Free Eating Crow by Jay Rayner Page A

explaining myself. She watched me in silence.
    When it was finished, the pillow of beige soufflé tumescent above the ramekin’s rim, I placed it on the kitchen table and sat down opposite her. She took one mouthful, pursed her lips, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “One of the very special things about a life in teaching,” she said, gulping down air, “is seeing those you have shepherded through the confusions of childhood turn into such nice adults.” She reached over and gripped my hand. “You’re a good man, Marc Basset. A very good man.” I’m not embarrassed to say it. I wept too.
    At a meeting in a local pub I apologized to Marcus Hedley, whom Stefan and I had taunted when we were just ten or eleven because he once wet himself while listening to the 1812 Overture during music lessons because, he said, it was so exciting. When I had explained myself, Marcus and I got raucously drunk and sang along to “No More Heroes” by the Stranglers on the pub jukebox.
    I apologized to Karen and Richard Brewster, two former colleagues of Lynne’s at the British Council, because I once got so drunk at one of their parties that I quietly threw up into their laundry basket and then didn’t confess. I also bought them a new laundry basket to make up for it.
    On the spur of the moment, I even apologized to our garbagemen for having put grass cuttings in the wheelie bin, which contravenes local council bylaws prohibiting the leaving of garden waste for collection. It wasn’t much of an apology, but it did help me to start the day on a little high. It was an espresso of apology. I cut out a picture of a wheelie bin from the local newspaper (which for some reason always contains photographs of wheelie bins) and I added it to the Wall of Shame. Then I stuck a gold star on it, to indicate that the matter had been dealt with.
    Lynne tried to be understanding but I could tell she was confused. In the mornings, before going to work, she would stand in the doorway to the living room, silently watching me as I made adjustments to the Wall, sticking up gold stars or adding a new image.
    One morning she said, “Are you nearly done, then?”
    I laughed. “Done? I don’t think so.”
    “Oh.” And then: “Who’s left?”
    I was cutting out the photograph of a chef. I had once described him as “the David Koresh of the restaurant world” for the messianic devotion he inspired in his fans despite the generally demented nature of his dishes. (Seared herring fillets in a raspberry vinaigrette, anyone?) “There’s loads of people, actually. This guy, for example.” I held up the cutting. “He might be a truly awful cook, but that didn’t mean I had to humiliate him. The customers would have told him in the end, and if they didn’t, what business was it of mine?”
    Lynne said, “Now you’re beginning to scare me.”
    “I’m just saying perhaps there are limits to criticism.”
    “Are you planning to apologize to every chef you’ve ever given a bad review to?”
    “I’m not sure yet. Maybe.”
    “And then? Will you stop?”
    “Listen, Lynne, I haven’t apologized to my brother yet.”
    I heard her mutter “sweet Jesus” under her breath as she retreated from the room. The front door slammed shut behind her.

Eight
    O ne dull Sunday afternoon, when I was eleven, I spent two hours torturing my brother. I cannot now remember why I decided to do it, save that Luke was two years younger than me and that younger brothers, sodden with optimism, deserved to be tortured. Psychologists would say my behavior was born of a festering and deep-seated hostility toward the family member who, by mere fact of birth, had unseated me from my position of primacy within the household. I would have told you that he was an annoying little shit who always managed to make me look like I was in the wrong.
    The method of torture was simple and devious but, ultimately, grossly effective. I made a sound at him once every three minutes or