Lindsay Armstrong - An Unsuitable Wife

She wasn’t. Despite a cook book she found—or, as she later heard herself say, actually because of it. She certainly wouldn’t have been as adventurous without it but when there was cauliflower crying out for a white sauce and the instructions for it, a recipe for honeyed carrots... The list went on.

None of this altered the fact that, an hour and a half later when Mike Brennan returned to the boat, she’d got herself into an unbelievable, not to mention dangerous mess and had just managed to tilt the roasting tray, complete with burnt chicken, pumpkin and potatoes, so that all its contents had slid to the galley floor.

The first words he spoke she heard quite clearly although she couldn’t quite see him through the smoky black haze that filled the boat.

He said, ‘My God...!’ Then, ‘Just what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Sidonie? Trying to burn the boat to the waterline?’

‘No, no!’ She gasped and coughed then yelped as she burnt herself on the roasting tray.

The next few minutes were confused and not helped by the white sauce, which quadrupled its volume into a billowing, bubbly head and cascaded all over the top of the stove, thereby adding another smell of burning of a slightly different but equally unpleasant nature.

It was only after Mike Brennan had managed to reduce the haze by opening every porthole and hatch that he stopped swearing. Then he surveyed her with blazing blue eyes but said in a voice like ice, ‘How did this happen ?’

Sidonie wiped her watering eyes and thought briefly. ‘Food and I don’t get along too well. I mean, I enjoy eating it well enough, there are some things I love , but I’m just not very good at...cooking it. Although I followed the instructions to a T, I do assure you!’

‘You thoughtless, stupid, pedantic, tiresome little girl—why didn’t you just tell me you couldn’t cook?’ he ground out through his teeth. ‘Not only could you have burnt the boat but it will take a week to clean up the mess.’

Sidonie thought again although she felt a bit fearful and looked it. ‘I don’t understand why I can’t cook, you see. And I really thought that without you around to give me an inferiority complex, plus the help of this recipe book, I might just get it right this time.’

He said something extremely uncomplimentary towards her thought processes and added that he hoped she was as good at cleaning up messes as she was at creating them, but when she assured him eagerly that she was he glared at her in a way that made her quake inside, and turned away in disgust.

They worked together for over an hour in a cold, absolutely demoralising silence. Then he said curtly, ‘Leave it now, Sidonie. For one thing I’m tired of tripping over you—go and have a shower or something. I’ll make us something to eat.’

She opened her mouth but received such a devastating blue glance that she closed it and turned away defeatedly.

* * *

He’d made them scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, she discovered when she nerved herself to leave her cabin, washed and cleaned up but feeling like an incredible fool.

She also discovered she was still in Coventry as they ate, and for once she could think of not a thing to say or do to ease the situation.

Then he broke the silence to say with considerable irony, ‘Would I be wrong in surmising your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend possesses some culinary skills?’

Sidonie winced and looked away. Don’t cry, she warned herself. However hurtful, it was still a horrible thing to say.

‘Sidonie?’

‘I don’t really know. Probably,’ she said gruffly and concentrated on the last little bit of smoked salmon.

‘Probably,’ he marvelled. ‘Even if it were a bare modicum it would have to be an improvement on you.’

She didn’t answer but put her knife and fork together and went to get up but flinched as the inside of her forearm came into contact with the edge of the table. She didn’t see him frown and looked up in surprise when he took her wrist and turned her arm to the light, exposing the nasty little burn she’d received from the roasting dish.

Their gazes caught and held and he said in a different voice, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘About this?’

‘Yes, about this burn,’ he said deliberately, still holding her wrist.

‘I...I don’t really know,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose because I’d created enough havoc without adding to it. But it’s nothing,’ she assured him. ‘I—’

‘Stop right there, Sidonie,’ he warned. ‘I know damn well it must have been hurting like hell and still is, and if there’s one thing I don’t appreciate it’s false bravery—’

‘It’s not false —’

‘It’s not hurting?’ he shot at her.

‘Well...’ she bit her lip ‘...only a little. And if you must know,’ she continued, ‘if you hadn’t made me feel entirely as if I’d crawled out from under a stone, I would have asked you for something to put on it. I don’t believe in false bravery either.’

He moved his fingers on her wrist so that she flinched again, then he raised his eyes heavenwards in total exasperation. ‘Just promise me one thing, Sidonie.’

She looked at him wide-eyed. He surveyed her upturned face and wide eyes for a moment then shook his head and said merely, ‘Don’t talk the hind leg off a donkey until my mood improves.’ And he gave her back her wrist and motioned her to sit down, whereupon he brought out a first-aid kit and dealt with her burn competently and clinically. Then he made them some coffee but declined her offer to do the dishes. ‘Although,’ he said meditatively, ‘I think that will have to be the division of labour from hereon in. I’ll be chief cook and you can be chief bottle washer.’

‘Thank you very much,’ she said with a rush of gratitude. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. And tomorrow I’ll clean every crevice so that it will all look like new again. Unless...’ She paused and eyed him warily.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘I just wondered if it would be possible to teach me a bit of cookery, seeing as you seem to be so very good at it.’

He eyed her over the rim of his cup. ‘How come no one else has been able to teach you?’

‘No one’s ever tried. Dad and I always lived on campus, you see. Oh, we had a self-contained flatlet but it was much easier to eat in the canteen.’

Mike Brennan put down his cup and stared into it silently but when she thought he wasn’t going to say anything and had begun to wish she’d never mentioned the subject he looked up at last with something wry and quizzical in his eyes. ‘I suppose one could only try,’ he said gravely. ‘If nothing else it might render you more marriageable.’

The glow that had started to light Sidonie’s face up faltered and he grimaced, stood up and patted her on the head. ‘Don’t look like that, kid. I’m still recovering from the shock of your little débâcle—yes, I’ll teach you how to cook, if it’s possible.’

With that she had to be content, and discovered, curiously, that she was. And even more so when, after he’d dealt with the dishes, he put some music on the CD, a lovely Enya album, and brought out the manual for the instrument known colloquially as a GPS, short for Global Positioning System. In fact it would have been true to say she was entranced as he explained the finer points of satellite navigation and how the instrument locked into several satellites and was thereby able to record the boat’s position so that they could plot it on a chart and know exactly where they were as well as being able to put in a destination point and have it tell them the course to steer to get to it, the range in nautical miles and the time it would take to get there.