Chapter 9 Chez Blinkhorn #2
“Good. Well, anyway, I import wine,” Archie said, apparently reassured.
“That was your question, wasn’t it? I’ve a lot of connections in France, of course, from before the war, you know.
” Mitzi pirouetted back into the room, tray aloft, to announce the arrival of the canapés.
Not other guests but a plate of vol-au-vents that proved to be large, unwieldy things that had been stuffed with smoked haddock and proved very difficult to eat, every bite provoking a shower of pastry crumbs and fish flakes.
The difficulty was squared once Archie handed Flynn a coupe brimming with the champagne cocktail.
A red glacé cherry bobbed around in this lukewarm concoction like an unwelcome drop of blood.
Cynthia, the girl who had been Mitzi’s kitchen help when she was making eclairs, entered, carrying a bowl of nuts.
“You forgot these, Mummy,” she said accusingly to Mitzi, placing the nuts on an already overcrowded side table.
Mummy? Mitzi was a mother? To Cynthia? She seemed so utterly unsuitable for the role.
It must have been terrifying to be nurtured by that rather disobliging maternal bosom.
Cynthia glanced briefly at Flynn and blushed. Out of politeness to her, Flynn took a handful of nuts from the bowl. They were dreadfully stale and he had to take a great swig of the champagne cocktail to get them down his throat.
“Yes, indeed, bottoms up,” Archie said.
—
“The entrée,” Mitzi proclaimed triumphantly when Cynthia made her own entrée and deposited a large platter on the dining table.
The dining room was even smaller than the living room, most of the space taken up by the table itself.
The room was lit by candles, which like the pink lamps seemed to serve more to flatter Mitzi’s gorgonesque features than illuminate anything.
Unlike the room next door, the temperature in this one was approaching Arctic.
“Plateau de fruits de mer,” Mitzi announced. “A seafood platter,” she translated. “Do help yourself,” she said, handing Flynn a pair of forceps-like instruments that looked as though they belonged in an operating theatre. “What are we drinking, Archie?”
“Ah, a lively little Petit Chablis from Louis Michel. Notes of—”
“Just pour, Archie,” Mitzi said.
“Yes, my darling. Of course.” He poured. “Cheers,” he said.
On the dish were displayed oysters, crayfish, prawns, winkles, clams and mussels, all adorned with lemon slices that had been cut into fancy shapes.
Flynn was (reluctantly) about to pick out a prawn when he noticed a tiny winkle detach itself from the array and begin to inch away from its fellows.
He watched in fascination (not to mention empathy) as the fugitive mollusc slowly traversed the crevasse of lemon wedges.
When he pointed out this shy renegade to Mitzi, she simply hitched her eyebrows up even higher and, ever the good hostess, said, “Which would you prefer—a live one or a dead one?” Flynn opted for dead, although the idea was hardly tempting.
He did his best, washing down the seafood with a good deal of wine. Too much wine.
Cynthia arrived to clear the plates. She avoided looking at him and, close up, he could see her plain features and limp, rather stringy hair.
She behaved more like an unwilling servant than a member of the family, and Flynn, feeling bad for her, said to Mitzi, “I didn’t realize Cynthia was your daughter. ”
“Oh, yes, Cynthia,” Mitzi said in an offhand way.
The paucity of the introduction seemed worse than no introduction at all and Flynn stood up—awkwardly, there was very little room between the table and the chair—and stuck out a hand and said, “Harry Flynn,” but Cynthia was already stomping out of the room with their plates. “She isn’t going to join us?”
“Oh no,” Mitzi said. “She’s terribly shy.”
“And we don’t have enough plates anyway,” Archie said. “We have only three soup bowls, three dinner plates, three cups, three saucers.” Flynn worried that the entire Trinitarian inventory of the kitchen would be recited. “We weren’t able to bring all our things with us when we moved.”
“Yes, and whose fault was that?” Mitzi said.
Oh, God, Flynn thought wearily. He was going to end up stranded in the middle of a domestic row.
He wondered if he could just pretend to faint.
Or crawl away like the winkle. Although, in fact, the winkle had failed to make good its escape, speared on a pin by Archie and eaten as a precursor to several oysters that the Major had tossed down his gullet in the manner of a heedless gannet.
With their open, phlegmy throats, the oysters seemed like an invitation to food poisoning.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it, Flynn thought.
Where was that line from? Doctor Faustus?
Was that it—had he accidentally made a pact with the devil and now the reckoning of his soul was due—to be trapped in this basement flat with the Blinkhorns for ever?
The impending marital row was interrupted by the return of Cynthia, who cleared the remains of the seafood and thumped a dish down on the table in front of Archie.
It was left to Mitzi to introduce the joint of beef—“le rosbif”—rolling her rs like a cat about to be sick.
The beef was gently oozing blood on to the plate as if it had only recently arrived from the abattoir.
“Ah, the sacrificial cow,” Archie said, and, wielding an enormous scimitar-like carving knife, he advanced on the joint with as many flourishes as a fencing master.
Cynthia meanwhile continued to slouch to and fro, ferrying in a tureen of mashed potatoes, followed by cabbage and carrots and, bringing up the rear, a gravy boat and a dish of horseradish sauce.
There was something ponderous about the girl, as if she didn’t fit her body properly.
“There are peas as well,” Mitzi said to her.
“No, there aren’t,” Cynthia said. She returned to the kitchen with a smirk on her face, as if the absence of peas represented a small triumph for her.
How old was Cynthia? She could have been anywhere between fifteen and fifty. As if reading his mind, Mitzi said, “She’s twenty next month. It really is time she was off our hands.”
“She’s terrifically useful though,” Archie said affectionately.
“Do you find her attractive, Harry?” Mitzi asked, giving Flynn a beaky look.
There was no good answer to this question. If he said no it would pique her mother. If, on the other hand, he said yes, it might, rightly, outrage her father. “She seems like a nice girl,” he said weakly.
They listened in silence to the noises emanating from the kitchen.
Plates were clashed, water could be heard splashing, something was banged down repeatedly, and all to the accompaniment of a high, keening noise that would have brought a dog running.
“She’s singing,” Archie said after they had listened in silence for a while. “She’s a good girl,” he added.
“Do you think she needs a hand in there?” Flynn asked as the sounds from the kitchen seemed to be approaching a peak.
“Sit down, you’re a guest!” Mitzi honked when he made a half-hearted attempt at leaving the table.
“I’m very fond of Cynthia,” Archie said in a low voice after Mitzi had disappeared in the direction of the crashing plates. “She’s not mine, of course.”
“I’m sorry?”
“She’s another chap’s by-blow.” His voice dropped even lower.
“Love her just as much as if she were my own flesh and blood, though. I’ve been there since the beginning, you know.
Took on someone else’s duty. A friend—at the time.
Shouldn’t talk about it really. In vino veritas,” he laughed.
(They were already finishing a second bottle of white.) “Should learn to keep the old cake hole closed, shouldn’t I?
Paid for a good education as well, you know, Swiss finishing school and everything—not that you can tell, she still seems a bit unfinished to me, although what do I know about women, eh, Flynn?
” Archie laughed again, as though at a shared joke.
“Terrifically expensive as well, though I didn’t resent it.
” He grabbed Flynn by the sleeve and said, “But seriously, old chap, she’s a great girl. ”
“Cynthia?”
“No, Mitzi. Speak of the devil. Hello, darling. Time to move on,” he said, producing a bottle of red like a magician. “A Malbec. Very quaffable.” The Blinkhorns were a bibulous pair; Flynn doubted that he could keep up with them.
Cynthia barged through the door carrying fresh crockery and cutlery—or presumably the same plates as before, now washed.
—
Flynn nibbled his way round the edge of the bloody slice on his plate. There had been a time when he had not been so squeamish. The mouse he’d eaten on the Railway was for a brief moment regurgitated in memory.
The potatoes weren’t much help. They were grey and gooey, and the cabbage was watery and tasteless, the carrots gnarly. Flynn was struck by the realization that Mitzi was not actually a very good cook. Mitzi was a terrible cook. A bit of a charlatan, in fact.
He wished there was a dog that he could have surreptitiously fed beneath the table.
His thoughts roamed back to Wealdstone and Mrs. Betty, who was often the grateful recipient of clandestine food from his hand.
In the short time that Flynn had lived there he had taught the little dog several tricks.
She would do anything for food, even lie down and “roll over for the King,” which was probably more than most of his human subjects would be prepared to do for him outside of wartime.
Mrs. Betty would be growing quite old now, perhaps she was dead.
The thought of the good-natured, innocent little dog made him suddenly sad.