Eating Mammals

Eating Mammals
John Barlow

Three wonderfully original, linked novellas based on true stories from the winner of the Paris Review's Discovery Award. A new voice from Yorkshire, John Barlow has been compared to Michel Faber and T.C. Boyle. This is his first book.A winged cat wreaks havoc in a Yorkshire workhouse. An autumnal romance between two pork pie makers is celebrated with a donkey wedding. The strange career of Michael 'Cast Iron' Mulligan is revealed by his unlucky apprentice Captain Gusto, both men who eat – and eat anything – for a living. These are the stories that mark the debut of one of fiction's most original and assured new voices. And, remarkably, they all are based on fact.Gypsies, Victorian businessmen, servants, masters and unwise children come together in three gothic and moving novellas of magic and deception. Largely set in the nineteenth century, they combine the satisfactions of the finest novels with a playfulness that does not forfeit humanity. With the comic sensibility of Dickens and a taste for the macabre worthy of Irvine Welsh, John Barlow is a storyteller with a unique imagination who will continue to amaze and entertain us for many years to come.

Eating Mammals

JOHN BARLOW

For Susana

¿Recuerdas dónde comenzó todo esto?

Contents

Cover (#ub54f4206-5e86-57bc-a9ae-cdac6c9502f6)

Title Page (#uc16e995b-9cf5-57a0-930c-95c70df10bae)

EATING MAMMALS (#ub88a6e43-2487-5097-8626-783f1cef4a6e)

THE POSSESSION OF THOMAS–BESSIE: a Victorian melodrama (#litres_trial_promo)

I (#litres_trial_promo)

II (#litres_trial_promo)

III (#litres_trial_promo)

IV (#litres_trial_promo)

V (#litres_trial_promo)

VI (#litres_trial_promo)

VII (#litres_trial_promo)

VIII (#litres_trial_promo)

THE DONKEY WEDDING AT GOMERSAL, recounted by an inhabitant of that place (#litres_trial_promo)

I (#litres_trial_promo)

II (#litres_trial_promo)

ENDPIECE (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

EATING MAMMALS (#ulink_87f5b4cd-0710-57ac-a767-783cfe1ed473)

My career began with two strokes of good luck – fate you might say, because as instances of good fortune none could have bettered them. After the war, towards the end of which I served as a cook in His Majesty’s land forces, I returned to England and, armed with the ability to knock up a wholesome bully beef stew for three hundred, presumed to pass myself off as a chef. In my new, ill-fitting suit (we all got a new, ill-fitting suit) I talked my way into the kitchens of a modest hotel in Scarborough, and several years afterwards found myself working in one of the superior hotels on the Yorkshire coast. I won’t tell you where, because about a decade later, at a moment when I gained some brief, local notoriety for swallowing slugs, my former employer there wrote to beg me never to divulge the name of the place to another living soul. Quite right, of course, although by that time I had completely forgotten the name of the establishment, and his letter served only to remind me of it.

Anyway, whilst I was working at this hotel as third chef, in which role I took charge of breakfasts, I found myself one morning called to the table of a guest in order to receive his compliments. His name was Mulligan, a regular customer, and familiar to us all, not by the frequency of his stays so much as by the dimensions of his body. He was, quite simply, enormous. In his tweed suit he resembled a well-tailored tree trunk, a huge lump of man. One would not have called him fat, although there was certainly more to him than meat and bone. No, not fat. Even as he sat, motionless but for the steady working of his jaws, one could tell that he wasn’t a wobbler, that when he stood up his belly would not flib-flab around in front of him like a sackful of jellyfish. From head to toe he had achieved a condition only dreamed of by the obese, and scorned (somewhat jealously) by bodybuilders everywhere: firm fat. And underneath that magnificent outer layer there resided also an ample musculature, sufficient muscle indeed so that, had he been alive today, Mulligan would have been at least an American wrestler, and at best a great film star.

But as luck (for me) would have it, he was neither of these; he was the fêted Michael ‘Cast Iron’ Mulligan. And that morning, as I picked bits of uneaten bacon from returned breakfast plates, examining them for teeth marks before setting them aside for a quiche, he wanted to speak to me.

At that time I knew no more about him than what I saw, and that included what I saw him eat. On this particular occasion he had consumed enough porridge to fill a bowler hat, ham and eggs sufficient to keep a team of navvies on the move all morning, and half a loaf of toast. But, then again, he had done so the previous morning, and as far as I was aware my cooking had not improved miraculously overnight. So why he wanted to speak to the breakfast chef I could not guess.

I approached his table, where he was sipping tea from a china cup, as delicate as you like. As if to mark my arrival he dropped a lump of sugar into the cup with a pair of silver tongs. Then he looked up at me.

‘So you’re the breakfast chef,’ he said, in an Irish accent which teetered between seriousness and levity, as if everything had two possible interpretations. ‘Well, many thanks indeed for another fine meal. Yes, many, many thanks.’

I accepted his gratitude somewhat awkwardly, not quite deciding on an interpretation.

‘And,’ he continued, pushing a vacant chair towards me and lowering his voice, ‘I am in need of a little assistance, and you look as if you might be the right man for the job.’

I sat down at the table, and noticed that there was a pound note slotted under a side plate. He let me consider its possible significance for a moment, then went on.

‘Today,’ he said, then stopping to drain the last of the tea from his cup, ‘I have a little business, a professional dinner if you will …’

I nodded, still looking at the money.

‘… a rather special affair, for which I am to provide the liquid refreshment.’

I was about to tell him that access to the wine cellar was strictly by arrangement with the manager, having (incorrectly) deduced that he, like many others before him, baulked at the prices on our wine list and fancied some vino on the cheap. But I was a rather timid young man, and before I could summon up a suitably tactful form of words to explain that every thief has his price, and that mine was three pounds a case, he took a small piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket and placed it in front of me. On it was a recipe, handwritten and with no title:

Whisk until all ingredients combine. Leave to stand.

Whisk again and decant into eight pint bottles.

Whatever else he might have been, then, there seemed little doubt that Mr Mulligan was severely constipated. And do you wonder! one might add, although just how constipated a man can be, even a man the size of a tree trunk with the appetite of an elephant, was perplexing indeed. And why the home-made remedy?

‘I see that you find this something of a strange request, but I assure you that it is quite harmless, quite innocent …’

He nudged the plate with the banknote under it towards me.

‘And if you can supply me with the eight bottles by five this evening, in my room, there will be another small gift awaiting you.’

My eyes must have accepted the offer on my behalf, since he sat back in his chair as if the deal was now done. Carefully, I extracted the note from under the plate and stood up.

‘Oh,’ he added, ‘and, please, olive oil; of that I really must insist.’

In those days, not so very many years after the war, and with rationing only just out of the way, oranges enough for three pints of juice was a tall order. Even before I reached the kitchen it occurred to me that procuring wine was a far easier sideline than juicing six dozen oranges clandestinely, not to mention the tomatoes. As for the oil and the honey …

My career as a cook had been touched by the cold, pinching hand of rationing, so without hesitation I set to the question of spinning-out: I pulped the tomatoes and added sugared water and ketchup (for some reason more plentiful than the real thing); I ran to the sink, which mercifully was still piled high with unwashed breakfast plates, and rescued a good half-jug of fruit segments in syrup, not all orange, but at least citrus for the main part; I collected the dregs from two or three dozen glasses, and got more than a cupful of fruit juice, albeit of mixed origin; then, from the fruit store, I grabbed a couple of dozen oranges.