Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch?
pAki ico4 my father died almost exactly 60 years ago. I was at boarding school, on the eve of my 15th birthday, and the news came without warning. His illness was sudden, swift and implacable. In a way he was a belated victim of the Great War. He had spent four years in the killing-machine trenches of the Western Front, being wounded three times and gassed with that deadly toxin, chloride. Then, in the second world war, shortage of staff meant that he had to work harder, and no petrol forced him to puff around on an old Raleigh bicycle. His heart, though game, could not take it.
This sudden loss, just at a time when I was getting to know my father well and engaging with him in the arcana of art and literature, philosophy and history — he was opening his thoughts to me and pulling out glittering treasures — was the heaviest blow I have suffered in my entire life, which otherwise has been mercifully free of savage misfortunes. The Jesuits at my school displayed unforgettable kindness. There was a large community of them, more than 60, many of considerable learning and wide experience of the world. I had several good friends among them, who knew how to comfort a bewildered teenager suddenly dealt a cruel blow by a mysterious deity. The other boys were kind, too, as they always are in such circumstances. superstitiously fearful that the same might happen to them unless they propitiated the fates by unwonted tenderness.
I screwed up my courage, telling myself that my father had been through an even worse experience and at a much earlier age. Both his parents had been swept away within days of each other by one of those devastating influenza pandemics which punctuated the late 19th century. He and his two brothers were left orphans, to be cared for by Dickensian foster-parents. So at the age of 12, my father ran away to sea, something you were allowed to do in those days. He later regarded it as the most fortunate decision he had ever taken. He travelled round the world, under sail and by steam, rounding the Horn both ways, doubling the Cape, getting to know the China seas and the still romantic Pacific, where Stevenson had lately told his tales and Gauguin conjured up dusky madonnas. He had been lucky in his first skipper, Captain Thurso, one of those hard but just Scotch Calvinists who kept the empire together and the seas free and busy. He began to teach my father the art of navigation on their first day at sea, and watched over him with fierce paternal zeal.
So when they berthed in New York at around 53rd Street, alongside the Cunarders and White Star liners, the skipper said, 'Ye may go ashore, young Willie, to see the sights of this wicked place. But I'll hand ye none of your pay. That way, ye'll get into no trouble, ye limb of Satan.' So my father, as he described it to me many years later in the mid-Thirties, wandered around the Manhattan of Theodore Roosevelt and the young Damon Runyon. He marvelled at its spectacular mushroom growth and daemonic energy symbolised by gouts of steam shooting out of the pavements and the clang of the El clattering overhead. The first really big skyscrapers were going up, J. Pierpont Morgan ruled Wall Street and Tiffany was all the rage. But presently my father began to feel hungry, and the more he walked and stared in wonder, the hungrier he became. He was reluctant to retrace his steps to the ship's berth and its friendly galley. On the other hand, how were his ravenous pangs to be abated? 'I had heard that New York was a city of marvels,' he told me. 'and so I walked and waited for a miracle to happen. And lo! It did.' Outside a tavern, Mooney's Oyster & Stout Bar, he spotted a blackboard with the magic message chalked up: 'Free lunch'. 'I had heard of American generosity.' he said, 'but this seemed to be truly munificent.' He entered through swing half-doors, crossed the sanded, sawdusty floor and scrambled up on to a tall stool at the counter, There, a large fat bartender, with a white apron almost up to his chin, gave him a genial welcome. 'Well, young buster, what will it be?' The free lunch, if you please, sir.' 'To be sure. And will ye have the cold pork-and-pickles plate, or the corned-beef hash with a poached egg on lop?' I'll have the corned-beef hash, sir, and the mustard jar.' Presently, a heaped and steaming platter of this delectable dish was plonked in front of him and he set to with fervour. Ah America! Oh New-FoundLand of plenty! The bartender watched him eat with approval. 'And now what will it be?' he asked. 'Be, sir? How do you mean?' 'I mean, what will you drink? Hard or soft, long or short, corn-cob or mash whiskey, rye or Bourbon, upstate beer or Milwaukee, Budweiser or Danish, or the pure milk stout of the Liffey with a grand head on it? The house is at your command, little fellah.' My father at this point began to suspect there was a tiny catch in the largesse of Mooney's Bar. But for a 12-year-old he was not easily discomposed and replied promptly — a small eager boy with thick curly black hair, deep-set brown eyes and a clear, precise high-pitched voice, 'Oh, sir, I have never learnt to drink liquor. And besides. I have no money.' The bartender surveyed my father, hands on hips, from across the vast acreage of his white apron, and finally observed, Wa-al, Ah'll be da-amned!' Then he laughed loud and long and asked, 'Will ye have another plate of hash, then?' 'Oh, certainly, sir. Thank you very much indeed.'
My father always used to say that corned beef was the best culinary delight America had produced, next to soft-shell crabs and a certain kind of giant oyster to be found only in and around San Francisco Bay. I have inherited his taste for the dish, which I first ate, for breakfast, at the old Gladstone Hotel, off Lexington Avenue, now long since demolished. But hash for breakfast is on few Manhattan menus now: the St Regis will only do it as a special order, and the Algonquin, asked to provide what Alexander Woollcott grew fat on, merely raises a collective eyebrow. As for London, the Connaught, once my favourite restaurant, a paradise of English, French and American cooking at its finest, is no longer interested in such historic dishes. The only place I am sure you can get it is the Ivy, and what use is that to me? I am far too old to expect to get a table there in my lifetime. Perhaps the delectable Olga Polizzi, now that she has rescued Brown's Hotel from oblivion, will reinstate this classic, which Dickens wolfed and Thackeray insisted on ordering 'even if it kills me'.
But I digress. My father loved the sea and the ships he sailed in, and flourished mightily as a mariner. He got his First Mate's certificate at the age of 21, and might have risen to command a Cunarder. But the declaration of war in 1914 found him in his home town, Manchester. That day, he and his two brothers, and my mother's three brothers, all enlisted in the same regiment. Young men were patriots then, when values were clear and honoured, and wiseacres said that to be born English was to draw first prize in the lottery of life.
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