Grace's Table Read online

  Grace studied her hands as they moved across the meat. They looked much like any others the same age – veined, lined, the backs stained with tea-coloured spots. But they’d felt their way through the past seventy years in unique ways. Much of their work had been to the benefit of others, some not. She’d known them as still, listening hands, but also as hands that moved with urgency and madness. For a while they’d been careful nurse’s hands. Then hands that cradled three babies and clapped, tickled and taught in turn. She’d bruised, burnt and cut them; some scars suggested badly. They’d dismissed, beckoned, pleaded over the years, and not always successfully. Their goodbyes were too many to recall.

  She held out her arms and studied the flat platter of her palms, red now from salt and friction. She turned them over, looked at the backs again. Her fingers were long and slender as her legs still were; the nails neater at seventy than they had been in her fifties – back when she’d had to scrub beds and bodies in the nursing home. She was fond of them, she decided, attached, beyond the obvious. She’d rather lose an eye or a foot than either of these two old friends. She’d miss the feel of one against the other as they rested in her lap, cupped comfortably like a successful marriage. Not that Grace could give anybody tips on that.

  Her relationships, even now, were as problematic as they were when she was younger. She hadn’t thought it unreasonable to expect she’d have them down pat by now. And she probably would have if it wasn’t for her children. Unfortunately, they were determined to stand like a nagging conscience between her and Jack, forcing them to conduct their romance like sly adolescents.

  ‘They’ll all be coming?’ Jack had asked her last week of the day’s celebration.

  ‘Yes. Along with Ada and Kath.’

  He nodded, face impassive, typically hiding what he really felt.

  ‘One day,’ Grace said, and rested her hand on his arm.

  He’d laughed then, a rich, generous sound despite his exclusion. ‘Let’s hope it happens sooner than later. It’d be nice if one of us could put in an appearance at the funeral of whoever goes first.’

  ‘I’d show up anyway if I were you,’ Grace said. ‘You’ve earnt a seat on a pew.’

  She put her hands back to work on the lamb, cold after the warm thought of resting them on Jack’s arm.

  The lamb was slow-cooking in the oven, the timer set for two hours.

  ‘I’ll make a start on the mint sauce,’ Grace said and moved to the sink, half-filled it with water.

  Earlier, she’d picked a large bunch of mint from the old cement tub by the tap at the back of the house. She dropped the mint into the water now and swept it about, separating the sprigs. A money spider made its way to the surface from the submerged greenery and tried to scramble up the sink. Grace gave it a helping hand and it scuttled off across the bench. Behind her, she could hear Susan moving a pebble of fresh nutmeg across the grater.

  ‘I’ve never put nutmeg in a béchamel sauce.’ Grace worked the mint leaves up and down in the water, picking off webs and browned leaves as she spotted them.

  ‘I’ve never made mint sauce,’ Susan said.

  Grace had never bought it. Just as Mother had never bought tinned peaches.

  Peaches had been one of Mother’s favourite bottling fruits. The seasons at Harvest could be measured each year by the number of Fowlers Vacola preserving bottles that filled Mother’s pantry shelves. If they were lined up three and four deep, then it had been a good year. The years there were few were the years Grace recalled wearing shoes too tight and jumpers too thin.

  She’d looked upon those tall glass jars with their metal lids clamped down tightly on red rubber seals, and marvelled at the colourful patterns her mother had the patience to create. Deep maroon plum orbs pressed against the glass like eager faces and golden peaches, layered in symmetrical convex halves, forming hilly landscapes all the way to the top. There were sauces, chutneys and pickles too, made during times of plenty, plus pears, quinces, cumquats and stubby pieces of fibrous rhubarb. The change of seasons could be mapped in that pantry from summer blackberry jam through to winter pickled onions.

  There had been a peach tree in Grace’s city backyard once, but it was a tree she came to despise. The people who sold them the house had praised the tree’s fruitfulness. Grace was thrilled. Back then she still believed a well-stocked pantry said much about a woman. Each August the tree teased her with its weighty display of pink flowers. But by late October, when all the blossoms were gone and the fruit should have been plump with promise, they were still hard and ill-formed little nuts of bitterness. No amount of fertiliser or mulch helped; the tree continued to mock her optimism.

  One year, in a state of frustration, or madness perhaps, she harvested the pathetic crop anyway, determined they’d be eaten. She spent some time rubbing the fuzz from each, tossed out the ones with grubs and blemishes, and kidded herself that what was left looked better than usual. She pricked each fruit to its stone with a skewer then stewed them whole in sugar and water.

  The failure of the exercise was revealed early when they refused even to give up their skins. And the one she cut to try was tasteless. Feeling she’d be doubly damned by the tree if she wasted the two pounds of sugar in the syrup as well, she went to the greengrocer and bought peaches. She stewed those sunny fruits in the syrup but the pleasure in eating them was spoilt by the ones she’d thrown out. When the tree toppled over one windy January night, she was glad.

  Grace reflected later that the real reason she’d hated that peach tree in her backyard was because in producing inedible fruit year in, year out, it had reneged on its purpose. But then Grace had not always done what was expected of her either, so who was she to question?

  Grace pulled the plug from the sink, scooped up the mint and shook the excess water from it. She set the mint on the draining board and wondered, as she started to pinch the leaves from the branches between thumb and index finger, if Susan’s years of watching her had taught her much that was useful.

  Grace had learnt a good deal at her mother’s elbow, especially about the art of cooking. Even as a small child she’d watched enthralled by the mystery and cleverness of it, as her mother scooped and poured and shook ingredients into pots and bowls and moulds. A slab of butter could be rubbed into a generous shake of flour and the two mixed into pliable dough by a good splash of milk and beaten egg before it was cut into scones. Some days they’d have mixed peel or sultanas added, on others, grated cheese and parsley.

  As a child Grace believed the act of making something sweet or savoury, spicy or sour, was down to nothing more than whimsy. Later, she came to realise that her mother had put much thought and effort into concocting variety, as much to prevent her own boredom, Grace suspected, as theirs. Unintentionally, Grace was being taught to live inventively.

  There was rarely a cookbook open on Mother’s kitchen table, only an assortment of bags and packets and tins. When there was a recipe, it was in a tattered and torn exercise book she had filled with handwritten slips of paper gathered from friends and neighbours. There was little in the way of explanation on those pages, just a list of the main ingredients, their quantity described in words like generous or dash or sprinkle. Flours weren’t identified, techniques not explained; it was assumed the cook would know when to fold or cream or beat. The heading to the dish might read Mavis’s Chocolate Dessert or Freda’s Pork Dish. The ingredients to these recipes could metamorphose into something new like a Chinese whisper. But a little of the original person was always left behind in the recipe’s name despite Mother’s small, neat notations altering many of the pages, try cinnamon, better with four eggs or cook longer.

  Grace’s experimentation started with those butter-stained pages. As a girl, she set up her own mixing bowl and wooden spoon beside her mother’s on baking days and she scrutinised the recipes encoded in that exercise book. She soon realised there was no code to break
: ‘Is this enough sugar?’ she would ask.

  Her mother would look across, thoughtful. ‘A little more.’

  Simply those extra granules, Grace learnt, made a pavlova’s peaks more pert and creamed butter whiter.

  Mother shook flour or cocoa or arrowroot into a sifter and Grace cranked the handle until a soft peak formed in a bowl. The height of those peaks started to make sense once knocked down to form a well, filled with beaten eggs and mixed to a smooth batter.

  ‘How much salt?’ she asked.

  ‘A pinch.’ These measurements were a secret language just for girls. ‘Here, I’ll show you.’ Mother dipped her thumb and index finger into the salt pig and brought out a triangle of white grains.

  A pinch seemed a funny measure. Grace held up her own fingers, caught the thumb and index finger together and looked at them. They made her think of shadow puppets and birds’ beaks. She dipped that beak into the salt pig as her mother had done, and pinched. ‘My pinch looks smaller than your pinch,’ she said, looking at her own collection of salt grains, paltry compared to her mother’s.

  Mother looked up. ‘Add another pinch, then.’

  As Grace’s young hands grew, so did the size of her salt pinches.

  ‘What have you learnt from me about cooking over the years?’ Grace dared to ask Susan.

  ‘To use less salt.’

  Grace knew that one was coming. ‘But … you’ve learnt nothing good?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘What?’

  Susan stopped stirring the béchamel sauce. ‘Let’s see. You’ve taught me how to cook old-fashioned stuff, I guess, like Anzac biscuits, scones, Christmas puddings. That sort of thing. Most of my recipes come off the internet now though. You type in the key ingredient and it brings up dozens of suggestions.’

  Sometimes Grace still pulled her mother’s old recipe book from the back of a drawer and scanned the torn and spattered pages. She’d try to make the steamed puddings or pastries written there, not weighing or measuring a single ingredient but sticking instead to the dashes and sprinkles her mother suggested. Sometimes they failed. Other times they turned out perfectly. Grace wondered what would become of such a book. She imagined it at the back of a cupboard in Susan’s meticulous home and paraded around friends from time to time as a quaint but ridiculous relic from the past, like sanitary belts.

  ‘How long have these been on?’ Susan stuck the tine of a fork into the hole where the saucepan lid’s knob was once attached and lifted it to look at the potatoes inside. ‘They’ve nearly boiled dry.’

  ‘Long enough, then.’

  Grace took one of the new knives from the block – a broad-bladed one that tapered to a severe point – and started chopping the mint leaves. The fragrance released from the herb made her salivate. She knew when she steeped it in vinegar that the acerbic taste of it would catch at the back of her throat, but in a tantalising way.

  ‘Makes my toes open and shut,’ she recalled telling Mother of her homemade mint sauce as a child.

  There was a clatter behind Grace – she knew the sound. The saucepan lid had slipped from the fork and hit the floor. She’d done it often enough herself.

  ‘I don’t know how you put up with these old pots.’ Susan had bent down to pick it up but it kept moving across the tiles as she struggled to catch it on the fork again.

  ‘Here, use this one – it’s easier.’ Grace passed her a carving fork from the drawer.

  ‘I should have bought you pots, not knives!’

  Upright once more, Susan stuck the fork in the potatoes. ‘These are too soft to roast now. I’ll have to bin them. And the pot may as well follow.’

  ‘I’m fond of both pot and lid, so don’t throw either out.’ Grace took the pot from the stove and tipped the overcooked potatoes into a colander to drain. She’d mash them later and use them to top a cottage pie.

  She opened the cupboard under the sink and took a bag of potatoes from the basket inside. ‘I’ll do more.’

  Guilt obviously had some advantages, as Susan took the knife that Grace was about to use and said in a softer voice, ‘I’ll do them. You go and get dressed or you’ll be caught in your gardening clothes when everybody arrives,’ and kissed Grace on the cheek.

  In her bedroom, Grace swung back the doors to her wardrobe and sat on the edge of the bed. She cast her eyes across the clothes from left to right. Then back again. Nothing appealed.

  Des had always liked to see her in fitted blouses with tightly belted skirts or trousers. Sometimes she’d felt he wore her on his arm like some people wear a Rolex watch. Mother had never allowed Grace bare shoulders or too much knee. And now Susan, Grace knew, would like to see her in the lavender floral frock with dainty pearl buttons she’d given her last Mother’s Day. She’d expect it trimmed with pearls at throat and ears, the jewellery a gift too. Grace never felt her real self when she wore such an outfit. Jack wouldn’t care what she wore; he praised her in a slip and bra as much as he did when she was dressed up for the theatre.

  Grace stood again at the wardrobe. She ran a finger along the fabrics, stopping at a pair of lightweight cotton cropped trousers, relaxed at the waist. She took them from their hanger and laid them on the bed. Next she trailed through the tops; passed over cream, floral, pastel, bold fabrics, then lingered over a cotton blouse. Short-sleeved, button-through, loose. It was white like the cropped trousers. She took this from the hanger and laid it on the bed as well. She wouldn’t look brazen, decorous, dressed up or striking. Instead, she’d look cool, clinical, efficient – just what the day needed.

  3

  With the pot back in service, the second round of potatoes simmering on the stove and an apron on, Grace turned her attention to the half-dozen mangoes lined up along the windowsill. She could smell them even above the chopped mint and the lamb roasting in the oven. She took a clean tea towel from a drawer and used it to polish a crystal bowl she’d brought in earlier from the china cabinet. She held the bowl up to the light that came in through the window. Satisfied that it was clean, she set it back on the bench, took each mango from the windowsill in turn, tested its weight. The last one she kept cupped in her hand. It was warm in her palm.

  ‘It’s a sensual fruit, don’t you think?’ Grace rolled the fruit gently between her hands as she spoke, allowed her fingers to caress its smooth skin.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ Susan said.

  ‘Firm like a breast,’ Grace said. ‘A young breast, anyway.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get them cut up. We’ll see how good these knives are.’

  Grace ignored this. ‘But inside, they’re as soft and sweet as a puss—’

  ‘Mum!’

  Grace looked at her daughter and smiled. ‘Yes, dear?’

  Filip had once said Grace was exotic like a mango.

  He’d brought one back to her at Harvest, after a visit to his family in the city. He often brought her unusual treats from these visits: syrupy sweet Macedonian specialities mostly – halva, baklava, ravanija. Grace imagined his mother – small, dark – pressing waxed-paper bundles or dented biscuit tins into her son’s hands, as much a gift of culture as love.

  Grace had neither seen nor tasted a mango before this gift, and was struck immediately by its sun-coloured skin.

  ‘Smell it.’ Filip held the fruit out to her.

  She sat up on the picnic blanket, wrapped her hands around the warm fruit, embraced his fingers too, and breathed deeply of its scent. The sweetness she inhaled was like nothing she’d smelt before. It spoke to her of elsewhere.

  ‘It is all the way from Queensland,’ Filip said in his precise English. ‘It is a tropical fruit.’

  ‘Is that why it smells like the sun?’ Grace asked.

  ‘It smells exotic, like you.’ He pressed the fruit to his nose then rolled it in his palm, just as Gr
ace was doing these many years later. ‘Firm like a breast,’ he said, mock squeezing the fruit. Then, gentling his grip, added, ‘But inside, so soft, so sweet.’

  ‘Like me?’ Grace teased.

  ‘Yes, like you.’

  He took out a pocketknife and Grace watched as he carefully sliced the side off the mango. Juice from it ran through the gaps of his fingers and onto the blanket. He passed Grace the cut portion, curved like the hull of a boat. She licked the flesh tentatively, unsure what to expect.

  Filip laughed at her. ‘You taste it like a kitten tastes milk from a bowl.’

  Some firsts are not forgotten, her first taste of mango one of them. The flavour burst onto her tongue, declared itself as a fruit that needed to be eaten greedily, messily. Juice dripped from her chin and down to her elbows as she ate the flesh. She turned the curved-hull skin inside out to be sure not to miss any.

  ‘Delicious,’ she said, and held the thin golden skin up to cover the sun when she’d finished.

  Laughing, Filip passed her the other half, which she ate as quickly, then the seed, which she chewed until its stringy fibres stood out like a brush.

  After she’d licked the juice from each of her fingers, she then took her time to lick it from each of his.

  Susan took a glinting new knife from the block, tipped a mango up, and made a decisive slice down the side of the golden fruit.

  Grace gave her fruit one last roll in the hand before cutting it, gently, with her old knife, which fitted its shape so well.

  She wished she could say the same of Filip and the other men she’d loved, that the lives of each had fitted hers like worn knife to mango. Not even Des had achieved it, and he’d had more than thirty years to work on the fit.

  Now, she found, love worked in less explosive ways. It had neither the highs nor lows of her youth, nor the disappointments of middle age. It had become, instead, a gentle constant, unstartled by intensity. It was no longer waited on or waited for but taken, as needed, like sips from a cup. That’s what Jack provided now, those small sips.