warm-up exercise compared to this.
When as a child I had alluded to Mr Broadhurst's corpulence, my mother had snapped at me. ‘It's a disability, Ian, like any other. Mr Broadhurst has glandular problems, that's why he's overweight. He doesn't eat any more than ordinary people.’ As she spoke I had eidetiked the glands in question, embedded in the back of Mr Broadhurst's neck like obese sweetmeats.
‘You're thinking about my glands, aren't you, boy?’ The Fat Controller's voice sluiced me out of my wine haze. He was dissecting a gland-like mushroom as he spoke, clearly in order to illustrate his telepathy. ‘The only reason people are fat,’ he went on, ‘is because they eat too much. After all,’ he continued, deftly manipulating half a loaf of garlic bread to sop up the tomato juice on his last platter, ‘you never saw anybody fat come out of Auschwitz.’
It was two beats before I realised that this was meant to be a very funny joke and then I struggled to match his guffaws, adding my own rather reedy piping to his basso mirth.
He went on to discourse at length on the nature of fat. He reviewed a gallery of the great fatties of all time, from Nero through Falstaff to Arbuckle. He dwelt especially on the insulating and prophylactic properties of excessive flesh, remarking at one point, ‘Without the upholstery of embonpoint the body is a mere skeletal spring, ready to uncoil its very mortality.’ He brushed up my biochemistry, informing me that the long chain fences off at molecules are antipodean in scale set beside the dry stone walls of mere proteins, and that he himself had it as an ambition to contrive that his entire body should be sheathed in one enormous fat molecule. He concluded by reviewing the sexual properties of portliness, noting that, if you are fat enough, you can develop love-handles specially adapted for oral sex, as well as coitus.
During our meal the restaurant had begun to fill up with the pre-theatre crowd, Brighton burghers and their wives. I saw them through The Fat Controller's eyes – they were gauche and dowdy, crammed into suitings so ill-fitting that they looked like bolsters stuffed into pillow cases. They spoke quietly, deliberated over the menu and drank their wine in sips, like dipping birds. One of these types now rose from her chair and came over to where we were sitting. Our coffee had just arrived.
‘Excuse me,’ she said hesitantly.
‘No,’ snapped The Fat Controller. He didn't even look up, he was doing something with the cafetière. I gawped at the woman.
The rebuttal had done her no good whatsoever, her face was going blotchy, but she mustered all the sang-froid she could and continued, ‘Since you refuse to be civil I shall not moderate my criticism. I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your grandson – ‘
‘He's not my grandson, he's the son of the woman I lodge with – ‘
‘Be that as it may, perhaps he would like to know that you have completely disrupted our meal. Your voice is as loud as it is insistent and, as if that weren't bad enough, what you speak of is as boring as it is unseemly. You are without exception the rudest man it has ever been my misfortune to share a restaurant with; and I think I can speak for all the others present when I say that.’
Without waiting for The Fat Controller's reaction to all this, she turned and went back to her own table, where she was greeted with little ‘Well done's and furtive shoulder pats from her fellow diners.
The Fat Controller sat stock still while this woman had her say, like someone engaged in a sporting activity that has been temporarily frozen, prior to a replay on behalf of inattentive home viewers. I observed him warily, waiting for the outburst I felt certain was infusing along with the coffee, but he remained impassive and finished the meal by stoically downing a litre or so of the espresso blend, a large tin box of Amaretti di Saronno and eight grappa. He added the bill with a
When as a child I had alluded to Mr Broadhurst's corpulence, my mother had snapped at me. ‘It's a disability, Ian, like any other. Mr Broadhurst has glandular problems, that's why he's overweight. He doesn't eat any more than ordinary people.’ As she spoke I had eidetiked the glands in question, embedded in the back of Mr Broadhurst's neck like obese sweetmeats.
‘You're thinking about my glands, aren't you, boy?’ The Fat Controller's voice sluiced me out of my wine haze. He was dissecting a gland-like mushroom as he spoke, clearly in order to illustrate his telepathy. ‘The only reason people are fat,’ he went on, ‘is because they eat too much. After all,’ he continued, deftly manipulating half a loaf of garlic bread to sop up the tomato juice on his last platter, ‘you never saw anybody fat come out of Auschwitz.’
It was two beats before I realised that this was meant to be a very funny joke and then I struggled to match his guffaws, adding my own rather reedy piping to his basso mirth.
He went on to discourse at length on the nature of fat. He reviewed a gallery of the great fatties of all time, from Nero through Falstaff to Arbuckle. He dwelt especially on the insulating and prophylactic properties of excessive flesh, remarking at one point, ‘Without the upholstery of embonpoint the body is a mere skeletal spring, ready to uncoil its very mortality.’ He brushed up my biochemistry, informing me that the long chain fences off at molecules are antipodean in scale set beside the dry stone walls of mere proteins, and that he himself had it as an ambition to contrive that his entire body should be sheathed in one enormous fat molecule. He concluded by reviewing the sexual properties of portliness, noting that, if you are fat enough, you can develop love-handles specially adapted for oral sex, as well as coitus.
During our meal the restaurant had begun to fill up with the pre-theatre crowd, Brighton burghers and their wives. I saw them through The Fat Controller's eyes – they were gauche and dowdy, crammed into suitings so ill-fitting that they looked like bolsters stuffed into pillow cases. They spoke quietly, deliberated over the menu and drank their wine in sips, like dipping birds. One of these types now rose from her chair and came over to where we were sitting. Our coffee had just arrived.
‘Excuse me,’ she said hesitantly.
‘No,’ snapped The Fat Controller. He didn't even look up, he was doing something with the cafetière. I gawped at the woman.
The rebuttal had done her no good whatsoever, her face was going blotchy, but she mustered all the sang-froid she could and continued, ‘Since you refuse to be civil I shall not moderate my criticism. I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your grandson – ‘
‘He's not my grandson, he's the son of the woman I lodge with – ‘
‘Be that as it may, perhaps he would like to know that you have completely disrupted our meal. Your voice is as loud as it is insistent and, as if that weren't bad enough, what you speak of is as boring as it is unseemly. You are without exception the rudest man it has ever been my misfortune to share a restaurant with; and I think I can speak for all the others present when I say that.’
Without waiting for The Fat Controller's reaction to all this, she turned and went back to her own table, where she was greeted with little ‘Well done's and furtive shoulder pats from her fellow diners.
The Fat Controller sat stock still while this woman had her say, like someone engaged in a sporting activity that has been temporarily frozen, prior to a replay on behalf of inattentive home viewers. I observed him warily, waiting for the outburst I felt certain was infusing along with the coffee, but he remained impassive and finished the meal by stoically downing a litre or so of the espresso blend, a large tin box of Amaretti di Saronno and eight grappa. He added the bill with a
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