1001 Nights Cast

Thompson wrote to me the other day. I thought it strange that he should send me a letter. After all he only lived a couple of stations away, a mere 45 minutes by shanks pony as he liked to say when he turned up at my door every few weeks. We’d sit on my balcony and watch the Chinese diplomats in their compound across the street and Thompson would speculate on the nature of their relationships, inside this little walled patch of China-in-Australia. His views were scabrous, not to be repeated. Anyway—the letter. I didn’t recognise the handwriting. There was no return address on the envelope, nor on the letter inside, and when I realised it was from him, I checked the postmark, but it was blurred. He hadn’t left the country—it was an Australian stamp, and in any event he wouldn’t have had the cash to get much further than a ferry ride across the harbour.

He was writing to ask me a favour—could I collect the mail, and feed the goldfish—or rather, empty out the goldfish bowl: he hadn’t been home for weeks, and no doubt Edgar would be well and truly deceased by now. Edgar was the goldfish, a nondescript creature of little brain and no personality that Thompson had acquired for no particular reason.

Thompson was on the run, it seemed. His story went something like this.

He had this idea to start a catering business—a ‘small, bespoke operation for a select clientele’, as he put it. He wasn’t a bad cook—he’d asked me over on a few occasions, and always cooked up a storm, something fashionable, clipped from the lifestyle pages: slow cooked belly of pork with star anise; burnt honey panna cotta with raspberries. He didn’t think much of my cooking—I confess to finding the whole recipe thing a bit boring, and settle for pasta or a curry nine dinners out of ten—and he wasn’t averse to staying on into the evening, taking over my kitchen and cooking me a meal. He was being generous, but he also wanted the company and I liked it when he stayed too. We ate on the balcony, spinning outrageous stories about the goings on in the Chinese embassy compound, Thompson inventing sexual practices of such perversity I felt myself blushing.

But there is a big leap from a willingness to cook for a friend once every couple of months to ‘bespoke catering for a select clientele’.

His plan was simple. He retained a few friends from the financial industry, where he had carved out his ignominious career: while his contemporaries had gone on to bigger and better things, a couple of them remained fond of the man. These high flyers would be his entrée into the world of cooking for upmarket dinner parties: he would use their kitchens, so his overheads would be minimal. One success would lead to another, and Dinner by Thompson would take the Harbour suburbs by storm.

As chance would have it, his first phone call secured his first—and only—engagement. He rang his oldest friend, a woman now well up the management ladder in one of the big banks. She was leaving to take a new job in London. She wanted to have a small dinner party for 20 or so close friends and family at her house before she left. Obviously feeling sentimental, she offered Thompson the catering gig. He named a price—a vast sum—and promised a meal of flavoursome simplicity and style, with lots of luxury touches. He asked for the money upfront—he was frank about his lack of capital, and persuasive about his ability to deliver. She said yes. Thompson’s doom was sealed.

The cheque arrived—more than Thompson had seen in years—and he went out and bought up big—expensive knives, a bloody toque for gods sake. He was going to play chef in style. He consulted cookbooks in mates’ book shops, and developed an elaborate menu, which his banker friend approved. As the appointed dinner date drew near, Thompson stocked up on provisions—the most expensive olive oils, aged balsamic vinegar at $60 a bottle. Then the ingredients themselves: nothing but the best. A truffle, for $150. He purchased several large esky’s, and hired a van. He had by this stage spent some $3,000.

He assures me that when she arrived at her house early on the afternoon of the dinner party, he looked splendid—like a real caterer, a chef du cuisine, a cookbook author. It all went downhill from there.

It took me an hour to read his last paragraphs—dread and rising hysteria made it impossible to read more than a line at a time without a break to recover my composure.

I can imagine the scene: as dinnertime approached, the catastrophe in the kitchen grew, an algorithm of chaos—burnings, overflowings, unsettlings and overturnings. Where there had been confidence, now there was only fear and panic. By his own account Thompson felt his heartbeat increasing to a point where he feared he might well die. He had a full blown panic attack. He wept and whimpered, he had nothing ready to serve. He had even fucked up the oysters. This seemed improbable, but he was adamant: in his panic, he managed to cut himself badly attempting to open them (‘six kinds of freshly shucked oysters with several dressings’), and bled so profusely that he was ashamed to even attempt to open another. ‘It was a frenetic failure of catastrophic proportions’. His words. He literally abandoned ship. He left without a word, went home, changed out of his Chef’s whites and caught a bus ‘north’. He’ll let me know where to send the mail when he’s found a place to settle.

I’m going over to feed Edgar after this. If he’s still alive, I’ll bring him home.