Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder

And so I have to wait five minutes with my foot holding the door until she joins me in the elevator, with her keys and carry bag.

‘When will you have the chance to see this man again?’ I ask.

‘Next year,’ she says.

‘Next year?’

‘Same week, same place.’

‘You might not like him in a year.’

‘That doesn’t worry me. We both like the falls at Anderbac and they won’t change. We thought it would be safest if we met up there again. A year soon goes. We’ll write. We’ll phone. We’re not young kids. If you’re attracted to a man at my age, then what’s the hurry? It’ll be something to look forward to. What do they say? It’s better to travel than arrive.’

At last she pulls shut the elevator door and I can head towards my room, my cold meat supper and my bed.

‘What floor?’ I ask, my finger hovering above the ten buttons of the console.

She smiles. I think that beneath the suntan and the make-up she almost blushes. ‘The seventh floor,’ she says. She bites her lower lip — there’s lipstick on her teeth — and looks down at her shoes.

It’s not until we reach the janitor’s floor — and his two dogs are already barking at his door in greeting — that she confides in me. She’s backing out into the hall, into the early evening smell of other people’s meals, pushing the elevator door with her bottom. She opens up her carry bag to let me see inside. A bottle of wine. The paper packet full of treats that I have brought from George’s: two pies, six baby macaroons.

‘You spoil that man,’ I say.

‘Well, yes, perhaps I do. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so cheap. A macaroon’s too good for him.’ She tips her head towards the undeserving janitor, towards his raucous dogs. ‘You wouldn’t say this one’s well read, well dressed, well heeled! You wouldn’t say this one won’t try to get his hands on me.’ She backs away into the dark. ‘But, still, a woman’s got to eat if she’s to keep herself in trim. And no one wants to eat alone, not when your heart’s torn up like mine.’

SPITTING IN the omelette is a fine revenge. Or overloading it with pepper. But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago. The eggs got pregnant. When he heated them they grew and grew, becoming quick and lumpy, until they could outwit him (and all his hungry guests waiting with beer and bread out in the yard) by leaping from the pan with their half-wings and running down the lane like boys.

THIS WAS THE challenge that they faced. To cook their meal without a cooker or a pot. The boys had brought their tents out to the island in the stream for just three nights of liberty. It had been heavy work, toiling up the valley with their gear. They had their sleeping bags, their cartons of packaged, tinned and foil-wrapped food, their plastic plates and cutlery, their gas bottle.

But someone — let’s not spoil their weekend yet by naming names — had failed to put the little cooker and the pots and pans into his bag. It didn’t matter on day one. They ate the fruit, the biscuits and the bread, the chocolate, the cereal. That night they made a fire — at least the boy we should not name had packed the matches — and dined on toast and jam. Next morning they ate the bacon and the meat goujons, roasted on a flat stone in the fire. Their lips were singed and ashy. They drove away the taste with candy bars.

By the evening of day two they were immensely hungry, bored as well. They had misjudged their rations.

All that remained to eat were eggs and rice. The boys knew that it was possible to fry an egg on the bonnet of a 1950s car. They’d seen a photograph — a silver Buick, four spitting eggs, sunny side up, the bluest sky, the baking hills of Stovepipe Wells in California. But this was not America, nor was it warm, nor were there any cars. If only they could find an old tin can, then they could boil their supper. But this was untouched countryside. The sort of people who liked this kind of landscape did not leave their trash behind.

At first they thought these deprivations would be fun. They’d have to hunt for food, catch fish, like cavemen, cook their conquests on an open fire. But there were no fishing rods or nets. There were no traps or snares. There was no wildlife other than themselves, as far as they could tell.

The only option, then, was to find some way to boil their eggs without a pot or pan. It could be done. It had been done, so many times, 4,000 years before. Their island was an ancient place, a proven refuge for the night, where hunters, travellers might camp in those far days before the larder and the fridge. If those ancestors had some eggs, then they’d not have to wait until a Buick limousine turned up. All they’d have to do was dig a hole and line it with clay from the river bank, then fill it with water carried in skins. A constant supply of red-hot stones baked in their fire would make the water tumble-boil and cook the eggs to perfection. Indeed, the challenge could be met quite readily, but not by boys who hadn’t studied their prehistory.

So they sat round the fire that second night and contemplated something worse than hunger. They contemplated river, night and clay, the broken landscape and the perfect eggs, the foolishness of camping by this unceasing and unfeeding stream. They dreamed of being more courageous than they were, of being braver boys. And when the rain began to fall they contemplated their defeat of going home as soon as it was light, a whole day earlier than planned, and smuggling back that box of eggs into the simpler, chilling, less historic place from which they’d taken it.

THERE WAS an eating contest after the bride had left with her new husband on their honeymoon and all the duller couples had gone upstairs to their expensive rooms to sleep off the excesses of the day. Just nine men remained amid the debris of the dancing and the meal — five of the younger and more hearty guests, reluctant to bring such an amusing, colourless event to an end, the Spanish barman, two waiters and the hotel’s under-manager (who clearly wanted everyone to go to bed). All bachelors, all dressed (approximately) in white. That was the wedding theme. All white. A vulgar, wealthy man can have exactly what he wants when his youngest daughter marries, and this one wanted everything and everybody white. That meant a brand-new carpet in the hotel’s dining room, redecorated walls and doors, pearl tablecloths (hand-stitched with hearts in matching thread), displays of the very palest roses, lilies and carnations, and, of course, a wedding dinner ‘cooked from white ingredients’. An irritating challenge for the hotel’s chef.

The day had been exciting and bizarre. The ninety guests arrived to find themselves blanched out by lighting from the chandeliers and by the artificial snow heaped up in all the corners of the rooms. They must have felt they’d stepped onto the set of a television advertisement for heaven or into some uncanny Alpine hospital. Perhaps that’s why they drank and laughed so heartily. They felt such fools. But, when the waiters in their white smocks arrived to load the tables with the food, they had to clap. The chef had achieved the impossible. They sat at their appointed places and reverently picked their ways through fourteen spotless dishes, which seemed less vivid even than the chalky china tableware from which they had been served.

IT WAS THE barman’s fault. He said it was a pity that the waiters had to waste good drinking time clearing up the mess. It was a pity, too, that such eccentric food should go to waste. ‘Let’s eat the lot,’ he said. ‘I bet we can.’

‘In less than twenty minutes,’ said the under-manager, ‘or else you lose the bet. I want you out by two.’