I SMELLED trouble immediately upon smelling the joss sticks. And the sight of Louise Robinson in sari and with red splodge applied to forehead confirms that we are in for the worst. I dimly remember snatches of the early conversation. “An Indian dinner . . . done everything ourselves . . . Richard and I . . . such fun . . . wonderful new book . . . makes everything so straightforward.” Then much later, “I thought the chicken came out rather better than the fish. I am sure it shouldn’t have crumbled like that but anyway it tasted good. There’s rather a lot of chappaties left.”
The chappaties are discussed again after the evening is over, for dinner parties are always followed by postmortems. Louise and Richard are on the whole very happy with the evening, still wonder why the chappaties did not work, and decide that next time they will use another recipe. Phil and Ann in their taxi home are rather more caustic. Ann thinks Louise was silly to have attempted her own chappaties without a proper Indian oven. And they both agree “Indian” was much too complicated a dinner to undertake. They decide that when the Robinsons come back to them on the 23rd, they will do an Italian dinner: Ann has a new book which . . .
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