There were six of us to dinner that night at Mike Schofield’s
house in London: Mike and his wife and daughter, my
wife and I, and a man called Richard Pratt.
Richard Pratt was a famous gourmet. He was president
of a small society known as the Epicures, and each month
he circulated privately to its members a pamphlet on food
and wines. He organized dinners where sumptuous dishes
and rare wines were served. He refused to smoke for fear
of harming his palate, and when discussing a wine, he had
a curious, rather droll habit of referring to it as though it
were a living being. ‘A prudent wine,’ he would say, ‘rather
diffident and evasive, but quite prudent.’ Or, ‘A good-humoured wine, benevolent and
cheerful – slightly
obscene, perhaps, but none the less good-humoured.’
I had been to dinner at Mike’s twice before when
Richard Pratt was there, and on each occasion Mike and
his wife had gone out of their way to produce a special
meal for the famous gourmet. And this one, clearly, was
to be no exception. The moment we entered the dining-room, I could see that the table was
laid for a feast. The
tall candles, the yellow roses, the quantity of shining
silver, the three wineglasses to each person, and above all,
the faint scent of roasting meat from the kitchen brought
the first warm oozings of saliva to my mouth.
As we sat down, I remembered that on both Richard
Pratt’s previous visits Mike had played a little betting game
with him over the claret, challenging him to name its
breed and its vintage. Pratt had replied that that should
not be too difficult provided it was one of the great years.
Mike had then bet him a case of the wine in question that
he could not do it. Pratt had accepted, and had won both
times. Tonight I felt sure that the little game would be
played over again, for Mike was quite willing to lose the
bet in order to prove that his wine was good enough to be
recognized, and Pratt, for his part, seemed to take a grave,
restrained pleasure in displaying his knowledge.
The meal began with a plate of whitebait, fried very crisp
in butter, and to go with it there was a Moselle. Mike got up
and poured the wine himself, and when he sat down again,
I could see that he was watching Richard Pratt. He had set
the bottle in front of me so that I could read the label. It
said, ‘Geierslay Ohligsberg, 1945’. He leaned over and whispered to me that Geierslay was
a tiny village in the Moselle,
almost unknown outside Germany. He said that this wine
we were drinking was something unusual, that the output
of the vineyard was so small that it was almost impossible
for a stranger to get any of it. He had visited Geierslay personally the previous summer
in order to obtain the few
dozen bottles that they had finally allowed him to have.
‘I doubt whether anyone else in the country has any of
it at the moment,’ he said. I saw him glance again at
Richard Pratt. ‘Great thing about Moselle,’ he continued,
raising his voice, ‘it’s the perfect wine to serve before a
claret. A lot of people serve a Rhine wine instead, but
that’s because they don’t know any better. A Rhine wine
will kill a delicate claret, you know that? It’s barbaric to
serve a Rhine before a claret. But a Moselle – ah! – a
Moselle is exactly right.’
Mike Schofield was an amiable, middle-aged man. But
he was a stockbroker. To be precise, he was a jobber in the
stock market, and like a number of his kind, he seemed to
be somewhat embarrassed, almost ashamed to find that
he had made so much money with so slight a talent. In his
heart he knew that he was not really much more than a
bookmaker – an unctuous, infinitely respectable, secretly
unscrupulous bookmaker – and he knew that his friends
knew it, too. So he was seeking now to become a man of
culture, to cultivate a literary and aesthetic taste, to collect
paintings, music, books, and all the rest of it. His little sermon about Rhine wine and
Moselle was a part of this
thing, this culture that he sought.
‘A charming little wine, don’t you think?’ he said. He
was still watching Richard Pratt. I could see him give a
rapid furtive glance down the table each time he dropped
his head to take a mouthful of whitebait. I could almost
feel him waiting for the moment when Pratt would take his
first sip, and look up from his glass with a smile of pleasure, of astonishment, perhaps
even of wonder, and then
there would be a discussion and Mike would tell him
about the village of Geierslay.
But Richard Pratt did not taste his wine. He was
completely engrossed in conversation with Mike’s eighteen-
year-old daughter, Louise. He was half turned towards
her, smiling at her, telling her, so far as I could gather,
some story about a chef in a Paris restaurant. As he spoke,
he leaned closer and closer to her, seeming in his eagerness almost to impinge upon her,
and the poor girl leaned
as far as she could away from him, nodding politely, rather
desperately, and looking not at his face but at the topmost
button of his dinner jacket.
We finished our fish, and the maid came round removing the plates. When she came to
Pratt, she saw that he
had not yet touched his food, so she hesitated, and Pratt
noticed her. He waved her away, broke off his conversation, and quickly began to eat,
popping the little crisp
brown fish quickly into his mouth with rapid jabbing
movements of his fork. Then, when he had finished, he
reached for his glass, and in two short swallows he tipped
the wine down his throat and turned immediately to
resume his conversation with Louise Schofield.
Mike saw it all. I was conscious of him sitting there,
very still, containing himself, looking at his guest. His
round jovial face seemed to loosen slightly and to sag, but
he contained himself and was still and said nothing.
Soon the maid came forward with the second course.
This was a large roast of beef. She placed it on the table in
front of Mike, who stood up and carved it, cutting the
slices very thin, laying them gently on the plates for the
maid to take around. When he had served everyone,
including himself, he put down the carving knife and
leaned forward with both hands on the edge of the table.
‘Now,’ he said, speaking to all of us but looking at
Richard Pratt. ‘Now for the claret. I must go and fetch
the claret, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘You go and fetch it, Mike?’ I said. ‘Where is it?’
‘In my study, with the cork out – breathing.’
‘Why the study?’
‘Acquiring room temperature, of course. It’s been there
twenty-four hours.’
‘But why the study?’
‘It’s the best place in the house. Richard helped me
choose it last time he was here.’
‘On top of the green filing cabinet in my study,’ Mike
said. ‘That’s the place we chose. A good draught-free spot
in a room with an even temperature. Excuse me now, will
you, while I fetch it.’
The thought of another wine to play with had restored
his humour, and he hurried out of the door, to return a
minute later more slowly, walking softly, holding in both
hands a wine basket in which a dark bottle lay. The label
was out of sight, facing downwards. ‘Now!’ he cried as he
came towards the table. ‘What about this one, Richard?
You’ll never name this one!’
Richard Pratt turned slowly and looked up at Mike, then
his eyes travelled down to the bottle nestling in its small
wicker basket, and he raised his eyebrows, a slight, supercilious arching of the brows,
and with it a pushing outward
of the wet lower lip, suddenly imperious and ugly.
‘You’ll never get it,’ Mike said. ‘Not in a hundred years.’
‘A claret?’ Richard Pratt asked, condescending.
‘Of course.’
‘I assume, then, that it’s from one of the smaller vineyards?’
‘Maybe it is, Richard. And then again, maybe it isn’t.’
‘But it’s a good year? One of the great years?’
‘Yes, I guarantee that.’
‘Then it shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Richard Pratt said,
drawling his words, looking exceedingly bored. Except
that, to me, there was something strange about his drawling and his boredom: between the
eyes a shadow of
something evil, and in his bearing an intentness that gave
me a faint sense of uneasiness as I watched him.