Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

Mr Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman seemed content but I wanted cheese. I asked diffidently for some of it, not being sure that the British used such things.

“Cheese?” cried Mr Jorrocks, “Cheese? Vy, wot a young Trojan you are, to be sure. Cheese you shall have, and in habundance. Mr Creed, I say Mr Creed, bring this young fighting-cock one of your Stiltons — the werry ripest, for he deserves no less!”

A strange thing, shaped like a bucket, was brought in and reverently placed upon the table. It stunk very nicely, not as rich as a Limberger but strong. There were little things burrowing busily in it but Mr Creed quietened them with a soup-ladle of hot port. No one else was hungry any more but I ate great store of it, spread upon strange biscuit-like things called Thick Captains. The others, I think, admired my appetite, for they applauded every mouthful. I do not think that they were making fun of me; they were kind, kind. Then we concocted a bowl of some hot drink of which I forget the name, which we drank, saying many a kind word one to another. Then we were given a chamber-candlestick apiece and made our ways upstairs to bed. Mr Jorrocks and Mr York, climbing the stairs ahead of me, seemed to be a little random in their choice of steps.

When I had stripped to my shirt and washed, the little maid came in with the promised warming-pan and spoke to me reproachfully.

“How late you are, Sir,” she said. “Some of you gentlemen have no consideration for a poor girl. Why, see, I’ve already changed into my night-shift, all fresh-washed, and am shivering with cold!”

“So you have, child,” I said compassionately, “and so you are. Come, let me warm you.”

“Oh Sir !” she cried a few moments later.

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” she said, “You mistake me. I am not frightened. It is just that … well, have you been wounded? There, I mean?”

I thought for a moment. I realised.

“No my little love,” I murmured, “all of us, ah, Dutchmen are born like this.”

“Goodness gracious,” she said. “But, does it not make any difference ?”

“Let us see,” I said.

Some twenty minutes later she was agreeing fervently that the difference, if any, was for the better. But women are notoriously feather-brained and she awoke me at least twice — I forget — in the night to reassure herself that my “novelty”, as she coyly described it, was as adept as she had seemed to remember. I contrived to reassure her, for in those days I was even younger than I now am.

From that day to this I have firmly believed in the properties of the excellent English Stilton Cheese: my table is never without it.

I was awakened in the dark before dawn by certain young persons scrambling out of my bed, giving me a sleepy kiss and fending-off my sleepy advances.

“It’s all right for some,” she cried, “who have nothing to do but take advantage of poor innocent girls and then slug a’bed half the day themselves!”

I made placatory noises, grasped her and danced her lovingly round the room while I ascertained with finger and toe that my various little stores of gulden , concealed here and there, were intact. They were. She, I need scarcely, say, was not: a further three-minutes’ romp made sure of that, her protests making the interlude the more enjoyable. Before she left, frantic about the work she had to do, I gave her a whole gulden; I was young in those days and foolish.

Washed, dressed and shaven, I sought out Mr Jorrocks’s room — “you can tell it by ’is snoring,” said the other, uglier chamber-maid — and entered after a series of knocks, each one louder than the other.

“Come, my good friend!” I cried cheerily, “be stirring! Dawn is breaking!”

The shapeless lump under the bed-clothes wriggled in an irritable fashion.

“Let it break,” came the grumpy answer, “for it owes me nothing as I knows of.”

“But I had hoped, Mr Jorrocks, that you might join me at breakfast, as my guest, unless you are feeling, how is it, below the weather …?”

“Below the weather?” he bellowed, bounding out of bed with a thump which must have shaken the whole inn, “under the weather? Wot a imperent young game-cock you are, to be sure!” He smoothed out those parts of his ample nightshirt which had become entrapped in the folds of his person, his good temper quickly restoring itself. “No man shall say that John Jorrocks could not face his breakfast, come what may. Now, let me adwise you to take a restorative dip into Mother Hocean whilst I perform my ablutions and attend to my toilet. I shall look for you in the coffee-room in one hour precise, when we shall see who can eat most of that Macduff you spoke of so freely last night.”

Even at that hour the shingly shore of Margate was a heaving mass of bathing-women who came rushing towards me, avid for my patronage. I turned tail and fled. With one of the White Hart’s towels in my pocket I crossed to the Ramsgate side and found a stretch of deserted beach below the Preventive Service Station. I found that it was easier to swim in the sea than in the fresh water of the canals of my native land, but the water tasted curiously salt. A quick towelling and a brisk run brought me back to the White Hart at just the moment that Mr Jorrocks emerged from the inn’s kitchen, where he had been giving final directions for our breakfast. He rubbed his hands as he sat down. I, too, sat down, rubbing mine.

In the end I had to give him best. He had, after all, had a great deal more sleep than me and, you see, the appetite which my dips — one into Mother Hocean — had afforded me could not discount the healthy fatigue and strain upon the digestive organs.

“Wot?” he cried, dexterously trapping the last fourth of a muffin from my defeated plate, “Wot? ’Ave I made you cry ‘ capivi ’, my young prize-fighter? Vell, it’s nothing to be ashamed of; ask anyone in the Surrey ’Unt vether they’ve ever seen John Jorrocks outfaced when his knees are under a breakfast-table. Indeed, you’re the finest contender I’ve ever squared up against … consider Mr York, there,” and he pointed with his triumphant fork to a pallid apparition in the coffee-room doorway, “consider him, I say. I’ll wager you a hat — a guinea hat, not a 6/8d Goss — that he can get down no more than a pint of porter and a pair of ripe bloaters!” The apparition turned greenish and vanished.

“There you are!” he cried, “Wot did I say? Wot is ’appening to the youth of Old England when a slight breakfast daunts them? Where are the ’earts of hoak? Waiter, pray fetch me a few more of these capital prawns and another slice of that delicate Cambridge brawn, for I vows that my muffin-mill is almost stopped — needs hoiling — and I have promised Mrs J. that I shall not eat butter, lest I spoil the trimness of my figure.”

“Do you stay here long, Mr Jorrocks?” I asked, with some trepidation.

“Vy, no; I and Mr York came but to stay a five pound note in Margate this delightful weather (plus eighteenpence vich Mr York furnished) and it is now all but spent. We leaves on the steamer at eleven o’clock sharp.”

I summoned the waiter and asked for my bill. Mr Jorrocks took it from me but not, as I had hoped, to settle it. He took out a silver pencil-case and scrutinised the slip of paper carefully.

“Wot did you use by way of candles?” he asked.

“One,” I said. “For perhaps five minutes.”

“Imperence!” he cried, scratching out the item on the bill. “Now, ‘hearly call in the morning’?”

“Well, I do not think so.” He scratched some more.

“Wails for the vaiter — left blank.”

“Vails?”