THE CONNOISSEUR
I MET HIM at O’Reilly’s. He was sitting at the bar with a battered snooker cue in his lap, grinding away at a piece of chalk and smoothing green dust into the crook of his thumb like hand cream. I ordered a pint and sat down a few stools away. It was Friday morning, work was over and I was ready for a bit of relaxation. Someone had put a pound in the juke box and was playing the greatest hits of Status Quo, one after another, in chronological order. I felt like talking.
‘Sweaty hands, eh?’ He looked up at me and grunted. One of his eyes was slightly off kilter, and rested on me for a moment as he looked back down.
‘Can’t play wi’out a bit of chalk, can I? Sweaty ands. Rubs up somethin terrible.’ He kept up the grinding as he spoke, little nubbins of chalk tumbling down his trousers and gathering in the worn ridges of cord. This wasn’t going to be easy. I took a pull at my John Smith’s and tried again.
‘Couldn’t you get some of that hand-chalk, though, they sell in sports shops? You know – the little bottle of stuff that sends out squirts of it when you squeeze the sides?’ He put down the lump of chalk and turned in my direction.
‘Squirts?’
His eyes widened, a puzzled smile starting somewhere in the depths of his beard. ‘You mean it just squirts out, so’s you can put it anywhere you want?’ I nodded. He leapt up off his stool. The cue bounced across the floor. ‘Well bugger me, pal. Put it there!’
I did, and in that damp hammy clasp, I knew we would be friends.
*
I was usually there Fridays, and Mal never missed a game. I saw him the following week and we played a few frames, along with sinking a few attractively-priced pints of bitter, then again the week after that. We gradually fell into an easy, predictable rhythm I grew quite fond of, an end-of-the-week wind down I could rely on to drain away the last of the boss’s poison.
‘Hey, y’ever tasted whisky, George?’ Mal said one lunchtime after a concentrated morning’s play, his great padded frame hunched over the cue, arm wound up to strike. I was beginning to learn that he liked to communicate in short bursts, preferably while absorbed in something else. His cue arm let go like a pinball handle and sent the white ball smashing into the reds. With a resounding smack they broke apart and raced into the cushions, barging colours out of the way and hissing across the baize. A single red ball, speeding towards the far left pocket, rattled like a rat in the skirting board before it disappeared. He turned round, grinning. ‘Yer know, really tasted it?’
I nodded. I knew whisky – Bell’s, Teachers, the odd bottle of Jack Daniel’s when bonus-time came round, or I’d squeezed out a particularly good week – but he didn’t seem convinced. ‘Come on, I’ll show yer.’ We put down our cues for a minute and went out to the bar. After the alternating gloom and pooled-illumination of the snooker hall, the daylight was dazzling. Small bits of dust, like particles of smoke, floated in its beams.
Mal raised a couple of stubby fingers.
‘Dave, two whiskies. Y’know the kind.’ The barman reached beneath the counter and came up with a dark green bottle. The label was smudged with handprints, and had ‘Mal’ tattooed on a strip of masking tape in an elderly hand. Dave uncorked it and poured two shots, handing the glasses solemnly over the bar.
‘Ta.’
He turned about and stomped up the stairs. ‘Now whisky, see,’ he began, placing the pale green tumblers down on a stool, ‘ain’t all the same, and it ain’t all good. That crap they serve the regulars –’ he punched a yellow into a side pocket by main force – ‘is just shite, no two ways about it. Blended.’ He grunted with disgust, missed the next red. ‘Put us up, would yer?’
‘Go on.’ I put his points on the board then bent to my shot, head cocked in his direction.
‘Blended’s shite, but some of yer malts aren’t much better. Them Speyside an’ Highland malts are too soft and girly. They don’t taste of nowt till you’ve swallowed ’em, and then not much at all, at that. All farty and flowery, like. Now this –’ I picked up my tumbler and took a slug of it, rolled it around my tongue. He raised his glass like a relic and took in a mouthful through his moustache. ‘This here is the dog’s bollocks.’
It was like sucking on a bog-man’s cape: a wild, jetting burst of peatiness, all smoky and sour. The flavour drilled into my tongue, lashed my cheeks. When I swallowed it lit up my throat with flames.
‘Bloody hell! What is this?’
Mal beamed, nostrils flaring with pleasure. ‘Can’t tell yer that now can I, feller? It’s Islay, though. You want to try a bit of everythin’ till you find what works, then stick with that. Islay – that’s what yer want in a whisky.’
And it was. With visions of peat bogs and windswept, desolate shorelines dancing in my brain, I leant over the table and sank two reds and a brown. Playing with Mal wasn’t doing much for my snooker, but my senses were coming along a treat. After a few more frames, and a pint or two, we emerged squinting onto Bishopton Lane and made for the buses. I was heading for Norton, Mal for Hardwick, where he lived with his mother and their Jack Russell, Nancimaude, in a house with a tiny garden. We walked through the early afternoon crowd towards the stands. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him following pigeons as they moved, jerky and piston-headed, out of the range of passing feet, thick neck nodding in sympathy. I smiled, then thought briefly of my empty flat, and work again in barely a day and a half.
‘Well, here we are, Mal,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the game. Same time next week?’
He looked at me for a minute, up and down, then tugged on his beard. ‘So yer liked that Islay, eh?’ His fingers crackled like wire wool in a frying pan. ‘How’d yer fancy coming round sometime, you know – fer a taste uv a few other things? Make an evening of it, like.’ He stooped a bit, and his giant shaggy head shrank into his shoulders. ‘Tomorra?’ Suddenly I saw my chair and a wide-mouthed can leaking moisture onto the arm, the idiot box, some toffee-nosed arsehole on the news.
‘Yeah, go on then. Sounds alright.’ He slapped me on the back, then got out a stub of pencil and wrote his address on the bag of a fag-packet.
‘See yer at seven, then.’
*
Mal’s was the middle house in a row of three. His neighbours’ gardens crowded out the little strip of grass, its spiny bushes and weather-beaten gnomes jostling for shrinking territory. I hadn’t met Nancimaude, but could see a stick with a bit of frayed rope attached to it planted in the middle of the lawn, for when she had to be put outside. Once he’d found her in an alley in Thornaby, digging out green ham and pease-pudding sandwiches from a bin and gorging herself. Smelled like athlete’s foot, he said. With a hint of parsley.
I knocked on the door and Nancimaude let off a volley of barks. There was the sound of movement inside. A large shadow crossed behind wavy glass, then the safety latch went back and Mal’s face poked out into the twilight.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Haway in. Just through the front.’ I squeezed past him and went into the front room. His mother was sitting on the far end of a flat-looking settee, her knitting and a bag of liquorice all-sorts in her lap.
‘Hello pet,’ she said. We chatted for a few minutes about this and that before Mal announced she needed to be getting upstairs for a rest, and unceremoniously bundled her out of the room. She waved as she went, trailing a short length of pink wool. I moved over to a squashy chair and was just getting comfortable when he came back.
‘Not ’ere,’ he said, beckoning. I followed him into the kitchen. He pointed to a tall stool, handed me a glass. ‘Get yer tonsils round that.’ It was the same potent smoky liquid as yesterday, and burned like a bonfire on the way down. I noticed a row of covered dishes lined up on the kitchen table. One was red, one yellow, one green, and so on through all the colours of the snooker table. I took another gulp of fire-water and raised one eyebrow, gesturing at the dishes.
‘That for us? Dinner?’ I’d eaten a warmed-over burger on the way, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He sank into a groaning kitchen chair and nodded.
‘Aye. Well, not all of ’em, yer know. Thought I’d show yer a bit of me hobby, like.’ I finished the last of my whisky and like a flash he was rattling the bottle in the neck of my glass.
‘Hobby?’
‘Yeah. With me Mam I don’t get out all that much’ – his lazy eye wandered over to the cooker – ‘but I’m always hanging about in here, and I read an that, yer know. I’m interested in things. Like this, say.’ He picked up the red dish and handed it across. I pulled off the lid. What looked like a pointy-headed sea-creature lay in the bottom of the dish. It was a creamy grey colour, with odd ridges running cross-wise down its back. Mal handed me a small silver fork, his little finger hanging delicately in the air. ‘Gefilte fish. Go on, it won’t bite.’
I sliced off the nubby end and popped it in my mouth. It had a pleasant taste – bland and fishy, with a funny texture like a thicker version of the jelly in a pork pie. ‘Not bad. Does it get de-boned, or what?’
He laughed and banged his hand on the table. A jet aircraft broke the sound barrier somewhere overhead. ‘De-boned! Classic, that! No it’s Jewish – they mince up fish and bits of this and that an mould it up. I think they’re delicious.’ He poured himself a third whisky and swilled the glassful on its way down. ‘Here, now this. I really like seeing what people think of me things.’
I took the lid off the yellow dish. About twenty glistening creamy balls were piled one on top of another. The light bounced off their sides. Cleaning my fork, I speared one and put it in my mouth. The texture was peculiar, chewy like a fruit gum, but it tasted a bit like pasta. There was oil on the outside. I took another few and chewed them over, nodding. ‘Good,’ I said.
‘Gnocchi. Italian, see, little potato dumplings. Glad yer like em. Oh, pardon me.’ He belched into the back of his hand, then looked back and forth between me and the next dish. I tried a couple more, working up through a roll-mop herring soused in Tabasco and some grease bomb lattice-work of fried bacon, lard and seaweed. I was reaching for the blue dish when he reached out one meaty hand and stopped me. There was a slightly odd gleam in his eye.
‘Naw, don’t you ‘ave that one. These are – well, these are whatcher might call my special bits and pieces.’ He pulled the blue, pink and black dishes over to his side of the table and arranged them in front of him. I pointed at the whisky.
‘Can I?’
‘Be me guest.’ I filled my glass to the brim. The corners of the room seemed to be closing in, and a curious rolling had started in my stomach. ‘These,’ he went on, ‘are what yer might call experiments. Now, yer know I’m interested in tastes an that. I like things that make yer work to like em, keep on giving once you’ve figured em out, if yer stick with em. I like to learn. I’m curious. You ever wondered how certain things taste?’ He raised both his eyebrows. They bunched up like two baby caterpillars in the shadow of a bird.
‘Well, yeah,’ I replied. ‘Sweetbreads and that sort of thing, you know. Tripe.’
He nodded. ‘Me too. I’ve tried almost everythin, one time or tother, and some things are better than others.’ He whipped the lid off the dish with a dramatic flourish. What looked like crusty little snot-balls were gathered in the centre. My eyebrows rose. He sliced a little off one side and took it onto his tongue.
‘Hmm, not so good, that.’ Mal pushed the blue dish to one side and took up the pink. On one edge lay a couple of hard, waxy little plugs. He cut the nearest in half with his knife and fork and it disappeared. For a moment he grimaced, then a sweet smile passed over his face. ‘Just like paraffin. But see now, George, I know you’re a strong man, and me friend an all. I’ve never tried this last one before, and it might be quite somethin.’ He pulled across the black dish, overhead light glittering like beetle’s eyes in its surface, and lifted the lid. There was a ropy little turd in the middle of the plate.
‘Mal, no! Bloody hell!’ I yelled.
But it was too late. In an instant he’d knocked back the last of his whisky and dabbed his fork on the end of it. The silver shaft flashed quick as an insect between his lips. His mother knocked on the ceiling with her stick.
Mal’s face went green, then white, then that strange shade of blue fish acquire in the sun. I ran over and whacked him on the back, shoving the dish out of the way. He spluttered and coughed, writhing away from my grip.
‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘I’m alright.’ I sat back, bewildered. In a minute or so the colour came back to his cheeks.
‘Well?’ I asked, not hoping for much. Nancimaude barked once, from the other room. He looked up at me sadly, both of his rheumy eyes focused for once on the same point, his great shaggy beard masking sensuous lips.
‘Tastes like shit,’ he said.
First published in Northern Tales: The Sid Chaplin Short Story Anthology (Shildon Town Council, 2004)
Next: The Bloofer Lady