Claire-Louise Bennett - Pond - Stories

Clearly, my predicament with the cooker is not quite as dire as those redoubling aggravations that confronted the last woman left in the world, at the same time, once the final control knob splits and becomes useless, I will have no way at all of turning on any part of my mini-kitchen and so every known method of cooking food will be unavailable from that moment on. I have never had too much difficulty foreseeing impending setbacks and I have quite often identified the steps by which an oncoming obstacle might be avoided, yet it is a very rare occasion indeed when I’ve channelled any of this awareness into direct action and thereby altered the course of events so that they might progress more favourably. However, as I said, inspired perhaps by the book I’d just read, my musings on eventualities shifted out of an ineffective theoretical mode and I found myself taking a very practical view of the situation actually, which prompted me, first of all, to make a note of, and then carry out some research upon, the manufacturers of my decrepit cooking device.

Belling of course is the main exponent of mini-kitchens and I’m quite certain that when I lived in an attic near the hospital several years ago it was kitted out with a classic Belling model. Belling, by the way, are an English firm which makes complete sense to me because two-ring ovens are synonymous with bedsits and bedsits are quintessentially English in the same way that B&Bs are evocative of a certain kind of grassroots Englishness. One thinks of unmarried people right away, bereft secretaries and threadbare caretakers, and of ironing boards with scorched striped covers forever standing next to the airing-cupboard door at the end of the hallway. And saucepans with those thin bases of course which burn so easily, and a stoutish figure probing back and forth in the effluvial steam with a long metal spoon. And laundry always, hanging off everything and retaining the shape always of those ongoing elbows and steadfast knees and dug in heels. And coasters for some reason, and things from aboard, Malta for example, that were bought second-hand from somewhere close by, and a special rack for magazines and a special rack for ties. And nail scissors in the bathroom, poised on the same tile always, the same white tile like a compass needle always, always pointing the same way, always pointing towards the grizzled window. And extractor fans and skittish smoke alarms and bunged-up tin openers and melon scoops and packet soup, and a Baby Belling oven. You couldn’t kill yourself with a Baby Belling I shouldn’t think because as far as I know they are all powered by electricity and no doubt this specification was utterly deliberate because Belling would have been quite aware of the sorts of customers their product would invariably cater to and the sorts of morbid tendencies these people might brood over and wish to act upon and finally bring to completion.

In any case, gigantic joints of meat notwithstanding, there’s not much room in a Baby Belling oven so I should think the possibility of comfortably shoving one’s head into it is pretty slim.

I certainly couldn’t get my head into my cooker without getting a lot of grease on the underside of my chin for example— and it stinks in there. It stinks of carbonisation I suppose and that’s only to be expected because I’ve never cleaned it out, not once; I just don’t feel there’s much point if you must know. It’s not even a Belling, as it turns out; it’s a Salton, whoever they are. The name strikes me as dubious — downright chimerical actually — and my hopes for acquiring replacement control knobs start to etiolate and turn prickly and I know, as I lift up the mirror so that I can get to the back of the oven and find the model number, that this oven doesn’t really exist any longer and this is just a fat waste of time and the persistence with which I am trying to remain undaunted by these two facts means that either I am uncommonly desperate for a concrete diversion or that my typical inexcusably blasé attitude towards most things is starting to make me feel sort of panicky and ought not be allowed free rein over nearly everything any longer. I make a note of the model number which is on a sticker, one corner of which is peeling away from the oven. There are bits attached to the underside of the label where it’s come unstuck and on the place where it was which must mean there’s still some stickiness in both areas and as such I wonder how they ever came apart. The number is something like 92711, but I don’t suppose I remember exactly, probably the digits are prefixed by two capital letters, but I have no idea what they are either. This is not an occasion to formulate detailed and lasting memories. There are of course a number of regions in any abode that are foremost yet unreachable. Places, in other words, right under your nose which are routinely inundated with crumbs and smidgens and remains. And these ill-suited specks and veils and hairpins stay still and conspire in a way that is unpleasant to consider, and so one largely attempts to arrange one’s awareness upon the immediate surfaces always and not let it drop into the ravines of smeared disarray everywhere between things. Where it would immediately alight upon the dreadful contents therein and deliver the entire catalogue to those parts of the imagination that will gladly make a lurid potion from goose fat and unrefined sea salt.

There were grains, of course. Grains and seeds, and a swan in fact. A tiny white swan, with beak and eyes hoisted as if regarding four or five swans walloping through the clouds above. Poor little white swan, so realistic and wistful, I’ll put you back where you were. Which was, I believe on the corner of the mirror frame. How did you get here little white swan? I turn you about between my thumb and forefinger and cannot remember for the life of me where you came from.

South Africa. South Africa! Can you believe it! It turns out my little stove comes all the way from an incredibly distant continent! I can see chickens with extraordinary manes stalking atop the flaking hob rings, pieces of caramelised corn wedged in the forks of their aristocratic claws. And all these big root vegetables with wrinkles and beards and startling fruits and rice hissing out the sack like rain. Everything red, everything yellow. I know nothing of course; I remember standing chopping vegetables for a salad in a kitchen in south London very many years ago and a man from South Africa stood beside me and showed me how to prepare the cucumber, that’s all. I remember he scored the cold lustreless skin lengthways with a fork several times so that when he cut it at an angle there were these lovely elliptical loops of serrulated cucumber, and I have sliced it that way every time ever since. It looks particularly chi-chi in a short tumbler glass of botanical gin.

Dear Salton of South Africa my cooker is on its knees please help. Perhaps send the parts I need upon a cuckoo so they arrive in time for spring — on second thoughts a cuckoo is a flagrantly selfish creature so feel free to select a more suitably attuned carrier from another imminently migrating species— but please not a swallow because they don’t get here until sometime in May, which will I fear be far too late, and anyway I’m sure they’re far too dextrous and flash for such a quaint assignment. I live on the most westerly point of Europe, right next to the Atlantic Ocean in fact. The weather here is generally very bad, compared to the rest of Europe that is, and that might be a reason why not too many people live here. The fact that the population is quite low might in turn account for the fact that the country’s basic infrastructure is very uneven which means, for example, that the public transport service is stunted, sporadic and comprehensively lousy. Fortunately despite all this, and its history of starvation which did in fact take many hundreds of lives hereabouts and beyond, the exact spot where I live is pleasant overall and taxi drivers often remark upon what an unexpected piece of paradise it is and how they never even knew it was here. I mention the famine, Salton, not in order to establish any sort of sociohistorical affinity, which would be a very crass contrivance indeed, but simply because my mind is currently more susceptible to images of hunger than it has ever been on account of the fact that I am running out of matches, so to speak. This is not the time of year to be eating granola and salads and caper berries, let me tell you. Oh Salton of South Africa, do you even exist? I rather fear you do not, the attempts I made to discover your headquarters merely disclosed a host of online platforms from which hundreds of second-hand models are bought or exchanged. You are producing nothing new it seems, and are no longer on hand to assist with the upkeep of the kitchen devices you once put your illustrious and rather intimidating name to. No doubt I’ll have to resort to clamps or something like that.