Read Online Heloise and Bellinis by Harry Cipriani - Free Book Online
Authors: Harry Cipriani
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you, sir.”
“1 have also faxed the President. He is looking forward to seeing you in Washington and congratulating you himself—and he wants to give you the Medal of Honor personally”
“1 don’t deserve it.” George said.
“That’s up to us to decide.” said Custer, cutting him short. And’ then he added: “1 suggest we go out and celebrate. What do you say?”
“It sounds great to me,” said Suzy.
“Let’s go to Harry’s Bar,” Custer said as he stood up.
They all went out, Suzy leading the way, then Heloise, and finally Custer and George. Custer put his arm around George’s shoulder, while his eyes were drawn irresistibly to Heloise’s quivering gluteals, as she walked ahead of him aquiver as usual and slightly unsteady on her dusty, high-heeled, black patent leather evening shoes.
END OF CHAPTER TEN
INTERMEZZO
BETWEEN CHAPTERS TEN AND ELEVEN
Dear Abelard,
I have already mentioned the grim castle in Somerset where my father sent me one winter in the early 1950s to study English, a language you almost have to know in my business.
The owner of this castle was a mild-mannered, very British-looking gentleman, one of those people they use in television advertisements for Scotch whisky. His salient features were a ruddy complexion, a set of whiskers that grew right up to his eyes, and two buckteeth, the kind people sometimes end up with if they were thumbsuckers as babies.
His helpmate was about twenty years younger than he, a little brunette who wasn’t half bad. There was an odd, intermittent gasp in her laugh that might have been quite appropriate in certain interesting situations.
There was also a cook. Her distinguishing feature was her missing denture and her boundless love for the song “You Belong to Me.” which she was forever playing on a little phonograph in the kitchen. She was very good at enriching Campbell’s soups with a few drops of cream. She too was caught up in the lively atmosphere of the manor and busied herself at night by giving dazzling parties in her room, to which she invited the sta-bleboys and the men and women servants of the house.
The dining room had three walls of austere walnut wainscot, and the fourth wall consisted of a magnificent window overlooking the grounds. The dining-room table was dominated by a huge cylindrical cactus, from which two enormous red glasses dangled on a red ribbon. The phallic reference was clear to everyone.
That is where I idled away three short months one bitter-cold English winter. Occasionally a letter would come from my father. He had only gone to sixth grade in Germany before the First World War, but when it came to sending stern yet loving instructions, he wrote simple, extremely effective prose. To tell the truth, I did not receive very many of these missives in my time, because I was more obedient than reprobate as a son; but when they came, they always filled me with heavy yet salutary feelings of guilt.
After receiving one of these letters, I decided to move to London, where I lived the first three days on the proceeds of twelve country-fresh eggs that I had brought from Somerset and sold to a buxom waitress. In London I shared a room with a Swedish girl, which is the main reason why I still have a strange accent when I speak English.
At that time my future career had still not been settled for me, though I already had my suspicions. Until I was nineteen, I had always considered my name a simple family oddity. My father had opened Harry’s Bar in Venice for business about a year before my mother brought me into the world. Both of them thought it was perfectly normal to call me Arrigo, even though 1 had no grandfathers or great-grandfathers of that name, and there had never been even a trace of an Arrigo anywhere in the family.
The English for Arrigo is Harry, and though it is perfectly ordinary for a bar to be named for a barman, it is quite exceptional that a boy be named for a bar. The fact that I was the only
“1 have also faxed the President. He is looking forward to seeing you in Washington and congratulating you himself—and he wants to give you the Medal of Honor personally”
“1 don’t deserve it.” George said.
“That’s up to us to decide.” said Custer, cutting him short. And’ then he added: “1 suggest we go out and celebrate. What do you say?”
“It sounds great to me,” said Suzy.
“Let’s go to Harry’s Bar,” Custer said as he stood up.
They all went out, Suzy leading the way, then Heloise, and finally Custer and George. Custer put his arm around George’s shoulder, while his eyes were drawn irresistibly to Heloise’s quivering gluteals, as she walked ahead of him aquiver as usual and slightly unsteady on her dusty, high-heeled, black patent leather evening shoes.
END OF CHAPTER TEN
INTERMEZZO
BETWEEN CHAPTERS TEN AND ELEVEN
Dear Abelard,
I have already mentioned the grim castle in Somerset where my father sent me one winter in the early 1950s to study English, a language you almost have to know in my business.
The owner of this castle was a mild-mannered, very British-looking gentleman, one of those people they use in television advertisements for Scotch whisky. His salient features were a ruddy complexion, a set of whiskers that grew right up to his eyes, and two buckteeth, the kind people sometimes end up with if they were thumbsuckers as babies.
His helpmate was about twenty years younger than he, a little brunette who wasn’t half bad. There was an odd, intermittent gasp in her laugh that might have been quite appropriate in certain interesting situations.
There was also a cook. Her distinguishing feature was her missing denture and her boundless love for the song “You Belong to Me.” which she was forever playing on a little phonograph in the kitchen. She was very good at enriching Campbell’s soups with a few drops of cream. She too was caught up in the lively atmosphere of the manor and busied herself at night by giving dazzling parties in her room, to which she invited the sta-bleboys and the men and women servants of the house.
The dining room had three walls of austere walnut wainscot, and the fourth wall consisted of a magnificent window overlooking the grounds. The dining-room table was dominated by a huge cylindrical cactus, from which two enormous red glasses dangled on a red ribbon. The phallic reference was clear to everyone.
That is where I idled away three short months one bitter-cold English winter. Occasionally a letter would come from my father. He had only gone to sixth grade in Germany before the First World War, but when it came to sending stern yet loving instructions, he wrote simple, extremely effective prose. To tell the truth, I did not receive very many of these missives in my time, because I was more obedient than reprobate as a son; but when they came, they always filled me with heavy yet salutary feelings of guilt.
After receiving one of these letters, I decided to move to London, where I lived the first three days on the proceeds of twelve country-fresh eggs that I had brought from Somerset and sold to a buxom waitress. In London I shared a room with a Swedish girl, which is the main reason why I still have a strange accent when I speak English.
At that time my future career had still not been settled for me, though I already had my suspicions. Until I was nineteen, I had always considered my name a simple family oddity. My father had opened Harry’s Bar in Venice for business about a year before my mother brought me into the world. Both of them thought it was perfectly normal to call me Arrigo, even though 1 had no grandfathers or great-grandfathers of that name, and there had never been even a trace of an Arrigo anywhere in the family.
The English for Arrigo is Harry, and though it is perfectly ordinary for a bar to be named for a barman, it is quite exceptional that a boy be named for a bar. The fact that I was the only
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