He gave the impression of being . . . How shall I define it? Out of focus!
Furthermore, the apéritif he handed me was unworthy of his old aspirations: nothing but a commonplace vermouth with a chip off a tired lemon dropped into it as by afterthought. For himself he took only a little Vichy water.
Astonished that someone who, whatever his other attributes, was indisputably a gourmet, should thus deny himself, I was about to inquire why he was so abstemious. Then it occurred to me that he must have had bad news from his doctor. Or, on reflection (which took half a second), might wish me to believe so. I was much more prepared now than I had been a year ago to accept that he was a genuine hereditary baron. However, even if one is a scion of a family that lost its worldly goods apart from a miserly pittance in the Events of 1789, one can still be a con-man. There is no incompatibility between those roles any more than there is between being an author and being a sucker. So I forbore to comment, and was unable to decide whether or not a shadow of disappointment crossed his face.
By the time when I declined a second helping of that indifferent vermouth, I might well have been in the mood to regret my decision to re-contact the Baron, and have decided to limit my visit to the minimum consistent with politeness, but for an aroma which had gradually begun to permeate the air a few minutes after I sat down. It was inexpressibly delectable and savoury, setting my tastebuds to tingle a Tavance. Perhaps everything was going to be for the best after all. A dinner which broadcast such olfactory harbingers was bound to be worthwhile!
Except that when we actually went to table, it wasn’t.
At my own place I found a sort of symbolic gesture in the direction of an hors d’oeuvre: a limp leaf of lettuce, a lump of cucumber, a soft tomato, and some grated carrot that had seen better days before it met the mandoline} over which a bit of salt and oil had been sprinkled. To accompany this mini-feast I was given a dose of dry white ordinaire from a bottle without a label. Before the Baron, though, the servant set no food, only pouring for him more Vichy water which he sipped at in a distracted manner while his eyes followed my glass on its way to my lips and the discovery that such a wine would have shamed a relais routier sans panonceau. His face was pitiable. He looked envious!
Of rabbit-food and immature vinegar?
I was so confused, I could not comment. I made what inroads I could on the plate before me, trying to preserve at least a polite expression on my own face. And thinking about the servant. Had I not seen the fellow elsewhere?
As he answered the door to me, I’d scarcely glanced at him. Now, when he came to check whether I’d finished with my first course—I yielded it with relief—I was able to take a longer though still covert look. And concluded: yes, I had seen him.
Moreover I recalled when and where. During my last trip to France, in Guex-sur-Saône where they had held that year’s French National Science Fiction Congress—and incidentally where I had met the Baron—and what is more, he had been in the same car as the Baron.
But a year ago my host could not possibly have afforded a manservant! He had not even been able to afford his bill at the Restaurant du Tertre to which he had recommended, and accompanied, me and my wife and the friends we were with; he still owed me an embarrassing trifle of seven francs eighty which I was not proposing to mention again if he did not, because the meal had been—as he’d promised—incredibly good value.
The incongruities here began at last to form a pattern in my mind. Had he received the benefit of his “expectations” and then let silly pride tempt him into an extravagance he now regretted? Was it because, thinking a servant appropriate to his new station in life, he had hired one, that he still wore the same suit and couldn’t afford to have his hair properly barbered? Was it economy rather than health that drove him to refrain from even such poor refreshment as a guest was offered in this apartment which, though in a smart quartier, either was furnished out of a flea market or hadn’t been refurnished since what one buys at flea markets was last in style?
Hmm. . . !
The interior of the head of a professional writer is a little like a mirror maze and a little like a haunted house. From the most trivial impetus, the mind inside can find countless unpredictable directions in which to jump. While I was waiting for the main course to be brought in, mine took off towards the past and reviewed key details of our meeting in Guex.
Of all the science fiction events I have attended—and in the course of twenty-five years there have been not a few—that was the most chaotic it has been my misfortune to participate in. The organisers chose a date already preempted by a reunion of anciens combattants de la Résistance, so that all the hotels in the centre of town were full and we had been farmed out to somewhere miles away. It was, I suppose, entirely in keeping with the rest of the arrangements that on the last evening of the congress we should find ourselves, and the only other English people present—the guest of honour, his wife, and their baby—abandoned in front of the cinema
