The Inspector-General of Misconception (3 page)

One cannot, of course,
howl
but it is possible to
sob inaudibly
.

The unspoken indictment of the bill

Now the arrival of the bill. The problem with the bill is that it seems to any sane observer, such as a table attendant, to be a monumental act of narcissistic self-indulgence. You may see an expression on the table attendant's face which says what-manner-of-self-centred-person spends $176 dollars on a meal for themselves on Christ's birthday?

This expression can be removed by a heavy tip.

Then leave with dignity, but do not forget that your temptation and your folly still lie,
immediately ahead.

We can look at a coffee pot and be reminded of the sort of Australia it was that owned it.

Australia has had percolators of many sorts, dripolators of many sorts, plungers –
cafetières
– of many designs; many sizes of the round, turn-upside-down Neapolitan gravity dripolators; many sizes of the Milano coffee-maker, with the two eight-sided sections which screw together with a slightly cinched waist at the coffee basket.

During the Vietnam War, we were given a Vietnamese dripolator made from the aluminium frame of a US aircraft shot down by the Viet Cong. We found it too morbid to use.

However, here at The Office, we think we have reached
the end of one of life's long journeys – the journey towards the perfect cup of coffee and the perfect milk steamer made by the most perfect-looking coffee-maker.

We now own, at great expense, an original 1940s Atomic Espresso Coffee Maker.

The Atomic is a chrome, muscular-looking coffee-maker with an elegant, plump arm which curves up purposefully from a round base and holds the coffee basket in its plump hand.

The New York Museum of Modern Art has an Atomic in its collection of great designs of the twentieth century.

The name is from those more optimistic times when the word ‘Atomic' was filled with scientific promise of infinite technological possibility.

The Atomic, which has been out of manufacture for a few years, is at present one of the most desired coffee-makers and is to be found only in expensive antique shops.

They are about to be manufactured again because of world-wide lust for the machines.

Ownership of the Atomic entitles us to join the Society of Atomic Espresso Coffee Makers.

We have monthly meetings where we ‘campaign' the gleaming machines, displaying them on velvet-covered trolleys, back and forth before the judges.

We have tournaments to see who can make the thickest frothed milk or the best cafe latté.

We have lectures on the molecular structure of steam.

We compare the different models and argue their merits.

Once a year, we have a national rally, often travelling thousands of kilometres with our Atomics, in special soft leather carrying bags, cradled on our laps.

There are plans for an Atomic Olympics to be held in Rome.

We remember, as a child, coming across coffee for the first time after one of mother's Afternoon Teas – ah, the days of the elaborate Afternoon Tea.

We lived in a country town, and in those times a woman didn't ‘do lunch' she ‘gave an afternoon tea' for friends.

The story of the Afternoon Tea is that sometime in the nineteenth century, the Seventh Duchess of Bedford grew impatient with the ‘sinking feeling' which afflicted her around 4 pm. Or was it Queen Alexandra, ‘Her Royal Sweetness', who created it? Never mind.

One or the other, tired of ‘the sinking feeling', called down for a tray of tea, bread and butter, and cake to be brought to her room.

The practice spread among her friends and then to the public at large.

Mmmm. Oh well, everything had to start somewhere.

Although it seems to us that it was a rather obvious idea which many people could have come up with all on their own without the Duchess or the Queen to lead them. Such was the nature of legends in pre-republican times that all things of value began in the magical rooms of the aristocracy and moved ‘down'.

Towards the end of the century, afternoon tea gowns appeared together with china, specialised furniture, and
other afternoon tea accoutrements such as the cake fork.

Nests of tables were created to hold the cup of tea, and cake plate and fork of the guests who sat in the lounge room.

It was also called an ‘At Home' (but not in the town where we grew up) and customarily took place between 3–5 pm.

In Australia, the hostess sometimes offered a musical performance by herself or by one of the guests who was ‘prevailed upon' to sing or play the piano or whatever.

It was acceptable to do knitting or needlework at Afternoon Tea, though preferably for a good cause such as the Red Cross.

At an Afternoon Tea, our mother offered sandwiches, scones, cakes, sausage rolls and ‘savouries' – cheddar cheese cubes and small, sweet, coloured onions on toothpicks on savoury holders including one which we especially liked, a small wooden rocking horse.

They were served on afternoon tea ‘sets' – matching cup, saucer and plate, with a cake fork.

It was after such an occasion that, as a small child, we came across a black liquid left in the cups which we had not seen, tasted or smelled before. It was coffee (it hadn't been available during the war).

We shudder at some of the experimenting that we did as a child. The leftover things we tasted, including alcohol, or touched, or, in the case of my mother's wardrobe, ‘tried on' would have shocked (would still shock).

And could've had us killed.

Could've had us arrested.

As we write, we have beside us a half-cup of lukewarm, black coffee and we can find in it that first taste of coffee from our childhood; that bitterness which was on the edge of sweetness and which indeed tastes like a ‘bean' of some sort.

Mother percolated her coffee in an aluminium coffee-maker where the boiling water burped noisily into a glass inspection top and then seeped back through the coffee basket to fill the pot with coffee.

An Afternoon Tea was the only time Mother served coffee. Other than that, we drank tea made in a teapot. Coffee, until ‘instant coffee' arrived in the sixties, was for special occasions and considered sophisticated and ‘American', which is comical given how bad their coffee is.

In the fifties, the Italian espresso bars came to Australia with their lever-forced, compressed steam machines which made this new ‘real' coffee and a new coffee drink called cappuccino.

The Australian taste has progressed fashionably over the years from this beginning to the latté, the latté-macchiato, the macchiato, and the Australian ‘double short black' – the heavy decadent hit.

It was from one of these new espresso bars that we launched off to our first job interview to be a cadet journalist.

We think this real, full-shot of caffeine from Italian-made coffee falsely got us the job by temporarily knocking shyness on the head. It must have been a rather garrulous sixteen-year-old who took that interview.

In adulthood, the worst coffee experience we can recall was while working as a young reporter on the
Riverina Express
, a country newspaper, where David Gyger, the owner and editor, often exhausted, would make the instant coffee with hot water from the hand-basin tap. The Riverina Espresso.

As our generation came of age, we were introduced by advertising to instant coffee as a time-saver and which we came, quite rightly, to snobbishly disdain.

Regardless of arguments over the taste, as with the martini, the pleasure of coffee is in the simple craft ceremony of the ‘making'.

For a while in our writing life we had a twelve-cup electric percolator which kept coffee hot all day and from which we would take a cup every so often.

We finally began to tremble and had palpations and then one day ran into the street without any clothes (not even our mother's) while still cleaning our teeth and came to realise that having ever-ready strong coffee always at hand was unsettling, nay,
perilous
.

The most recent change in coffee-drinking we have noticed, is that both in the United States and Australia, there is a new practice of drinking cappuccino with dinner. In the US, it is used
between
main course and dessert. In Australia, the cappuccino or flat white is used almost as a substitute dessert, especially in restaurants which can be depended upon to serve
petits fours
.

Coffee-drinking and the internet seem also to have merged. Some coffee-shops offer net access and the customers, instead of talking with each other – or wishing
to talk with each other – make contact with complete strangers in other places who are comfortably distanced by the computer.

Recently, a companion suggested that we go to a dentist to have the coffee stains removed from our teeth.

It would be as if to begin a fresh page in our gastronomic history.

For truly, our gastronomic history is written on our body, Peter Greenaway.

It was in the month of February in the year 19–, while we were living in Cambridge as Professor of Tired Notions in residence at King's College. We were inclined one night to forgo High Table and leave the gown and sherry and the scintillating conversation of the best minds of our generation behind us, and to lose ourself in ‘the town'.

We decided that we would not attend the sherry at 7:20 pm and the procession into Hall behind the President of the Table (the most senior fellow present) and, after grace, to be seated and served a beautiful meal by the butlers.

And then, after dessert, to retire to the Wine Room for fruit and cheese and port and white wine. And snuff. Of course.

So, we ventured out into ‘the town' with a certain swagger belonging to a chap from King's, choosing to
wear our academic gown for the heck of it.

During our time there, we had sometimes snuck off college grounds and visited the Indian restaurants and searched for decadence without much luck.

We were known, of course, at some places by now for our eccentricities regarding the making of the martini and our penchant for lone dining and sometimes for improper conduct with table attendants.

We had yet to be thrown out. True, we had been moved once or twice because of our over-friendliness to people at other tables. But on the whole, we were tolerated even if kept under watchful eye by the staff, and we like to think that we were well admired for our quips and sallies.

On this particular night, therefore, we were nonplussed to find our Indian restaurant declared ‘full' by the maître d'. As with all rejected diners, we peered at the empty tables and suspected that we were being denied a table because of some previous behaviour or because of some aberrance of appearance.

‘Bookings,' the maître d' said, ‘all tables booked.' We had never had to book at this or any other restaurant in Cambridge.

However, we left politely and went on to our restaurant of second choice.

Again, we were told that ‘all the tables were reserved'.

Outside the restaurant in the reflection of the restaurant window, we examined our dress. We had not forgotten to put on our socks and our socks matched (although this is not a sartorial requirement in
Cambridge, believe us) or to do up our flies (ditto). No disconcerting bodily sheddings hung from any of our visible orifices (ditto). And that our trousers were kept up by our college tie was also not out of place in Cambridge. We felt our back to check whether we had a notice pinned there saying, ‘Thief and Liar' or ‘Child Molester', stuck on as a ‘jape' by the ever-playful students who tended to treat Australians as a butt for all pranks and jests and practical jokes (they forget that if it had not been for the food parcels we sent their parents during the war, they would not have such perfect teeth).

At our third restaurant of choice, having met the same response, we confronted the maître d'. ‘Why is it that the restaurants are booked out on this particular Tuesday?'

We did not allow a querulous tone to enter our inquiry.

‘If you will observe the tables of diners already seated, you will notice something,' he said, and patiently gestured at the diners.

We observed. We observed couples.

Only couples.

All with long-stemmed red roses in long-necked vases and candle-lit tables.

‘We observe couples dining by candlelight,' we said inconclusively. ‘We see red roses.'

‘And why would that be the only clientele this particular night?' the maître d' said, leading our thinking, respectfully, Socratically.

We thought of mass marriages by Dr Moon.

We shook our head. ‘Give in,' we said.

‘St Valentine's Day,' he said, sympathetically, breaking the news to us with a tenderness not usually characteristic of any maître d'.

‘St Valentine's Day?'

‘Yes, St Valentine's Day.'

He patted our arm. ‘Perhaps a drink on the house – but I am afraid no table tonight, my dear friend,' he said in his calming voice. It reminded us of the tone of voice of the counselling which we'd had on the half-dozen or so post-traumatic stress counselling situations we'd experienced since being in Britain.

‘St Valentine's Day,' we said numbly.

‘Yes.' He poured us a British ‘large' drink which never seems large to us.

‘St Valentine's Day is a commercial fraud,' we said. ‘It was never celebrated until the last few years.'

‘It started around the year 270,' the maître d' said. ‘Chaucer kicked it off,' he said, pouring me a second drink. In Cambridge, even the maître d' is learned.

We saw couple after couple enter his restaurant with red roses; the women in little black dresses and the boys with tight jeans and pressed shirts. Very little black dresses.

‘However,' he said, leaning close and whispering, ‘in every city there is always one restaurant designated …' he paused, choosing his words, ‘for people such as you on St Valentine's Day.'

‘
Such as we
?'

‘Such as you.'

‘Who are
such as we
?'

‘Well, single people – people without partners,' he conjectured.

‘Or people away from their partners?'

He obviously did not believe that we were ‘away' from our partner.

‘I doubt that people
away from their partners
would wish to eat alone in public on St Valentine's Day,' the maître d' said gently. ‘They would be more likely to eat from the refrigerator at home. Say something eggy on toast. Waiting to take a call from their loved one perhaps.' His voice trailed off protectively.

And, of course, although he didn't say it, the maître d' knew that Those Who Are Loved
know
when it is St Valentine's Day. The others don't.

‘As I say,' he said, in his now infuriatingly consoling voice, ‘there are places to go.'

He wrote something on a piece of paper which we took to be the name and address of a restaurant and handed it to us.

We suggested a compromise. ‘We could eat something here at the bar.'

‘I don't think that would be a good idea,' he said. ‘Not a good idea.'

He did not want, we could tell, a single person hanging morbidly and lasciviously around his restaurant on St Valentine's Day.

He moved us towards the door.

He stood at the door watching as we moved down the street which seemed now devoid of light. Perhaps he was fearful that we might return and try to gain entry to
his restaurant, perhaps by alleging that we had made ‘a reservation for two'. And then saying that our companion had been killed in a car accident and would not be joining us for dinner.

We then went to the address – in a dark back lane – and found the restaurant. A lane so dark and full of hopeless sleazy promise that even we had never been in it. The restaurant was so dilapidated and out-of-the-way that it was not pretending to be other than a Place of Last Resort for diners not welcome at Venus's table.

It was where the unfit (physically and morally) and the unworthy, the unsociable, the unfortunate, the smelly, the unwashed, the profoundly demoralised, gathered to eat – and not only, we suspected, on St Valentine's Day.

The place was so dim we had to feel our way in and the maître d', if that was how he saw himself, with his soiled apron and collapsed chef's hat, led us to a table. All tables were tiny and designed for one person with room for a book and a small light.

Without asking, he brought us a heavy drink of some dark, fizzing alcoholic beverage which we drank without question. He did not say, ‘Happy St Valentine's Day' but nor did he say, ‘Unhappy St Valentine's Day'.

There were no flowers in sight. No long-stemmed roses. No music played.

Our ears heard the sounds of the restaurant before our eyes became accustomed to the dark. Occasionally a sigh disguised as a clearing of the throat.

Occasionally we heard a noise which was a cross between a cry from the soul and a cough.

There was, from time to time, audible sobbing (something we were familiar with from dining alone at Christmas).

We became aware that there were both men and women dining in this sad cafe.

No eye contact was made at any time among the diners or the table attendants and the diners. All eyes were cast down as victims punished cruelly by the so-called Saint of Love.

We now saw the sadism of St Valentine's Day.

There were no smiles and no one laughed. All read books. Thick books; the books which people who fear running out of reading matter and being left with themselves, cart around in restaurants and read on public transport.

They were all concerned to be seen as
busy readers
.

They made facial movements of agreement or disagreement with the book, some made vigorous marks in the margins of the books or wrote copious notes in old personal leather-bound notebooks, or they scribbled in the flyleaf or in the margins or on the blank pages at the back of the book.

We opened our own big book and began to read, and to drink in that way where, without looking at glass or bottle you reach out and refill the glass. We have no recollection of what we ate.

And then, one by one, we paid our bills and left, walking with that false steadiness and bogus purpose which the unsteady and purposeless always affect.

None of us were under the protection of any saint
as we walked out into the dark.

But no.

Perhaps we were watched over by other older pagan spirits (from whom the Catholic Church had stolen St Valentine's Day). Those pagan spirits who visited those
such as us
on other days in our lives, if not today, and who occasionally, surprisingly, bestow upon us their own strange, aberrant, pagan gifts.

Admonition:
Read the work of Carson McCullers.