David Nobbs - Ostrich Country

The pans and stoves seemed very large after his saucepan and gas ring. Everything looked much more mechanical and less artistic than he had expected. This whole venture was absurd.

He was supposed to have previous experience, and the two chefs, Alphonse and his assistant Tonio, assumed that he knew how to begin. He had to be very careful.

‘I’m not used to machines of this sort,’ he told Alphonse, and Alphonse showed him how to use them. It was easy, really. The vegetables came out just as efficiently for him as they did for Alphonse.

‘I’m sorry. We never used carrots,’ he told Alphonse, after he had cut up some carrots the wrong way.

‘What kind of place have you been working from, with the extreme absence of carrots?’ said Alphonse.

‘A little place,’ said Pegasus. ‘The owner had a thing about carrots.’

‘Was he having the thing also about other foods?’ asked Alphonse.

‘One or two,’ said Pegasus non-committally, in case there should be other disasters.

He got his timings mixed up. Alphonse was cross.

‘I’m not used to these quantities,’ said Pegasus.

‘This place where you work, she was having no customers?’ said Alphonse.

‘Not many. The owner had a thing about customers,’ said Pegasus.

He needed quite a lot of help, he felt a bit of a fool, but lunch passed off without disaster. And no one sent their vegetables back.

He started early on dinner, and it all went much more smoothly. He began to lose his sense of absurdity. Here he was working alongside these true professionals. Alphonse, with his typical French moustache, and his lean, rather crooked, pimply face with a big nose and stick-out ears. Tonio, hairy and Italian, always either singing or swearing. Pegasus began to feel happy. He was too busy to think about Jane Hassett. Tonight he would sleep soundly. Tomorrow he would work still better. Soon he would be a great chef. And he still had all his fingers. He felt that he was coming to life, that he was starting to live his own natural, destined life. He began to sing, but silently, in case they should think him presumptuous.

Jane Hassett changed into an expensive, bottle green costume. She dressed swiftly, her movements charged with nervous energy. Her legs, which were so often heavy and lifeless, felt light, seemed eager to play their full part in the day’s activities.

She ran her left hand over her right breast and squeezed the nipple very gently, as if she was reassuring an old friend. The parts of her body often had an independent existence. Often as a child she had been a leg or an arm for several days, without anybody knowing. Never a breast. Not in those days.

Tony was out, gone to Norwich, to see about some new central heating equipment. All lies. Once again there was a woman. She sat down on the bed, lit a cigarette, smoked it urgently, practically devouring it, yet with elegance.

Four months they’d been here, and already it had started up again.

Tony had come into a big legacy last October when his rich Uncle James had been flambeed to death in brandy during a five course meal at an hotel in Berkshire. Tony went away on a business trip to Suffolk and bought the hotel he was staying in. He had said that the least they could do, in memory of his uncle, was to buy a hotel and never serve meals at the table. She had been presented with a fait accompli, as usual.

She had been nervous. She felt she was too thin to be taken seriously. Landladies were fat, autocratic women, with voluminous chins and loud voices, whose false hoarse laughter shook the mock-Tudor beams and set the antique swords rattling on the walls. Yet she had been a success. She thought she could count herself, to date, a reasonable success. It was Tony who had been the failure. Already he was bored. He’d found a new toy, a doll. The lies had begun again. The accusations and scenes would follow.

And it had all begun with a lie. She had seen his entry in the visitors’ book. Mr and Mrs Hassett. So much for his business trip to Suffolk.

She soaked her face-flannel in hot water and applied it to the spot above her lip. She held it there, feeling a sexual excitement in these preparations. Her throat was tickling, the approach of a cold. All his fault. Whenever the lies began she had some minor ailment. It was her system’s way of getting rid of the poison.

She took away the flannel and pressed a finger of each hand against the horrid little pimple. It popped and the white poison shot out. She wiped it off with her flannel. It was Tony. It was her husband, in suppurative form, and when it was gone she hated him less.

That was better. Nothing nauseous about a dull, red excrescence. Ready to go now.

She walked over to Rose Lodge, wondering if Tony had sent the poor boy there on purpose. It was sensible enough, on the face of it. There wasn’t room at the hotel. It would take their minds off their tragedy. And yet she felt sure that it was done in anger. He was annoyed because she had made the appointment on her own. Only he could do things on his own.

Brenda showed her up to Pegasus’s room.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said.

‘Oh good.’

‘Bill likes him.’

Pegasus opened the door and asked her in. She sat in the armchair and he sat in the hard chair. She had never once been unfaithful to Tony.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she said, offering her packet of tipped.

‘No, thanks, I don’t. I should offer you some but I haven’t any.’

‘I just came to see how you were getting on,’ said Jane.

‘All right, thank you.’

‘You heard about their tragedy, I suppose?’

‘Yes. They told me.’

‘They should have removed all these toys and things. It’s embarrassing for you.’

She stood up and went to the window.

‘At least you have a nice view,’ she said, instantly regretting the ‘at least’.

‘Yes. Very nice.’

She turned away from the window and smiled at him. He was still seated. She wanted to touch him. She felt a sneeze coming on, turned away politely, sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ he said.

When she turned round again he looked embarrassed. Why? He seemed tense too, but it wasn’t enough to go on. All this was in her imagination. She was in danger of making a fool of herself.

She sat down and took a deliberate puff at her cigarette, keeping herself calm.

‘Is the bed comfortable?’ she said.

‘Very, thank you.’

She crossed her legs, felt this to be a little theatrical, and uncrossed them.

‘I must say I wouldn’t like having those books and toys there,’ she said.

‘I would be happier if they were moved,’ said Pegasus, ‘but I don’t like to mention it.’

‘No. It’s difficult. Well I’m glad to see that apart from that you’re very comfortable.’

‘Yes. Very. And the view is very nice.’

A hiatus.

‘It must seem quiet after London?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Even with all the planes?’

‘We get those in London too.’

What a conversation! She must go, and it would be quite wrong anyway to use him as a pawn in her battle with Tony. She had never used anyone in that way. He might even be engaged.

‘How did you get on with Alphonse?’ she said.

‘Very well, I think.’

‘We’ve only had him three weeks. He’s very gallic.’

‘Yes.’

She decided it was stupid not to cross her legs, just because if done self-consciously it might seem theatrical. So she crossed her legs. Then she sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ he said, and then he looked embarrassed. Why?

‘If you ever have any problems, let me know,’ she said.

‘Yes, I will.’

She must go. She stood up abruptly and to her surprise found herself not at the door but at the window, looking out over the fields and woods of Lord Noseby’s estate. He joined her there and they stood side by side, looking out over Lord Noseby’s estate. She could feel his body, touching hers ever so slightly, either by accident or deliberately but made to seem like an accident.