The Devil's Larder (7 page)

O
UR NEIGHBOUR
’
S
husband rented a strip of land and an angling hut by the river. He had no children or dog, but he had six
fruit trees, some currant bushes and a plot of meadow, where he grew vegetables. I used to pass him on the way to school. In that uncertain light, he seemed the loneliest of working men, sometimes
tackling the grey-brown soil with his trenching spade, sometimes sitting on the angling bench with a hand line or a short rod, sometimes struggling up the river bank with his two buckets to
irrigate his vegetables, never idle, never anything but occupied, and frightening.

He’d still be on his land when I came home from school, limping on his gammy leg, and always wearing sky-blue jeans so that, even in the grimmer half-light of the afternoon, he could not
disappear. I never saw him walking to or from his home. My sisters said he slept in the angling hut, washed in the river, lived on what he grew, wee’d on his lettuces, crapped on his greens
and poisoned strangers with his crops. His wife, for reasons more weighty than her loathing of his muddy boots, had not allowed him in the house for months.

Sometimes, when he caught my eye, I’d have to wave in reply, I’d have to smile – embarrassed, I suppose – despite what my parents said about avoiding him and not
accepting any fruit or vegetables. Embarrassment is worse than pain, for boys.

One afternoon when I’d had to wave at him in that last year before I went away, he pulled an apple off his tree and threw it at me, high, uphill, across the meadow fence. I caught it with
one hand, the crispest catch, the smack of flesh on flesh, of skin on peel. Another time, when he was working near the road, he dropped some berries into my palm. At other times, it was a handful
of his manac beans or ripe shrubnuts. And then, occasionally, he’d give me something to take home ‘for the table’, some radishes perhaps, or a lettuce head, or – once
– a fine, fat perch he’d caught.

I never tasted anything, of course. I smiled, I waved, I shouted thanks. I took his berries and his beans, his vegetables, his fish, and dropped them from the railway bridge onto the line, a
half-minute from our house, then wiped away the poison and the smell of them on snatches of wet grass. At home, I’d dream of him, bad dreams. A train was hurtling down the railway line. The
blood and sap of lettuce, carrots, fish and fruit were splashed across its windscreen and its wheels.

Once, though, he caught me off guard. He must have known I’d rather die than not do what he asked. He pulled a baby carrot from the row, snapped off its plume, wiped (half) the earth off
on his sky-blue trouser leg, and made me eat it there and then, while he was watching from the far side of the fence. ‘You have to eat it from the earth, at once,’ he said. ‘Or
else the flavour flies away. Go on. This is the best.’ And he was right. I put his dirty carrot in my mouth. I chewed, expecting bitterness. But nothing could be more delicate and sweet than
that frail root. It is a taste that’s stayed with me for thirty years. A carrot from the shop could not compete. It had to be the earth, I thought, that tasted good.

And so I took to finding new ways to and from the school, and I was thankful when, at the end of the year, I moved to the boarding college and never had to pass the meadow except in
father’s car. I don’t believe I saw our neighbour’s husband for a year or two, and by then he had forgotten me – so I was not obliged to wave or smile again or throw his
produce on to the railway line.

I grow carrots of my own these days. I draw them from the soil before they’re quite mature and eat them there and then, just like I once did at my neighbour’s husband’s fence,
fresh-pulled and half disguised by earth. But there’s no special taste to mine. They seem shop bought and ordinary, according to my son. So now I wonder what his secret was. If it was not the
flavour of the soil that made the difference, then perhaps it was the taste of fear and shame. I can’t deny that he had frightened me or that I’d cheated him. Even in the grimmer
half-light of the afternoon, I cannot make our neighbour’s husband disappear.

But my son is young enough for simple explanations. I’ve told him how the man was calling from the far side of the fence, the stooping back, the snapping plume of leaves, and how the earth
was (half) removed. It could have been his gammy trouser leg that made the carrots delicate and sweet, my son suggests (for loneliness is bound to have its taste). That one swift wipe across the
sky-blue cloth, he says, had left its dressing on the root.

H
ER DAUGHTERS
wouldn’t eat. She tried to bribe them with their favourite foods. They said they had no favourite foods. She threatened them with
early bed, pocket-money fines, extra duties round the house, less television. That didn’t work. She feared her daughters more than they feared her. So, finally, she sought advice by
contacting a childcare magazine. Its doctor wrote: ‘Do not forget that mealtimes should be fun. Once your daughters begin to enjoy the occasion, they will also start to love the food. Do not
impose unnecessary rules, which blunt their pleasure. Try to make the food entertaining to look at and amusing to eat.’

So mother sat her children down in easy chairs in front of the television and brought their dinners in on trays. She left them to enjoy themselves. They let their food go cold. She let them take
their lunches out to the playhouse in the wood and eat with their fingers, like runaways. They threw their meals into the bushes. She tried giving them only desserts to eat. They just picked at
them, even though she’d marked a smiley face on the custard skin of one fruit tart with chocolate pips. She prepared pasta dishes from five different shapes and many colours, but her
daughters only tried the colours and the shapes they liked and wouldn’t even taste the rest.

Finally, furious with herself, exasperated by her girls, she made a pizza and scored an angry face into the cheese topping with the handle of a knife. And just to show her, the daughters ate it,
every crumb. Eating mother’s anger was good fun.

I’
LL COME TO LUNCH
, but only if you promise me that there’ll be other guests, old friend. We’ve spent too many years at that oak table
in your yard with just ourselves for company. And I’ve grown bored. Enough, I say. Let’s change our habits or let’s call a halt. We die too soon.

I see you wince. But, no, I’m bored by me, not you. You always were the perfect host, a listener. And I have been the less-than-silent guest for far too long. I’ve heard my anecdotes
too many times. I can’t resist repeating jokes and telling you again my views on art or gardening or God or politics or chemistry or how you comb your hair. I have a reputation, I’m
mortified to say, for being the life and soul of any gathering. I’ll speak my mind on anything, especially when my tongue’s been loosened by the grape.

Excuse me if I blame the wine. Good honest wine, the sort you buy, is cheap, I know, but there are disadvantages to such outstanding discounts. A better wine, even one of modest price, might
silence me while I appreciate the smell and flavour or inspect the details on the label. A good wine encourages a little placid introspection. But a bargain wine, in my case anyway, achieves the
opposite. It makes me tedious. I am unsettled by the aftertaste. I feel I have to talk to pay you back for asking me, week after week, to share a bottle and some food. This is my only contribution,
as you know, because my finances do not allow me to pay you back in other ways. Besides, you look so pained by any silences. I can see it in your eyes; they’re darting to and fro, alarmed,
demanding that I rescue you by saying something, anything. If I don’t talk, you count the lunch a failure. But, if I do all the talking, then I hate myself. And that can’t be the proper
purpose – or the desired outcome – of a lunch, that your one guest should go away with a lesser opinion of himself and just a little drunker than when he arrived (for I must admit I
generally prepare myself for you by stopping off on the way for an aperitif at the Passenger Bar and, occasionally, if we’ve exhausted our acquaintance more quickly than expected, I console
myself on my way home with a digestif there as well).

So here is my proposal. Let’s stretch ourselves, expand the pleasures of the lunch, put extra chairs out in the yard. I have a friend whom you would like, a cousin actually, though there
does not exist between us any of the reticence that normally you find in families. No, I think you would enjoy our badinage. And he would be a better guest than me, as he is younger and his
comments will be fresh. Moreover, he will welcome the attentions of your cats. I have not dared to say before, but I am not a felophile. I do not take exception to the distant view of wildlife in
your yard, but I am not happy, let’s admit, to have the creatures seeking comfort in my lap or exposing their neat parts below stretched tails as they patrol the table top in search of
titbits on our plates.

I’m touched, of course, to see how unselfconscious and indulgent your love of cats can be. But this is something that I trust my cousin is better placed to appreciate than me.

You’d like his wife as well, I think. And she would introduce to your table something that I have missed these last few years, the female outlook on the world. She can express herself most
cleverly and in a teasing way that I have never found misjudged or tiresome. Perhaps I ought to implicate you in a secret that might amuse you covertly if we are ever gathered at your table. My
cousin’s wife and I are ancient friends. She visits me alone. I am, she says, her private rogue. I’m sure you see how she would benefit our lunches.

There is a problem. There always is. My cousin and his wife have greater appetites than us. This is not greed, of course. I am referring to their higher expectations of a meal and their
discernment.

I have, you know, been more than happy to settle for the simple compromises that you make with food. A good farm cheese and decent bread, together with a choice of pickles and some fruit, are
more than adequate for me. I make my satisfaction clear to you each week by always leaving something untouched on my plate. The fact that sometimes you present me with a cheese that is not fresh
that day or with some supermarket bread has never been an issue in my eyes. I know your thoughts. You do not like to see good produce go to waste, no matter that the pickles have been hardened in
the sun or the nectarines are bruised and floury. Where would our planet be if food of lesser quality were thrown out? The world would starve.

But, still, you ought to know that my cousin and his wife have wilder tastes. Why would they stir themselves to make the expedition to your ungarnished part of town if they were not beckoned by
the prospect of some treats? Do not bankrupt yourself. Some decent pasta would serve well. Or fish. It’s always easy to get fish. Our little port sustains more than sixty fishing boats.
You’d be surprised by all the choice of species. Equally, the hunting season has begun; it would be simple to lay your hands on some nice game.

I see you wince again. The cooking is too much for you, of course. Well, here’s a compromise. If you are short of energy – I sympathize with that, old friend; men of our age cannot
be expected to work in kitchens – then there’s a way to save your legs and keep your blood pressure down. You are not short of cash, I know. I’ve seen, by chance, your pension
slip. You’ve worked for over forty years to pay for your retirement and to enjoy an unstinting quality of life. So, now, be generous to yourself. You are deserving of some luxury. Let’s
put an end to lunches in your yard. It is, anyway, I have to say, a little damp and draughty there. The table and the drains are far too close to each other. I always feel your bread and cheese
have just an edge of borrowed pungency. The ripeness I detect is sometimes inappropriate. And, when the instant coffee comes, the smell is blunted, don’t you think?

We could move into the house, of course, as we have done from time to time when it is raining. But it’s a little dark in there – and you would be obliged to tidy up if there were
guests less liberal than me. No, you should take a taxi to that little restaurant, the Saint Celice, behind my apartment block. Invite the three of us. Four is the perfect number. It is a pity,
obviously, that none of us could volunteer to share the burden of the bill. Life’s inequalities are always an embarrassment. But I’d be happy to meet you there at any time, as would my
cousin and his wife. We are good friends with the proprietor and so you could be certain of a welcome and the grandest meal. Good wine as well. No table cats. Celice is the patron saint of cooks.
She graces only the best of kitchens. So, you see, I am proposing something less simple and informal than we have been used to, something less confined at least.

I’ll miss your charming yard, of course, but I think we’ve reached an age when we can be indulgent and immoderate without fear of reproach. We have to change our ways or calcify.

What do you say? We’ve been having lunch together for so many years. We count on it. It keeps us sane. It would be a pity, don’t you think, if our fond custom were to end?

M
ONDAZY IS
the greatest writer from this town, but not the wealthiest. That honour rests with Alicja Lesniak (a pseudonym), who wrote
The
Boulevard of Perfect Health
and
The Well of Wellbeing
and sold more than a million copies of each in seven years, not out of bookshops but from cardboard serve-yourself stands inside
pharmacies and fitness clubs worldwide. The day after she died, from a stroke in her seventy-first year and not five kilometres from here, the local newspaper attached to its obituary a photograph
of Lesniak, looking oddly robust in the driveway of her villa, and the following transcript from one of her famously assertive radio broadcasts: