Lords And Ladies

"This is damn good wine," she said, picking up another bottle. "What did you say it's called?" She peered at the label. "Chateau Maison? Chat-eau . . . that's foreign for cat's water, you know, but that's only their way, I know it ain't real cat's water. Real cat's water is sharper." She hammered the cork into the bottle with the end of her knife, then stuck her finger over the neck and gave it a vigorous shaking "to mix the goodness in."

"But I don't hold with drinking it out of ladies' boots," she said. "I know it's supposed to be the thing to do, but I can't see what's so wonderful about walking home with your boots full of wine. Ain't you hungry? If you don't want that bit of gristle, I'll eat it. anymore of them lobsters? Never had lobster before. And that mayonnaise. And them little eggs stuffed with stuff. Mind you, that bramble jam tasted of fish, to my mind."

"'S caviar," murmured Casanunda.

He was sitting with his chin on his hand, watching her in rapt infatuation.

He was, he was surprised to find, enjoying himself immensely while not horizontal.

He knew how this sort of dinner was supposed to go. It was one of the basic weapons in the seducer's armoury. The amoratrix was plied with fine wines and expensive yet light dishes. There was much knowing eye contact across the table, and tangling of feet underneath it. There was much pointed eating of pears and bananas and so on. And thus the ship of temptation steered, gently yet inexorably, to a good docking.

And then there was Nanny Ogg.

Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she'd reached the end of the bottle.

As for the food . . . well, she enjoyed that, too. Casanunda had never seen that elbow action before. Show Nanny Ogg a good dinner and she went at it with knife, fork, and rammer. Watching her eat a lobster was a particular experience he would not forget in a hurry. They'd be picking bits of claw out of the woodwork for weeks.

And the asparagus . . . he might actually try to forget Nanny Ogg putting away asparagus, but he suspected the memory would come creeping back.

It must be a witch thing, he told himself. They're always very clear about what they want. If you climbed cliffs and braved rivers and skied down mountains to bring a box of chocolates to Gytha Ogg, she'd have the nougat centres out of the bottom layer even before you got your crampons off. That's it. Whatever a witch does, she does one hundred percent.

Hubba, hubba!

"Ain't you going to eat all those prawns? Just push the plate this way, then."

He had tried a little footsie to keep his hand in, as it were, but an accidental blow on the ankle from one of Nanny's heavy iron-nailed boots had put a stop to that.

And then there had been the gypsy violinist. At first Nanny had complained about people playin' the fiddle while she was trying to concentrate on her eatin', but between courses she'd snatched it off the man, thrown the bow into a bowl of camellias, retuned the instrument to something approaching a banjo, and had given Casanunda three rousing verses of what, him being foreign, she chose to call Il Porcupine Nil Sodomy Est.

Then she'd drunk more wine.

What also captivated Casanunda was the way Nanny Ogg's face became a mass of cheerful horizontal lines when she laughed, and Nanny Ogg laughed a lot.

In fact Casanunda was finding, through the faint haze of wine, that he was actually having fun.

"I take it there is no Mr. Ogg?" he said, eventually.

"Oh, yes, there's a Mr. Ogg," said Nanny. "We buried him years ago. Well, we had to. He was dead."

"It must be very hard for a woman living all alone?"

"Dreadful," said Nanny Ogg, who had never prepared a meal or wielded a duster since her eldest daughter had been old enough to do it for her, and who had at least four meals cooked for her every day by various terrified daughters-in-law.

"It must be especially lonely at night," said Casanunda, out of habit as much as anything else.

"Well, there's Greebo," said Nanny "He keeps my feet warm."

"Greebo-"

"The cat. I say, do you think there's any pudding?"

Later, she asked for a doggy bottle.

Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter.

There was a wasps' nest in the garden wall. It'd be a mortuary by morning.

That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd chink in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils'd be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive'd let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn't know what to do.

He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor.