The Cornish Affair (9 page)

As
I swished around the kitchen like an angry cat, I mulled over Nancy’s words. My parents were undoubtedly odd in the way they had raised me, but I had been so happy it hadn’t bothered me at all that I never went to Bea’s ghastly sounding boarding school. I’d had odd forays into the education system to know that it wasn’t for me. The only drawback that I could see for an upbringing like mine was the terrible sense of loss when it finally disappeared.

I
felt the absence of them more and more each day.

I
roughly grabbed a roasting tray and smeared it with olive oil, ready to try out the damn onions. I felt a great annoyance building up inside me, and cursed Harry for bringing horrible Oliver down here. I sliced the top off an onion, and started to peel it.

I’d
heard Nancy’s slight disapproval when she’d spoken about my parents. Which was daft really, as I know how much she’d loved them too.

I
remembered what it had been like, living here with those two vibrant personalities, Michael and Dorothea. Every day had been a holiday, a laugh, a game, I’d felt enfolded in love. Everything was a pale imitation of that now. Even cooking. And that had always been a solace to me, partly of course, because I associated it so strongly with both of my parents. We would all spend hours faffing round in the kitchen making extraordinary things, time consuming potted shrimps with mace and paprika, dipping rose leaves into melted dark chocolate and peeling them back when cool to reveal perfect chocolate leaves underneath, or making champagne jellies that we suspended the first seasons primroses in, like tiffany jewels suspended in amber.

I
remembered as a child Nancy visiting, and the happy sound of laughter echoing around Penmorah. Nancy and Dorothea had been very close, but perhaps underneath it all there was a bit of jealousy? Dorothea had been more beautiful, more vivacious, somehow more alive that Nancy… and of course, she had married my father.

I
sliced the top off another onion, and pulled away at the pale papery skin.

Michael
had flirted with Nancy and made her laugh, teasing her about her arty ways, and she had loved it.

I
slowly prepped another onion.

Maybe
Nancy and my father… No,
surely
not. No. I put the thought from my mind and reached for another onion. I had been too young to uncover adult talk that revealed anything other than a close familial relationship, but maybe? Just maybe.

I
jumped slightly as I heard footsteps behind me. Harry was holding the tray of coffee cups, and looked contrite.

“Sorry
Fin, did you catch the end of that conversation?”

I
nodded, feeling tears start in my eyes and truly not knowing if they were tears of self pity, or due to the onions. Whatever you do with onions they’ll make you cry. Chewing bread, or cutting them underwater, it’s a load of nonsense. I tried to pull myself together, really, what was wrong with me? Of course I missed my parents, and yes, now and again I was lonely, but I’d just had a night of moonlight passion, the dolphins were back and I was being paid a great deal of money to do the job I loved in a place that I loved.

I
smiled ruefully at Harry.

“Oh
forget it… I’m suffering from the effects of the picnic,” I said, slicing another onion.

“So,
what’s the weather like today Fin?” Harry asked in a gentle teasing tone.

My
mind flitted to the absence of Baxter and Nelson, the irritation of Oliver Dean, my morbid thoughts on my parents, and sighed.

“Oh,
that’s easy. Tinned tomato. Watered down tinned tomato with sliced white bread that’s slightly stale and a scraping of marge.”

I
caught Harry’s eye and we burst out laughing.

Chapter
Nine

Oliver and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen being very, very polite to each other.

“May
I use this chopping board?”

“Oh,
please do.”

“Too
much sage, do you think?”

“Not
sure, what do you think?”

And
so on.

The
day was mercifully punctuated with various callers who on the pretext of returning various bits of flotsam and jetsam from the picnic (amongst them my jeans – oh god) came to have a good gawp at Oliver Dean. It seemed most of them knew him from TV, or magazines, the kilt wearing went down a treat with a lot of elbow nudges going on. Even Breadpudding arrived clutching a copy of his book for him to sign, much to Nancy’s amusement. “Wouldn’t you know she’d be a star fucker,” Nancy whispered outrageously to me, making me splutter with laughter. Nancy gave me a huge wink, and I winked back, glad that any imagined tension between us was gone.

At
one point in the kitchen we had Richard, Will, Mrs Trevellyon (who had been driven up by Will) and Pritti, all sitting around the table drinking tea and commenting on the onions. Oliver seemed a little taken aback by this swarm of people. Harry was in his element, making tea and flirting like mad with everyone.

Everyone
but Jace, I realised with a stab of remorse. I was just going to ask Pritti, in a horribly convoluted roundabout way where he was when Harry did the job for me.

“And
where is that ravishing son of yours, Mrs Rampersaud? I hope he behaved himself at the picnic yesterday?”

Pritti
covered her mouth with her hand, and simpered at Harry. (He had that effect on most of the women in Port Charles, although it was fairly obvious even to the most unsophisticated among us that they were barking up the wrong tree.)

She
gave that wonderful side to side nod, waggling her head and said, “I think my son was touched by the sun and the moon yesterday, Mr Harry, he was still lying in bed this morning, smiling at the ceiling. But, I must let him lay there, he is my son and I although I wish with all my heart for him to marry, I know it will not happen if I nag him. So, I took him in his tea, and let him sleep, then he ran off to Newquay with his surfing board thing later on, but I think he will spend all day lying on the beach like a, like a beach bum.”

“He
must be very tired,” Harry said gravely, “Perhaps he overdid it yesterday?”

Oliver
glanced sharply at me, and I turned away, busying myself at the sink. Damn Harry and his bloody barbed comments. Oliver guessed that Jace was the cause of my drunken appearance in the library, I could tell by his face.

The
phone rang, giving me the opportunity to escape. I missed Nelson and his supernatural early warning system. It was my friend Martha calling from London, I excused myself and took the call in my office.

Martha
was a food historian and a great pal. We’d met through Harry about five years ago, and had got on famously.

“I
hear you have the great Oliver Dean with you, you lucky thing,” her husky voice said with a great deal of laughter contained in it.

I
imagined her sitting in her home, surrounded by piles of books and her cats.

“Yes.
Yes I have, and half the village at the moment as well.” I said.

“Isn’t
he
gorgeous
?” Martha said enthusiastically.

I
was completely taken aback. I could tell that she was being serious. Gorgeous? Oliver?

“Look
sweetie, I won’t keep you as you’re busy entertaining the serfs with ale and cakes in the big house-”

“Very
funny,” I said, wishing that she was here to lighten the load.

“I
just wanted to tell you that I was faxing you that recipe I found for you for salmon done in red wine and oranges, it was a great favourite with King James the first, all that general excitement over Spain and oranges, I suppose, anyway it
looks
stunning. Try it, and let me know what you think. Come up here soon and we’ll have dinner. Give my love to lovely Oliver, he’s a dish!”

I
said goodbye and went back into the kitchen thoughtfully. So Martha thought he was a dish, did she? I don’t know what sort of dish she had in mind. I gave him a surreptitious look. OK, I suppose. But hardly Martha’s type, I would have supposed, which just goes to show how wrong I can be.

There
was a general exodus from the kitchen, and I waved goodbye to everyone, having promised that we would all got to The Ram tonight so that Harry and Oliver could sample the Cherrywood Devil.

Harry
took Nancy off to the office so they could read the latest instalments of Angelique, and Oliver sat at the table with his head in his hands.

“Is
it always like this round here?” he asked.

I
nodded, clearing away the various cups and glasses from the table.

“How
in the name of God do you get any work done?” he said, looking at me with incredulous eyes.

“Well,
you know… things just get done, I suppose. Anyway,” I went on defensively, “Pritti gives me lots of ideas for stuff, she’s a fantastic cook and-”

“What
about you? Don’t you need some time alone to concentrate?” he asked looking intently at me.

I
usually got loads of time to myself, I felt like crying out, and the reason it was so busy here today was that they all wanted to come and have a good look at the freak off the telly! I bit my lip and continued to wash up in a dignified silence.

“Why
don’t you have a dishwasher?”

Quite
a few reasons, actually, I inwardly fumed. Where shall I start? The first is that the plumbing at Penmorah goes into a cess pit and can barely cope with a washing machine, the second is that I have a lot of old china and glass and silver that wouldn’t go in one, the third is that I don’t want one, and the fourth is that it’s none of your damned business. Although there was a fleeting guilty thought that I’d been having more and more of the burdens of being a caretaker to Penmorah and the possible joys of a modern house with modern plumbing.

“Do
you know Martha? Martha Miller?” I said, completely changing the subject.

I’m
not sure why I asked this, but it was a relief to be asking him questions instead of the other way around.

“Martha?
Yeah, sure I do. Nice woman… although I had dinner there once and had to leave early because of her bloody cats.” Oliver said, making notes in a very professional looking book that put my food splattered notepad to shame.

“What
did she cook for you?” I asked curiously, thinking back to the time when she’d made me some god awful mediaeval pike dish that tasted of mud. We’d laughed our socks off and had gone round to her local Italian where we’d had far too much wine and enjoyed the attentions of the waiters and the every present over large phallic pepper grinder that all such restaurants seem to order in bulk, and then send all the male staff on some pepper grinding/libido course, (complete with lascivious leer).

Oliver
groaned, “Oh don’t remind me, it was an eel soup – that was when she was deeply into her mediaeval period, salt cod and flowers floated in it. Truly revolting, but she whipped up an omelette, I seem to remember. She’s a very good historian, I just wish she didn’t take her work home with her, that’s all. Oh, and of course, it would be great if she got rid of her damn cats, as well.”

“We
can’t all get rid of our pets just for you,” I replied tartly.

Oliver
grinned at me.

“No,
no, I realise that. It’s just so awful having a damn allergy to something that is so endemic. And I do think it’s very nice of you to have accommodated my rather wimpy affliction with such good grace.”

I
looked sharply at him to see if he was being sarcastic or not. It seemed not, but I wasn’t sure. I decided to move on to safer grounds.

“So,
about these onions,” I said, “Nobody was very keen on them, were they? I still think cheese would go down well at some point, although the chaps at the factory won’t like it, they have a lot of trouble with the machine that grates to a specific portion, and they’ll have to or then we get in the hassle of hand finishing which, of course makes it much more expensive to produce for such a low return product-”

“You
really do know about this stuff, don’t you?” Oliver interrupted.

“Of
course I do!” I said indignantly.

I
bloody well should do, after all the interminable factory tours I’d done, not to mention the lunches with food technicians, marketing chaps (male and female) and consumer taste panels.

I
glared at him, my feathers well and truly ruffled. I probably looked like Nelson when I left the door open, letting in cold raw January wind.

“Sorry,
I just forget what I’m doing really. I’m used to creating something that I either cook in a restaurant or that people can re-produce at home, this mass market stuff isn’t really my thing.” Oliver said apologetically, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes.

“Why
are you doing it then?” I asked promptly. Knowing, of course the answer.

Oliver
spread his arms out wide, palms facing the ceiling.

“Money.
I was offered an
obscene
amount of the filthy lucre, too much to turn it down. Harry persuaded me that if I did it, I could then concentrate on my writing for a bit…”

I
let his words drift over me.
Just
what the world needs, I thought scornfully. Yet another lavishly produced cookery book, complete with luscious colour photographs of some rustic ponced about Tuscan bean dish served in roughly hewn peasant olive wood bowls. I turned away from him, and busied myself at the sink. Probably it’ll have pictures of him in some fake kitchen, swigging glasses of wine with trendy looking mates hanging about.

“…
and the kids really deserve it, they’re great.”

What?
Why is he talking about kids? I glanced sharply towards him, and saw that he was laughing his head off.

“What’s
so funny?” I asked, embarrassed that I haven’t heard one word that he’s said.

“You!
You’re really funny when you’re caught out! You didn’t hear a word of that did you? I think I lost you when I said the word book, didn’t I?”

Now
then, I’d like it set on record that I rarely blush. I mean, rarely if
at all
. Frankly with my colouring I just can’t afford to, and I was unfamiliar with the feeling. Two hot spots of colour were flaming in my cheeks, I could feel that, and a slight stickiness had developed in the palms of my hands. Why I should be so mortified about being found out at not listening properly to someone, I simply don’t know. But I was.

“Kids,
you definitely said something about kids. What was it?”

Oliver
was still laughing at me, which, to be honest, I found it a bit of a cheek.
And
patronising. None of us like to be accused of not having a sense of humour (although you can be sure when people proudly tell you ‘I’m dead funny, me’ you can guarantee that they’re not.) But I can usually dredge up a smile at the very least, even when it’s me that they’re laughing at. So I pasted on that sort of slight seasickness face that Nancy says I get when I try a fake smile, and it seemed to make him laugh even more.

Bastard.

I flashed him A Look.

That
was seemingly the worst thing I could do, it practically set off hysterics in him. He was doing that man thing that they do, to indicate general all round mirth, you know, slapping his thighs with his palms, and throwing his head back a lot. I waited patiently for him to finish.

As
I was waiting I studied him closely, and I could begrudgingly see that he was quite attractive – but not my type at all. The only thing that I liked about him, was the way he moved. You know how some people are just naturally comfortable in their skins? Well, he was. He was a muscular man, but he moved very gracefully, deftly, with a purpose. The other thing that I begrudgingly admired about him was that he’d made himself thoroughly at home here. He was moving about my kitchen as if he owned it. I mean, obviously I didn’t like it, but there was something attractive about that amount of self confidence.

The
late afternoon sun was glinting off the dark hair on his legs, and as my eyes travelled across him, I did actually wonder if he was wearing anything under his skirt, sorry,
kilt
. Kilt as a fashion statement, that is.

I
poured myself a glass of water and sampled the last batch of roasted onions.