Recipe

Tom was a fireman. Not the glamorous type of fireman who fights fires, climbs ladders to save burning damsels and is generally the unsung hero. No Tom was the guy who kept the fire going in a boiler, ensuring that there was a full head of steam whenever one was required. He learnt his trade on the steam trains of the Department of South African Railways and Harbours. He also developed a taste for alcohol while tending the fires of the steam trains as they chuffed their smoky way across the length and breadth of South Africa.

Tom's taste for alcohol became an irresistible habit and after one too many incidents of binge drinking that prevented him from fulfilling his rather easy duties of keeping the fires burning, the Department and he parted company.

Tom of course claimed that he had been fired to "save the bastards paying me my pension".

I met Tom when I was a young and innocent apprentice. (Don’t laugh, I was. Both young and innocent.) Tom helped me to lose some of my innocence

One way he did that was to introduce me to the denizens of the pub closest to the harbour gates. They were a strange group of people. People who lived on the edge of society, sailors, dockers, journeymen and prostitutes along with others whose professions were not known but who seemed to have no real occupation but always seemed to have money to spare and and ready ear for stories from the sailors.

It was one of these floating listeners who provided one of the more tantalising peaks into the dark and devious activities of the pub. For some reason, maybe he was being devious, maybe he took a liking to me, but whatever the reason he decided to include me in one of his murky dealings. Tom speculated that there had been something wrong with "Charlie's" operation and he wanted to distance himself from it. Tom only became aware of this incident afterwards and was in parts scared, angry and intrigued. He berated me for getting involved with Charlie and insisted he wanted to know nothing about the issue as it was "tres dangerous" but after a milk stout and a triple shooter demanded to be told every small detail of the incident. It was only at this stage that I found out that the barman Fred who dozed at the end of the bar was not as dozy or disengaged as he might have seemed and he filled in for Tom some of the details that I had missed. His additions were accompanied by gales of laughter at how I had stumbled through the entire episode doing all the right things for all the most totally the wrong reasons and giving the impression I knew exactly what I was doing all the time.

So I am going to tell you what happened from three points of view. Mine, Toms and Fred's. Let me tell you first the simple plot line. Then add the complexities.

I arrived one evening for my usual drink with Tom to find that he had run foul of the Harbour Police. Fred was not very forthcoming as to what had happened or what Tom had done to call down the ire of the Harbour Police, but minutes before I arrived they had marched into pub; "Damned illegal action!" Fred had grumbled and carried Tom off in handcuffs. Now this had happened on a couple of occasions while I had been there and it was normally triggered when someone had been attempting to smuggle goods in or out of the harbour without consulting the officer in charge. It was fairly common knowledge that the Sergeant in charge was an avaricious soul who had to be paid for any naughty business that happened under his watch and he took serious umbrage if someone tried to evade paying him a sweetener. Anyway, whatever had happened opined Fred, Tom had been summoned to explain his erroneous ways to the Sergeant.

"He will be back shortly." said Fred after handing me my beer.

I shrugged and settled down to wait for Fred to appear.

This was a pub where every regular had his mug or glass and his special place along the bar. I tended to float around as I was not really considered a local, more as an oddity connected to Tom. For this reason I was treated with polite indifference bordering on vague acknowledgement by all the regulars and allowed to sit on the stool next to Toms well worn stool. Charlie had been sitting in his usual place a few metres down the bar as usual but seeing that Tom was not around he ambled across and slid onto the stool next to me.

"What do you think Old Tom got up to?" he asked curiously. Now I had been around this pub long enough to know that this was not the way things normally panned out. In this sort of event, everyone would quietly go on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The recalcitrant sinner would be greeted as if it was quite normal to be dragged out of the pub in chains. I was shocked, but shrugged my shoulders.

"Mistaken identity." I murmured vaguely. "Tom doesn’t work the docks."

Charlie laughed out loud at this.

"He doesn’t work the docks like Rachel over there now does he?" he shouted.

Rachel glared at us and went back to chatting to a rather drunken Russian sailor.

"He was supposed to do me a favour tonight, but it all got screwed up." he sighed theatrically.

I shrugged again. I had a very low opinion of Tom doing anybody a favour without screwing it up royally. He was a nice guy but also a bumbling idiot to whom I would not entrust the task of walking to the corner and switching on the light. Tom was to put it mildly, unreliable.

"So,I was wondering" continued Charlie, "If you wouldn’t mind standing in for him as it were."

I looked at him and raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"I will make it worth your while."

He looked at Fred, "Here give the man a chaser! His beer looks lonely."

I didn’t usually drink chasers because I don't have a good head for alcohol and also because being a badly paid apprentice, I usually could not afford the price.

Before I could come to a firm conclusion on the topic Fred slid a huge glass of vodka across the bar to me and another to Fred.

"Scholl!" shouted Charlie and sank the entire glass. I tried to sink the entire glass and nearly drowned in the flood. Charlie happily pounded me on the back as I hacked and wheezed.

When I had recovered a bit of my equanimity, I nodded and rasped "Yes. OK."

The reason for the agreement was that I was a bit financially hard pressed that month due to courting a young woman who had serious delusions of grandeur.

Charlie smiled and moved in closer, and started briefing me by speaking in a hushed voice right into my ear.

"You see, its like this. My mother is addicted to fruit cake. Not just ordinary fruit cake but Russian fruit cake. She was introduced to the stuff when she was a little girl and it reminds her of the good old days and really wants a recipe to bring back the past. But you know how the cops view Russians at present and I have a bit of a bad rep with the cops right now and they would love an excuse to haul me in for being in contact with an enemy foreigner. So what I need you to is to walk down toward the docks carrying this newspaper under your left arm. You sit down on the wall next to the fish and chips shop, put the newspaper down and wait. A guy will arrive, put the same newspaper down on top of yours. You pick it up, tuck it under your arm and you come back here. Put the newspaper down on the counter here. I will take the newspaper and you will take the envelope I will leave here. Are you in?"

Now, I am not sure what Charlie read when he had a quiet moment, but at that time I was voraciously consuming Le Carre novels and I recognised a clandestine document handover immediately. Now, decades later and with much experience behind me, I would have said "Thank you, but no thank you." but I was pressed for money and I was young and hence immortal. Nothing could go wrong. I would walk it. Nobody in Le Carre's novels got ever got caught doing document handovers. It was always the desperate action that caused the problems, so fool that I was, I said, "Sounds simple enough, I will do that."

"Good man." says Charlie. "You go out there are 8 this evening. Have another beer on me."

So, I waited for 8 and then ambled out of the pub, along the road to the fish and chip shop. I sat down on the wall as instructed, placed the newspaper next to me as instructed and waited. It was at this time that the enormity of what I was doing seeped into my fuzzy brain. For one thing, I did not believe the story of the Russian Fruit Cake recipe, it was just too silly but the other thing that disturbed me was that there seemed an awful lot of policemen just ambling around trying to look bored and uninterested. After 10 minutes nothing had happened and I was becoming seriously concerned. I was starting to consider making a break for it and never returning to the pub and facing Charlie. The problem was that I was not certain how happy Charlie would be and if there would be any repercussions. I sat still for another ten minutes and had just decided that I needed to go home and call in sick for at least a week to avoid facing Tom when Rachel ambled up and sat down beside me. She hauls out a cigarette, lights up and blows a column of smoke into the air. She dumps a newspaper onto mine.

"Silly fuckers."

I leave the statement hanging for a while. Eventually I have to ask.

"Who?"

"Men. You are all grossly incompetent."

I wait. Patiently. I am good at patient waiting.

Rachel eventually sighs, flicks some ash off her cigarette, takes another deep draw on the tobacco and then looks at me.

"Charlie sets up this complicated exchange of documents. Tom doesn’t pitch, so he picks on the most conspicuous person in the room to take over from Tom."

Now I have never considered myself as being conspicuous and it takes me a long time to figure out I am who Rachel is referring to.

"Not conspicuous." I manage to mumble.

"Of course you are. Big, well built and fit young man. More intelligence that the entire pub clientèle put together. Not a drunkard or down on your luck. You stand out like a fucking beacon."

I wait, considering this last little assessment of my place in society.

"The Russian took one look at you and thought you were security police. Don't blame him either. Anyway, I managed to calm him down. Offered him a discount blow job. I will charge Charlie the full rate. Anyway, I negotiated with him, persuaded him that you were OK and that I would do the transfer here in the full gaze of every spy in this god forsaken city. So, go back. Sit in your normal place. Put this newspaper down, wait for Charlie and collect your pay. give me half the money and then go home to Mommy."

"How can you do the transfer without getting us both busted?"

"Because all the cops know me, most of them get discount treatments. No one is going to touch me. Can't afford to. What would wifey say if I started yapping?"

Rachel gets up, grinds the cigarette into pieces under her heel and walks away.

I sit for a while and then pick up the top newspaper, leaving Charlie's paper on the wall. I do exactly as she told me. I go into the pub, put the newspaper down, order a beer and wait. Charlie slides in next to me and looks around.

"Everything go off OK?"

I nod. It is at this moment that the cops make their appearance, cuff and drag Charlie away. Fred just shakes his head sadly. I am left with a newspaper and an envelope. I split the cash with Rachel, finish my beer and take myself off home. I keep the newspaper as a memento.

It is only when I get home and open the newspaper that I realise that deep in the financial section of the newspaper there is a sheet of white paper. I extract the paper carefully and realise that I am holding a neatly typed recipe for Russian Fruit Cake. I stare at it for a while, wondering. I ditch the newspaper in a bin outside and carefully stash the recipe.

The next Friday I go to the pub to meet Tom. I have a current newspaper under my arm with the recipe tucked inside. I settle in and it is Fred who tells me that Charlie had fallen out of window on the way to the toilet in a building that housed the security police. He would not be collecting his newspaper after all.

"What do I do with this?" I ask Fred. He looks at it with some amusement, picks it up and dumps it in the bin.

"No recipe?" he asks.

I shake my head, "Must have been destroyed." I say and take a deep swig of beer.

"Sensible man. It might have had lots of microdots with sensitive information on them." he says and slides a large glass of vodka over to me. "To the late and lamented Charlie."

Tom next to me raises his glass and we drink to the memory of Charlie.

"What?" I hear you ask "Happened to the recipe?" Simple. I burnt it in the outside bin, not before photocopying it of course. You just never know when you may need a Russian Fruit Cake Recipe.

"But of course."