Mr Doubler Begins Again

Mrs Millwood was unclipping her Tupperware and removing the sandwiches that she prepared, with surprising variety, every day.

‘What you want on that, Mr Doubler’ – nodding in the direction of his plate – ‘is a nice bit of melted Cheddar.’

‘Cheddar? Melted? Heavens, no, Mrs Millwood. Why on earth would I do that?’

‘For, you know, a bit of flavour. Or vitamins. You can’t live on spuds alone.’ This she knew was a provocative statement, but it wasn’t spoken to provoke, more out of genuine and long-running concern over his nutritional intake.

‘Oh, Mrs Millwood. I don’t really need to tell you about the beneficial qualities of the British potato, do I? You know as well as I do that the potato produces more edible protein per acre per day than either rice or wheat.’

‘But I’m not going to eat an acre of spuds, Mr Doubler. I just want something tasty for my lunch. Tasty and healthy.’

‘Don’t talk to me about healthy! The biological value of potato protein is better than that of wheat, maize, peas or beans. Potatoes are just as good for you as milk, and nobody would deny the health benefits of milk, now would they?’

‘I know very well about the beneficial qualities of the British potato’ – and indeed she did. Only last night she had enlightened the ladies in her knitting circle, who were amazed not just by this information but by the depth of Mrs Millwood’s knowledge and the persuasiveness of her passion – ‘but a bit of melted Cheddar for flavour wouldn’t go amiss.’

Doubler put down his fork and looked sternly at his lunch companion. ‘Mrs Millwood. Heat is the worst possible thing you can subject a Cheddar cheese to. All that would achieve would be to release the oils and destroy the flavour. If you go to the trouble of making a decent Cheddar, there’s only one way to eat it.’ Here, he went to the pantry and produced a large parcel wrapped tightly in waxed paper and tied with string.

‘Let me show you.’ He demonstrated with exaggerated movements while never taking his eyes off his audience. ‘You serve Cheddar on wood. Not pottery or porcelain. That’s a rule,’ he said firmly, placing the unwrapped Cheddar on the centre of a wooden chopping board. ‘The natural oils and flavours in the wood are absorbed into the cheese, adding a quality that cannot be replicated by any other means. Secondly, wood is porous. It does not create an impenetrable barrier against the cheese, thus allowing it to breathe.’

Mrs Millwood appeared to be holding her breath.

‘Allowing a cheese to breathe is another rule. Otherwise it sweats and that is not good. A sweaty Cheddar is never good,’ said Doubler, unwrapping the parcel carefully.

Mrs Millwood shook her head solemnly.

‘Next rule.’ He counted this off on his index finger, suddenly aware that there were actually many rules when it came to Cheddar and he probably needed to keep a log. ‘Just one cut, Mrs Millwood, or at any rate, as few cuts as possible.’ He used here his penknife to make a sharp diagonal cut through the narrowest point until he could break it with his fingers. ‘The Cheddar is a cheese of the fingers – it’s a truly sensory experience. You breathe it in, you feel it, and you taste it. The feel is the bit that can’t be missed. By handling the cheese with your fingers, you prepare your brain for what to expect. You don’t want any surprises. My brain already knows to ready itself for the sharp tang of good Cheddar because my fingers have already tasted it ahead of my mouth. You see?’

Mrs Millwood watched intently, her own sandwich hanging a little limply in her hands and a frown playing gently on her forehead.

‘So, one cut with your knife and then break it with your fingers to get the full experience. You can serve it with an apple – probably a Cox’s orange pippin is best, but I’m not a pedant, Mrs Millwood. And chutney. You’re after a sweet chutney or something quite dry and sour. I’ll give you a try of two I’d recommend, but chutney is a very personal thing – it’s a matter of taste. Just so long as it’s not pickle: the brine will compete with a good Cheddar, not complement it. You don’t want competition on your plate. You’re looking for harmony. Harmony and tone. Think of it as a piece of music and you’re the conductor.’

Mrs Millwood looked at her own sandwich and took a cautious bite.

‘Heat? No. I wouldn’t even heat a good Cheddar on a cold day. Complete waste.’

‘I’m sorry I spoke.’ Mrs Millwood took a larger, more defiant bite of her sandwich, refusing to be ashamed of her sliced, evenly toned knife-cut cheese layered with supermarket ham, mustard, pickle, pepper and lettuce. ‘Lovely,’ she said, taking her biggest mouthful yet.

‘I just thought it would perk up your lunch,’ she added, washing her mouthful down with a generous gulp of tea.

‘Well, yes, I’m not averse to a little cheese with my potato, but not in this context, and never with Cheddar. There are plenty of cheeses crying out to be melted. I’d put most of the goat family into that category,’ thus dismissing the entire group with a wave of his hand. ‘But I’m not after additional flavour. I’m working, Mrs Millwood, and what I want to taste is the potato.’

‘And are you pleased with today’s spuds?’

‘Oh! I am, I am. I’m absolutely delighted. They are behaving themselves beautifully. There’s little news to report, and that’s a good thing. Just further validation.’ Doubler lowered his voice a fraction, saying, conspiratorially, ‘Once I have my findings confirmed by the experts – our friends overseas – I’m done.’

Mrs Millwood looked at him carefully. ‘With your research? With your potatoes? What are you done with?’ Mrs Millwood had concern in her voice. She’d known him when he was done before and it had very nearly killed him.

Doubler recognized the worry and set about reassuring her that his motivation, his zest for life and his appetite for continued research were very much unfinished. ‘I can’t imagine I will ever be completely done with potatoes per se. They are in my blood. What would I concern myself with if they weren’t there to fill every working moment? But the detailed analysis, yes, I think I am probably finished with that. I cannot see any room for improvement or any questions left unanswered. Once I receive validation, it will mark the end of a very long period of concentrated work. If I am right, and my research is formally recognized, then I suppose I shall have to think of another project, or dedicate my remaining years to ensuring my work is properly recorded for the benefit of future generations. It will be the most significant moment of my life, of that I am sure. Obviously, I’m still awaiting official word from the institute, and you can appreciate that I’m not finding the waiting very easy.’ He sighed heavily, immediately undermining any pretence of confidence he had just delivered.

Mrs Millwood knew as well as he did that Doubler would not find the wait easy. She, too, was impatiently awaiting news. After all, since he had revealed his discovery to her, she had been instrumental in steering him through this convoluted course of action, which would, they both hoped, ultimately result in the scientific validation he craved. She had researched the options open to him fully and, without betraying any confidences, had taken the counsel of those comfortable in the areas of law, copyright, patent and scientific assessment, and in many respects these enquiries had been as meticulous and painstaking as Doubler’s own endeavours.

The situation, as she had carefully explained to him over a lunch, was that during the decades he had spent as a potato farmer, the farming world had moved on and left him behind. It transpired that the science of potatoes was funded primarily by the giant users, those who stood to gain the most commercially from any significant improvement in the process. The big-label oven-ready chip producers were at the heart of research and development, and the fast-food retailers, too, had a considerable vested interest in blight. ‘Who would have thought the oven chip had so much power, Mr Doubler!’ she had exclaimed, before continuing with her lugubrious findings.

Despite his own significant production, Doubler had not struck deals with these commercial partners and so had never worked in league with them. Likewise, through the happy accident of his meticulous barn clearing, Doubler had found himself, most discreetly, in the vodka business, but never on any scale. So, while he was a much-valued and highly respected contributor to it, the vodka industry had its own specific regulations to navigate and its own endless legislation to challenge. Doubler was not of enough consequence either to those who funded research or lobbied on behalf of the potato growers, and he was certainly small beer for the beverage companies. Doubler simply did not move in the right circles.

Mrs Millwood had researched all of this carefully and had soon learnt an alarming amount about the duplicitous nature of corporate life. She had spent time talking to great legal minds, who all warned her of being too hasty in sharing her anonymous friend’s findings until she had found a partner with deep pockets who could be trusted with the science. She should tread carefully, she had been warned, for an unscrupulous player further up the supply chain would not think twice about taking this research and presenting it as their own or undermining Doubler’s findings. As one great mind had put it, ‘Once they get wind of what he’s up to on that farm of his, the big boys will simply chew him up and spit him out,’ and so, instead, she had presented to Doubler over lunch one day a solution that would take a little longer but would have his work put in front of some of the most qualified and respected eyes in the world.

And thus, after much research, Mrs Millwood’s solution was to seek a non-partisan validation from the Institute of Potato Research and Development in northern India. It was for feedback from this venerated institution that they now waited.

‘Well, let’s have a look.’ Mrs Millwood rummaged in her bag for a little leather diary and flicked back through the pages. ‘We posted your package just after Christmas, didn’t we? Here we go. The twenty-seventh. Now, there will have been holiday delays and the like, but even so, that’s six weeks.’

Doubler looked glum.

‘But six weeks isn’t that long if you think about it. That’s overland post, not airmail, and I don’t know what their postal service is like over there. Let’s allow it four weeks, shall we? And then there’s some processing time yet – two weeks? We don’t want them rushing it. Four maybe? Four weeks to do a really thorough job. And we want a thorough job, don’t we? Then four weeks back in the post. I think, Mr Doubler, you’re anxious ahead of time. I think if you haven’t heard anything back by the beginning of April, you can start to wonder if there’s a problem.’

‘What sort of problem?’ Doubler’s face was beset with a frown drawn from all sorts of unframed worries.

‘Failure of the post to arrive. Administration error their end. Lost in an in-tray. Then there’s the technical side. They don’t think your work is important. They think your findings are wrong. They don’t think it is worthy of a response.’

Doubler was alarmed by each one of these possibilities, but the sum of all the possibilities (why would he fail on one count when he could fail on so many?) had his head reeling.

Mrs Millwood smiled at him reassuringly. ‘But do you know how hopelessly futile it is to worry about any of these issues? We can’t worry about those things that are out of our control. You have your farm. You have your potatoes. You’ve made breakthroughs, Mr Doubler. And they’ll recognize that.’

Seeing her words land with little impact, Mrs Millwood reached for a more powerful weapon in her arsenal. ‘Do you think your Mr Clarke floundered at the first hurdle?’

Doubler thought hard. He imagined his great hero working by candlelight, scratching out his own findings with the worn stub of a pencil. He thought about the many generations of potatoes that man must have grown with no clear goal in mind, just the burning desire to improve the spud for the benefit of all. He thought about the achievement this represented when undertaken by a man with no education. Doubler was ashamed.

‘No, of course not. Mr Clarke overcame every obstacle.’

Mrs Millwood chuckled to herself. ‘He did, didn’t he? And here are you hanging your head in shame and you haven’t had a single setback yet!’

‘You’re right, of course, as always. And poor Mr Clarke didn’t have the benefit of a role model as I do. But, Mrs Millwood, you can understand my worries, can’t you? This is my life’s work. I’ve made some sacrifices along the way, too, and I want there to be some meaning, some purpose behind it all. I want my legacy.’

He stood up and went to look out of the window, clearing a small patch of condensation through which he could see the last of the winter sun as it chased across his fields.

‘When I die, Mrs Millwood, this work is all that will be left of me. My potatoes are my bequest. I have devoted every waking moment to them, and my most useful days are now well behind me. I want to leave my mark; I want to show the world it was worth it. I want to die knowing I made a difference. Is that too much to ask? Am I being greedy?’

Mrs Millwood thought carefully before answering. ‘Not greedy, but a little impatient perhaps. You have your health, Mr Doubler, and, what’s more, you still have plenty of time left to make a difference. You should count yourself among the fortunate ones.’ She paused, and Doubler, focused on the view from the window, missed the shadow of something fearful flickering across her eyes.

He turned to face her, looking at her quizzically as he waited for her to carry on. She shook her head a little sadly, a determined smile on her face, and she continued in a slightly different direction to the thought process she’d begun.

‘We don’t all get to do something of consequence, Mr Doubler, so you should be proud of everything you’ve achieved already. And who is to say this is your life’s work done yet? That will be determined when the time comes. Now, a short wait for the postman to deliver your answer is a small price to pay. Others suffer substantially more for less of a legacy, Mr Doubler.’

Mrs Millwood bit into a Granny Smith with great relish and Doubler, grateful once again for her deep wisdom, and quite used by now to his housekeeper having a much greater instinct than his own for matters pertaining to life, chose not to comment on her choice of apple.

Chapter 4

On the first Sunday of each month, Doubler’s only daughter, Camilla, liked to visit Mirth Farm with her family. This had been happening for many years. It was a habit that had been initiated by Camilla once she had her own children, as if she might be able to teach her father the correct procedure to hold a family together. One or two such lunches established a precedent, a couple more sealed it as a tradition, and this was then upheld by Camilla with great diligence and worn proudly as some sort of badge of filial duty.

‘It’s lovely to know that my kids are part of Dad’s life,’ she said to her brother, Julian, with a barely concealed stratum of aggression-tinged superiority that she rarely found cause to exhibit in her brother’s company.

Conversely, Julian, Doubler’s only son, was ambivalent about his role in the family. His associations with both family and Mirth Farm were linked to his childhood and now, an adult with adult responsibilities, his main preoccupation at the weekends was the management, from afar, of his costly ex-wife and the ongoing provision for two expensive children who found little to interest them on a potato farm, having been exposed to the sort of infancy that valued lawn much more highly than soil. Even if they had clamoured to visit their grandfather, Julian would have found an excuse to resist. At Mirth Farm, there was little escape from the immediacy of fatherhood and Julian felt exposed by this. In stark contrast, his own home provided any number of distractions and barriers that allowed the children and their father to coexist without confronting the enormity of each other’s failings.

To date, Julian’s involvement in his children’s upbringing had given him very little fulfilment other than the satisfaction of completing numbers in a column of the ledger of his mind. Nevertheless, he wore his paternal responsibilities quite heavily on his stooped shoulders and never was this more apparent than under the gaze of his father and sister. He didn’t quite understand Camilla’s need to imitate a conventional family so regularly, but nor did he quite trust his own emotional response to try to change or influence the pattern.

Camilla, however, had a very certain sense of what these occasions should feel like to her offspring, and even though her own childhood had failed to live up to many of the obligations she liked to associate with the institution, she insisted on imposing her own needs upon all of them. She made sure that Julian and his children joined them at least four times a year, and this Sunday was one of those prescribed occasions when Doubler’s son and daughter and his four grandchildren were due to visit Mirth Farm all together.

In his many years of voluntary isolation, Doubler had learnt to navigate the extremely narrow path that separates solitude from loneliness. One he sought; the other sought him. But never was he more certain that he would prefer to be alone than when his family descended upon him in this manner. Had Marie not gone in the way that she had, things would certainly have been different. Raising children was something that he and his wife had undertaken together, and he had no doubt that he would have approached grandparenthood with a similarly shared sense of commitment. But he had not sought the role of single parent with its double dose of duty and he eschewed all grandparental influence for fear that he would fall short twice. He deeply resented the additional pressure the seismic shift his wife’s departure had imposed upon him.

And anyway, Doubler valued his time on his own. He relished the silence, and his intellect needed very little stimulation other than that provided by his potatoes, by his carefully stocked cellar and by his daily lunch with Mrs Millwood. In truth, he had come to dread these family occasions, but he knew that the more normality he was able to depict, the sooner he would be left to his own devices for the ensuing month. This meant interacting as well as he could, feigning interest in those around him, keeping off the subjects that tended to provoke conflict and never, ever letting any of his family realize that he had chosen to live life as a recluse.

Julian wasn’t overly interested in the comings and goings of his father, Doubler knew that. But if Camilla had any idea of just how far, how conclusively, Doubler had removed himself from society, then she would be even more disappointed in him. As it was, Doubler felt his deceit had been reasonably successful, as his daughter believed quite vocally that her father was coping ‘as well as could be expected under the circumstances’.

One of the greatest pretences that Doubler could enact to give the impression of lucid stability was to provide a flawless Sunday lunch. Increasingly he found great comfort in cooking well and these visits gave him an opportunity to put his skills into practice. He could produce a roast for eight people without any one of them even realizing there was expertise involved. To his visitors, lunch meant trays of piping-hot food sliding from the Aga at 1 p.m. with very little sense of the many significant decisions that separated a good Sunday lunch from a great one. His trick was to have completed the preparation long before anyone arrived – even the gravy was made. All he had to do as his family gathered in the kitchen bothering him with details of their small lives was to take the beef out, put the Yorkshires in and finish off the gravy by adding the meat juices while the beef rested before carving.

As for the next generation (‘f3’, Doubler liked to joke to himself), he barely took a passing interest in his grandchildren. He was fascinated to see which, if any, of his own genetic characteristics had been passed on, but these could be observed with side glances as he went about his kitchen business. The trouble with humans, he had learnt, was that their life cycles were just too long to intervene in the genetics meaningfully. By the time the weak or undesirable traits fully emerged, the sample had probably already reproduced itself.

He suspected that Marie, had she not gone, would have been a very good, active grandmother, interested in their grandchildren’s school progress, their extra-curricular choices, their loss of teeth, their new haircuts or the little triumphs that everyone felt necessary to discuss but that Doubler found dull. Marie would have excelled at grandparenting, so Doubler didn’t dismiss his obligation altogether but nodded and listened and even made a small comment every now and then, feigning interest as best he could. What he was watching for in his grandchildren was something that might arrest his attention. A flash of genetic improvement that meant they weren’t going to just be dull incarnations of their parents.

Julian’s children, born to a generous portion of the same DNA as their cousins, had already been ruined by an expensive education. Though still small, they were haughty, just like their father, and their lack of stable family life meant they had quickly learnt to exploit their father’s guilt to their own advantage. That is what their private education had taught them: to see a weakness in an adult and to monetize it. This manifested in a steady access to costly things: overseas cricket and skiing trips, expensive electronic gadgetry and a sense of entitlement that would guarantee them good careers later in life.

Meanwhile, Camilla’s children were a little younger and it was hard to see who they might become in the years ahead. Doubler had some hope for them but expected their qualities to be presented to him like a gun dog’s prize. He didn’t yet like them enough to try to coax some good out of them or to shape the people they might become.

They arrived today in the usual flurry of coats and welly boots flung across the kitchen and Doubler, who prided himself on preserving some semblance of order within his home during the weekends, tidied up after them while putting the finishing touches to the lunch.

As they sat down to eat, Camilla smiled benevolently at all of them. ‘Isn’t this special!’ she said, just as she always did. ‘Being together as a family is what it’s all about, don’t you think?’

Her husband, a translucent man with thin lips that rested his face into a grimace, muttered some agreement, while Julian admonished his spoilt children, who were leaning over to help themselves to potatoes with their fingers. Scolded, they sat back in their chairs, growling their dissatisfaction and sharing that special camaraderie that unites siblings when they hate their parents.

Doubler carved, his heavy steel knife slipping through the beef and making light work of the task. Camilla served vegetables while Julian surveyed the room, assessing and valuing as he went.

‘So, Dad, heard anything from Peele recently?’

Doubler stopped, his knife suspended in the air. After a pause of several seconds, he resumed the carving, watching with renewed pleasure as blood seeped from the joint beneath him.

In order to create a larger stage on which to star, Julian was rocking his chair back on its rear legs, a habit Doubler found alarming. He watched his son intently as Julian asked, feigning a polite interest, ‘I heard he was considering buying this place off you?’

‘Wherever did you hear that?’ said Doubler, carving the beef with a deft movement.

‘Oh, around and about. I can’t recall. The golf course, I suspect. We’re both members. Idle talk is golfers’ talk,’ said Julian with a smirk.

Doubler addressed the beef, not his son. ‘I have not entered into any communication with Peele.’