sturdiest soul.
While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was coming straight to the point:
‘When did this happen?’
Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of the spine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among the back hair.
‘Just two days after I spoke to you. Me, I am about to hit the hay, and presently I look up, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed glass pyramid. Was that a pretty affair? Was that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I was so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I was an honoured guest there, isn’t it? I was at the place given to me, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters peer at me so cool as a few cucumbers, making some faces?’
‘Must have been very upsetting,’ said Aunt Dahlia.
Anatole clutched his drooping moustache and gave it a tug.
‘Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on the glass pyramid on top of the house, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remained planted there, not giving any damns, and stood regarding me like a cat watching a duck. Was this amusing for me? You think I liked it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt’s loony. Je me fiche de ce type infect. C’est idiot de faire comme ça l’oiseau… Allez-vous-en, louffier….’
‘Did you not complain to your hosts?’
‘Immédiatement. They said it is all right – they will check in the morning. What a heap of trash – blistering barnacles – I am like some cat on hot bricks – and they say it is all right. Forsooth!”
Aunt Dahlia laid a quivering hand on his shoulder.
‘That was very inhospitable on their part, I say. You must be shaken.’
‘All right? Nom d’un nom d’un nom! The hell they say it’s all right! Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am a serious man. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer in that house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted.’
‘Of course. Those crazy loons!’, cried Aunt Dahlia, in that ringing voice of hers which had once caused nervous members of the Quorn to lose stirrups and take tosses from the saddle.
‘I tell them to make an immediate return booking. I collect all moneys due to me. Then I buzz off from that wretched place.’
‘You did the right thing’, cooed the aged relative. ‘I thought Indians believed in the principle that a guest is like God. What is the expression I am looking for, Jeeves?’
‘Perhaps you allude to a phrase in Sanskrit, Ma’am. Atithi devo bhavah.’
But Anatole went on, uttering such words as ‘marmiton de Domange’, ‘pignouf’, ‘hurluberlu’, and ‘roustisseur’. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at the Gallic language during my last Cannes visit, I’m still more or less an illiterate in that means of communication. I regretted this, for these words somehow sounded juicy.
Frenchmen are surely made of sterner stuff. Pretty soon, Anatole had regained his composure and got back to displaying his proficiency at the cooking stove, surpassing himself.
I am not a man who speaks hastily in these matters. I weigh my words. And I say again that Anatole had surpassed himself. The exotic fare dished out by him revived Uncle Thomas like a watered flower.
As we sat down to a sumptuous dinner, he was saying some things about the Government which they wouldn’t have cared to hear. With the soupe à l’oignon, he said but what could you expect nowadays? With the boeuf bourguignonde, he admitted rather decently that the Government couldn’t be held responsible for the rotten weather, anyway. And shortly after the quiche Lorraine, he was practically giving the lads the benefit of his whole-hearted support.
The dining table was yet again a lively place. Light-hearted family banter had once again become the norm. Aunt Dahlia was back to being a suave and genial host, presiding over the dinner-table on most nights. Often, the conversation in the group touched a high level and feasts of Reason and flows of Soul occurred. Angela and Tuppy had buried their hatchet and were no longer arguing whether a shark had indeed bitten Angela while she was swimming at Cannes.
In other words, love and domestic peace had regained its throne. Flowers were in full bloom. Birds were twittering merrily. God was in heaven, and all was well at Brinkley Manor.
A day dawned when Jeeves and I were getting ready to drive back to the city. There was something troubling me within and I thought it fit to mention it to Jeeves.
‘Jeeves, I say, rummy all this, what? I mean Anatole popping back so very soon?’
‘Indeed sir. Most gratifying.’
‘Well, I suspect you had played some role there.’
‘Kind of you to say so, sir. I was somewhat baffled for a while, I must confess, sir. Then I was materially assisted by a fortunate opportunity that came up and I merely seized it.’
‘What opportunity?’
‘You may recall that some time back, Monsieur Anatole was very upset when Gussie Fink Nottle had made faces at him through the skylight of his bedroom.’
‘Yes. A chapter in the annals of Brinkley Manor which is not easy to forget.’
‘Since Anatole had given the contact particulars of the caretaker in Pondicherry to Seppings, it was not difficult for me to reach out to him. I explained the state of affairs at this end and he kindly accepted to help us out. He hired someone local to go on top of the house and deliver the goods, so to say, sir.’
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘this is genius of a high order.’
‘It is very good of you to say so, sir.’
‘What did Aunt Dahlia say about it?’
‘Details are not known to her, but she appeared gratified at the outcome, sir.’
‘To go into sordid figures, did she—’
‘Yes, sir. Two hundred pounds.’
‘Uncle Thomas?’
‘Yes, sir. He also behaved most handsomely, quite independently of Mrs Travers. Another two hundred and fifty pounds.
‘Good Lord, Jeeves! You’ve been coining the stuff!’
‘But, sir, I confess I owe one hundred pounds to the caretaker of the house where Anatole was staying while in Pondicherry.’
I gaped at the fellow.
‘Oh, for the services rendered?’
‘Indeed sir. There are no free lunches in life, as those across the pond say, sir.’
‘Well, I would hate to see you incurring a cost of that magnitude for benefitting a beloved aunt of mine. I suppose I had better pitch in and support you on that count.’
‘Why, thank you, sir. This is extremely generous of you.’
Notes:
- Inputs from Anand Pakiam, C G Suresh, Dominique Conterno, and Chakravarti Madhusudana are gratefully acknowledged.
- Illustration of Anatole courtesy Shalini Bhatia.
- Photo of beach road courtesy Sanjay Mohan.
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