Society
Now what? - Lauren Booth learns table manners from Portillo
Published 18 November 2002
To the Carlton Club, where Portillo tells me to keep the silver clear of the salt
The Carlton Club in St James's wistfully combines the smells and atmosphere of a Victorian salon. Just hanging my coat up beneath the paintings of lairds and Tory grandees gave me the jitters as I waited to be shown to the private room where I was to dine with countryside dwellers and Michael Portillo. There's something about the smell of ruddied leather and vintage port that makes me want to slide down banisters or run around flapping my arms like a restless child after a long car journey. The overpowering stillness is stifling. Dust (if any were allowed to gather) wouldn't swirl here - it would just sit in great lumpy clouds, obscuring the fine chandeliers. As I climbed the long, winding staircase, two middle-aged men in dinner jackets passed by. When I, a heavily pregnant woman puffing with exertion, smiled at them, they looked back with utter distaste. Theirs is still a world where a real lady is "confined" for the entire length of her pregnancy, so as not to embarrass sensitive males with her robustly sexual condition. I was clearly a harlot and, worse still, I was unable to perform any of the tasks they would doubtless be prepared to pay such a gal for. Disgraceful!
I've met Portillo once or twice before, but something was different about him this evening. His voice was the usual smooth baritone, his hair and features an easy blend of Andrew Rawnsley and Melvyn Bragg. But beneath his polite "Hello" was a ferociously restrained excitement. He looked like the cat who had not only got the cream but the smoked salmon and the early bird as well. Gone was the glum-faced "loyal" MP of the TV bulletins, reportedly "hoping" that Iain Duncan Smith does well in the Commons. Here was a man who seemed to be enjoying a holiday.
Rod Liddle, former editor of the Today programme, sat on my left, Portillo on my right. As the main course was served, Rod looked at the white powder in the small china dish in front of him.
"I'm not familiar with these sorts of places. Is that a bowl of salt or sugar?" he asked. Some of our companions tutted. Like naughty street urchins, we exchanged gleeful grins. We didn't want to be good for the posh grown-ups this evening. Feigning astonishment at the sheer amount of cutlery and crystal surrounding us was too hard to resist.
Portillo looked thoughtfully at the small dish and announced: "Well, that is salt and I really shouldn't have put the spoon back into it. When I was little, I was always told to keep the silver clear of the salt, as it tarnishes."
There was a moment of silence as everyone tackled their tough rack of lamb with blunt and heavy silver knives. Then we kiddies started to giggle and nudge each other. "We never 'ad silver in my 'ome when I was a choild. Did you Rod?"
"Nah, Lauren," he sighed, "we couldn't afford silver neither."
Michael Portillo groaned and slapped his forehead dramatically "Ahh. I should have known not to make any mention of my childhood in front of journalists."
The talk turned to farming and fox-hunting. The novelist Jeanette Winterson astounded even the farmers by announcing that she wrings the necks of her own chickens. She doesn't do this for "sport" but because she wants any meat she eats to have enjoyed a happy life and a quick death.
"Hunting," lisped the country lady between us, "protects the fox, actually. If it didn't happen, farmers would simply shoot them all in droves." Her kindly wish to "protect" foxes was a little marred by the fact that she loved to wear them around her skinny throat. My eyes, and gorge, rose throughout the meal to the beautiful murdered animal that had been dyed a hideous puce and lolled lifeless over the back of her chair. Proof, perhaps, that childishness knows no class.
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