Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

That afternoon, I found Lord Windermere in a piteous state. It appeared that, some few nights before, he had drunk two bottles of port more than was his wont and had awakened in the night with the frightful kind of thirst which will drive a man to drink water. He had made his own way to the butler’s pantry and drunk quite a pint of the stuff. Now, everyone knows that to drink the water of London is to invite disaster, and disaster had indeed descended upon his essential tripes: one could hear them gurgling like Fleet-ditch. He perked up considerably when I produced the little present I had brought him from China: a minute, exquisite scribe’s screen in the purest mutton-fat jade and a matching brush-pot in the most unflawed spinach-colour; a colour only to be found in the fabled Jade Mountain which lies somewhere in Shan-Si, is guarded day and night and whose location even the Celestial One has not been told.

He was right to prize this present, for old Jim Christie would have squeezed out quite a hundred guineas for it in his auction rooms. But Windermere was no fool and knew that I too was nothing of the sort.

“Uncommon kind of you,” he murmured, just audible over the Vesuvian noises from his innards, “uncommon kind. Dare say you’ve something to sell me, eh? Eh?”

I explained to him that, amongst my new season’s stock, I had the incomparable ox-blood piece, bought in Canton, which I have spoken of before, and that I could not exhibit it publicly because no true connoisseur would have eyes for anything else in my shop if it were there; I had to be rid of it, even at a sacrifice. Windermere’s eyes glazed with disinterest as he stared abstractedly at a corner of the painted bedroom-ceiling, where some precocious cherubs were disporting themselves in adult ways. I uttered, in a flat voice, some seven more words describing the piece. His eyes remained disinterested but I was watching the quickened respiration of his chest.

“How much?” he asked, languidly.

I told him. He sat bolt upright.

“Oh, burst and rot me!” he cried in a frenzy. “If I’d not the squitters already I’d have ’em now! Are you insane?”

“I do not think so,” I said carefully, “except, perhaps, in the matter of women.”

“Pull the bell-rope!” he yelled. “No, not that one, the other: I need a bedpan, not the butler.”

When I re-entered the room, some minutes later, an effete and pallid Windermere begged me to trifle no more with a man trembling, as he was, on the edge of the very grave.

“What’s the real price?” he asked. “Come now, the real one, eh? Damme, you’ve had your joke, turned me bowels inside out, let’s talk sense now. Guineas. Things like that.”

“Lord Windermere,” I said, gravely as any high-priced doctor, “the real price would blench the cheek of anyone but Nathan Meyer Rothschild” — I repeated this name carefully — “but the price I named to you was but a token of friendship, you understand.”

He ranted a little but used no language more dirty than was customary with him. At last, sulkily, he said that he would look at the pot.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Today, if you will forgive me, your eyes are a little tinged with bile and not perfectly able to appreciate the colour of this piece. So, until this time tomorrow, my Lord…?”

“Very well,” he rasped in tones of defeat. “On your way out, tell that woman to bring the bedpan again — and tell the butler to give you a glass of whatever you please. I can recommend the water , heh heh.”

There is a peculiar pleasure in knowing that you have made a sale before the customer has seen anything but the price.

I sprang out of bed the next morning with a song on my lips and the world at my feet. Blanche had, during the night, given me yet more proof of her talents and inventiveness in the field of love and had shyly promised to surprise me deliciously, next bed-time, with a truly remarkable piece of naughtiness which she had been saving up for a special occasion. Moreover, I was rich; I had a glistering new carriage, a splendid emporium ready to startle London with, an ensured sale to Lord Windermere that evening which would bring enough to keep an unambitious man for life and — here I rubbed my hands with glee — Mr Jorrocks was bidden for dinner at two-thirty sharp and I had arranged such a feast as would daunt even his magnificent appetite. He had made me cry “capivi” at the Margate breakfast and I had long thirsted for revenge. At this dinner I meant to make him repeat the legendary episode when he had had to beg his friends to lift him up, tie him into his chair and fill his glass.

There was a barrel of oysters dripping in the cellar; an incredible salmon with the sea-lice still clustering on it, brought express from the sandy deserts of Wales itself; a tureen of soup made from a prodigious turtle, the gelatinous meat and gobbets of green fat swimming so thickly in it — both calipash and calipee — that it was a puzzle to find the liquor; Aylesbury ducklings as big as geese; half of a stag’s bottom cooked in pastry and many another kickshaw — but the prime remove, the dish to defeat even Mr Jorrocks, was a round of boiled beef. Plain fare, you say? Ah, but this round of beef was from an ox among oxes, an ox which would have made an elephant cringe; moreover, it had been dressed according to the receipt of Signor Francatelli, the pupil of Carême himself and the new chef de cuisine to her new Majesty. The receipt alone had cost me a guinea and now, as I write (when I have to count every penny so that I can leave a substantial sum to the Foundling Hospital), it makes me shudder to think of the cost of the cocks’-combs, palates, crayfish and other rarities which were called for. (I shall perhaps append the receipt to this memoir of mine, but I know how you love these little legacies en souvenir.)

It was, then, a wonderfully happy Van Cleef or Mortdecai who sat down to dinner that afternoon.

“Wot a werry helegant little repast, Mr Dutch,” said Mr Jorrocks, as oyster after oyster flew down his throat. “Can’t take my eyes off that salmon. Yes, pray help me, do.” A little later: “Vy, wot’s this? Haven’t seen finer turtle soup on the Lord Mayor’s table, swears I don’t know where you gets it, unless you’ve a friend in the Mansion House.” And so it went on without a flaw or pause in the arrangements; Tom was trotting to and fro with fresh plates and more bottles, Blanche was beaming and winking at me and old Mrs Jorrocks’s great red face was steaming with pleasure as she gobbled.

I passed the ox-blood Ming bowl around as a loving-cup, filled with champagne, then the round of beef was brought in with great éclat . I begged Mr J. to take the honours of the carving-knife and he had heaped every plate before he dropped, from a full mouth, the words which were to change my life.

“Almost forgot, Mr Dutch. A person came to the varehouse on Friday, claimed to be a friend of yours.”

“Really?” I said, from an equally full mouth. “Did he give a name?”

“Believes he did. Elderly, skinny chap, brown in the face, werry short of teeth and a little the worse for liquor. Ragged pea-jacket buttoned up to the neck to hide his no-shirt, but spoke like a gent — and I means the genuine harticle.”

“I do not think I know anyone of that description, Mr J.,” I said, reaching for another oyster or two to help the beef slip down. “Do you recall the name?” This question seemed to have the most alarming effect:

“Fetch my hat, Binjamin!” he roared over his shoulder. I gaped.