7. A Fish Supper

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN THINGS (7)

I enjoyed my fish and chips lunch. It’s always been a favourite meal of mine, but for me at least the pleasure was moderated by memories of Katie, years and years old but still there in my head, not crystal clear, but then, they shouldn’t have been. She was dead and buried, had been so for above half a century, and no amount of mental gloss could go any way to making the emotions that coursed through back then anything but depressing. And the feeling hovered around at the back of my mind. Not sadness or sorrow, not any more anyway, but a kind of unfocussed regret. And then, out of the bloom of emotion I remembered something.

“That’s funny,” I said suddenly to Dingle, “this is bringing things back that I thought had gone for ever!”

“What? Having lunch?” he asked.

“Sort of. At least having fish and chips for lunch. Who’d have thought it?”

“Thought what?” He was clearly confused by me.

I grinned at him. “I’d completely forgotten,” I began, and he interrupted me. “Clearly not completely,” he put in, “not completely at all.”

“Well, I thought I had,” I confessed, “but listen.”

“Okay. Shoot,” he invited me.

“I was at Perry’s wedding, the one he had with Amanda,” I said, “and for the reception there was one of those old sixties buffet meals rather than a sit down and gorge affair. And, across a crowded room, as they say, I saw her. Katie. Shining brighter than any star in the heavens and smiling at those she chanced to exchange a word with. You don’t know how beautifully she filled that bridesmaid dress! I was entranced, captivated, mesmerised, think of any word like that and it applied to me.”

“I’ve had my moments too,” he grinned.

“Well, she drifted round the room going from one person to the next as if the party was all about her, and I must have been following her with my eyes because everywhere I seemed to look there she was, centre stage so to speak.

“Then I was at the buffet table and trying to work out what I wanted from the range of sausages on sticks adorned with pineapple cubes and silverskin onions, or cheese on those little crumbly biscuits that seemed to be designed to go damp and soggy within moments of being exposed to the air, and the angel with perfect eyes suddenly appeared next to me. The fragrance of her was out of this world! I’ve no idea what she’d doused herself with but it suited her down to the ground and I loved it!”

“I can hear the savage rawness of your emotions in your voice,” he said, probably sarcastically because, truth to tell, Katie has always been the one woman against whom I have measured all others, even now all these decades later, and it must have been obvious from the way I spoke.

“Anyway, there she was next to me, her lovely face giving way to a slight frown as she caught sight of a few curling sandwiches, and I could tell the buffet wasn’t her cup of tea. Then she caught hold of me, quite firmly, by one elbow and guided me like that to the far wall, away from the spoiled food and glasses of dubious fruit juice that was pretending to be adventurous because it was partly diluted with something stronger, but only just, than water.

“’What do you think?’ she asked.

“Now, it was a wedding reception and somebody else’s special day and I didn’t like the idea of being critical of what truly deserved to be criticised.

‘I hope they’ll have a good long life together,’ I said.

‘I mean, the buffet,’ she said, and, smiling, she added, ‘it’s not my cup of tea and I can tell it isn’t yours.’”

“I seem to remember that there was quite a lot of pretentiousness over the comestibles at such things as wedding receptions,” observed the Professor when I paused.

“I suppose it was all the fault of the Beatles!” I joked, “dominating the world with the way they encouraged girls to scream themselves hoarse! All they could manage after a good throat-rending howl would be sad little things on cocktail sticks!”

“You didn’t like that particular musical combo, then?” he asked.

“It was a craze,” I murmured, “gone and forgotten within a few years of being born. But at the time it did cross my mind that whilst half the human population was screaming their adoration at that group of four Liverpool lads they didn’t have any time left for me!”

“It passed me by,” he smiled, “I was never into pop music. Not then and not since.”

“Anyway, getting back to the reception, I said, “I was talking to the angel of the hour, and this is what I suddenly remembered, out of the blue, words that must have found a little corner in my mind to lurk until today, fifty years after she said them. ‘what we need,’ she said in that lovely voice of hers, ‘is a good old fashioned plate of fish and chips!’

“Ah, the association with today!” he exclaimed. “The one thread that has joined the past to the present! Tell me, did you get your fish and chips instead of a dry old buffet?”

I shook my head. “Of course not!” I said, “I was at a wedding reception, for goodness’ sake! And not long after the mouth-watering suggestion from Katie the dancing began. Perry had brought his own personal record player, I recall. And his brother (I hadn’t realised he had a brother until then) was in charge of the music, putting records on without all the chatter of later disc jockeys. Talk of food and fish and chips faded into the distance where all old conversations go to die, and I danced with Katie. I say danced...” I grinned at him, “what I really mean is I jumped around and waved my arms in a pretentious sort of way and tried to look hip!”

“I bit like my younger self,” he laughed, “I tell you what, sit in my memory chair for a moment...”

“What?”

“Well, your own memory was incomplete. You were talking to your angel about food in a room set out for a buffet and then you started dancing. But what joined the two things? Remember, there would have been a whole lot of tables and chairs being moved to make way for the gymnastics, stuff being piled against walls, boys and girls clinging to each other, the noise of a room being changed from an eating area to a dancing one. I know what it was like back then!

“I suppose so,” I admitted.

“And the most important thing, the one factor that was to change the whole of the rest of your life?” he prompted.

I shook my head. “There was nothing earth shattering,” I said, “I don’t remember, but...”

“But you… but go on, sit in the chair, let’s find out what might have been the most precious moment of your entire youth,” he grinned.

And I was persuaded. I lowered myself into the comfort of his memory chair as he switched it on. I brought (as best I could) the memory of that wedding reception to my mind and closed my eyes to everything else.

And there was what I can only describe as a moment of chaos as everything, the girl, myself, the music and dancing, the wonder of young love, all coalesced into a crescendo of forgotten glory.

“Good grief! I shouted from the chair, “she’s seducing me, and there’s no fish supper in sight!”

© Peter Rogerson, 14.06.20