“I felt like we were one of those wedding cakes in a shop window, that look really beautiful, all ornately decorated, all hand-piped, with roses…but really there’s foam inside!’”
She burst into tears, then sniffed and laughed self-deprecatingly. “That is the silliest thing anyone has ever said before crying”
“Hey, hey” he soothed. “But you’re right”
“about the crying or the cake?”
“Take a wild guess”
…
“We have to argue more, to practice”
He nodded. “Don’t think you won though”
…
“I’m sorry”
“me too”
“so you’ll wait for me?”
“They’ll be the hardest six months of my life”
..
“Marlin” (she did not move).
…
The water turned scolding. Briony ran the good serrated edge under it for a few seconds. A little cascade fell over the blade and onto the dirty dinner plates. Slithers of caramelised onion detached and writhed about like baby eels in the dishwater.
The water turned scolding. Briony ran the good serrated edge under it for a few seconds. A little cascade fell over the blade and onto the dirty dinner plates. Slithers of caramelised onion detached and writhed about like baby eels in the dishwater.
…
She flipped the tap shut and shook. A beautiful smell seeped from the open oven, along with what remained of the half hour’s worth of 180 degree, fan-forced heat. On TV last week Briony had seen an oven advertised- a new and revolutionary oven powered by light that could roast a chicken in nine minutes. It incensed her enough to pen a letter and tear it up, repeat the process, then sit pensively in her room, moved as if somebody dear to her was listed in the morning obituaries. Gratification of the store-bought kind, at home:
what was it if not the death of feeling in the kitchen, of that beautiful time spent waiting for the oven to deliberate, so that when the time did come to reap what had been sown, the food was not only impregnated with flavour but with emotion also? But of course it all sounded so overdone- the best course of action was to rip up the letters, and simply mute the TV whenever that ad came on.
…
See a well-warmed knife – according to Tuesday’s Epicure – wouldn’t smear the icing. And the crumb should remain, to the greatest extent possible, imbedded in the slice, rather than imploding like vintage cheese when cut into. Mounds of crumble weren’t exactly praiseworthy after all, and these sorts of ‘efficiency problems’, as she’d come to think of them, kept Briony up at night. Thus the heated knife- just another artisan’s tricked she’d learned since booking a flight. That is to say, for reasons beyond explanation, making plans for her holiday had also meant months of floury bench-tops, draw handles greased with cake margarine, egg stuck like old sponge in the sinkhole, bedside tables – Daniel’s too – piled high with food magazines; icing sugar here, caster there, no brown or raw left for porridge. Suddenly this peculiar room, scented differently all the time, with its sharp instruments and unscaleable mountain of guidebooks and training DVDs, with its machines capable of burning and maiming and hurting, suddenly this had become her sanctuary, one that offered up its riches as a bed of nails did its rest. Only Daniel knew why: him.
In the sitting room Daniel had St. Germain on, the track with jazz flute. It completed the picture enough for Briony to imagine herself hostess of some swanky dinner party; napkins in gilded holders, all the other florid touches, jazz flute, and Briony in her apron busily preparing dessert for all the small-talking guests. Using the knife as a drumstick she beat the rangehood, and bobbed her head and cancanned with her feet, while Fergus’ tail kept tickling her calves. Through the half-open door she saw candles burned to the rim of their whisky glass houses. A pale hairy forearm rested nearby. She felt a sneeze rise up but it pulled away, right on the threshold. Then Daniel said marlin loudly and the fantasy blew out.
He had (A) just farted, or (B) pretended to let one go in order to be alone a little while longer. For marlin was both a plea for privacy and the very public boast in a game of bodily one-upmanship they’d been playing since their first night together. On that occasion Daniel had pushed her onto a couch, all but thrown her like a doll, flinging her legs back to her shoulders in one of his amorous fits.
The intensity with which he plied that body, in combination with its sheer unexpectedness made Briony tense with desire, but at the joy of his entrance she’d slackened and inadvertently broke wind so loud and foul smelling that tears of embarrassment welled in her eyes, a capillary-bursting blush seized her head to toe, and she made to run out of the bedroom and the house and the world of eyes and ears and noses. She would have, too, had Daniel not taken her by the ankles. He could barely manage a marlin over all that laughter. Then, after calming down, he’d threatened,
“I’ll beat that before you get sick of me, mark my words”
…
Her creation was cooling on the wire rack his mum had bought for them, a helpful nudge towards housewife duties disguised by the happy housewarming card it came with. She thought so, at least when things went badly- in other words, often. Widthways, she cut the first piece and inspected.
“Not much of a marble cake, but reow”
She shrugged her shoulders. No big deal; she knew she’d gotten carried away when swirling the white and brown batters, so that homogenous beige colour was hardly a great surprise. But what was a surprise – hell, astonishing even – was the texture. Nice even porous, no gaping air pockets or other mutations typical of her baking. Soft and spongy to touch. Just cake, the way it was supposed to look and behave. Flush with pride, Briony smiled and shook her head- how ridiculous that a cake recipe filched from New Weekly’s Nice ‘n’ Easy section, over the page from all the pictures of grubby babies and pets wearing hats and sunglasses, could leave her so…elated? But it did. And anyway, who but religious people made hierarchies of good feelings?
“Hey Dan,” she called out, “when I get back I’m auditioning for Masterchef, that’s how good this cake is”
he said, “the new season will already have started by then”
Briony winced and bit her nails. Then she washed her hands to the elbows, according to correct hygiene procedures.
He had (A) just farted, or (B) pretended to let one go in order to be alone a little while longer. For marlin was both a plea for privacy and the very public boast in a game of bodily one-upmanship they’d been playing since their first night together. On that occasion Daniel had pushed her onto a couch, all but thrown her like a doll, flinging her legs back to her shoulders in one of his amorous fits.
The intensity with which he plied that body, in combination with its sheer unexpectedness made Briony tense with desire, but at the joy of his entrance she’d slackened and inadvertently broke wind so loud and foul smelling that tears of embarrassment welled in her eyes, a capillary-bursting blush seized her head to toe, and she made to run out of the bedroom and the house and the world of eyes and ears and noses. She would have, too, had Daniel not taken her by the ankles. He could barely manage a marlin over all that laughter. Then, after calming down, he’d threatened,
“I’ll beat that before you get sick of me, mark my words”
…
Her creation was cooling on the wire rack his mum had bought for them, a helpful nudge towards housewife duties disguised by the happy housewarming card it came with. She thought so, at least when things went badly- in other words, often. Widthways, she cut the first piece and inspected.
“Not much of a marble cake, but reow”
She shrugged her shoulders. No big deal; she knew she’d gotten carried away when swirling the white and brown batters, so that homogenous beige colour was hardly a great surprise. But what was a surprise – hell, astonishing even – was the texture. Nice even porous, no gaping air pockets or other mutations typical of her baking. Soft and spongy to touch. Just cake, the way it was supposed to look and behave. Flush with pride, Briony smiled and shook her head- how ridiculous that a cake recipe filched from New Weekly’s Nice ‘n’ Easy section, over the page from all the pictures of grubby babies and pets wearing hats and sunglasses, could leave her so…elated? But it did. And anyway, who but religious people made hierarchies of good feelings?
“Hey Dan,” she called out, “when I get back I’m auditioning for Masterchef, that’s how good this cake is”
he said, “the new season will already have started by then”
Briony winced and bit her nails. Then she washed her hands to the elbows, according to correct hygiene procedures.
In that tragicomic moment she realised that intimacy was a different animal for this pallid, gawky guy. Something wonderfully different compared with all the also-rans of her past. Nuts as it sounded, that single incident had disarmed her to the point where love became all but a matter of course- an afterthought. Marlin had been a staple ever since. For six years, as indispensable to their honesty and good humour as they were indispensable to one another. Perhaps more than anything it was a reminder that nothing was outlawed, that at one’s worst held no meaning any longer. When etiquette was followed it was done so out of affection, not hollow courtesy.
But there was a qualifier: unshackled as she’d been by him Briony was still a princess at heart, and while she happily gave her own she would still leave the room, almost to keep up appearances, whenever Daniel said it. Therefore, of marlin’s two functions, only Daniel exercised the latter- the beauty lay in Briony never knowing.
But there was a qualifier: unshackled as she’d been by him Briony was still a princess at heart, and while she happily gave her own she would still leave the room, almost to keep up appearances, whenever Daniel said it. Therefore, of marlin’s two functions, only Daniel exercised the latter- the beauty lay in Briony never knowing.
…
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