When Memory Served

One very memorable evening last May I went, upon invitation, to join a friend of mine at a family dinner. The year is not important but was a good while in the past, and the location a rather fine Georgian row house in Belgravia, London. Bedecked in my finest as per the detailed instructions imparted upon me by my friend, I picked my way through that borough’s gleaming whiteness until I was brought face to face with the man himself.

“Good job turning up, won’t do you much good, but glad you came all the same. Might get some good food out of it I should think.” He said languidly, slouching in his dinner tails.

“Not much good?” I replied.

“These sorts of dinners never do anyone much good, unfortunately. It’s rather trying to keep it up but one has to hope.”

“Hope in what?” I pursued, intrigued.

“Money of course. My father’s got lots of it. That’s why we do it you know, these infernal dinners.” I was taken aback by his frankness, which he observed.

“Papa is grossly wealthy you know,” he expounded irritably, as if I should have known it as a matter of fact as well established and accepted as the law of gravity. “And all the family simply grovel at his feet with visits and cards and yellow toothed smiles and these awful dinners, in the hopes they might catch some rays of his gleaming gold when he dies, which shouldn’t be long I expect.”

“And you…”

“Will get everything of course, the oldest son and all that. Don’t know why anyone else bothers with papa. He’s a right bore and awfully proud.”

“Well I – ” didn’t know what to say as it happened, but in the usual course of things my friend listened most to the sound of his own voice and cared little for mine.

“Right then, you know the brief, let’s meet the cast shall we?” He sighed sarcastically, adjusting his necktie. I followed his stiff form up the stairs to the black, gleaming door under the portico of No. 9, street irrelevant.

“How often do you have these family dinners?” I asked while we waited.

“Every week if you can believe it. Absolute waste.” He said the last words under his breath as he knocked. The insipid knock was opened by an equally insipid butler who led the way through lavish halls to the drawing room where the familial actors were preening and perfuming themselves in preparation for the weekly performance.

The room was richly decorated, with copious mirrors reflecting the general grandeur. A short stout man in a suit so starched I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a little door in the back of it through which he entered and exited the suit leaving it to stand on it’s own in his absence. It was explained to me that this was an uncle, and I held out a hand to shake his, which he did with great difficulty due to the starch. To his right an aunt emerged, undulating in her wisp of a wrist an enormous feathered fan quite disproportional to her slight frame. In between oscillations of the avian accessory I caught glimpses of her thin face, black eyes and greedy expression made even more horrid by her steely smile.

More relatives circled the room like vultures, lifting bejeweled hands to adjust curls and mustache hairs as they caught glimpses of the themselves in the mirror. Periodically these orbiting relations would collide, resulting in pricked tempers soothed only by a profusion of fan fluttering and gruffly muttered “I say” or “look here” or some other equivalent. My friend remained beside me during these oozingly slow minutes looking disgustedly as his family, hardly attempting to hide his visage.

Before long the dinner bell rang and the illustrious and apparently very wealthy father led the procession into the great room for the feast. Seated at a mediocre place between a cousin with a warty nose and a distant something or other with a multitude of chins tucked into his shirt collar I let my gaze slip unnoticed to the master of the table.

My friend’s father was a glorious looking man, dressed in a gloriously embroidered waist coast, a gloriously brushed velvet coat and with a glorious head of golden hair. His face beamed with benevolence and pride, as he looked down the table at his less fortunate and grasping relations. They in turn beamed back at him with, as my friend so accurately described, yellow-toothed smiles, vigorously executed as if the effort of their expression could magically extract the money from his pockets as long as they could hold it on their faces.

The father was sat next to another old man, more advanced in age though of less endowment if his appearance was anything to go by. That snowy head smiled, not toothily no, simply pleasantly and innocently at the people around him, as if they had come for him and not his shining brother. As the food was served the chatter was joined by a chorus of tinkling glasses, silverware on porcelain and the odd aluminum, artificial laugh. Indeed, several of the party were no relations at all, but acquaintances so long joined in this designing masquerade that they hoped the small inconvenience of blood would not come between them and a small remuneration for their social labors over the years at that illustrious table.

The evening wore on with nothing remarkable to report except this. Observing those seated at the head of the table the older but lesser brother would often speak, beginning some sort of story to which the universal reaction was always to cast eyeballs to the ceiling and hush him thoroughly. It was difficult to hear his exact words from so far away but eventually his soft, reedy words rang through.

“I remember,” He began resolutely and every eye went to the ceiling and every mouth breathed a sigh like fifty balloons punctured simultaneously.

“I remember when I was a young man and I went to take a trip to Aberdeen.”

“Here we go again.” Said the warty nosed cousin next to me, tiredly bringing a glass of wine to her lips. The relation on my other side had his eyes still rolled up, exasperatingly studying the plasterwork on the ceiling.

“I was meant to take the ten o’clock train from St. Pancras, but accidentally got on the wrong train! Imagine!” The sweet tempered old man leaned forward, laughing softly.

“He does this every time. Old fool.” The cousin remarked to me.

“Not quite right in the head these days, or never was I suspect.” Whispered the man with the chins to me as if I was his most bosom companion in the whole world.

“He’s always remembering something, and so well he does it he often remembers things that never happened.” Said the cousin.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t tell us the same stories every dinner, really it is rather tedious.” Returned chins.

“Like the time he was mayor of some village in Madiera.” Volleyed the cousin.

“Or when he got lost in the Sahara and survived on beetles and camel milk.” Served the other.

“And of course that ridiculous yarn about him saving some merchant’s child and sharing in wealth beyond imagining in Istanbul.” Fired off the cousin severely.

“I think we are to be served up that story piping hot tonight.” Mumbled the multi-chinned man giving us a knowing look.

“What a silly, silly man!” hissed the cousin, shaking her glass at him. I sat a prisoner between the two relations as they hit the discourse back and forth with their conversational rackets, yet I strained to hear this strange story. At the other end of the table the man was continuing.

“So, there I was, absolutely gob smacked to be in Istanbul! How I ever got there don’t ask, but that’s where I got off my train and found myself alone in the city.”

“Now Robert, come come, why don’t you save your little story for after dinner, our guests are tired perhaps, of your ramblings?” Asked the eminent father condescendingly, bestowing his most charming and patronizing smile upon his unfortunate brother.

“Indeed, Robert dear, after dinner.” Whined the mother, whom one could only see as a head sitting upon a stack of pearls, which sat upon a gown made up almost entirely of lace.

“But what a good tale it is! And all true!” Robert returned enthusiastically. Several laughs were chocked down and given up for wine drunk too quickly or a dash of pepper in the throat.

“There I was in the city,” Robert continued, looking round the table for a friendly eye, most of which were still on the ceiling. “And I found myself after several days getting desperate, not knowing the culture or having any of it’s currency. While I walked by the sea one day I saw in the blue waters a young girl, making a great deal of splashing, and fearing that her life may be in danger, I leaped into the waves and brought her safely to shore. It might be added, that I am quite a strong swimmer, having taken up the sport from my youthful excursions to Cyprus and Malta.”

“Oh Robert, you’ve never been to Malta!” drawled a cousin to his right, looking deeply into his empty wine glass.

“Yes, yes I have, several times! When I brought that dear child to shore and asked who her parents were, I was told she was the only daughter of a very wealthy merchant in that city, Ofar Ahmid the third. And when this man, Ofar Ahmid, came to collect his daughter and was told of what I had done, a firm friendship, dare I say brotherhood, was formed on that very spot, and he took me back to his palace where I spent a great many days.”

“Dear Uncle Robert,” droned a cousin halfway down the table, leaning her weasel-like face forward to be better heard, and spoke in a voice not unlike the high pitched whine of a mosquito that is far to close to your ear. “We’ve heard this story a million times and I’m sure we’re all quite tired of listening to your fanciful tales, colorful though they may be.” Heads bobbed up in down in ascent all along the table. This did nothing to damper the valiant Robert who continued on with a sparkle in his eye.

“While I was in Istanbul, I learned a great many things and went a great many places with my friend Ofar. We became like family he and I, and we would sail all over the Mediterranean and even further in some instances!” He related this with a warm pride and such animation that it endeared me to the old fool quite strongly. His brother next to him with his eminent white head shaking sadly as if to pity his poor brother and the loss of that veritable relative’s mental faculties.

Dinner continued much in the same way for what seemed an age. The father showered everyone with arrogant charm, the relatives jostled for position in his affections (and indirectly his pocketbook) and the cheery Robert telling his tall tales to any who would listen. I was still caught in the crossfire of the conversing cousins when the most amazing and wonderful thing happened.

With the suddenness of a thunderbolt the stately double door at the end of the room which face the father burst open and through them strode a man draped in colorful silk with a turban round his head and silver draped around his neck studded with glittering jewels. The tall, powerful figure positively sparkled from the gold embroidery, all manner of bright and exotic colors making up his garments and in his hand he held an ornate ivory scepter. On his handsome, but somewhat worn face was the most noble visage in the room with bright eyes covered in dark, thick eye brows and a mouth set firmly in an expression of command. He stood before the table and surveyed it.

The father and his relations were all sitting thrust back in their seats as if a great wind had swept through and plastered them to their chair backs, and their mouths hung open as they were stricken dumb with surprise. Wine poured down a face frozen to the spot mid sip, another had a herring half flopped out of their gaping mouth and the cousin with the warty nose had fainted clean away, which I was grateful for. Perhaps the most surprised member of the party was the father, who found himself wholly without words to direct towards this apparition. His brother, however, wasn’t surprised in the least.

“Ofar!” He cried with brightest joy, and that firm, austere expression on the fantastic man’s face turned instantly to one of warm recognition. The two men, one tall and radiating, the other smaller and decidedly shabby, embraced in the middle of the dinning room to the horror and utter astonishment of the general body.

“It is him! My friend!” Cried Robert, waving his arm at them and pointing to his merchant brother.

“It is I? Well yes, me, myself, Ofar Ahmid the Third, though to tell you the truth there has been no Ofar Ahmid before me, the title of “the third” suited my eminence so I took it.” At these words spoken in a deep and musical voice the two friends laughed at the old joke.

While the family began to detach themselves from the backs of their chairs no one could yet utter a single word. One can only guess at what was more incredible in their minds; that the fabled Turkish merchant was not only real but standing in their dining room, or the fact that Robert had been telling the truth all these years, and that if he was, then he was also by necessity, fabulously wealthy. Noone was more surprised than the father, who feeling that his shining light was being dimmed somewhat by his brother’s new friend, stood to address the pair.

“Well Robert, a delight to be sure – “ The golden head did not get far before Robert turned with a paradoxical look creeping over his face, an impossible combination both innocent and sly.

“You know, my dear brother, I remember –” Here he paused for the customary affect these words produced, which did not follow at this occasion. “I remember you and I, some time ago now it must have been, yes, at the bank I think in Marylebone, or was it Pimlico?”

The brother’s face turned from one of surprise to panic in an instant, a tinge of green growing from his ruffled collar.

“Yes, Pimlico, I remember it well now.” Robert turned towards his brother, his finger tapping on his chin as he spoke the words slowly, as if he were chewing some comestible and endeavoring to determine its precise flavor. “You and I at the bank, hmm, to resolve the small issue of you having spent all of your money and running up a debt of some –”

“Well,” laughed the father, nervously adjusting his collar. “You may have told truthfully of your old friend here, but you still have some real yarns spun up in your heard brother, can’t all be believed can they?” The general population at the dinner table looked intently back and forth between the brothers, beginning to suspect with some anxiety that their years of social labor were about to meet an unfortunate end.

“Which I paid for you, and advanced you some thousands more. I was happy to do it brother, happy you see, but it was a long time ago and yet… well I gave you all I had and at my last visit to said bank, brother, when I inquired out of brotherly concern and interest into your financial state of affairs, I was surprised again to find your coffers decidedly – ” He paused, and all eyes shifted from Robert to his brother, waiting strenuously for the termination of this particular story. The brother laughed faintly and gave everyone his most dismissive and consoling set of expressions.

“Empty.” The word resounded ‘round the room like a gong and the relations set to hissing through their teeth to each other in their incredulity. The father’s knowing look was frozen to his face as he gazed at his brother, though his mind was obviously engaged elsewhere, no doubt churning in panic.

“And not only empty, but you again, brother dear, have accumulated a prodigious amount of debt. Funny business that, isn’t it?” Robert, I believe, was not a mercenary or designing man, but the slight grin on his face as he drew his arm through that of his friend and propelled them both out of the erupting chaos in the dining room, betrayed the presence of a playful and agile mind. So much for being an old fool.

Words fail me in the description of what followed in the dining room. To everyone present it was their day of ruin. To me, an onlooker with no stock in their familial game at all whatsoever, found it positively hilarious and I do believe I bellowed with laughter without be noticed in the slightest. Disentangling myself from the cousins and without any hope of ever recovering my friend, I stepped outside into the crisp evening air, into which the wails of that unfortunately family bemoaning their pecuniary victimhood wafted out like a pitiful symphony. I looked down the street and caught a glimpse of that unlikely and fantastic pair strolling down the street, grey twill beside embroidered silk. There the money so much sought for resided, completely unheeded by the very ones who possessed it. Instead, their treasure was their friendship, the years of adventure and all that was worth remembering.