“One down and three to go,” Hamilton declared, oblivious to Barker's reaction. The footmen reappeared and took away the fish plates, to replace them a few moments later
with lightly cooked grouse. While its accompaniments were being served, Barker did not speak. He just stared at the other three decanters, not even hearing his host inform Henry who his guests were to be for the first shoot of the season the following week. I remember that the names corresponded roughly with the ones Hamilton had suggested for his ideal cabinet.
Barker nibbled at the grouse as he waited for Adams to fill a glass from the first decanter. He had not finished his terrine after the opening failure, only taking the occasional sip of water.
“Since Adams and I spent a considerable part of our morning selecting the wines for this little challenge, let us hope you can do better this time,” said Hamilton, unable to hide his satisfaction. Barker once again began to swirl the wine around. He seemed to take longer this time, sniffing it several times before putting his glass to his lips and finally sipping from it.
A smile of instant recognition appeared on his face and he did not hesitate. “Château la Louvière 1978.”
“This time you have the correct year, sir, but you have insulted the wine.”
Immediately Barker turned the card over and read it out incredulously: Château Lafite 1978. Even I knew that to be one of the finest Bordeaux one might ever hope to taste. Barker lapsed into a deep silence and continued to nibble at his food. Hamilton appeared to be enjoying the wine almost as much as the half-time score. “One hundred pounds to me, nothing to the president of the Wine Society,” he reminded us. Embarrassed, Henry and I tried to keep the conversation going until the third course had been servedâa lemon-and-lime soufflé that could not compare in presentation or subtlety with any of Suzanne's offerings.
“Shall we move on to my third challenge?” asked Hamilton crisply.
Once again Adams picked up a decanter and began to pour the wine. I was surprised to see that he spilled a little as he filled Barker's glass.
“Clumsy oaf,” barked Hamilton.
“I do apologize, sir,” said Adams. He removed the spilled drop from the wooden table with a napkin. As he did so he stared at Barker with a desperate look that I felt sure had nothing to do with the spilling of the wine. However, he remained mute as he continued to circle the table.
Once again Barker went through his ritual, the swirling, the sniffing, and finally the tasting. This time he took even longer. Hamilton became impatient and drummed the great Jacobean table with his podgy fingers.
“It's a Sauternes,” began Barker.
“Any halfwit could tell you that,” said Hamilton. “I want to know the year and the vintage.”
His guest hesitated.
“Château Guiraud 1976,” he said flatly.
“At least you are consistent,” said Hamilton. “You're always wrong.”
Barker flicked over the card.
“Château d'Yquem 1980,” he said in disbelief. It was a vintage that I had only seen at the bottom of wine lists in expensive restaurants and had never had the privilege of tasting. It puzzled me greatly that Barker could have been wrong about the Mona Lisa of wines.
Barker quickly turned toward Hamilton to protest and must have seen Adams standing behind his master, all six feet three of the man trembling, at exactly the same time I did. I wanted Hamilton to leave the room so I could ask Adams what was making him so fearful, but the owner of Sefton Hall was now in full cry.
Meanwhile Barker gazed at the butler for a moment more and, sensing his discomfort, lowered his eyes and contributed nothing else to the conversation until the port was poured some twenty minutes later.
“Your last chance to avoid complete humiliation,” said Hamilton.
A cheese board, displaying several varieties, was brought round and each guest selected his choiceâI stuck to a cheddar that I could have told Hamilton had not been made in
Somerset. Meanwhile the port was poured by the butler, who was now as white as a sheet. I began to wonder if he was going to faint, but somehow he managed to fill all four glasses before returning to stand a pace behind his master's chair. Hamilton noticed nothing untoward.
Barker drank the port, not bothering with any of his previous preliminaries.
“Taylor's,” he began.
“Agreed,” said Hamilton. “But as there are only three decent suppliers of port in the world, the year can be all that mattersâas you, in your exalted position, must be well aware, Mr. Barker.”
Freddie nodded his agreement. “Nineteen seventy-five,” he said firmly, then quickly flicked the card over.
“Taylor's 1927,” I read upside-down.
Once again Barker turned sharply toward his host, who was rocking with laughter. The butler stared back at his master's guest with haunted eyes. Barker hesitated only for a moment before removing a checkbook from his inside pocket. He filled in the name “Sefton Hamilton” and the figure of two hundred pounds. He signed it and wordlessly passed the check along the table to his host.
“That was only half the bargain,” said Hamilton, enjoying every moment of his triumph.
Barker rose, paused and said, “I am a humbug.”
“You are indeed, sir,” said Hamilton.
After spending three of the most unpleasant hours of my life, I managed to escape with Henry and Freddie Barker a little after four o'clock. As Henry drove away from Sefton Hall neither of us uttered a word. Perhaps we both felt that Barker should be allowed the first comment.
“I fear, gentlemen,” he said eventually, “I shall not be good company for the next few hours, and so I will, with your permission, take a brisk walk and join you both for dinner at the Hamilton Arms around seven-thirty. I have booked a table for eight o'clock.” Without another word, Barker signaled that Henry should bring the car to a halt, and we watched as he climbed out and headed off down a country
lane. Henry did not drive on until his friend was well out of sight.
My sympathies were entirely with Barker, although I remained puzzled by the whole affair. How could the president of the Wine Society make such basic mistakes? After all, I could read one page of Dickens and know it wasn't Graham Greene.
Like Dr. Watson, I felt I required a fuller explanation.
Barker found us sitting round the fire in the private bar at the Hamilton Arms a little after seven-thirty that night. Following his exercise, he appeared in far better spirits. He chatted about nothing consequential and didn't once mention what had taken place at lunchtime.
It must have been a few minutes later, when I turned to check the old clock above the door, that I saw Hamilton's butler seated at the bar in earnest conversation with the innkeeper. I would have thought nothing of it had I not noticed the same terrified look that I had witnessed earlier in the afternoon as he pointed in our direction. The innkeeper appeared equally anxious, as if he had been found guilty of serving half measures by a customs and excise officer.
He picked up some menus and walked over to our table.
“We've no need for those,” said Barker. “Your reputation goes before you. We are in your hands. Whatever you suggest we will happily consume.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said and passed our host the wine list.
Barker studied the contents inside the leather-bound covers for some time before a large smile appeared on his face. “I think you had better select the wines as well,” he said, “as I have a feeling you know the sort of thing I would expect.”
“Of course, sir,” said the innkeeper, as Freddie passed back the wine list, leaving me totally mystified, remembering that this was Barker's first visit to the inn.
The innkeeper left for the kitchens while we chatted away and didn't reappear for some fifteen minutes.
“Your table is ready, gentlemen,” he said, and we followed him into an adjoining dining room. There were only a
dozen tables, and since ours was the last to be filled there was no doubting the inn's popularity.
The innkeeper had selected a light supper of consommé, followed by thin slices of duck, almost as if he had known that we would be unable to handle another heavy meal after our lunch at the Hall.
I was also surprised to find that all the wines he had chosen were served in decanters, and I assumed that the innkeeper must therefore have selected the house wines. As each was poured and consumed, I admit that, to my untutored palate, they seemed far superior to those I had drunk at Sefton Hall earlier that day. Barker certainly seemed to linger over every mouthful and on one occasion said appreciatively, “This is the real McCoy.”
At the end of the evening, when our table had been cleared, we sat back and enjoyed a magnificent port and smoked cigars.
It was at this point that Henry mentioned Hamilton for the first time.
“Are you going to let us into the mystery of what really happened at lunch today?” he asked.
“I'm still not altogether sure myself,” came back Barker's reply, “but I am certain of one thing: Mr. Hamilton's father was a man who knew his wines, while his son doesn't.”
I would have pressed Barker further on the subject if the innkeeper had not arrived by his side at that moment.
“An excellent meal,” Barker declared. “And as for the wineâquite exceptional.”
“You are kind, sir,” said the innkeeper, as he handed him the bill.
My curiosity got the better of me, I'm sorry to admit, and I glanced at the bottom of the slim strip of paper. I couldn't believe my eyesâthe bill came to two hundred pounds
To my surprise, Barker only commented, “Very reasonable, considering.” He wrote out a check and passed it over to the innkeeper. “I have only tasted Château d'Yquem 1980 once before today,” he added, “and Taylor's 1927 never.”
The innkeeper smiled. “I hope you enjoyed them both,
sir. I feel sure you wouldn't have wanted to see them wasted on a humbug.”
Barker nodded his agreement.
I watched as the innkeeper left the dining room and returned to his place behind the bar.
He passed the check over to Adams the butler, who studied it for a moment, smiled, and then tore it into little pieces.
Arnold Bacon would have made a fortune if he hadn't taken his father's advice.
Arnold's occupation, as described in his passport, was “banker.” For those of you who are pedantic about such matters, he was the branch manager of Barclays Bank in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, which in banking circles is about the equivalent of being a captain in the Royal Army Pay Corps.
His passport also stated that he was born in 1937, was five feet nine inches tall, with sandy hair and no distinguishing marksâalthough in fact he had several lines on his forehead, which served only to prove that he frowned a great deal.
He was a member of the local Rotary Club (hon. treasurer), the Conservative Party (branch vice-chairman), and was a past secretary of the St. Albans Festival. He had also played rugby for the Old Albanians Second Fifteen in the 1960s and cricket for St. Albans Cricket Club in the 1970s. His only exercise for the past two decades, however, had been the occasional round of golf with his opposite number from National Westminster. Arnold did not boast a handicap.
During these excursions around the golf course Arnold would often browbeat his opponent with his conviction that he should never have been a banker in the first place. After years of handing out loans to customers who wanted to start
up their own businesses, he had become painfully aware that he himself was really one of nature's born entrepreneurs. If only he hadn't listened to his father's advice and followed him into the bank, heaven knows what heights he might have reached by now.
His colleague nodded wearily, then holed a seven-foot putt, ensuring that the drinks would not be on him.
“How's Deirdre?” he asked as the two men strolled toward the clubhouse.
“Wants to buy a new dinner service,” said Arnold, which slightly puzzled his companion. “Not that I can see what's wrong with our old coronation set.”
When they reached the bar, Arnold checked his watch before ordering half a pint of lager for himself and a gin-and-tonic for the victor, since Deirdre wouldn't be expecting him back for at least an hour. He stopped pontificating only when another member began telling them the latest rumors about the club captain's wife.
Deirdre Bacon, Arnold's long-suffering wife, had come to accept that her husband was now too set in his ways for her to hope for any improvement. Although she had her own opinions on what would have happened to Arnold if he hadn't followed his father's advice, she no longer voiced them. At the. time of their engagement she had considered Arnold Bacon “quite a catch.” But as the years passed, she had become more realistic about her expectations, and after two children, one of each sex, she had settled into the life of a housewife and motherânot that anything else had ever been seriously contemplated.
The children had now grown up, Justin to become a solicitor's clerk in Chelmsford, and Virginia to marry a local boy whom Arnold described as an official with British Rail. Deirdre, more accurately, told her friends at the hairdresser's that Keith was a train driver.
For the first ten years of their marriage, the Bacons had vacationed in Bournemouth, because Arnold's parents had always done so. They only graduated to the Costa del Sol after Arnold read in the
Daily Telegraph's
“Sun Supplement”
that that was where most bank managers were to be found during the month of August.
For many years Arnold had promised his wife that they would do “something special” when it came to celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, though he had never actually committed himself to defining what “special” meant.
It was only when he read in the bank's quarterly staff magazine that Andrew Buxton, the chairman of Barclays, would be spending his summer sailing around the Greek islands on a private yacht that Arnold began writing to numerous cruise companies and travel agents, requesting copies of their brochures. After having studied hundreds of glossy pages, he settled on a seven-day cruise aboard the
Princess Corina,
starting out from Piraeus to sail around the Greek islands, ending up at Mykonos. Deirdre's only contribution to the discussion was that she would rather go back to the Costa del Sol and spend the money they saved on a new dinner service. She was delighted, however, to read in one of the brochures that the Greeks were famous for their pottery.
By the time they boarded the bus to Heathrow, Arnold's junior staff, fellow members of the Rotary Club, and even a few of his more select customers were becoming tired of being reminded of how Arnold would be spending his summer break. “I shall be sailing around the Greek islands on a liner,” he would tell them. “Not unlike the bank's Chairman, Andrew Buxton, you know.” If anyone asked Deirdre what she and Arnold were doing for their vacation, she said that they were going on a seven-day package tour, and that the one thing she hoped to come home with was a new dinner service.
The old coronation service that had been given to them by Deirdre's parents as a wedding gift some twenty-five years before was now sadly depleted. Several of the plates were chipped or broken, while the pattern of crowns and sceptres on the pieces that were still serviceable had almost faded away.
“I can't see what's wrong with it myself,” said Arnold
when his wife raised the subject once more as they waited in the departure lounge at Heathrow. Deirdre made no effort to list its defects again.
Arnold spent most of the flight to Athens complaining that the aircraft was full of Greeks. Deirdre didn't feel it was worth pointing out to him that, if one booked a flight with Olympic Airways, that was likely to be the outcome. She also knew his reply would be, “But it saved us twenty-four pounds.”
Once they had landed at Hellenikon International Airport, the two vacationers climbed aboard a bus. Arnold doubted whether it would have passed its roadworthiness tests in St. Albans, but nevertheless it somehow managed to transport them into the center of Athens, where Arnold had booked them overnight into a two-star hotel (two Greek stars). Arnold quickly found the local branch of Barclays and cashed one of his travelers' checks, explaining to his wife that there was no point in changing more, since once they were on board the liner everything had already been paid for. He was sure that was how entrepreneurs conducted themselves.
The Bacons rose early the following morning, mainly because they hadn't been able to get a great deal of sleep. Their bodies had continually rolled to the center of the lumpy concave mattress, and their ears ached after a night resting on the brick-hard convex pillows. Even before the sun had risen, Arnold jumped out of bed and threw open the little window that looked out onto a backyard. He stretched his arms and declared he had never felt better. Deirdre didn't comment, since she was already busy packing their clothes.
Over breakfastâa meal consisting of a croissant, which Arnold felt was too sticky, and which in any case fell apart in his fingers; feta cheese, which he didn't care for the smell of; and an obstinately empty cup, because the management refused to serve teaâa long debate developed between them as to whether they should hire a taxi or take a bus to the liner. They both came to the conclusion that a taxi would be more sensible, Deirdre because she didn't want to be
crammed into a hot bus with a lot of sweaty Athenians, and Arnold because he wanted to be seen arriving at the gangplank in a car.
Once Arnold had paid their billâhaving checked the little row of figures presented to him three times before he was willing to part with another travelers' checkâhe hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take them to the quayside. The longer than expected journey, in an ancient car with no air conditioning, did not put Arnold into a good humor.
When he first set eyes on the
Princess Corina,
Arnold was unable to mask his disappointment. The ship was neither as large nor as modern as it had appeared in the glossy brochure. He had a feeling his chairman would not be experiencing the same problem.
Mr. and Mrs. Bacon ascended the gangplank and were escorted to their cabin, which to Arnold's dismay consisted of two bunks, a washbasin, a shower and a porthole, without even enough room between the bunks for both of them to be able to undress at the same time. Arnold pointed out to his wife that this particular cabin had certainly not been illustrated in the brochure, even if it had been described on the tariff by the encomium “de luxe.”
The brochure must have been put together by an out-of-work estate agent, he concluded.
Arnold set out to take a turn around the deckânot a particularly lengthy excursion. On the way he bumped into a solicitor from Chester who had been innocently strolling with his wife in the opposite direction. After Arnold had established that Malcolm Jackson was a senior partner in his firm, and his wife, Joan, was a magistrate, he suggested they should join up for lunch.
Once they had selected their meal from the buffet, Arnold lost no time in telling his newfound friends that he was a born entrepreneur, explaining, for example, the immediate changes he would make to improve efficiency on the
Princess Corina
had he been the chairman of this particular shipping line. (The list, I fear, turned out to be far too long to include in a short story.)
The solicitor, who had not had to suffer any of Arnold's opinions before, seemed quite content to listen, while Deirdre chatted away to Joan about how she was hoping to find a new dinner service on one of the islands. “The Greeks are famous for their pottery, you know,” she kept saying.
The conversation didn't vary a great deal when the two couples reunited over dinner that evening.
Although the Bacons were tired after their first day on board, neither of them slept for more than a few moments that night. But Arnold was unwilling to admit, as they bobbed across the Aegean in their little cabin, that given the choice he would have preferred the two-star hotel (two Greek stars), with its lumpy mattress and brick-hard pillows, to the bunks on which they were now being tossed from side to side.
After two days at sea the ship docked at Rhodes, and by then even Arnold had stopped describing it as a “liner.” Most of the passengers piled off down the gangway, only too delighted to have the chance of spending a few hours on land.
Arnold and Malcolm beat a path to the nearest Barclays Bank to cash a travelers' check each, while Deirdre and Joan set off in the opposite direction in search of a dinner service. At the bank, Arnold immediately informed the manager who he was, ensuring that both he and Malcolm received a tiny improvement on the advertised rate of exchange.
Arnold smiled as they stepped out of the bank, and onto the hot, dusty, cobbled street. “I should have gone into futures trading, you know,” he told Malcolm as they sauntered off down the hill. “I would have made a fortune.”
Deirdre's quest for a dinner service didn't turn out to be quite so straightforward. The shops were numerous and varied in quality, and she quickly discovered that Rhodes boasted a great many potters. It was therefore necessary for her to establish which of them was the most highly regarded by the locals, and then find the shop that sold his work. This information was gained by talking to the old women dressed in black who could be found sitting silently on the street corners, about one in ten of whom, she discovered, had some
broken English. While her husband was at the bank saving a few drachmas, Deirdre managed to find out all the inside information she required.
The four of them met at a small taverna in the center of the town for lunch. Over a plate of souvlakia Arnold tried to convince Deirdre that as they were visiting five islands in the course of the trip, it might perhaps be wise to wait until their final port of call, so they could purchase the dinner service at the last possible moment.
“Prices will undoubtedly fall,” declared Arnold, “the closer we get to Athens.” He spoke with the air of a true entrepreneur.
Although Deirdre had already seen a thirty-two-piece set she liked, at a price well within their budget, she reluctantly agreed to Arnold's suggestion. Her acquiescence was largely brought about by the fact that it was her husband who was in possession of all the travelers' checks.
By the time the ship had docked at Heraklion, on Crete, Arnold had vetted all the British nationals on board, and had permitted a major (Territorial Reserve) and his spouse to join their table for lunchâbut only after discovering that the fellow held an account at Barclays. A dinner invitation followed once it had been established that the major occasionally played bridge with Arnold's area manager.
From that moment Arnold spent many happy hours at the bar explaining to the major or to Malcolmâneither of whom actually listened any longerâwhy he should never have taken his father's advice and followed him into the bank, since he was after all one of nature's born entrepreneurs.
By the time the ship had weighed anchor and sailed from Santorini, Deirdre knew exactly the type of dinner service she wanted, and how to establish quickly which potter she should trade with as soon as they set foot in a new port. But Arnold continued to insist that they should wait for the bigger market as they approached Athensâ“More competition, forces prices down,” he explained for the umpteenth time. Deirdre knew there was no point in telling him that prices seemed to be rising with each sea mile they covered on their journey back toward the Greek capital.