Taste
THERE were six of us to dinner that night at Mike Schofield's house in Lon
don: Mike and his wife and daughter, and my wife and I, and a man called R
ichard 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 membe
rs a pamphlet on food and wines. He organized dinners where sumptuous dishe
s and rare wines were served. He refused to smoke for fear of harming his p
alate, 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-humou
red wine, benevolent and cheerful slightly obscene, perhaps, but none the l
ess 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 produc
e 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 tabl
e 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 fai
nt 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 h
im 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 p
layed over again, for Mike was quite willing to lose the bet in order to prov
e that his wine was good enough to be recognized, and Pratt, for his part, se
emed to take a grave, restrained pleasure in displaying his knowledge.
The meal began with a plate of whitebait, fried very crisp in butter, an
d 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 sa
id, 'Geierslay Ohligsberg, 1945'. He leaned over and whispered to me that Ge
ierslay was a tiny village in the Moselle, almost unknown outside Germany. H
e said that this wine we were drinking was something unusual, that the outpu
t 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 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 d
on'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 Mosel
le is exactly right."
Mike Schofield was an amiable, middle-aged man, but he was a stockbroke
r. 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 tha
t he had made so much money with so slight a talent. In his heart he knew t
hat he was not really much more than a bookmaker--an unctuous, infinitely respectable, secretly unscrupulous bookmaker--and he knew that his friends k
new 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 al
l 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 watchin
g 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 almos
t feel him waiting for the moment when Pratt would take his first sip, and l
ook up from his glass with a smile of pleasure, of astonishment, perhaps eve
n of wonder, and then there would be a discussion and Mike would tell him ab
out 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 tu
rned towards her, smiling at her, telling her, so far as I could gather, som
e story about a chef in a Paris restaurant. As he spoke, he leaned closer an
d closer to her, seeming in his eagerness almost to impinge upon her, and th
e poor girl leaned as far as she could away from him nodding politely, rathe
r 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 he
sitated, and Pratt noticed her. He waved her away, broke off his conversati
on, and quickly began to eat, popping the little crisp brown fish quickly i
nto his mouth with rapid jabbing movements of his fork. Then, when he had f
inished, 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, contain
ing himself, looking at his guest. His round jovial face seemed to loosen slig
htly 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 roas
t 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 m
aid to take around. When he had served everyone, including himself, he put d
own 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 fo
r 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?"