Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

  Recipes, the editor thought she was just a machine for recipes. Maybe she could try out the local daube de cèpes, casseroling the caps in red wine with some Bayonne ham – no, remember the vegetarians. A la grècque? Too banal. A warm salad of wild mushrooms with rocket, or young spinach? Too much like restaurant food. Perhaps cèpes à la bordelaise – so simple, just mushrooms, oil, garlic and parsley, the dish which had outraged Paris with its country simplicity when the Cafè Anglais had introduced it in 1880; that, of course, was a historic moment in the history of gastronomy, when the smart world first fell in love with peasant cooking.

  ‘Look at this big fat perfect thing!’ Louisa held up a huge brown cap. ‘How nice to be an early worm, or whatever.’

  ‘Do be sure, look at it in the light,’ Jane advised, trimming the earthy base from a bulbous white stem. ‘Those big ones usually do get infested. Here, take the knife – cut it in half to make sure.’

  ‘Nothing’s been near this baby, I pr … ugh!’ As she spoke a grub wriggled indignantly from the mushroom’s gills and fell between the satin lapels of the bathrobe.

  Louisa’s scream reverberated from the hills, loud enough to wake the roosting pigeons in the treetops and send them tumbling and shrieking into the sky. Breakfasting rabbits bolted from the field and every clump of undergrowth rustled as tiny animals leaped in terror. There was an instant of quiet, in which the echo of her voice rolled back and forth among the trees, and then a commotion of thrashing branches and snapping twigs directly beside them. A young deer, eyes white with fright, scrambled from a hidden wallow in the stream bed and leaped between the two women. Louisa stumbled backwards, screamed again, flung up her arms and overbalanced.

  ‘Holy shit! Fucking hell!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jane was at her side, torn between concern, irritation at the histrionics and watching the magical creature escape, its white scut bobbing in the leafy shadows.

  ‘Yuck, yuck, yuck! The mud!’

  The deer was gone. Louisa sprawled half-naked on the forest floor, flailing her dimpled limbs. Her mushroom basket was six feet away in a clump of butcher’s broom, upside down with most of the fungi scattered. In the cleft of a root Jane saw the fallen cep, a big brown ball which split into two halves as she retrieved it.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ She had enough experience of Louisa, and of accidental falls, to be sure the main injury was to the bathrobe, which had sustained a ripped armhole. People with broken bones usually screamed in a more purposeful tone.

  ‘Ugh. Oh God. My back.’ At last she struggled into a sitting position and began to pick the pine needles and dead leaves from her sleeves.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘I think it’s just a bang.’ She wriggled her hams experimentally. ‘I can move – ooh, it hurts.’ Jane waited until her guest felt restored enough to stand, then helped her lumber to her feet. With curses and caution because of the broom’s sharp leaves, they gathered up the scattered mushrooms.

  The fall had knocked out Louisa’s enthusiasm and she began to groan and talk about breakfast and other plans for the day, pulling the bathrobe around her in order to look wretched and in need of sustenance. Jane was unwilling to let her friend give up before their task was finished. ‘We can’t go back yet,’ she said, trying to infuse her voice with enthusiasm. ‘The best ones are always over by the railway.’

  ‘Do we …’

  ‘I need a lot – there are fifty people coming on Sunday.’ Louisa looked so pathetically deflated that she continued, ‘If you’re tired, just sit and watch me.’

  Slowly, they made for the far side of the wood, where a railway line marked the border of their land. It was invisible from the house. The single track ran imperceptibly downhill in a cutting towards the white stone bridge which carried the road. Trees had been felled to leave a shoulder of open ground, and more chanterelles grew there, fluted orange caps clustered on top of each other like fallen petals.

  Louisa sat heavily down on the embankment. ‘It looks awfully rusty, the railway. Are there any trains?’

  ‘One a day at this time of year. It comes down from Paris at about six every evening, goes to the cooperative outside Saint-Victor, loads up with wheat and comes back at midnight.’

  Jane pulled a bag from her pocket and began to fill it, while Louisa lay back on one elbow and desultorily picked a few blades of grass out of her basket. ‘I’m sorry I nag you about Michael,’ she said after a while, looking genuinely contrite.

  ‘Oh well – I can’t blame you, I always dump on you about him, I know.’

  ‘I only do it because I love you.’

  Jane sighed, feeling racked between sympathy, gratitude, embarrassment and shame because she was unhappy and unable to help herself. ‘You realize that’s Michael’s best line?’

  ‘Oh God, I might have known.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons why I always end up feeling I can’t win. But I have done something. Something that’ll bring him up short. It may not work, but I might as well tell you and then you’ll get off my case for the weekend.’

  ‘Well, good for you. I promise I won’t tell …’

  Jane hesitated, aware that whatever she might promise, gossip, scandal and confrontation were meat and drink to her friend. But then, her tiny gesture of defiance would not be a secret for long. ‘You know the first one – at least, the first one I was sure about?’

  ‘The woman he worked with, his director or something?’

  ‘Grace Evans, she was. She’s Grace Nichols now. I met her husband this week.’

  ‘No! I didn’t know she was married. He doesn’t usually leave much on their bones, does he?’

  ‘She’s the one who got away, it seems. She went back to newspapers and moved to Paris. He’s a nice man, her husband. I liked him. It was at this Basque cuisine seminar. So – I’ve asked them for Sunday. See how Michael likes them apples.’

  There were no more chanterelles in sight, and she stood idly beside her friend, suddenly afraid of what Michael might do. He was furiously secretive. Very seldom had she dared any defensive manoeuvre against him, and his response had always been inordinate rage. ‘Go on,’ she prompted Louisa with anxiety. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What do you mean, what do I think?’

  ‘What do you think he’ll do?’

  Louisa was biting her tongue on the opinion that Michael had beaten better challenges than that. ‘Whatever he usually does, I suppose.’

  ‘He hates intrusions, you know.’

  ‘What do you think you’ll achieve?’

  ‘I don’t know … I just thought …’ Suddenly it seemed that her bold move was only an idiotic, ineffectual gesture. ‘She is the only one I’m absolutely sure about, that I’ve got the chapter and verse on. And Andy Moynihan will be there, and Andy told me what was going on, and so I’ve got a witness.’

  ‘So you want to confront him again?’

  ‘No. There’s no point. He always denies everything and I just feel I’m going crazy.’

  Louisa scrambled to her feet and picked up her basket. ‘Can we go back now, have you got enough?’

  ‘Yes. But tell me, what do you think?’

  ‘Let me ask you one more question. Just one.’ Revived by the rest, Louisa waded through the undergrowth, careless of the briars which snagged her bedraggled skirts. ‘Jane – do you love him?’

  Jane swallowed, a child taking medicine. ‘Louisa, must you? I’m not going to do anything else. There is nothing I can do anyway.’

  Her friend gave a satisfied cluck and nodded, having heard the answer she had expected. ‘Then – why?’

  ‘Because I’ve had enough, Louisa. You are right, I do want to end it, I can’t live like this, it’s killing me. And I’ve tried before, you know I have, but he is stronger than I am, and he always wins. I need something, someone on my side.’

  ‘And one of Michael’s mistresses is the right person to have on your side?’ One eyebrow arched in contempt.


  ‘I don’t care, I don’t care.’ Jane turned her face away, afraid she might have tears in her eyes. ‘You don’t understand, he isn’t an ordinary man. I just want to end it, I don’t care how or with whom or how awful it is. I can’t do it alone, that’s all I know.’

  ‘You mean you think I wouldn’t help you?’ Now she was approaching anger, her bosom swelling with indignation.

  ‘Of course you would, I don’t mean that. But she knows him like I do – do you understand?’

  Louisa was hurt and said nothing. Then she saw new mushrooms, fairy-like pure white things speckling the grass. She bent down and picked a single ghostly parasol.

  ‘What’s this? It’s so pretty. Look at the little ones, they’re like bird’s eggs. It can’t be any good, can it? Too charming.’

  Amused, Jane made her turn the mushroom over so she could investigate the colour of the gills, which were milk-white. Ruffles of white flesh at the top and bottom of the stem made the fungus look as if it wore a frilled shirt.

  ‘Good for what? That’s the question. It’s an oronge. Every farm seems to have them round here. Nothing charming about them except the way they look. It’s the most poisonous mushroom in Europe.’

  ‘Fancy!’ Louisa examined her find with new respect.

  ‘It’s easy to identify, you can’t make a mistake, no other summer mushroom is this pure white colour underneath.’

  ‘And it’s really poisonous?’

  ‘Deadly. More than one toxin, no antidote.’

  ‘But there are a whole bunch of them down there. Shouldn’t we do something? The children might eat them, mightn’t they. If we pick them all won’t they die out?’

  ‘Perhaps. They are a mystery, mushrooms. One year they’re everywhere, next year – nothing. But Madame Montaud was quite proud of having these.’ She remembered the old woman stabbing the ground with her walking stick as if to punish the mushroom for its wickedness, and then walking violently away from it, rolling at every step on her bowed, arthritic legs. Despite her warnings, Jane had retained the impression that the deadly oronge was deliberately included in the harvest.

  Over the years, she observed that in late summer and early autumn, when the entire province became obsessed with mushrooms, occasional deaths were reported in the local newspaper. Since every countryman around Saint-Victor possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of food, Jane came to regard these fatalities with amused scepticism. It tickled her fancy to think that the prudent farmer would grow a few poisonous fungi in case there should, one day, be a need of them.

  Louisa placed the white parasol on top of Jane’s whole some basketload. ‘There you are, my dear. Just give that to Michael for his breakfast and all your troubles will be over.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Louisa. Let me deal with my troubles my way.’ Annoyed, Jane threw the oronge away and walked off in the direction of the house. She was ashamed of her childish anger. To her horror there was a strong urge to go back for the evil thing, under cover of an apology. The notion of having one in her possession, hung up to dry from the beams in the kitchen, was desperately attractive. No one would notice; she would have the power of life and death right there, and Michael would sit under it at the head of their big farmhouse table in all ignorance.

  He never noticed what he ate. In fact, she had often suspected that he made a point of not enjoying her food, as if to emphasize that what the rest of the world praised her for meant nothing to him. No more Michael, no more lies, no more agony, no more pitying discretion from her distanced friends. And she would be able at last, to tell the truth about him; that would be the real victory, to wipe out his image of himself with her own. Michael Knight exposed. Non-father, non-husband, selfish cruel, a liar. Intoxicating, wicked vision. The force of her fascination horrified her. What was she becoming in this marriage, what was Michael making of her?

  She accelerated her steps, trying to, put the scenario behind her. Louisa panted to keep up, congratulating herself for provoking her friend a little closer to the level of assertion proper for a woman at the end of the second millennium.

  When he was finally asleep she slid out of the bed, gathered her clothes in her arms and took them to the bathroom. More than anything at that moment she wanted a shower, but the noise often woke them and then there was more trouble. She washed herself thoroughly at the bidet, despising the peach-coloured porcelain and the rose-scented soap. The steak, what she had eaten of it, was lying heavy in her stomach, obscene meat, poisoning her with its hormones and its great big selfish indigestible proteins. Still, it was cover, if ever they came after her they would never think of looking for a vegetarian.

  Between her legs felt wooden, just a groove carved in a block, not registering the touch of her hands as they spread the lather. With no feeling, it was impossible to judge if she was bruised. He had put on a great display of virility, which was excellent because he had been tiring himself out and getting ready for a good long sleep, but she had so little flesh that she was easily hurt.

  Snoring began in the bedroom, a reassuring noise. She was methodical. She found her gloves in a side pocket of her backpack. Her socks she put on, boots she left downstairs by the front door, unlaced and ready to step into. One of the nannies used to do that for her. It was suffocatingly hot so she laid her jacket ready beside the boots, smiling, remembering her father. ‘We’re still waiting to find out what exactly it is that my daughter can do.’ This was something she could do. This she did expertly, in fact, beyond anyone’s criticism. Nearly six months now and she hadn’t been caught. These assholes never went to the police, they were too guilty. They just told their wives another lie. Not very significant, after so many. One more corpse tossed on the pile.

  The bedroom first, or the dressing room if that was how the house worked. Once the man had woken up as soon as she opened a drawer; she had pretended to be looking for body lotion and let herself in for another hour of horror. Now she was extremely quiet. There wasn’t much, there never was, the men were too mean, but no sensible wife took all her jewellery on holiday so there was always something.

  She found gold chains, absolutely vulgar but so easy to sell, and two eternity rings, in their boxes, cheap boxes. Probably one for each child. One box had an inscription embossed in the satin lining: ‘The Symbol of Everlasting Love’. Maybe he started fucking around when she was pregnant. Everlasting love for her and their two children, here in the outer suburbs, immured behind the cupressus hedge, and he never hurried home. Everlasting love, another big fat lie.

  Downstairs, his jacket was on the kitchen floor where she had dropped it, a new refinement of her strategy. The jacket was the goldmine, not only for the money; jackets gave you your victim in three dimensions. She loved getting all those personal things, the driving licence with his traffic crimes logged in it, the business cards telling you who he had met, the little scribbled notes, the credit card slips witnessing his shopping and his restaurants. A good jacket was an afternoon’s entertainment, but they were such noisy things, flapping with wallets, clanking with keys, and the men seemed to be umbilically attached to them and often stirred in their sleep as soon as she reached for the collar. Not this one, he was still snoring. No doubt his wife had to put up with that every night as well. Sometimes she got so frightened that she nearly threw up when she got to the jacket, and then the fear of throwing up, of that noise and disturbance, made it worse, so it felt like a string of pain around her throat, as if she was being strangled.

  Then, when he had made the lunge across the kitchen and pushed her back against the pinboard with the children’s drawings and the school timetable, it had occurred to her. How neat, how simple, during the kissing, just push the thing off his shoulders and there it would be when you were ready, waiting for you by itself in an empty room.

  Flipping open the wallet, she saw that he had plenty of cash. Men always did, they liked to have money lying over their hearts to protect them from feeling. Good credit cards, gold ones. Someone at colle
ge knew a man who would buy credit cards. Now, what else? The steak felt like a pool of slurry in her stomach, seeping out, polluting her blood. The early dawn showed above the high suburban cupressus hedge. Little birds were awake, fluttering between the treetops and the telegraph poles.

  The lamps were still on in the sitting room. Selective now, she turned over a photograph frame, appraising the faded velvet backing. Maybe they were antiques, some of them. She put half a dozen in her rucksack. These houses were always the same, too feminine, stuffed with cosy trinkets, padded with excessive furnishings, trying to fill up the space where the man should have been. The wife was pretending that the family was real, but real families had emptier houses, with things lying around where they were used, instead of all this self-conscious arrangement. One day maybe she would do a painting of a room like this.

  The dining room was the usual trophy display, silver candlesticks and coasters, nice linen napkins to wrap them in and stop them, rattling. So professional, she was becoming. Sometimes when she went to sell things like this the dealers were suspicious. Last time a man had joked that she was too young to be selling the family silver. ‘You can’t do it unless you’re young,’ she told him. ‘It’s when people get older that they get sentimental.’

  The rucksack was full and heavy. She took off her gloves, laced her boots, pulled a note out of the wallet for fares and slipped out of the door into the dewy small hours of an August morning. The air smelled very clean, like the breath of children. A fox ran rapidly across the road and she blew it a kiss, one predator to another in the suburbs.

  2. Friday

  ‘Mr Knight, the concern of this committee is that if your news agency becomes part of the Altmark media group, a situation will arise that might be considered incompatible with the ideals of a freedom of information which this country has upheld before the whole world.’