A House Called Askival by Merryn Glover

and at night in her dreams she would sometimes grasp him and cry out, as if she were drowning.
    Her last project had been the updated edition of the Cookbook. Leota had intended one, all those years ago, but it had been swept aside in the aftermath of the tragedy, like everything else. Fifty years later, when James and Ellen left the hospital in Kanpur and settled in Landour, Ellen came across a dusty file of Leota’s notes and recipes in a missiongodown behind Morrison Church and got excited. She gathered a small team of editors for regular meetings in the Community Centre, and roamed the hillside collecting recipes from the motley crew of residents. There was the Dutch vegan woman with a shaved head and expertise on bean sprouts, the Anglo-Indian Brigadier who could name the joints of a wild boar (if only one was still allowed to shoot the damn things!), the fourth-generation khansamma from Goa bringing coconuts and a Portuguese twist, and the ancient spinsters, Dorothy and Iris Winshaft, who had never been to England but preserved the legend of it, as passed on by their mother, like a pickled egg. Their eyes misted over when they recalled Mummy’s Devilled Fowl and Celery Fritters, not to mention her Macaronie a la Teddie and – oh! – her Roly-Poly Pudding. The Book was unfinished when Ellen died.
    Along with her neatly labelled lists, she always had several small scraps of paper lying around which James knew to be her daily, scribbled, on-the-spot, Must Remember notes. They turned up in the pockets of her cardigans, in her Bible, on pin boards.
    phone Hill Queen
get Vicks
Bible Study prep
Paul Verghese for supper
write Ruth
    Despite Ruth’s rare and unsatisfactory replies, Ellen had continued to write to her and Hannah every Sunday afternoon. Tucking two sheets of blue airmail paper and two sheets of carbon under a page of her diary, she recorded the events of the week. It was cheerful, homey stuff. New paediatrician at the hospital, wonderful music this morning at Hindustani church, the dog roses in flower. No mention of James’ dark days or her own quiet struggle.
    When she had finished, she took the first airmail sheet and wrote at the top, ‘Dear Hannah and Derek’. As the years went on, she added Miriam, Elijah, Caleb, Noah, Damaris, Zachariah and, finally, Jethro.‘Such beautiful names,’ she would say, and James could hear the yearning in her voice. She only saw them once every three years on furlough and almost ate them alive with her hungry eyes. On another sheet of paper she answered any letters they had sent, of which there was always at least one. Hannah wrote regularly and had her brood organised on a “Write to Gramma and Grampa” rota.
    At the top of the second carbon copy, paler and a little smudged, Ellen wrote ‘Dear Ruth’. At the bottom, she paused. James would watch her trying to think what to say, sitting at her little fold-down secretaire in the corner of the living room, staring into the garden. She generally settled for something uncontroversial. ‘It’s great that you’re exploring again.’ ‘Hannah said you’re helping out at a women’s refuge.’ Or a veiled hint: ‘Hope this gets to you, as we’re not sure of your address right now.’ She had learnt not to ask for more. Expect little and you won’t be disappointed.
    That was the theory, anyway.
    By the time she died, most people around her were using email, but it was not for Ellen. She wanted the paper her loved ones had held, the handwriting, the enclosed photographs, the sticky artwork. She kept them all, the sacred bundles of her daughters’ letters, tied with ribbon and tucked into labelled shoeboxes. They dated back to the girls’ first weeks at Oaklands, when they could barely write and most of the page was taken up with a drawing.
    In the early years, she’d felt the welling of tears at each letter’s arrival, even