James was again fantasising if he was 45 again what could he not do for this woman but she interrupted his dreams by announcing that dinner was served.
The food was exquisite, Scottish smoked salmon and slivers of lemon served with wafer thin slices of brown bread. An ice cold bottle of Chablis was the perfect wine for the occasion. Next Alison served an orange and grapefruit sorbet.
The main course was a thick fillet of Aberdeen Angus beef served with broccolli, courgettes, roast and duchess potatoes and roast parsnips. A bottle of Nuits St George 1984 complimented this main course.
Bombe Alaska was then offered and although he knew he should have refused this too was accepted with a glass of Sauternes.
A good slice of Stilton and a glass of vintage port brought an excellent meal to it's conclusion.
During the meal Alison had told him of an adventure she and her husband had enjoyed some five years previously. In Borneo her husband had insisted on meeting up with a native who had been in the Malay Rangers during the Emergency in the late 1940's early 1950's against the Chinese and Malayan communist terrorists. Sunghi Mohammed Dhou was not the head man of his tribe. Alison knew that he had to be at least 70 but he looked no older than 30. It was a tribal secret but as Alison husband, Mortimer had saved this mans life in a guerrilla ambush this secret of longevity was given to them.
It had to do with Oriental fruits that were equally well know to the West being fermented with a particular grass. On returning home Mortimer laughed off the idea even going as far as suggesting that it was not his old friend that he had met but the son or even grandson of his friend who had over the years digested the history of the Malay rangers to the extent that he believed himself to be his father/grandfather. Mortimer did not take the elixir. Alison, by her own admission, being vain and not wanting to lose her sexual attractiveness had, in secret, her once being a commercial Chemist, managed to distil the elixir and she had been taking this aid to youthfulness once a month ever since. Unfortunately Mortimer had died of old age, in fact, as Alison was now on the port, she admitted that he was in the midst of an amazing sexual excess when, in Alison's less than her normal Oxbridge English suggested that "My dear old husband, instead of Coming, he Went!!"
