That Part Was True
Page 17
What did you eat on the wedding day? I hope it was lush, and that you will describe it lavishly. I have been snowed in and surviving on beans and bacon.
J
Your honeyed nuts (very popular), cheddar crisps (ditto), onion dip, mushrooms with goat cheese. Potted mackerel. Goose, onion and celery stuffing, roasted potatoes and parsnips, boiled turnips and carrots, spiced red cabbage, sprouts, preserved apricots, whipped cream, brandy butter and Christmas pudding. Chocolates and coconut ice. Menu mostly chosen by popular vote, since we won’t all be together at Christmas. I put coins in the pudding, for the children. We toasted Ollie and Izzy with a fabulous Sauterne that Simon brought.
It was wonderful, Jack.
Izzy looked so beautiful, I can’t describe it. And Ollie’s mother showed up after all and was not nearly so daunting as I’d feared. Apart from her and Ollie’s sister and our muddled little crowd—Simon and Laura and the boys—there were only Ollie’s and Izzy’s best friends. They all stopped at the pub on the way back, to give me time to prepare. Gwen helped, of course, and one of her daughters came with her. Gwen’s husband, George, was in the pub when Izzy walked in, in her long velvet dress with her bouquet. He said everyone stood up and cheered. So they should have.
It was the happiest day of my life. It shouldn’t have been. Her birth should have been, but perhaps late pleasures are all the sweeter for the waiting.
I hope things are as happy on your end.
Eve
Mummy,
Thank you for everything. We’ll write every day.
Izzy X (and Ollie X)
My Dear Eve,
It was a perfect wedding. We enjoyed it so much. The boys were particularly delighted with their sweets. How do you make the fudge? It is delicious. Thank you for everything.
With love,
Laura
Eve,
I know that Laura has written to thank you, but this is a thank you from me. Not for the food and hospitality, all of which was perfect, but for your openness to me and to my family for the sake of our family. You are an example to us all.
Simon
“The End,” Jack wrote to Eve. Paris?
“Sometimes I feel that I could go. I feel that I could be the woman he thinks I am. But I can’t.”
“No?” Beth said.
“I don’t know, maybe…”
“Would you like to?”
“There are lots of things I’d like to do and going to Paris to meet Jack is one of them, but if I try to imagine myself in an airport, or in a foreign city, alone, I just don’t feel I’m up to it.”
“Well, you’ve made great strides in other things that you didn’t feel up to a year ago.”
“I know. I do know. And maybe, one day.”
Dearest Eve,
It’s really finished. And guess what? Harry Gordon isn’t. I’ve saved him for another year. He owes his life to you.
I had begun to get cynical about my work, and worse, my readers. It was a mistake and reflective of me, not them. You have brought me back in touch with so many things.
Jack
I was glad that Harry didn’t end up with the redhead, she wrote:
Although I’m not sure if that’s what I’m meant to say. The thing is that, unmarried, he can focus on his work. I know that’s an unpopular idea, but I do think there’s something to it. It’s not the love that distracts people. Love, I think, can be a great energizer, but the slow draining away of love, or worse, false love, is exhausting. And I don’t think Harry’s the marrying kind anyway, but the redhead certainly was, so it would have been a false love soon enough. Why am I telling you this? You wrote it. I get caught up in the story and forget that. Sorry.
Thank you so much, Jack, for letting me see it. It’s not just that I loved the book (I did), but knowing that no one else had read it made the experience all the more precious.
Eve
I cooked leeks, this week, in red wine and beef stock, and ate them cold. As good as your novel.
I am not mentioning Paris just yet. You know why.
I have read your letter and understand your concerns. After that episode on the train you are bound to feel that an airport would tax you. There is no point in my reminding you that I could meet you or that you could wait till Izzy has come back from her honeymoon and bring her with you, because I know you have thought of that.
I also know that you have a script in your head of how it oughtta be, this rendezvous of ours. I know because I have one, too, have had for a while. So, this is what I’m going to do: On the 28th I’m going to get on a plane. And on the 29th I’m going to go to Le Pont du Sud at 6:00 p.m. and order two kirs. If you don’t come, I’ll drink yours, and toast you with it, dear friend.
Eve leapt up and crossed the room like a deer breaking cover and circled her arms around her daughter, who was weeping, as she was. At the kitchen door Gwen, with her hands on her hips, grinned. Ollie stood, sheepish, next to her.
“How far?”
“Ten weeks. It’s a bit soon to tell anyone, but we wanted you to know. Anyway, I know it’s going to be all right. I just know.”
“I was like that with Carly,” Gwen said. “Just knew. Knew she was going to be a boy, too, mind you.”
They all laughed then, and sat down, Eve next to Izzy with her hand on her knee. “Ten weeks?”
“Yes,” Izzy said, meeting her mother’s eye, sharing the understanding, then confirming it. “Yes. I was. I didn’t really know then, or at least pretended I didn’t. Although when I said my vows, it felt like I was speaking for the baby, too. It was strange.”
“It was…unplanned, then?” Eve asked gently.
“Yes.”
“Unplanned,” Eve repeated, almost to herself, “That’s—”
“Unlike me,” Izzy interrupted.
“Yes.”
“I know. But I am unlike me now, aren’t I?”
Eve lifted her hand from her daughter’s knee and raised it to her cheek. Stroking that beloved face, she didn’t reply.
She wasn’t going. If she ever had been going, she wasn’t now. Jack had been a friend, a marvelous friend for a time, but the relationship was a mirage. She didn’t need to walk into it to feel it dissolve. To know that there had been nothing really solid there. Not compared to this. Compared to family. Compared to love.
He sent her a postcard of Le Pont du Sud. There was nothing written on it. She didn’t write anything back.
Chapter Thirteen
Dear Eve,
I am writing to send you my new address.
No I’m not, I’m writing because it feels right. You could have found me easily enough and, in any case, I moved six months ago. But I have wanted to tell you, for all that time and all the months before, about Paris, and to thank you for not coming. That may seem odd to you but I don’t think it will because you remain, in my head at least, The Great Understander.
You did right. I was still, at that point, hunting around for something. I didn’t see it then, and would have fought the notion hugely if it had been put to me, but I was still looking for something physical to hitch my life to. I used to do that with women and I wasn’t yet quite cured of the habit and, lord knows, I might have tried some of the old stuff with you. If I had, I would not be writing this letter now. Certainly you would not be reading it.
That night, when I knew you would not come as soon as the concierge handed me the message, I went to our meeting spot and drank your kir, as I said I would. And then I ate. I asked to keep a menu, like a tourist, so that I could send it to you, and now finally I am doing so, but you might like to know what I ordered; I was eating for the both of us after all.
I started with the artichokes, and then eschewed the tuna tartare, although I was tempted, in favor of the lobster. It was the tarragon that won me over. I am a sucker for it and have, lately, been making a version of mustard and tarragon sauce that I will send you if you’re interested. But back to our dinner: After the lobster I was served a perf
ect morsel of green apple sorbet and I thought of you. Such a tiny thing, but it looked exquisite, and I thought, Eve would approve. It reminded me of your comment about party food and hummingbirds. Also, the apple was Granny Smith and I remembered you specified those for your spiced red cabbage. “They don’t mush,” you said. You were right. After that I ate the côte de veau and a side of spinach. If you’d been there, I’d have bullied you into the rabbit so that I could taste the sauce, but you weren’t. You weren’t. After that I rested up kinda morosely before meeting the cheeses. I couldn’t stay morose for long because the waiter introduced them with such infectious enthusiasm. I won’t bore you with the details, they were all French, all fully matured, all delicious. The wines, too, naturally. I finished with some fried plums—for you, of course. And an eaux de vie—poire. I hope you approve.
I’d like to say that I walked back to the hotel afterward, with my collar up, and that I stood and looked out at the Seine in the bituminous night, and was subject to some sort of epiphany about my future (which is how I would write it, of course, for a hero rather than me), but it wasn’t that way. I walked back and I thought a little more of you and a lot more of myself, as has been my long habit, but mostly I just felt that I had begun something. And I had.
When I got home, after another six days of very fine eating and pretty good walking, I saw that Grove Shore belonged to the old me. I couldn’t catch my reflection in a storefront without facing my failures. I am using that word rather melodramatically, it’s true, but I mean that I had slipped into a kind of dilatory life there and I think, when you’re getting to your middle years, you’ve either gotta haul yourself up, or surrender to some pretty fast sliding. So I put my shoulder muscles to use and headed north. It took six months to move properly and I said some sad good-byes, but once the worst was done, the relocation was smooth. I bought a good-sized, shingle house on two acres up here. I still look at the sea, but it looks back with more attitude. The walks are better but the winters are harsher.
You might be surprised (no you won’t) to hear that I have also become interested in gardening. I remember you mentioned your own garden once or twice, but I never picked up on it so you let the matter drop—such a selfless correspondent. Well, anyhow, if you write about it now, I’ll happily bore you with my new interest. I think growing vegetables may become one of my great loves, although I have inherited a cat from the previous owners of this house (who have gone to live in Italy—so you can tell that this is the right sort of house) and he has claimed a great chunk of my affections.
When I’m not tinkering with tomatoes, or arrested by the rarely bestowed, but almighty lap weight of Major Tom, I’m writing or walking, and, here’s the kicker, twice a week I help out at a local high school. Not too many kids hereabouts know anything of hunger or disease, but there’s a few of ’em who struggle with reading, which I think comes a close second. The school needed volunteers to come in and read with them. I’m one. (Mrs. John Elliot-Carson is one, too. But she’s a whole other story that I’ll tell you sometime if you want to hear it.) Mostly, I read with a boy called Ethan, who’s fifteen and jumpy. We hit it off right away, and I’m glad to say that the jumps settle a bit when we’re together.
So, now you can see what an upright fella I’ve become in your absence.
Anyway, we are extraordinarily happy here, Major Tom and I, and I even have my hopes for Ethan. I say “extraordinarily” because I wonder constantly that I had not realized before I turned fifty-one what the ingredients for happiness really were. I think we each find our own recipe and I have found mine. I hope that you have, too.
Jack
Eve opened her copy of The Done Deal to the dedication page. “For Eve,” it said. “For Eve.” She had looked at it many times, but the thrill ran through her again nevertheless. Then she lay the book, still open, on the table in front of him.
He glanced up briefly when he lifted it and smiled. “Would you like it dedicated to anyone in particular?” he asked, just as he had asked the hundred and fifty people who’d lined up before her. They’d been an orderly crowd, Eve thought, no matter what people said about New Yorkers.
“Would you write ‘From Jack,’ just here beneath the dedication?” she said.
This time he did not look up at all, and it was a moment before he spoke.
“No,” he said. “I will write, ‘From Jack with all my love.’”
Granny Cooper’s Peanut Cookies
3 ounces butter
1 small cup sugar
1 egg
1 good cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 dessert spoon cocoa
1 cup peanuts (She liked to roast them in the oven first. I do, too.)
Cream the butter and sugar; add the beaten egg; then mix in the sifted flour, baking powder, and cocoa; and last, add the cooled peanuts.
Place spoonfuls on tray(s) and bake at 350° for about 15–20 minutes.
Serve with milk.
Grandmother’s Christmas Cake
½ pound sultanas
1 pound currants
½ pound raisins
4 ounces candied cherries
4 ounces candied peel
4 ounces blanched almonds
12 ounces flour
grated rind of 1 lemon
4 eggs
4 tablespoons milk
8 ounces butter
8 ounces brown sugar
1 tablespoon Golden Syrup
2–4 tablespoons sherry or brandy
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice *
½ teaspoon salt
Mix together the dried fruits, cherries, peel, and almonds. Dust with a little flour, and add the lemon rind. Whisk the eggs and milk together. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the syrup. Alternately mix in the flour (mixed with the salt and spices) and egg mixture. Fold in the fruit. Add the sherry or brandy.
Line a 9-inch round or 8-inch square tin with a double layer of baking paper (to 3 inches deep up the sides of the tin).**
Bake at 300° for 1½ hours. Then at 250° for 1½ hours.
Store at least 3 weeks.
* Mixed spice mainly consists of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. Just use the sorts of spices you like in your pumpkin pie.
** I always do this, out of superstition mostly, but you might not need to.
Also by Deborah McKinlay
The View From Here
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Also by Deborah McKinlay
Newsletters
Table of Contents
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Deborah McKinlay
Cover design by Anne Twomey
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without
the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: February 2014
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ISBN: 978-1-455-57367-7
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