ONE SUMMER WHEN I WAS ABOUT SIXTEEN, after reading a few too many books by Elizabeth David, I became obsessed with the idea of cooking bouillabaisse. My poor mother was bullied into getting up at dawn and driving to the market in Toulon down by the old port, where we immediately headed for the bellowing harridans who inhabit the fish stands—overflowing with a mélange of grotesque sea creatures straight out of Hieronymus Bosch’s fevered imagination. Spiky black rascasses; terrifying moray eels; weavers, their hideous eyes bulging out of the top of their heads; combers, known as serans écritures on account of the blue-and-purple scribbles carelessly dashed across their red scales; Saint-Pierres, shiny black moules, multicolored girelles, and tiny green favouilles (crabs) were wrapped in newspaper and piled into our baskets. Still alive, some of the more adventurous favouilles decided to make a break for freedom in the car on the way home. The next morning I found one of them scuttling around on the backseat, so of course he had to accompany us, in a plastic bowl filled with water and two teaspoons of sea salt, to Bikini Beach, where he disappeared into the sand.
For some reason, probably nerves at the thought of embarking on this tricky enterprise with only my mother as sous-chef, I had decided to invite our two neighbors, Francette and Jeannine Tricon, gifted cooks both, to come and help me transform my Quasimodo creatures into this sublime Provençal dish. Naively I had failed to take into account the explosive, proprietorial emotions that could be ignited when it came to the composition of une bouillabaisse véritable. Some purists (usually people who come from Toulon or Marseille) will tell you that the real deal can be found only in their hometown and in a few places along the coast between these culinary lodestars. (Other less fanatical aficionados will allow that the permissible area extends as far as Monaco but not a single kilometer beyond.) So at least we had the geography right. The trouble began when Francette spotted the basket of small, round potatoes, soil still clinging to their rosy skins, that Madame Tricon had smuggled into my kitchen.
“Les pommes de terre, je pense pas!” she hissed in my ear while our neighbor was washing her offerings in the sink. “Jamais les pommes de terre!” Long practiced in the delicate art of conciliation, and perhaps misguidedly convinced of the beneficial properties of alcohol when it came to smoothing over disagreements, I ignored her and instead offered them each a double dose of rosé de Bandol while we set to work cutting up the fish. First the tiniest ones, freshly netted rockfish, were put in the pot along with the less-than-lively crabs, who had survived a night in the fridge (the cold must have sapped their fighting spirit), along with some fennel, leek, celery, olive oil, salt, and the bleeding guillotined heads of the bigger fish. Francette, a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, poured in water (traditionally the fishermen who cooked this on the beach over driftwood fires added seawater in lieu of salt), and the broth was put on the stove to boil (the bouille part), after which she lowered (the baisse bit) the flame and it was set at a steady simmer. At this point I saw the ashy tip of her cigarette disappear into the soup—oh, what the hell.
“Oh lá lá, j’ai jamais vu ça!” Madame Tricon exclaimed with entirely false bonhomie. Christ, what now? Francette had produced a bagful of cigales de mer, a type of lobster that she was seriously proposing to add to this controversial witches’ brew. “Perhaps this is something they do in Paris?” she asked her neighbor brightly. “Non, pas du tout, Jeannine, it is something I learned from my friend who is the chef at Chez Fonfon in Marseille.” Time for more wine. I have absolutely no memory of the rest of the evening, or what the bouillabaisse tasted like, but I swore then that I would never, ever get into cooking it again.
What changed my mind was a book called Lulu’s Provençal Table that landed on my desk in New York twenty-something years later. Lulu Peyraud lived in Le Plan du Castellet, and her family owned the rightly famous Domaine Tempier that produced some of the—if not the—best wine in the area. I had been introduced to her by Nick and his girlfriend, Jemima, who were friends of Madame Peyraud’s daughter, Catherine. Feeling inexplicably flush one day, Nick and I had driven over to their house for an informal wine tasting and had returned home with a case of—what else—cuvée La Migoua. The memory of that brief visit never left me. Surrounded by vineyards, the old farmhouse—its dusty blue shutters closed to keep out the ferocious summer heat—was approached by an allée of plane trees, its terrace shaded by a huge, slightly lopsided umbrella pine and a vine-covered pergola. The air was thick with the thrumming of cicadas and the scent of rosemary, flowering fennel, and wild thyme. Madame Peyraud’s great-grandmother Léonie had been given the property as part of her dowry in the mid-nineteenth century, and I remember thinking that if she had decided to return that day, she would surely have been happy to see that nothing had changed at all.
Sitting in my office in Manhattan, I opened the book and started reading. Alice Waters, who wrote the introduction, had met the Peyrauds in the seventies and credits “the Peyraud family’s example with helping us find our balance at Chez Panisse.” She remembers
one evening when Lulu had not expected us for supper but nevertheless insisted on cooking us a little something. She had a basket of wild mushrooms that she proceeded to quickly brush off and then sauté with garlic and lots of herbs. Although she seemed to be cooking them almost unconsciously, chatting away with us over a welcoming glass of rosé, they were probably the most flavorful wild mushrooms I have ever eaten.
A few days later I picked up the telephone and asked Madame Peyraud if I might come see her when I arrived in La Migoua later in the summer. Perhaps we could cook bouillabaisse together? “Absolument. Je serais ravie.”
No, it wasn’t exactly dawn, but it can’t have been too long after when I arrived at the Domaine Tempier to accompany Madame Peyraud to Bandol so that we could meet the fishing boats as they came into the port with the night’s catch. How else could one possibly be sure not only of the freshest fish but also of finding some of the more elusive creatures who might otherwise be stolen from under one’s nose by other sharp-eyed and -elbowed shoppers? I hopped into her car, and as we drove along the still-cool back roads down toward the coast, Lulu, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Simone Signoret, with her wide-set dark eyes and short blond hair, started to talk bouillabaisse.
To start with there is no “correct” recipe. The fishermen on the beach had just used whatever they couldn’t sell, and to this day, the list of ingredients is somewhat elastic, but not entirely. Baudroie (anglerfish) for instance is vital. Its head, the cartilaginous central bone, chopped small, and other trimmings go into the broth, while its pinkish beige liver, as smooth and delicious as foie gras, is an essential ingredient in the rouille. Those frolicsome favouille crabs lend a necessary peppery flavor to the broth, which should also include a generous slice of conger eel, an entire head of garlic, a couple of pounds of the tiny rockfish, as well as onion, tomatoes, leek, celery, carrots, and a bouquet of the fennel that happens to grow outside Lulu’s kitchen door. Francette’s cigarette ash is entirely optional.
“Whenever I cook fish, I always add lots of herbs, but for bouillabaisse I leave out the thyme and bay leaf, and concentrate on fennel.” We were back in Lulu’s kitchen with our baskets of fish, and out came the knives. The cut-up pieces of fish were set to marinate in a mix of ground fennel seed, saffron, crushed garlic, and olive oil on a platter, while we got to work on the broth. Raised up off the ground and almost big enough to stand up in, an enormous fireplace—just like the one in our house—dominated the room and would have been built as much for cooking as chauffage. Regrettable electrical intrusions like the refrigerator and dishwasher were concealed behind antique wooden doors, and marble mortars, wooden pestles, and spoons, metal whisks, ancient metal grills, copper cooking pots, sharp knives—all things her great-grandmother might have used—constituted her entire batterie de cuisine. (Perhaps the shiny new Cuisinart, blenders, electric knife sharpeners, and other equally regrettable modern innovations were hidden away in a cupboard—but somehow I doubted it, and certainly didn’t dare ask.)
“Alors, maintenant on fait la rouille!” Without which there can be no bouillabaisse. Cayenne peppers were attacked in a big marble mortar, coarse salt and garlic added, the sublime anglerfish foie gras was pounded until we had a smooth paste, then an egg yolk and a mix of bread crumbs and saffron, moistened with fish stock, and after that I dribbled in a steady stream of olive oil. This celestial, garlicky, fish-infused mayonnaise is spread as thickly as you dare on garlic bread crusts at the bottom of each soup plate, the rest being passed around at the table, just in case you feel that you might have been shortchanged on your daily garlic ration. And what of Madame Tricon’s problematical potatoes? “Mais oui, toujours les pommes de terres!” Lulu added them to the broth, with the tomatoes, more garlic, more saffron, fennel, followed by the mussels and marinated fish. And what of Francette’s controversial cigales de mer? “Oui, absolument. But I couldn’t find any this morning. Sometimes I add octopus as well.”
Ever the sly diplomat, when I got back home I made sure to tell Francette and Madame Tricon (separately, of course) that the great Lulu Peyraud had decreed that they had been completely right. Unsurprised at being vindicated, they both shrugged and said I told you so, whatever that is in French. And—having experienced perfection—I never cooked bouillabaisse again.
THAT SUMMER Peter had stayed behind in New York while Rebecca and I made our annual pilgrimage to La Migoua. The truth is that after the horror show of our last visit with Peter hissing in my ear, “But you said she wouldn’t be here,” the thought of them together for several weeks in the same house was more than I could take. If I hadn’t married somebody quite so much like her everything would have been easier, or so I thought. But as it was I had fallen for a man who was every bit as smart as she was, who made me laugh just as much as she did, who did outrageous things like stopping his car in traffic to have a pee in the middle of Parliament Square, who had yet to master the useful art of suffering fools, who couldn’t help showing off his considerable intelligence, and whose love I have never doubted. Just as I never doubted hers.
Of course they had their differences. Peter wasn’t much use as a snob, never having seen the point of posh people per se, his tongue lacked that fine stiletto edge, and with all the expensive education his parents had given him—and hers had failed to give her—he could win any argument that depended on real knowledge as opposed to my mother’s preferred, but highly effective, weapon of wit and wild chutzpah. Sadly his swearing never approached the masterful pitch of hers and his desire to shock the world into submission was minimal, but these were minor, and forgivable, failings.
Like the Jesuits, my mother had gotten hold of me at an impressionable age and had nourished me on such a rich and unpredictable diet that most other people seemed utterly bland in comparison. The terror of boredom—this came from her, whether by nature or nurture I do not know—must have made me crave the kind of emotional and intellectual excitement I had grown accustomed to. And which both she and Peter provided, sometimes in exhausting abundance. No danger of ever being bored with those two roaming around inside your psyche, but plenty of danger of thrilling fireworks with them roaming around inside the same small house. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. So for the sake of my fragile sanity I preferred not to put my theory to the test.
THERE WAS NOTHING Freddie adored more than a party. An extraordinarily good dancer—he taught Rebecca the Charleston when she was four and he was seventy-seven—he liked to flirt, he liked to talk, and I’m afraid he never could resist showing off, which is always lots more fun with an audience. That first fall he was with us, after Vanessa died, I thought it might cheer him up if the two Scorpios—“Jesus, all you two ever think about is sex and death”—had a joint birthday party. We would have lots to drink, get Balducci’s to do the food, hire a barman, Freddie would ask all his old—in both senses of the word—friends, Peter and I would round up ours, we’d throw them all together and hope that at least a few people misbehaved. It would be a strange mix—but isn’t that the whole point?
Distinguished oldsters like Meyer Schapiro (the brilliant art historian, pushing ninety), Mary McCarthy, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the birthday boy were carefully propped up on the sofas, people who liked to drink (Anthony Haden-Guest, Charles Kuralt, our downstairs neighbor, Christopher Hitchens) stuck close to the bar, the lady (no name) who was up to no good with somebody else’s husband (no name) hung out in the shadowy hallway, kindhearted people (Nick, Quentin Crisp) talked to Rebecca, and everybody else just did the best they could in whatever space was left over. I can’t say there was any serious misbehavior, unless you count the host going to bed before the last guest had left, and the hostess disappearing to Da Silvano’s for spaghetti puttanesca with an old friend (Michael Stone) soon afterward. Jeffrey and Caron Steingarten stepped into our delinquent shoes and ended up cooking Freddie, Ed Epstein, and his date, Susannah Duncan, the best bacon and eggs any of them had ever tasted. La Rochefoucauld was right, hunger is always the best sauce.
Ed’s date was the highlight of Freddie’s evening. A doctor in her late thirties who looked like a dark-haired Grace Kelly, crisp and detached in that cool English way, she had driven the poor man into a terminal tizzy. Battling a ferocious hangover the next morning, I did what I could to calm him down.
“Oh dear, oh dear, I can’t possibly call her. Can I?”
“Of course you can. Did she give you her number?”
“Yes, she said it was G-R-A-B-T-R-Y.”
The minx.
“That must be a secret code for those very special men she’s attracted to. The rest get the numbers.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely.”
A few days later, at about four in the afternoon, a beaming only slightly intoxicated Freddie was entertaining Rebecca with a soft-shoe shuffle and a soulful rendition of “Night and Day.” After that he moved on to “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.”
“How was lunch with Grabtry?”
“Well, now that you ask, I have to say it went extremely well.”
That night after I had gone to bed, Freddie and Peter sat up, with a bottle of brandy to keep them company, and wrestled with that age-old masculine conundrum: How to figure out if an irresistible, flirtatious minx has the slightest intention of ever sleeping with you.
“One doesn’t want to make a total ass of oneself.”
“God, no!”
“And yet, if one does nothing, how’s one ever to know?”
“Too true, too true!”
Several more lunches followed, but I suspect that Grabtry’s honor and Freddie’s dignity must have remained intact, because if they hadn’t my dear stepfather could never have resisted telling me all about it.
THE MANAGEMENT’S POLICY at the Hotel Bank Street was to include our guests in all invitations. Which is how Freddie and Fernando Sánchez, a charismatic designer of ladies’ lingerie, came to meet. Introduced at a dinner given by my friend Sarah Giles, they had so charmed one another that Fernando called the next morning and asked us all to a party he and his boyfriend were giving the following week.
For whatever reason Peter and Bob Friend, a BBC colleague, had thought it would be a good idea to arrive chez Sánchez early and drunk. They found their surprised and irritated hosts, dressed in matching silk peignoirs still attending to their hair and makeup. Parked in the drawing room, Peter and Bob helped themselves to a few more drinks, and by the time the other guests started to drift in, Bob Bloke (as Hitch used to call him on account of his total blokishness) was in a fine state. Of course he knew that such people existed, he was a sophisticated man of the world, and he’d met one or two of them in his time, but it was a bit much to find yourself surrounded by the buggers.
“I expect you’re a homosexual. Everybody else here seems to be.”
Freddie looked appalled.
“I most certainly am not!”
“Well, thank God for that, is all I can say!”
Apart from us the guests looked as though Fernando had chosen them by flicking impatiently through the pages of model-agency look books, rejecting all the dogs—“Oh dear, can’t think he’s much in demand. Honey, you’re wasting your time—take my advice and get back to Kansas!”—and picking out the hundred or so true dazzlers. A perfectionist with an artist’s eye, Fernando worshipped at the altar of beauty—whether it was the priapic black ambergris candles (how Robert Mapplethorpe would have loved them!), the gigantic flowering gardenia bushes, the heavy white linen curtains, or the exquisite creatures that filled his apartment.
But he was also a kindhearted host, and when he saw one of his guests standing all alone, he grabbed my arm. “You must meet Naomi Campbell, she’s just arrived from London and knows no one.”
Naomi was ten feet tall, sixteen years old, and unspeakably beautiful.
“Mum and I got here last week. I’m doing a bit of modeling.”
“Sounds to me like you have chosen the perfect career.”
“Yeah, I hope it’s going to work out.”
“I don’t think you need worry.”
Naomi smiled. She didn’t look worried at all.
Freddie was just about to get up and pile lots more smoked salmon on to his plate, when Sarah came rushing over to our table. “The most terrible thing is going on upstairs. This poor girl is pinned up against the wall and the man won’t let her go.”
Who better than a seventy-seven-year-old philosopher to take on an overenthusiastic suitor? Perhaps he could try engaging him in a discussion of ethics.
The scene was just as Sarah had described it. Naomi was squealing, the man had her rammed against the wall, and, distracted by the effort of trying to shove his tongue down her throat, he didn’t notice when Freddie tapped him on the shoulder. So Freddie tapped him a bit harder; the man swung round, adjusting his fly, and glared at the old geezer. “And who the fuck are you?”
“I happen to be rather a famous philosopher. My name is Professor Sir Alfred Ayer. And who are you, if I may ask?”
“I’m Mike Tyson—the heavyweight champion of the world.”
“Well in that case, my dear boy, we are both supreme in our field.”
Which settled everything.
Whether Naomi really needed rescuing, I’m not so sure. All I do know is that Freddie was thrilled with his heroic feat that there was no dragging him away from the party. No, he didn’t want to come home with us—it was well past midnight—on the whole he’d rather remain just where he was, on a sofa surrounded by admiring ladies eager to hear what had really happened when the two champions had gone mano a mano, or at least come face-to-face.
The next morning something was wrong with Freddie’s hearing. He hopped about, shaking his head to one side, then the other, as if he was trying to get water out of his ear. Nothing serious, but he did hope it would get better soon. And what could possibly have caused this? Around two in the morning, when he finally left the party, Freddie had gone down in the elevator with a group of extremely large, high-spirited black men who turned out to be part of Tyson’s entourage. Hey, it’s that old-timer who stopped Mike having a good time! Playfully, they meant no harm, it was all a joke really—they started boxing him around the ears. Mess with Mike and here’s what you get!
The doorman was not amused. He didn’t need a gang of hooligans laughing and shouting and jumping about in his hallway at that hour of the night. That little gray-haired man couldn’t just let them run wild. “Hey, you their manager? You gotta keep these guys under control. Get them outta here!”
Poor Freddie. First Bob Bloke thought he was queer, and then he had turned into a boxing manager. But at least his hearing came back.