Before and After (29 page)

“So,
has Will recovered from his shock?” I said.

“I
reckons so. He’m beat me at arrows last night,” Jace said with a grin.

Jace
wandered out the back door to sit on the steps and lit up. A breeze wafted through the kitchen, making Nelson look up suspiciously. He glared at me, and shuffled around a bit.

It
did seem very unfair, I was the only person I knew who had two bad tempered pets. Nelson had been in this house since I was a baby, and had very over developed ideas of who was actually in charge. He was a lovely looking bird, and would occasionally, when the wind was blowing from the west, deign to perch on my shoulder and gently nuzzle my ear. He was, if I am truthful, just as likely to take a nip at you. He also spoke, usually at really inopportune moments. He had repeated (ad nauseam) at my parents funeral wake, “bugger off you lot” in his loud screechy voice, which reduced Nancy and me to tears of mingled grief and laughter, but I don’t think the multitude of grieving aunts and cousins, not to mention the vicar, was impressed.

Baxter,
on the other hand, whom I’d had great hopes for, were slowly being eroded. He was a westie, given to me by Nancy for a birthday present. A lovable bundle of white fur with two boot button eyes. He too, was distinctly gruff in his manner. A bit like a very old man in a gentleman’s club in St James’s, who discovers that some young cad is sitting in his seat. Oh well, perhaps now summer was nearly here they’d both mellow out a bit. Oh God, I was sounding like the boys, ‘
mellow out’
? I went to shut the kitchen door. Perhaps the fumes of Jace’s joint were slowly but surely addling my brain.

From
the side window I saw Baxter pulling Nancy along on his lead. Nancy had gathered a bunch of flowers, and was clasping them to her chest with one hand, whilst allowing the dog to drag her up the hill. Her silver hair had completely come undone in the wind, and was blowing wildly around her face, and her long silk scarf was in danger of throttling her. In fact, she looked pretty much like everybody’s idea of an aging bohemian: amber necklaces, home spun skirt, flapping sandals and all. That’s where the surprise came, I think. She
looked
like an old hippie but
spoke
like the leader of the sensible tribe from planet kindness.

She
was my mother’s older sister, and had somehow never left Penmorah after my parents funeral fifteen years ago, for which I was profoundly thankful.

Nelson
shuffled on his perch, and then gave a screech. I knew what that meant, and sure enough, two seconds later, the phone rang. I never knew if the parrot had supernatural abilities, or maybe his hearing was so acute he could pick up on noises inaudible to us mere humans. Whatever it was, it was disconcerting.

“Hello,
Fin, darling. What’s the weather like in glorious Cornwall?”

It
was the angel of darkness, otherwise known as my manager, sparring partner, guru, and general all round bossy boots, Harry.

The
only reason he wanted know what the weather was like so that he could taunt me with the game. The game involved him trying to catch me out. I had to give the correct lunch time soup to fit the general weather and circumstances of our day. You know, if it was a perfect autumn day where the crisp golden leaves were drifting round the foot of the beech trees, willing you to be five years old again and roll around in them, and there was just a hint of chill in the deep blue sky, well, that was easy. It had to be wild mushroom, didn’t it?

“Hmm,
let me think.” I looked out of the window again, noting the scudding clouds and the pale blue sky. “Oh, OK, got it. It’s watercress soup, with a hefty dollop of cream swirled round in the middle, alright?”

“Hmm,
well, not a
lot
of thought went into that one did it? Anyway, I’ll let it go, just because I’m that sort of magnanimous person –“

I
snorted derisively.

“I’ll
have you know, I
could
have chosen the soup that Napoleon, when he was pining away on Elba craved, which was his childhood chestnut and goats milk concoction.” I said tartly.

I
like to throw in a bit of food history with Harry, so he doesn’t think I’m a complete idiot. Actually, in a fit of authenticity I’d made it once. It was truly disgusting.

“
– and I am afraid my darling I am the bearer of bad news.”

Oh
God, the last time Harry had said that I’d had a particularly gorgeous clam chowder rejected. I’d spent month getting the recipe and quantities right, not to mention working to a ridiculously low budget.

“Come
on then, out with it, don’t leave me in suspenders. It’s that bloody cheese and spinach pie, isn’t it? I
told
you that –

“No.
No, it’s not the pie. It’s worse than that.” Harry sounded horribly smug, and not unamused.

“I’ll
thcweam and thcweam until I’m thick, just tell me! “ I said warningly.

“Oh,
alright, alright Violet Elizabeth. He wants to come down and meet you.”

“Who
does?” I said.

“The
TV chef, that’s who.”

I
detected a note of glee in Harry’s voice.

“I
hope you told him that it was impossible,” I said, sternly.

“Well,
no not really, you see, he’s
insisting
.” Harry said, trying to smother the laughter in his voice.

“Well,
he can insist all he bloody well likes, the answer is no. I’m not running some bloody B&B for bloody TV bloody chefs, am I?”

Harry
snorted with amusement.

“No,
Harry, I mean it. He is
not
coming here.”

It
was as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

“The
thing is Fin, this is a really,
really
large contract for us, and well, he is the star, and he’s
insisting
. Anyway it’s not for a week or so. Besides, it’ll do you some good. Shake you up a bit. You never know, you might like him. Besides, you and Nancy have loads of rooms, so it’s not exactly a problem is it?”

We
ended the conversation with me accusing Harry of being a swine and a bounder and him blowing kisses down the phone to me.

Nelson
cocked his head on one side and I went to stroke him. He ducked his head down appreciatively as I ruffled his neck feathers.

“Oh
Nelson, I don’t want the bloody TV chef here. What shall I do?” I whispered.

Nelson
winked at me and continued to bob up and down.

It’s
not that I am averse to company, it’s just that I know from experience what cooking is like with another person. Hell – to sum it up in one word. It’s not that I’m a control freak, you understand, although I do like things the way I like them – but, hey, who doesn’t?

I’m
not very scientific, or that hygienic, some prissy fools would say, having a dog and a bird in the kitchen with me. But I get along fine by myself. I have notebooks scattered all over the kitchen and I make comments in them as I see fit, and then and only then, when everything is right, I’ll write the recipe up.

Harry
once had to do it for me and swears that it drove him mad, trying to decipher my handwriting and wondering about the comments I’d written in the margin.
Add the bishop’s nose
for instance had nothing to do with the clergy, it was the name of the local cheese I was using. Same with
knobby russet
– it was just a reminder to use some more of the apples of that name. I hope you gather from this description that I am not, and never will be, an elegant Elizabeth David genius in the kitchen, but more a bumbling amateur that has struck lucky.

TV
chefs wouldn’t stop for an hour to separate Nelson and Baxter from a near death grapple, or want to listen to Nancy reminisce about the time she met Quentin Crisp. TV bloody chefs would want to talk about portion control and fat content.

“Bloody,
bloody TV chefs,” I said indignantly to Nelson as I banged around to make Nancy a cup of tea and to find a vase to put the flowers in that I’d seen her carrying.

I
heard Nancy and Jace laughing outside the kitchen door, and I carried out Nancy’s tea to her, and joined them sitting down on a bench that was against the sunny granite wall of Penmorah House.

“
Thanks, Fin. We had a lovely walk, we went the cliff top way, Baxter chased two rabbits, but luckily did
not
catch them.” She said, swapping me the tea for her bunch of wild flowers and grasses, and untangling her scarf and necklaces.

I
bent down to stroke Baxter. He wriggled under the bench and lay on his side. He obviously considered that he had earned a well deserved rest. I pulled some burrs from his coat, and he deigned to lick my hand, but then settled back to his snooze.

Jace
handed Nancy the joint and she puffed in contented silence for a while. It always struck me as being hilarious that Nancy at the age of seventy had none of my anti-dope feelings, but then I was a mere stripling of thirty eight.

Perhaps
it was something I’d grow into?

I
broke the reverie by complaining bitterly about the bloody TV chef. Jace and Nancy laughed.

“Don’t
worry we’ll put him in the yellow room, the bed is very lumpy and if it rains, the window leaks,” Nancy said comfortably.

“Yeah,
and I’ll get him slaughtered at The Ram, an’ he’ll be that hungover he won’t want to cook,” Jace said helpfully.

I
laughed and relaxed. The granite wall behind me was warm to the touch, the honeysuckle was out and an early fat bee was buzzing around – how bad could it be? I could handle a jumped up chef for a couple of days. I leant down and tweaked a leaf of lavender, and pinched it under my nose. Lavender was meant to help when you were feeling stressed – it may or it may not, of course, but it certainly smells good.

Nancy
finished her tea and we all walked into the kitchen together chattering about the beach picnic. Jace was persuading Nancy to try on his wet suit and brave the rollers with him, and she was happy to be try and be persuaded.

We’d
just got inside when Nelson spied Baxter. He flapped his wings, as a prelude to a launch upon him and screeched at the top of his voice “Little bastard!”

We
all rounded on Baxter and shut him outside and went to calm the parrot down.

He
glared at us all balefully and then added to his already very unsuitable vocabulary. “Bloody TV Chefs! Bloody TV chefs!” he crowed, looking very, very pleased with himself.

Oh
dear.

Chapter
Two

Some marriages are made in heaven. My parents, for instance. Other examples I could site would be peas and mint, chicken and mushroom, Edward and Mrs Simpson, bacon and eggs, strawberries and balsamic vinegar, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, beef and horseradish, Richard and Judy, oh you get the picture. But onions? Hmm, well, maybe something cheesy and herby. Rosemary, perhaps? Although it’s not my favourite, as it can overwhelm things very easily.

I
glanced over at my kitchen wall full of cookery books, to get some inspiration. I strongly resisted my favourite mediaeval recipe book, given to me by my friend Martha, whose intriguing first recipe started with “First pluck your peacock…” and pulled down a Mediterranean vegetable book and started to skim through it.

Baxter’s
ivory nails made a clicking sound on the wooden floor as he came over to sit next to me. With a sigh, he settled himself down. Nelson, for once was quiet, and the kitchen was very peaceful. The sun was fading and I knew that it would get chilly quite soon, but I was too comfortable to get up and put the heating on. I made do with sliding my bare feet under Baxter’s warm little body. Without the radio on, or anyone talking I could hear the sound of the sea, which I know to anyone living in the centre of a city must sound like bliss. It was, on the whole. But on a stormy day in November when the waves were crashing and the sky was dumping water on us, I would gladly have exchanged a little bit of inner city warmth for the drama and wetness of Cornwall. But, today was lovely. Or would have been, if I could get the niggle out of my mind about the bloody chef.

I
leant back and my head fitted neatly into a dent in the wall, known by us as the Martyr’s Memorial. It had been caused by my father once demonstrating to my mother how he’d bowled someone out. The cricket ball had slipped from his hand, crashing into a very nasty picture of the martyrdom of St Anne, smashing it into a hundred splinters, hence the name.

Penmorah
was crammed full of these sorts of memories. My fathers walking stick was still propped up in the flag stoned hall, as if any minute its master was about to claim it. The stick was standing sentry duty, ready to swish out at the stinging nettles in the lane, or thwack the thistles any moment it was asked. I’d taken it with me on a walk a few times, but it hadn’t felt right.

Nancy
came into the kitchen, with a large basket of laundry. I jumped up to help her, but she shooed me away.

“You’re
working, aren’t you?” she said.

“Hardly.
I’m just skimming through a few books for inspiration. What would
you
like to eat with roast onions?” I said, idly turning the pages.

“Oh,
darling, I do wish you wouldn’t ask me that sort of thing. You know I’m just a cheese and pickle sandwich sort of person!” Nancy said, stuffing washing into the ever open maw of the machine.

Indeed,
that was true. Well, to be really honest with you, we both were. People who didn’t know me very well assumed that I spent my life in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. I mean,
obviously
I did cook, but usually by the end of the day if I’d been working on a recipe, I’d tasted so much of the damn stuff, that the last thing I wanted was a meal. And as I made Nancy do a lot of tasting as well, we were both far more likely to be found at The Ram, with a pint and a packet of crisps than sitting down to dinner.

Nancy
wandered away, her dark brown eyes gleaming with determination for her next task, which could well be a spot of gardening, or her painting, or the never ending biography that she was writing of a very obscure French woman artist called Angelique Flavell. The fact that
nobody
had ever heard of this painter, and there was only one remaining picture of hers left in the world in no way dimmed Nancy’s enthusiasm for the project. It caused Harry endless amusement, and he had promised Nancy that if she ever finished it, he
personally
would publish it. (Apparently Angelique had led a scandalous life, revolving around absinthe and illegitimate babies and Harry thought he’d make a killing by updating it and turning it into a sort of modern day bodice ripper.) But as she’d been writing it for the past ten years, I don’t think there was any danger of that happening.

I
heard the fax machine whirring into life from my office off the kitchen. It had once been a still room, then had become a general dumping ground for wellington boots, fishing tackle, painting gear, picnic paraphernalia, broken croquet sets and the all round general stuff found in a house like this. I had, in a fit of energy, some years ago cleared it out, painted it a pale primrose, put up shelves and installed an office. I had to have help though, with the setting up of the computer – why is it that all instruction manuals are written in impenetrable gobbledygook? Jace had finally cracked it, scornfully
not
by reading the book, but by telling me that he had a ‘feel’ for computers, and that really I should have bought an apple. (Nancy had to explain to me that he meant an
Apple
, not a knobby russet, much to all round general hilarity at my lack of knowledge.) When the damn machine wouldn’t behave itself, Nancy could normally sort it out, telling me to go away and calm down and to come back in ten minutes, muttering, “
Just
like your father, absolutely no patience at all!”

I
picked up the fax and studied it.

From:
The desk of Harry Richardson.

To:
Finisterre Spencer

Fin
darling, I know that you’ll be spitting feathers, but Oliver Dean wants to come and see you on June 14th. That’s a Friday, and I think he’s expecting to stay for about a week. Don’t worry, he seems very nice, try and catch his show on Channel 4 tonight. Anyway, it’s weeks and weeks away, so it gives you long enough to get over your bad mood about him! I might pop down too… so light the chandelier, dust off the silver goblets and sprinkle the rose petals! Don’t put him in the yellow room, will you? Love to Nancy, and a smack to Baxter. Big kisses, Harry xxx .

P.S.
Don’t forget to tell me all about the beach picnic. Who’s going to get off with Jace this year?

Hmm,
well. The yellow room was out, then. I crumpled the fax up and chucked in the bin. There was no way I’d be watching Oliver bloody Dean tonight anyway, channel 4 was out of the question down here. What we got instead was a shadow image of French TV, interesting in a sort of impressionistic sort of way, but not actually watchable.

There
was a toot outside the kitchen door, and then the cheery sound of Richard calling my name. Baxter burst into life and did a fair imitation of a guard dog, giving excited little barks with his tail wagging, whilst Nelson shifted on his perch, screeching. Richard was a flame haired boy, who delivered (amongst other things) shellfish, fish (caught legally and or not), ice, and his mother’s clotted cream.

“Afternoon,
Fin. ‘Ave I missed Jace, then? I wanted to ask ‘im summat – get down you little bugger! Anyway, I ‘spect I’ll catch ‘im at The Ram tonight.”

He
heaved a parcel on the table, and I noticed with amusement that he too was wearing a pair of the Italian loafers. He caught my glance and did a little soft shoe shuffle.

“Right
proper job, aren’t they?” he said, proudly.

Hmm,
well yes, I suppose they were. At least they would be if they were on a linen suited man from Milan, wearing shades and a posh pong – but frankly, on Richard, no. The thing about Cornwall is that we are, to put it mildly, just a tad backwards on the fashion front. Some of us had natural style, Nancy, and Jace for instance, but the rest of us were rubbish at any attempt towards sartorial elegance. Comfort and weather proof is what we aimed at, not knock ‘em dead glamour. I habitually wore a sweat shirt and a pair of jeans, and considered myself fairly well dressed compared to the other residents of Port Charles. So you can but imagine what the rest of them wore…Although I did buck my ideas up a bit when Harry came down, or if I went out (which was rarely, and only when forced to go to London to sample the delights of a new restaurant that I could claim as research and then constituted the perennial but ultimately quite boring Little Black Dress).

“What’s
in the parcel then?” I asked, gesturing towards the table.

“
Summat for you to cook for the picnic, an’ I got yer prawns in the van. Shall I put ‘em on the bill?” Richard asked.

I
thanked him and switched the kettle on. The boys usually stopped for tea and a chat, but it seemed that Richard was in a hurry. Well, as much of a hurry as anyone was in Cornwall. Perhaps we were all twinned with a county in Mexico where the manana philosophy ruled supreme. It was fun to watch visitors from London get twitchy in shops here, as they had to wait for the shop assistant to finish a leisurely conversation with a friend before they got served. Some visitors seemed on the verge of having a stroke as they waited for the interminable (and mainly indecipherable) chat to finish. But it was hard to complain as the shop assistant invariably turned with a big guileless smile on their face, innocence radiating from their eyes and said, “Now then my lover, what is it you’m be wantin’?”

Before
Richard left, he jerked his head towards my office, and looked enquiringly at me.

“Oh,
go on then,” I said, as I watched him squirm slightly.

Richard
had been using my computer for some time, going on the internet. Other than assuring me that it was nothing ‘smutty’ I had no idea what he was doing on there. I suppose I could have found out, but I wasn’t that curious. If pushed I would guess he was in some chat room or something. Hell, what did I know? He could well have been looking up Wall Street stocks and bonds, although with a limited income from flogging fish it seemed unlikely. This time he was very quick, just about long enough to send an e-mail.

“Cheers
then, Fin. See you at the picnic.”

I
waved him off, and settled back to the cookery book.

The
boys were my lifeline to the world outside that sold any ingredient that couldn’t be found in the Port Charles store – which meant practically anything. The store was a dismal place, it doubled as a post office, and seemed only to stock plastic bread and sweaty processed cheese. Oh, and of course, pre-packaged pasties for the tourists, as they would certainly be the only people who bought them. So the boys were essential. They were the stars of my work really. They left no stone unturned to find exactly what I needed. I suppose with modern technology I could have ordered on-line and had obscure spices delivered to me straight from Fortnum and Mason, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I
got the gossip with the boys, as well as a feeling of continuity. I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Penmorah was still considered to be the ‘Big House’. Certain things were expected of us here… even though we no longer sat in the named pew for us in the church, all of that had died out with my grandparents. We didn’t even employ anyone from the village any more, although my parents had kept a skeleton staff here, they had long gone. When I was a child, I was addresses as Miss Fin, but that too, thank God, had died out. Everyone knew in the village of the appalling debt I had inherited and had been kind beyond words. But there was still a tattered remnant of expectation from me. I had shrunk from it, till I realised that it was something I just couldn’t shake off. If my parents were still alive it would be different, well, everything would be, but they weren’t, and I just had to get on with it.

I
pushed the book back on the shelf, and went to find Nancy. I wasn’t in the mood for onions.

I
eventually tracked her down to the library, a room we rarely used. We still call it that, even though the majority of the books are gone, long sold to a dealer in Falmouth to help pay for a new damp course. The empty acres of mahogany shelves looked reprovingly at me.

She
was lying on her back, breathing heavily.

“Nancy,
what
are
you doing?” I asked in alarm. It looked as though she was recovering from some strenuous activity, but I couldn’t imagine what.

“Just
finishing off my deep breathing after yoga, you must try it Fin, it’s so invigorating!”

Nancy
was twice my age, and at least as twice as active. It made me feel like a lumpy schoolgirl. I sank into a sofa, and Baxter jumped up on my lap, trying to look ingratiatingly at me. He and I had had this tussle many, many times. I don’t approve of dogs on furniture, but it’s so exhausting stopping them all the time.

Nancy
was holding one nostril closed and breathing deeply out with the other one. At least, I
think
that’s what she was doing. It was quite hard to tell.

She
gave a big stretch and sat up, gracefully raising her arms above her head.

“Oh,
that feels better. What did Richard bring?”