Gentleman's Relish

Stories

Patrick Gale

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781504037662
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Love—common and uncommon, vengeful and transformational—is the theme of this superb collection from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition. From subtle tales of domestic unease to a story featuring a caravan that transports three generations of a family away from their small-town lives, author Patrick Gale proves in his second story collection that he is a master at mining the loneliness, yearning, and eternal optimism of the human spirit. The lonely wife of a prison governor—and the only female on an inaccessible island—gets a lesson in angling from an inmate who will pay a high price in "The Lesson." In "Saving Space, " a widower returns to a summer music festival to revisit bittersweet memories of his wife—and receives consolation from another woman's ghost. In "Petals on a Pool, " a female author bonds with a male poet at a book convention in Hong Kong where no one has heard of them—until she sees something odd floating among the petals in the hotel's pool. The puppy training lessons at the center of "Obedience" serve as the catalyst for the rekindled sex life of a couple when the husband is suspected of murder. Gentleman's Relish also features chilling tales of blood and revenge. In "Making Hay, " a senior citizen living in a retirement home conceives a diabolical payback in the form of family folklore told to her young grandchildren. And in "Cookery, " a son exacts a nasty retribution against his homophobic father when he whips up an extra-special dinner. Some of these stories unfold like dreams—or nightmares—and others dissect with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Narrated with wit, glee, and surprising tenderness, this collection includes unsung masterpieces like "Hushed Casket, " in which a husband on his honeymoon discovers an old tea casket in an abandoned church that releases a macabre spirit, and suddenly, the homely spouse is transformed into an irresistible sex magnet. Additionally included here are stories originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4, as well as "In the Camp, " which explores the childhood of Laura Lewis, the heroine of Gale's acclaimed novel The Whole Day Through. With Gale's sharp eye for detail and unerring ear for dialogue, this pitch-perfect, something-for-everyone collection is sure to lure readers in—and keep them hooked.

PETALS ON A POOL

Edith was only at the festival because of an administrative error. It was the other Edith Chalmers they’d wanted. She knew it, her agent knew it and so – rapidly – did the festival organizers but two decades of such slights at last gave rise to a small demonstration of bloody-mindedness and she affected not to have understood, which duly shamed everyone else into saying nothing.

She was the first Edith Chalmers. She wrote quietly devastating studies of a quiet sort of English character: thwarted people too well bred to fight, people who numbered priests among their friends, people who not only noticed split infinitives but found them morally troubling. The other Edith Chalmers, who had no such qualms, wrote bestsellers about illegitimate girls of no account who rose to positions of tediously itemized wealth and high status. She only bothered to call herself Edith P. Chalmers for her first offering, To Boldly Sin. The sales of this eclipsed all those of her namesake in less than two weeks and the P. was dropped from the second edition. It was the kind of effrontery that she celebrated in her heroines.

The first Edith naïvely thought her publishers might sue but they merely resorted to a suitably quiet sort of branding, thereafter announcing her as Edith Chalmers (Author of Sad Cypresses) or Edith Chalmers (Author of A Corner Table).

‘You’ve been invited to the Bali Book Festival,’ her agent said warily. ‘All expenses paid. They want you for a spotlight session and then a panel on romantic fiction. Shall I let them down gently?’

Edith would usually have sighed and said yes but she thought of her late best friend Margaret, who had written whodunits about a dog breeder and said yes to everything. Margaret was a tireless attendee of readers’ days and book festivals and regarded each and every train ticket, hotel bed and feast of mini-bar chocolate as just compensation for the failure of her publishers to see that her lengthy backlist took fire. Margaret remained a shameless freeloader until her recent death. Edith missed her keenly.

‘No,’ she told her agent. ‘Say yes for a change. Tell them I’d be delighted.’

She assumed the organizers would find a way to cancel once they’d seen their mistake but perhaps, being oriental, they were too strenuously polite. They e-mailed gushingly to say how wonderful, what fans they were and so on. Then they e-mailed again, rather more coolly, to say how unexpectedly difficult they were finding it to gather sufficient stock of her titles for the festival bookshop. They sent her aeroplane ticket with nothing more enthusiastic attached than a compliment slip. It was only an economy ticket – the other Edith lived in a tax haven and passed much of her life in first class – but this Edith was slight and would be perfectly comfortable. It would be a free holiday with only a little work attached, it would be interesting and it would offer some correction to the disparity in her and her namesake’s fortunes.

As she fought through the airport crowds into the stifling evening air of Denpasar, Edith faced humiliation by taxi driver. Ranged along a crowd barrier was a three-deep line of drivers, all holding cards with the names of the passengers they were there to collect. She could see her name nowhere but some of the writing was small. She unearthed her glasses then walked along the line squinting at the names, a process made no easier by the way each driver waggled his card as she drew close, blurring its lettering. She walked up and down four times, melting in the heat, bitterly regretting her decision to come, and was at last reduced to perching on her sagging suitcase, in full view of all the drivers, to wait.

Her name appeared at last, wildly misspelt, behind all the others, waggled by a driver who explained, entirely without apology, that they had still to wait for someone else.

‘Might I sit in the car at least?’ she asked but he only smiled and repeated,

‘We have to wait, lady. Very important guest.’

This proved to be a formidable journalist from Hong Kong, Lucinda Yeung. Lent height by heels, soignée to the point of agelessness, she made Edith conscious of the crumpled hours she had just passed in travelling. She had a set of immaculate suitcases, of a shade that toned with her cream suit, and left their driver to cope with them while she consulted her little kid-bound agenda and quizzed Edith. As soon as she’d ascertained that she wasn’t the other Edith Chalmers, she relaxed and confessed to having ‘stitched her up once’. She broke off to grill the driver in quickfire Bahasa then turned back with a feline smile. ‘Turns out we’re staying in the island’s best hotel,’ she said. ‘You’re very lucky. The drive will take around thirty-five minutes. Do you mind if I conduct a little business? I’m chairing several events and I’m way behind as always.’

Edith said that would be quite understandable and Ms Yeung spent the rest of their blissfully air-conditioned journey on her telephone, greeting a succession of authors with virtually identical praise for their latest books and the bluntly delivered instruction that they were not to turn up for their events with prepared speeches.

‘The public comes to see you interact, not reading your homework. And they don’t want readings either; they can read your book themselves once you’ve convinced them to buy it.’

The end of each call was softened by some variant of the praise that had opened it and some regally personal touch, an enquiry about a garden or husband or pet made after a rapid glance at the notes she had made alongside the names and addresses in her agenda. A call completed, a name was scratched off a list. Ms Yeung’s professionalism was so astonishing it did not occur to Edith to be offended or to make any effort not to listen in.

The last author was dealt with as they finished passing through Ubud, roughly five minutes before their arrival at the hotel. Ms Yeung put away her agenda and gave Edith her full, interested attention.

‘Don’t worry that we’re so far out from all the action,’ she told her. ‘There’ll be a free car to take you into Ubud whenever you need and the compensations are terrific. The nights are cooler and quieter out here. You won’t be troubled by barking dogs or woken by cockerels and the rooms and service are perfection.’

The car paused at a gatehouse for security men to check beneath it for bombs then they were waved through. They approached a brightly-lit pavilion, where staff were lined up in expectation.

‘Now don’t go racing off with your famous friends tomorrow. I’ll want to catch up with you,’ Ms Yeung said as a young man in a version of traditional dress came to open their door.

Female staff met them with namastes and draped them with scented white garlands of welcome. Then, before Edith could say goodnight, they were deftly separated and whisked in different directions into the lantern-lit grounds.

It was like no hotel she had ever visited. There was none of the usual sordid business of credit-card swipes or checking who was paying for what. Edith’s guide introduced herself as Ayu.

‘I’m your personal assistant for the duration of your stay. Anything you need, anything you don’t like, just dial one and I’ll answer,’ she said. ‘I’ll stop by each morning after breakfast to file your requests for the day. Your room is this way. Watch your step here, it’s a little uneven.’

She led the way past a bewildering succession of pavilions and pools, gardens and terraces. She pointed out various restaurants and spa centres in passing which Edith was sure she would never rediscover by daylight. Edith could hear rushing water somewhere far below and, through the trees, a music like nothing she had heard before, at once frenetic and calmly circular, as though moving at two speeds at once. It seemed to be made by gongs or tuned drums of some kind.

‘It’s a temple ceremony,’ Ayu told her, seeing she had paused to listen. ‘There’s a full moon this week … So. Here we are. This is your room and your own pool is just there across the terrace. Beyond that grille you’ll find a library with a computer and broadband access.’

She unlocked and slid open a huge glazed door into a suite of rooms easily the size of Edith’s little flat in Tufnell Park. She demonstrated shower, fridge, television, lighting, remote control, air conditioning, mosquito nets and only then, on the point of bidding goodnight and as though she sensed it was deeply distasteful, she asked for Edith’s passport and took a swipe of her credit card on a tiny electronic reader she produced from a pocket.

After a dreamy night haunted by the sound of distant gongs and the perfume of aromatic oil in the lanterns on her terrace, Edith woke to find herself in a kind of paradise. The hotel was a series of tastefully converted antique buildings spread across an old estate or plantation on the steeply folded sides of a river valley. Through the trees came virid glimpses of deserted rice fields but no other buildings.

Edith had been trained by Margaret never to have a hotel breakfast delivered for fear of extra charges and a reduction in choice. Besides, breakfast in a pretty pavilion built over a cascade was part of the treat. Deciding not to fret after English marmalade and her usual toast and strong coffee, she elected to embrace, with a good child’s passivity, whatever this adventure threw at her. She thus found herself sipping a lawn-green concoction made of melon and parsley and eating some kind of pancakes stuffed with nuts and berries.

It was impossible to sense how many guests there were since they were housed far apart and many, like Ms Yeung, might have elected to take breakfast on their terraces. The restaurant was almost deserted. There was a severe Japanese woman glaring into her tea in a corner and an Australian couple were leaving, softly arguing, as she arrived. At the table next to her a wan young man was poring over the festival programme. He smiled fleetingly and mouthed a hello at her as she sat so it didn’t seem too forward to speak back once she had finished the last of her surprisingly filling pancakes.

‘Are you here for the festival too?’

‘Looks like it,’ he said quietly.

‘Are you Irish?’

‘American,’ he said. ‘But my mother was from Limerick.’ He looked back at the programme. ‘My event seems to have been left off this.’

‘How terrible! Is it too late to complain?’

‘Oh I’m used to it. A voice in the wilderness, that’s me.’

‘I’m Edith Chalmers,’ she said brightly, in an effort to head him off from gloom.

He brightened at once. ‘No!’

‘The other one. The one no one’s heard of.’

‘Ah. Well no one’s heard of me either so we’re quits. I’m Peter John.’ He leant across to shake her proffered hand. His grasp was so cool and weak she wondered if he were unwell. ‘You see? You’ve forgotten it already. I always told my mother it was a mistake to marry a man with no proper surname; two first names give the mind no anchor.’

‘I’ll think of you as Prester John,’ she said. ‘Then it’ll stick. Sorry. What do you write?’

‘I’m a poet,’ he said. ‘So my case is hopeless really. Still, we’re in the very best hotel and I intend to make the most of it. Although even the staff seem to have forgotten I’m here.’

As if on cue, the waitress ignored his pleading look as she came to clear Edith’s place. Edith offered him a roll and nut butter as he looked famished but he waved her little basket aside.

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve a massage at ten and it’s best on an empty stomach. They’re going to pound me with sea salt then dribble me all over with stimulating oils. But show me your event so I can circle it.’

She flicked through his programme and shyly pointed out her two events, feeling she ought really to give him one of them. He circled them both with a tiny pen worthy of Ms Yeung. It was ivory with a little skull carved on its cap.

‘If I hear no one else,’ he said, ‘I shall come into town to hear you, the other, the real Edith Chalmers!’

Although her events were not until the third day, she felt honour bound to attend as much of the festival as possible because someone else had paid for her to be there and she had been nicely brought up. Besides, the hotel’s luxury – a part of which plainly lay in its keeping the vulgar question of prices aired as rarely as possible – made her nervous. It might have been different had someone from the festival welcomed her and made it quite clear what she was and wasn’t going to be paying for at the adventure’s end …

So for two days she fought jet-lag and lived like a nun among sybarites, eating minimal breakfasts, catching her free ride into Ubud in the morning and dining in the evening off the treats in her lavishly restocked fruit bowl, which Ayu had expressly pointed out were free of charge. By day she heard novelists and translators and historians and poets. She sat through discussions of adultery in young adult fiction, the gender politics of far eastern folklore and Does Post Colonialism Exist. She winced at one woman’s account of her daughter’s circumcision and laughed at another’s sonnet to her neurotic Abyssinian. It was all very lively and interesting but she felt lonely in a way she never felt at home, where she saw far fewer people. She longed to escape and explore the island, which clearly had a unique and fascinating culture, but she was intimidated by her lack of language and the vast denominations of the local currency. She felt she shouldn’t go touring during festival hours yet when the last event finished it was nearly dark and she was nervous of missing her free ride home.

She spotted Lucinda Yeung repeatedly, either on stage or in the middle of an animated crowd, but Ms Yeung’s glance seemed to slide over her in a myopic way that discouraged friendly approaches. The other writers all seemed to know each other and wandered off to socialize in merry groups but nobody thought to ask Edith along, perhaps because she had removed her author’s badge when she tired of explaining why she couldn’t sign the other Edith Chalmers’ books.

Massage, she was startled to gather, seemed to be playing a greater part in the festival for most writers than literature. Whenever she listened in on an offstage conversation, writers seemed to be comparing notes on which kind of pummelling, stretching or kneading had worked best for them so far, which day spa offered the best value and which the most handsome or beautiful practitioners.

Her lifeline, on the second day, was Peter John. He seemed to have been as overlooked as she was. Not only was he not in the programme but no badge had been made up for him and the shop had stocked none of his books. He seemed quite unabashed. He fashioned his own author badge which read Peter John: Neglected Poet!

Whenever he saw her he came to sit by her to gossip for a while or simply make her feel less unattached in the crowds. Madame Yeung, he assured her, was far too grand to chat to either of them now that her column was so widely syndicated around the Pacific rim and her cable show had taken off. ‘Consider yourself honoured she gave you five minutes in the taxi from the airport,’ he said. ‘She stood up Seamus Heaney and they say she once made Peggy Atwood cry, which must take some doing.’

Undaunted at being left off the programme, he made regular use of the open mike sessions during the lunch hour, reciting his poetry by heart to the near-empty auditorium in his whispery voice until jostled off the stage by someone else who acted as though he wasn’t there. Edith was not a poetry-reader by habit but she liked his. His verses were dry and witty and desperately sad and she couldn’t think why he wasn’t famous, especially as he was so pale and interesting.

‘I don’t care,’ he assured her, as though reading her mind. ‘Really I don’...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• The Lesson
• Cookery
• Fourth of July, 1862
• Saving Space
• Petals on a Pool
• Obedience
• In the Camp
• The Dark Cutter
• Making Hay
• Brahms and Moonshine
• The Excursion
• Hushèd Casket
• Dream Lover
• Sleep Tight
• Freedom
• Gentleman’s Relish
• Author’s Note
• About the Author
• Copyright Page