The Cookbook of Common Prayer

by Francesca Haig

  She’s still holding the container, trying very hard to pretend that this is normal. Teddy’s noticed too, and goes to say something, and she shoots him a look. They’re both watching me now, which makes it worse.

  ‘Was that cumin, in the sauce?’ I ask.

  She nods. ‘And turmeric, too – just a bit.’

  Teddy

  After dinner, Mum and Papabee and I watch a quiz show, and there’s a bit about how the City of London still pays rent to the queen, because of some leftover law from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The part that makes me pay attention is the price that they pay her. I even Google it to double-check, after Papabee’s gone, and it’s just like they said on the TV: a knife, an axe, six oversized horseshoes, and sixty-one nails. That’s how I know I’m onto something – the London price has got nails, just like The Lorax, with its fifteen cents and its single nail. So I know for sure that I’m on the right track.

  After that, I think a lot about nails. When Sylvie was younger she did tap-dancing lessons in a church hall in West Hobart, and Mum and I used to wait in the room off to the side. There was a poster on the wall that was a picture of Jesus on the cross and great big letters that said:

  IT WAS NOT THE NAILS THAT

  HELD CHRIST TO THE CROSS

  BUT HIS LOVE FOR YOU AND ME

  That picture never made me think about love – only about nails. Every week, I used to sit on the bench right underneath the poster, so I wouldn’t have to stare at it. I already knew about Jesus and the nails and the cross, of course – we have RE lessons at school – but up until the poster I’d never really thought about what would happen when a nail goes through a hand.

  Even though I haven’t seen that poster for years, just thinking about it makes me scrunch my fists up tight. And it makes me think there must be a special magic that has something to do with nails. Jesus, The Lorax, and London can’t all be wrong.

  I’d like to see what Sylvie would say if I went to the shed and got a nail, and took it in to her as part of the price for her story. But they’re really strict about No Sharp Objects in the ward. Aunt Amy sent Sylve a pair of silver earrings for her birthday, once, and the nurses made Mum take them home again because they were long and kind of pointy at the end. I get it. I’ve seen the scars all the way down Sylvie’s arm.

  Anyway, I have another idea for what the price might be – something even better than nails. I know where I need to go this time. The only problem is that I need Papabee to drive me there, and his driving’s getting worse and worse. I didn’t tell Mum that he got lost the other day and was late picking me up from school. And I definitely didn’t tell her that when Papabee parked outside his flat yesterday he hit the telegraph pole with his back light. I don’t want Mum to worry. And I especially don’t want her to start talking about Papabee having to stop driving. I want to believe that if love could keep Jesus on the cross, then love can also keep Papabee’s Toyota Corolla on the road. Because, this weekend, I need him to drive me a lot further than just back from school.

  Gabe

  Rosa and I have drunk too much. It’s become a habit. She comes around in the late morning; we open a bottle of cheap wine and make sandwiches for lunch; if she’s still here in the evening we go to the Italian place down the road and drink their house red with greasy pizza.

  This daily drinking isn’t like the drinking that I remember from home: the kind of happy, noisy drinking that we used to do at the Neck, Sue and Gill laughing louder and louder and Dan pouring more wine and all of us talking over each other.

  This is different. Rosa and I drink like we’re thirsty. And even though we talk, it’s quieter than those conversations at the Neck. Rosa and I talk around and around the silence that would be there if we stopped talking. The silence of Dougie, who says nothing.

  This afternoon, her cheeks are red. I don’t know whether it’s the heat or the wine we had with lunch. The school’s still closed for the summer holidays, the boarders all at home with their families. I picture Rosa walking those long, empty corridors. No wonder she comes here so often.

  After today’s lunch she sprawls across my couch and flicks through her phone, a glass of white wine on the floor nearby.

  ‘I’m going to look back on this stage of my life as, like, Rosa Campbell: The Couch Years,’ she says.

  ‘Hardly years,’ I say. ‘Anyway, cut yourself some slack.’

  She doesn’t reply.

  ‘Have they said anything yet?’ I ask her. ‘About your contract, at the school?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not yet. I don’t know if I want to stay, even if they do decide to keep me on. My sister says I can go and stay with her for a while in Mexico. I’d like to. And my best friend wants to go to Iceland, for a holiday – asked me if I’ll go with her. The hot springs, you know? But it depends on what the school decides. Or what I decide. And I sort of feel like—’ She pauses, one hand circling impatiently. ‘I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen.’

  ‘Maybe after the inquest you’ll feel different,’ I say. ‘Some closure, maybe.’

  ‘Closure,’ she says, then says it again in a bad American accent: ‘Closure. What does that really mean, anyway?’ She shrugs.

  That night, when we’re halfway through the second bottle at the Italian restaurant, and I’m telling her that Meredith Calvert still hasn’t replied to my email asking her to meet again, Rosa puts down the pizza crust she’s fiddling with and says, ‘And then what?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean: what happens next, after you’ve found out all the answers? Is that going to make it all better?’

  ‘I’m not kidding myself that it’s going to bring him back. Or even that it’ll make it easier. But it’s something I have to do.’

  ‘Who for? For Dougie?’

  ‘What about for you? Don’t you want to know?’

  ‘Don’t make me your excuse,’ she says, picking up the pizza crust again. ‘You’re not doing this for me. I never asked you to do any of this.’

  ‘I need to do this. I need to find out why it happened.’

  ‘You’re still not answering my question,’ Rosa says. ‘What then?’

  In the morning I go to the Wellcome Centre Library again, to read more about subdural haematomas. My bus gets held up in traffic on Euston Rd, and I get back to the flat later than usual. Rosa’s waiting there, sitting on the steps that lead up to the door. She jumps up when she sees me coming from the bus stop.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Traffic. Why? Everything OK?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says, but she throws her bag over her shoulder and stomps up the stairs.

  ‘You could’ve texted me if you were worried.’ I put the kettle on.

  ‘I wasn’t worried. I’m fine.’

  But I worry, too, later that week when she has the norovirus and doesn’t come. She texts to let me know, but I can’t stop thinking about her, there in that huge school with nobody to take care of her. When she comes back on the fourth day, thinner and with dry, flaking lips, I tell her that she needs to drink more water, and while she naps on my couch I go out to the pharmacy and get her some Dioralyte sachets. At dinner that night the waiter at the Italian restaurant says, ‘Nice to see your daughter is back,’ and neither of us corrects him, because we don’t know what we are to each other.

  She orders wine.

  ‘Are you sure we should?’ I say. ‘You’re still on the mend.’

  ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ she says.

  And there’s no answer to that, because the worst thing that could happen has already happened. When the wine comes, I pour us both a glass.

  That night I catch the train out to Potters Bar. I don’t need to check the address – I have it memorised – and I find my way from the station on foot. The streets are wide and mainly empty, and every house has a front garden. It’s so suburban and quiet compared to the sirens and constant traffic that I’ve b
ecome used to near my flat. I stand outside Murphy’s bungalow at the corner of the street. A light glows from a rear room. A man with a dog walks past and I pretend to look at my phone until he’s gone.

  It’s nearly nine o’clock now but only just starting to get dark, and the day’s heat hasn’t dissipated. Another light comes on inside the house. I walk the length of the agapanthus that rim the lawn. There’s no sign of any kids: no children’s bikes chained to the fence, or play equipment in the yard.

  I duck my head as a car’s headlights sweep over me. The car slows, then pulls over and parks barely five metres from me. The man who gets out is shorter than Murphy, and has a beard. I pretend to examine my phone again, but he’s not looking at me. He strides towards the front door with a briefcase in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. I can even hear his voice, when he calls out as he swings the door shut behind him. Not the words, but the sound of it – the unmistakable I’m home tone of someone arriving at the end of a long day. I walk slowly round the corner and peer over the fence to the rear of the house, where the lights are on. There are French doors to the garden, a whole wall of glass looking into the kitchen. Murphy’s cooking; the other man’s unpacking the groceries. They move around each other easily. They’re not talking, but there must be a TV or radio on because they both laugh at the same instant, at something I can’t hear.

  Does he look happy, or sad? Devastated, the newspaper report said. I’m looking for remorse in the way that he fills the kettle, or the angle of his head when he bends to close a cupboard. I’ve become an old madwoman scrying for messages in tea leaves.

  I can’t tell what they’re cooking – Gill would have worked it out. The thought of her makes me ask what I’m doing here, standing in the dark, staring over Murphy’s fence like some kind of pervert. Am I really even here? Or am I in Hobart, with my family, or in Paris with Dougie, as Gill’s letters pretend?

  Murphy lowers the blinds on the French windows. For a second, as he reaches up for the blind, he’s facing me directly, and I freeze. But he’s in the brightness and I’m in the twilight, and he doesn’t seem to see me. The blind drops. A light goes on in another room, and then off again, leaving the strobing blue light that only comes from a TV. I stay there a while longer, but there’s nothing to see.

  Am I going to do this? Can I really hurt this man now I’ve heard his partner call out to greet him? Now I’ve seen them cooking together in their own kitchen?

  It doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like something already marked on one of my maps. It feels like a fact – solid and incontrovertible as the asphalt under my feet. Solid as Dougie’s body in the morgue – the unyielding coolness of his skin.

  Sylvie

  Dad rings, so I have to wheel the drip-stand with my feeding pump to the nurses’ station.

  ‘I miss you, love,’ he says. ‘How are you? You being nice to Mum?’

  I make a non-committal sound, and twist around so that the nurses can only see my back. It’s night here – it must be morning in Europe.

  ‘Are you still in Rome?’

  A moment’s pause. ‘No – Paris now.’ His voice is kind of croaky.

  ‘You sound tired,’ I say. The feeding pump whirrs and clicks.

  ‘Feeling a bit seedy this morning, to be honest,’ he says. ‘Your brother’s leading me astray. I’m too old to be trying to keep up with a nineteen-year-old. Too much beer, not enough sleep.’ He’s silent for a few seconds. ‘He sends his love, by the way.’

  The first and last time I ever got drunk was with Dougie. It was New Year’s Eve at the Neck, and everyone went down to the beach. There were two bonfires – a big one where the grown-ups had set up their deck-chairs and picnic mats, and one further down the beach, where we kids gathered. Nathan had stolen half a bottle of vodka from Sue and Dan, and the rest of us had pilfered wine and beer from the eskis near the adults. I had two beers tucked in the front of my hoodie. They’d come straight from the ice-filled eski and they pressed cold and wet against my stomach. I tried not to clink as I walked.

  I pretended to like the taste of beer, until I’d drunk so much it didn’t taste of anything. The fire was hot on one side of my face, the sea wind cool on the other. Teddy was snuggled in against my legs, half asleep, while Dougie and Ella and Nathan talked across the fire, the alcohol making all their jokes a lot funnier than they should have been. It was the summer before Papa J died. Ella passed me the vodka bottle and I took another big swig.

  Later I threw up and Dougie patted me on the back, kicked sand over the puddle of vomit and fetched me water to drink. He walked me up and down the water’s edge until I felt sober enough to face the grown-ups back at the other fire.

  Dougie took care of me, even then, when I’d begun not to care about myself. I was already hiding food, and testing the gaps between my ribs with my fingers.

  I open his latest letter and read it again.

  Gill

  I get talking to a young woman in the hospital canteen – we’ve both ordered the cheese and mushroom toastie for lunch. I see her tentatively prodding her soggy sandwich, and from the next table I say, ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t bother. I made the mistake of eating mine and I’m regretting it.’

  Over tea in Styrofoam cups, she ends up telling me that her boyfriend is upstairs in the reproductive health clinic, giving a sperm sample before starting aggressive chemotherapy that will probably destroy his fertility.

  ‘He doesn’t even know if he wants kids,’ she says. ‘He always said probably not, and I’m not sure either way. We hardly even talked about it – we’re only twenty-seven, for God’s sake. But suddenly, it’s now or never: freeze his sperm before the chemo kills it for good.’ With the plastic fork she pushes the flaccid grey mushrooms around on her plate. ‘I can’t stop thinking about him, up there, wanking over some second-hand porn magazine.’ She shakes her head. ‘I love him – I do – but this whole sperm thing – in a weird way it’s actually been harder than the cancer.’

  All through the afternoon I think about her, and that mound of grey mushrooms congealing between the slices of damp toast.

  That night I write: Mushrooms for the day your boyfriend is giving a sperm sample before starting chemotherapy.

  I use smoked garlic, for depth, and sear the mushrooms so they won’t be soggy. I add some samphire, for colour, and for the saltiness. I serve it for dinner on crispy sourdough toast, which Teddy complains is too crunchy.

  A week later my old friend Esther phones to tell me that her first grandchild has been born.

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you,’ she says, a bit hesitant. ‘I expect all these things must be hard for you.’ Her husband died two years ago, after a sudden stroke, so she understands better than most what loss feels like. But tonight, her giddy joy is hard to resist. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ she admits. ‘I’m doing laps of the kitchen like a drunk person. I keep looking at the photo they emailed, and crying.’

  I cook for her, that same night: Late-night supper after receiving a phone call to announce the safe birth of your first grandson. Figs, because that seems suitably fecund. Fattened and warmed in a ginger sugar syrup, with slices of lemon floating like lily pads, the citrus and the sweetness together.

  I know that what Sue said about these recipes is probably right. I know that when people buy my cookbooks they’re buying an idea, an aspiration: the artfully styled photographs of a kitchen that isn’t mine (it’s a studio, hired by the publisher). I’ve always tried my best not to peddle any nonsense: no clean-eating nonsense; no diet claims; no ‘this meal will change your life.’ But I know how the business works – and I fall for it myself when I buy other people’s cookbooks. It’s the transaction that we make:

  Buy this book and you too could be standing, with good hair, in a shabby-chic kitchen, an egg nestled peacefully on a mound of flour on a wooden table. You’ll grind your own spices in a mortar and pestle, instead of relying on out-of-date powdered spices with a layer of
greasy dust on the lid.

  Buy this book and you too will be the kind of person who keeps your dry goods in glass jars, each one labelled. Your counter will be covered with small bowls of ingredients you prepared earlier, instead of being scattered with unopened mail, a packet of dog treats, and your son’s soccer mouthguard.

  Lately, I don’t feel I can participate in that transaction. I look at my life and ask, Who would want this? Who would want any part of this?

  Buy this book and you too could have a whole shelf in the fridge devoted to the food-replacement drinks that are the only thing your daughter will eat.

  Buy this book and you too could be crying over the sink because the taste of maple syrup reminds you of your dead son.

  I’d like to tell Gabe the truth about my new recipes, and what Sue said about them, but I can’t bring myself to ring him. He still calls every day, to speak to Teddy, but when it’s my turn to talk to him I find myself saying that we’re running late for school, or that I need to call my editor about the afternoon’s deadline. ‘Tell him I’ll call him later,’ I say to Teddy. ‘Give him my love.’

  I don’t call back later. It’s not that Gabe doesn’t understand me – it’s that he understands me too well. He asks me questions about when we should tell Sylvie, and I don’t have the answers.

  I know my new recipes – my batshit recipes, as Sue’s started to call them – will never become a book. But I keep writing them anyway. I’ve been thinking about The Book of Common Prayer that my mum always kept on her bedside table. All those prayers for specific days. The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth. Forms of Prayer for the Anniversary of the day of Accession of the Reigning Sovereign. The Order for the Burial of the Dead.