well. But you see, why did I have to eat chicken with a man I’d recently told I didn’t love? It’s always been other people who decide what’s kind and what’s rude. I’ve never been one of the deciders.”
“Was it true about not loving him anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
“You say that as if it’s always been clear to you, who you love and who you don’t.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘whom’?”
“I tend to pretend I don’t know that, in conversation. It’s so doggedly formal. ’Course, if I were editing you it’d be different. Paolo didn’t like my editing him. He didn’t like the way I’d done the food shopping, either. Why was it any of his business?”
Before she could stop him he’d opened the fridge, saying, “Dear God, what’s all this?” The ready meals were stacked in two piles of three, and on the upper shelf smaller cartons, of rice, couscous, prepared side dishes, sat alongside tubs of hummus, salsa, prepared garlic and chili pepper.
“I haven’t felt like cooking.”
He pulled out one of the meal boxes so as to be able to read the label. “Cumberland sausage with parmesan mash.”
“I haven’t felt like cooking.”
Paolo found a roasting dish, washed his hands, salted the birds, and then — taking a knife from the rack on the wall and a board from behind the bread bin — chopped onions and garlic cloves and added them to the tin. He rummaged in the fruit bowl, and sliced a lemon up and added the pieces. “There. As easy as those terrible cook-chill things.”
“I know. Why are you treating me as if I don’t know?”
He’d turned up the radio, and steamed the potatoes and boiled some green beans and they’d eaten lunch and talked about nothing, about world events.
Then he’d said, “Does the chef get a cup of coffee?” and he’d hung around, sitting on her sofa with his feet on the table, reading her weekend newspapers with faked raptness as if he hadn’t already read them at home. He mentioned, on leaving, that he’d left her a cauliflower that he’d bought at the farmers’ market, and some good cheese for the sauce.
Her father had found her later that afternoon, sitting on the kitchen floor, a destroyed cauliflower around her, bits of floret clutched in balled fists. She’d smashed it over and over, its cauliflower brain. He’d driven her to the village clinic, 150 yards, as Nina felt too dizzy to walk it. The doctor was grave and kind and elderly, technically long past retirement age; she’d been the family GP for a long time. Nina thought of her as another mother. She was Dr. Macfarlane but Nina had long since been urged to call her Alison.
“So what happened today?” Alison asked.
“Paolo brought me a cauliflower. I’ve never liked cauliflower. He was the one who liked it.”
It seemed as if her thoughts and preferences would always be tangled up with his, conjoined like Siamese twins, and she wasn’t wholly confident that her own would survive if surgicallydetached. Cooking was part of the problem, Nina told her; cooking was something too associated with the past and with domestic expectation. Chopping vegetables seemed too much like an act of faith in the future. Nina wondered if that’s how her father had seen things: he hadn’t cooked after Anna moved out, other than for the Sunday joint of beef, which sat under foil in the fridge for the rest of the week, awaiting slicing. Cooking, he said, was for people who didn’t have much else to do. Time was precious. He had ten thousand more books to read than years to read them in, and beans on toast and fruit from the bowl was a perfectly good dinner, thank you. He didn’t need to make a salad of the fruit and add elderflower cordial and mint and whatnot.
“It’s not going to be forever,” Nina said. “It’s just that I need to go through a period of food not mattering. Much more time is freed up for curling on the sofa in a ball.”
“Tell me more
“Was it true about not loving him anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
“You say that as if it’s always been clear to you, who you love and who you don’t.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘whom’?”
“I tend to pretend I don’t know that, in conversation. It’s so doggedly formal. ’Course, if I were editing you it’d be different. Paolo didn’t like my editing him. He didn’t like the way I’d done the food shopping, either. Why was it any of his business?”
Before she could stop him he’d opened the fridge, saying, “Dear God, what’s all this?” The ready meals were stacked in two piles of three, and on the upper shelf smaller cartons, of rice, couscous, prepared side dishes, sat alongside tubs of hummus, salsa, prepared garlic and chili pepper.
“I haven’t felt like cooking.”
He pulled out one of the meal boxes so as to be able to read the label. “Cumberland sausage with parmesan mash.”
“I haven’t felt like cooking.”
Paolo found a roasting dish, washed his hands, salted the birds, and then — taking a knife from the rack on the wall and a board from behind the bread bin — chopped onions and garlic cloves and added them to the tin. He rummaged in the fruit bowl, and sliced a lemon up and added the pieces. “There. As easy as those terrible cook-chill things.”
“I know. Why are you treating me as if I don’t know?”
He’d turned up the radio, and steamed the potatoes and boiled some green beans and they’d eaten lunch and talked about nothing, about world events.
Then he’d said, “Does the chef get a cup of coffee?” and he’d hung around, sitting on her sofa with his feet on the table, reading her weekend newspapers with faked raptness as if he hadn’t already read them at home. He mentioned, on leaving, that he’d left her a cauliflower that he’d bought at the farmers’ market, and some good cheese for the sauce.
Her father had found her later that afternoon, sitting on the kitchen floor, a destroyed cauliflower around her, bits of floret clutched in balled fists. She’d smashed it over and over, its cauliflower brain. He’d driven her to the village clinic, 150 yards, as Nina felt too dizzy to walk it. The doctor was grave and kind and elderly, technically long past retirement age; she’d been the family GP for a long time. Nina thought of her as another mother. She was Dr. Macfarlane but Nina had long since been urged to call her Alison.
“So what happened today?” Alison asked.
“Paolo brought me a cauliflower. I’ve never liked cauliflower. He was the one who liked it.”
It seemed as if her thoughts and preferences would always be tangled up with his, conjoined like Siamese twins, and she wasn’t wholly confident that her own would survive if surgicallydetached. Cooking was part of the problem, Nina told her; cooking was something too associated with the past and with domestic expectation. Chopping vegetables seemed too much like an act of faith in the future. Nina wondered if that’s how her father had seen things: he hadn’t cooked after Anna moved out, other than for the Sunday joint of beef, which sat under foil in the fridge for the rest of the week, awaiting slicing. Cooking, he said, was for people who didn’t have much else to do. Time was precious. He had ten thousand more books to read than years to read them in, and beans on toast and fruit from the bowl was a perfectly good dinner, thank you. He didn’t need to make a salad of the fruit and add elderflower cordial and mint and whatnot.
“It’s not going to be forever,” Nina said. “It’s just that I need to go through a period of food not mattering. Much more time is freed up for curling on the sofa in a ball.”
“Tell me more
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