Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder

He was forty, and an oddity — a farmer’s son who’d taught for years at the conservatoire. He had been married once before. His new bride, Rosa, was twenty-three. She’d been his music pupil and was — they all admitted it — too timid for her age. The flute was just the instrument for her.

They’d hired a cottage on the coast. It was September. Warm enough to swim by day. But cold at night. The village was an hour’s walk away and awkward to reach by car. They realized at once that they had not brought enough provisions for the week. No matter, he said. His idea was that they could hunt for food, and eat only — well, mostly — what they had found. He had his father’s sporting rifle in the car, and in the cottage there were some fishing nets, a book on fungi and a herbal, Mrs Caraway’s Guide to Medicinal, Culinary & Cosmetic Plants . They wouldn’t use the cooker in the cottage. They’d hunt for wood and make a fire in the open grate. Firelight was romantic. And flame-cooked food was wonderful. He’d been a Scout.

It would be amusing to find the free food of the countryside, he promised Rosa, while she was letting down and brushing out her hair on their first night alone. But more than that. They would be bonded by their efforts. Her hair was lifting with the static off her brush. Her music teacher’s face was in the mirror at her shoulder. He put his arms around her waist. He took her ear entirely in his mouth. He pushed himself against her back. ‘It will be fun,’ he said.

She was nervous in the night — the sea, the darkness and the wind — and so was glad to have his arm across her waist and resting on her chest. His penis was enlarged, but that was only natural, he said. She should ignore it. He would too. Marriage was for life and so there was no need for haste. She was delighted to be woken by the breakfast tray, though there was only tea, a slice of wedding cake and some blackberries that he had ‘hunted’ in the cottage grounds.

They spent their first morning looking for fuel. There were two seams of driftwood running along the beach. The lower seam had been dropped by the last tide. It was damp and dark and wrapped with weed. It would smoke, not burn, he said. He took her hand and led her to the upper seam of driftwood, amongst the back-beach weeds and clumps of samphire. Would she collect the wood while he went looking for some meat or fish? His hand was on her bottom, bunching up her skirt. He kissed the corner of her mouth. She felt the hard end of his tongue. Was she excited by his kiss, or terrified? Her heart was drumming on her chest.

Rosa was quite happy on the beach, alone. It was not long before she had their basket filled. The wood was dry and silvery and, somehow, was less heavy than it ought to be, as if its sinew had been hollowed out by worms. Every piece seemed worked and sculpted. The sea and sand had taken off the splinters and sharp edges. She held some to her lips and nose. It was warm and scentless. Here was a goose head with knot-hole eyes. Here was a lizard with five legs. Here was a boomerang.

That night, they dined on bread and samphire and the pigeons that he’d shot. He plucked and gutted them while she attended to the fire. The driftwood burned a salty green and blue at first but soon the light was golden from the flames. They wrapped the birds in foil and cooked them on an oven tray in the embers of the driftwood. They boiled the samphire in a camping pot. And then, cross-legged, their plates held in their laps, and cuts of bread draped over their knees like peasant serviettes, they ate their first meal alone as a married couple. Their entertainment was the food, and then the flames. The evening was not spoiled when he lay down and put his head — and nose — into her lap, the doting spaniel, and whispered to the folds and pleats of her skirt. Nor was it spoiled — in bed and in the middle of the night — when he pushed up her nightdress, pulled down his own pyjamas and wrapped himself around her like a cashew nut. She should ignore him, he had said. And that is what she did. He hardly cost her any sleep.

Next day, he left her with the basket on the dunes, while he went off with nets. He did not kiss her on the lips before he walked away. His mood had changed.

That evening, they sat a foot apart in front of the fire and dined on mackerel, grilled in mustard sauce. The enamelled fish skins pulled off like paper. The flesh was oily white. She’d never tasted fish as good. Then there were stewed blackberries and crab apples for dessert, with tinned cream, and the last slice of their wedding cake. They did not speak. Again their entertainment was the flames.

He was the first in bed that night and he pretended to be sleeping when Rosa came upstairs into the attic room. But he was watching her, she knew. Only one eye was shut. He watched her at the mirror combing out her hair. He watched her rubbing aloe cream into her face and throat. She went to urinate and clean her teeth and every sound she made was shared by him. He hardly breathed when she switched out the lamp, took off her clothes by moonlight and hung them, with her underwear on top, across the wooden footboard of the bed. The bedroom smelled of mackerel, she thought. He’d turned his back to her. He was a cashew wrapped around himself. She said goodnight. She patted him on his shoulder. She did not know how long he lay awake because the sea air had made her tired and she was soon asleep. She did not wake to breakfast on a tray. This was day three. ‘You’d try the patience of a saint,’ he said when she was still in bed at ten o’clock. She found this judgement pleasing in some way.

He did not leave her on the beach alone. His bad temper needed company, and witnesses. Instead, he helped her with the wood and — as he’d done when he was teaching flute — took too many opportunities to touch her arm, her waist, her hair. He was much noisier than her. He stamped on the larger pieces until they splintered. He kicked the broken driftwood into piles, then threw it up the beach into the open basket.

‘Come on,’ he said. They had agreed to take the kitchen bucket and some nets a little way along the coast where there were pools — and shrimps, they hoped. Rosa followed him, carrying her shoes and stepping in his puddled footsteps. The sun came out when they were halfway down the beach. Her shadow jogged ahead of her and clipped her husband’s heels. He took his shirt off and hung it over his shoulder.

They did not have much luck with shrimps. The tide was going out. He pulled his trousers up above his knees. She tucked her skirt into her knickers and waded into the sea. They needed to go deeper for the shrimps, her husband said. He went back to the beach and took his trousers off and then his underpants. She watched him from the shallows as he ran into the water. She had not seen him quite so naked before. He did not stop until he was waist deep, amongst the furthest rocks, and then he concentrated on the shrimping.

‘There’s hundreds here,’ he said. ‘Come over, Rosa. Bring the bucket.’

‘It’s deep,’ she said.

‘Take off your clothes like me. Come on, I need the bucket now. I’ve got our dinner here.’

She didn’t take her clothes off, though. She waded in fully clothed. Her skirt worked loose and spread out around her like a picnic rug. She hid behind the bucket while he shook the shrimps out of the net.

He let her peel and wash the shrimps. They ate them at the table with bread and mayonnaise. They didn’t bother with a fire that night. And he did not bother to join her in the bed. ‘It’s all impossible,’ he’d said.

It was raining in the morning. Rosa kissed his forehead when she found him curled up on the kitchen chair. She made him breakfast. She made it clear that they should start their honeymoon again. They walked into the woods, their arms around each other’s waists. He took the gun. She carried the herbal and the book on fungi in a plastic bag. He shot a pheasant, though he could have caught it with his hands. ‘Poaching is not theft,’ he said. Rosa filled her plastic bag with hazelnuts and blackberries (again). She checked the herbal for which plants were edible. There were some brown-cap mushrooms growing in a stand of birch trees. And there were dragon pulses growing in abundance in the lane, and rock lavender for stuffing the pheasant. The seashore wormwood was not edible. The autumn squill was far too small. The seablite was described by Mrs Caraway as poisonous.