"Tell you what, me lad, while your maman is once again fixing me up this famous lobster soufflé, I shall myself, as a tribute to my ex-valet, slip down --"
I then relate the touching story, how, every Grouse Shoot after, my mother puts up a lobster soufflé in (I believe) remembrance of Jean-Jacques, and we share another bottle of bubbly in memory of the departed until the duc, exhibiting all the emotion of a tender sensibility, says through a manly tear:
For am I not the ducs stepson?
My mother fetches out a sigh, big enough to blow away the beaten egg-whites but, great artist that she is, her hand never trembles, not once, as she folds in the yolks. And when the ducal hands stray higher -- not a mite of agitation stirs the spoon.
He creeps up behind her, his index finger pressed to his lips to signify caution and silence, and extends his arm, and, slowly, slowly, slowly, with infinite delicacy and tact, he lets his hand adventure athwart her flank. It might have been a fly alighting on her bum. She flicks a haunch, like a mare in the field, unmoved, shakes in the flour. The duc himself quivers a bit. An expression as of a baby in a sweetie shop traverses his somewhat Bourbonesque features. He is attempting to peer over her shoulder to see what she is up to with her batterie de cuisine but his embonpoint gets in the way.
"Oh, sir!" I stammer. "You are too good!"
The grinding boy and I get the duc up on the marble slab, slap his face, dab his temples with the oven cloth dipped in chilled chablis, at long last his eyelids flicker, he comes to.
The housekeeper is mad as fire when my mother goes off in the closed barouche to the ducs very own www.99lib.netregal and French kitchen but she comforts herself with the notion that now she can persuade Sir and Madam to find her a spanking new chef such as Soyer or Carême to twirl their moustaches in her direction and gateau Saint-Honoré her on her birthday and indulge her in not infrequent babas au rhum. But -- I am the only child of my mothers kitchen and now I enter into my inheritance; besides, how can the housekeeper complain? Am I not the youngest (Yorkshire born) French chef in all the land?
And I stick as close to that kitchen as the cro?te to a paté or the mayonnaise to an oeuf. First, I stand on that stool to my saucepans; then on an upturned bucket; then on my own two feet. Time passes.
First, she wept for shame because shed spoiled a dish. Next, she wept for joy, to see her son mould the dough. And now she weeps for absence.
The duc, relaxing before dinner, popping a cork or two, is wrapped up in a velvet quilted smoking jacket much like the coats they put on very well-bred dogs, warming his slippered (Morocco) feet before the blazing fire and singing songs to himself in his native language. And I never saw a fatter man; hed have given my mother a stone or two and not felt the loss. Round as the "o" in "rotund". If hes taken aback by the apparition of this young chef out of the panelling, hes too much of a gent to show it by a jump or start, asks, what can he do for me? nice as you like and, in my best culinary French, my petit poi de fran?aise, I stammer out:
And then she cries: "To hell with it!" Departing from the script, my mother wields her wooden spoon like a club, brings it, smack! down onto the ducs head with considerable force. He drops on to the f99ｌib•neｔlags with a low moan.
But still she sends the grinding boy off for a lobster, for she must and will prepare her autumn ritual, if only as a wake for hope or as the funeral baked meats. And, taking matters into my own hands, I use the quickest method, the dumb waiter, above stairs to make a personal inquiry of this duc as to where his staff might be.
"The valet de chambre who accompanied you (garni de) those many years past of your last visit --"
I blanche like an endive. He, being a perfect gentleman, offers me a restorative snifter of his bubbly, brought as it has been all the way from his own cellars, he dont trust Sirs incinerated tastes, and I can feel it put hairs on my chest as it goes eructating down. Primed by another bottle, in which the duc joins me with that easy democratic affability which is the mark of all true aristocrats, I give him an account of what I take to be the circumstances of my conception, how his defunct valet wooed and won my mother in the course of the cooking of a lobster soufflé.
"Une crise de foie. Hélas, il est mort."
"I well remember that soufflé," says the duc. "Best I ever eat. Sent my compliments to the chef by way of the concierge, only added the advice of a truly exigeant gourmet to go easy on the cayenne, next time."
"She feared youd spoil the soufflé," I explain, overcome with embarrassment.
So that was the truth of it! The spiteful housekeeper relaying only half the message!
Hearing the news, my mother shakes, comes over queer, has to have a sit down on the marble pastry slab whilst I, oh, I prepare to meet my maker, having arrived at the age when a boy most broods about his father.
For it is, you understand, theｗｗw•99lｉb•nｅｔ time for seasoning. And in goes just sufficient cayenne, this time. Not a grain more. Huzzah! This soufflé will be -- I flourish the circle I have made with my thumb and forefinger, I simulate a kiss.
"Here you are!" Throwing open the door, she brings forth the veritable queen of all the souffles, that spreads its archangelic wings over the entire kitchen as it leaps upwards from the dish in which the force of gravity alone confines it. All present (some forty-seven in number -- the kitchen brigade with the addition of me, plus the duc) applaud and cheer.
He tweaks.
Forthwith I speed to the kitchen to find my mother just beginning the béchamel. Presently, as the butter melts like the heart of the duc melted when I told him her tale, the kitchen door steals open and in tippytoes Himself. Never a couple better matched for size, I must say. The kitchen battalion all turn their heads away, out of respect for this romantic moment, but I myself, the architect of it, cannot forbear to peep.
The man seems awestruck. He stares at my mother as if he will never get enough of gazing at her. Bounding off the marble slab as sprightly as a man his size may, he hurls himself across the kitchen, falls on his knees at her feet.
My mother, crouching over the range stopwatch in hand, pays him no heed.
But whats this? Who trots into the kitchen to pick up the chest of ice the duc ordered for the bottles he brought with him but a beardless boy of his own age or less! And though my mother tries to quizz him on the whereabouts of some other hypothetical valet who, once upon a time, might possibly have made her hand tremble so she lost control of the cayenne, he claims he cannot understand her Yorkshire brogue, he shakes h九-九-藏-书-网is head, he mimes incomprehension. Then, for the third time in all her life, my mother wept.
"What dedication!"
Reading and writing come to me easy. I learn my letters as follows: A for asparagus, asperges au beurre fondue (though never, for my mothers sake, with a sauce batarde); B for boeuf, baron of, roasted mostly, with a pouding Yorkshire patriotically sputtering away beneath it in the dripping pan; C for carrots, carrottes, choufleur, camembert and so on, right down to Zabaglione, although I often wonder what use the X might be, since it figures in no cooks alphabet.
"Ah! Jean-Jacques!" he readily concurs. "Le pauvre," he adds.
"Quelle femme," he murmurs.
"Would you have him spoil my soufflé? Wasnt it touch and go, last time?"
Although Sir and Madam believe their visit to be the very and unique reason for the existences of each and every one of us, the yearly climacteric of our beings, when their staff, who, as far as they are concerned, sleep out a hibernation the rest of the year, now spring to life like Sleeping Beauty when her prince turns up, in truth, we get on so well without them during the other eleven and a half months that the arrival of Themselves is a chronic interruption of our routine. We sweat out the fortnight of their presence with as ill a grace as gentlefolk forced by reduced circumstances to take paying guests into their home, and as for haute cuisine, forget it; sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches, all they want is sandwiches.
"How could you!" I cry.
"I beg you, I implore you --"
Life in this remote mansion flows by a tranquil stream, only convulsing into turbulence once a year and then for two weeks only, but that fuss en九-九-藏-书-网ough, the Grouse Shoot, when they all come from town to set us by the ears.
"Take that," she bids his prone form. Then she smartly shuts the soufflé in the oven.
The egg-whites topple into the panada; the movements of her spoon are quick and light as those of a bird caught in a trap. She upturns all into the soufflé dish.
Perhaps it is to shift her over a bit, or else a genuine tribute to her large charms, but now, with immense if gigantic grace, he gooses her.
But my mother has eyes only for the oven.
And never again, ever again, a special request for a soufflé, lobster or otherwise. Me mam always a touch broody come the Grouse Shoot, moody, distracted, and, even though no order came, nevertheless, every year, she would prepare her lobster soufflé all the same, send the grinding boy off for the lobster, boil it alive, beat the eggs, make the panada etc. etc. etc., as if the doing of the thing were a magic ritual that would raise up out of the past the great question mark from whose loins her son had sprung so that, perhaps, she could get a good look at his face, this time. Or, perhaps, there was some other reason. But she never said either way. In due course, she could construct the airiest, most savoury soufflé that ever lobster graced; but nobody arrived to eat it and none of the kitchen had the heart. So, fifteen times in all, the chickens got that soufflé.
Until, one fine October day, the mist rising over the moors like the steam off a consommé, the grouse taking last hearty meals like condemned men, my mothers vigil was at last rewarded. The house party arrives and as it does we hear the faint, nostalgic wail of an accordion as a closed barouche comes bounding up the drive all festooned with the lys de France.