Good taste, p.1
Good Taste, page 1
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This one is for you, Mum.
With respectful apologies to Florence White and Elizabeth Raffald.
‘Of course it was French. What passes for cookery in England is an abomination (they agreed). It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like leather. It is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables.’
VIRGINIA WOOLF, To the Lighthouse (1927)
‘We had the finest cookery in the world, but it had been nearly lost by neglect; a whole lifetime would not be sufficient for one person to rediscover it.’
FLORENCE WHITE, A Fire in the Kitchen (1938)
(Letter to the Editor, published in a number of newspapers, 1932)
TRADITIONAL ENGLISH RECIPES
Sir, Would any housewife in your region be kind enough to share a traditional recipe with which she may be acquainted? Many lines of verse have been devoted to the roast beef and plum pudding of olde England, but are you aware of other foods that are in peril of being forgotten? Is there a favourite pie made by your grandmother? A cake that you fondly recall from childhood? A dish that’s particular to your village? Perhaps a great-aunt left you a handwritten book of her recipes? This knowledge and these flavours have been passed down to us through the generations. They are our inheritance, but in recent decades our food has been ravaged by war, the factory production line and the can opener. Our ancient know-how is in danger of being crushed out of existence by the steamroller of modern uniformity. Are we to let our old recipes die of neglect? Are we to turn our backs on our inheritance? Surely not! But an urgent effort is required to collect and catalogue these dishes. If you are able to assist with this task, you would be doing a great service.
Please correspond with the address below. I will gratefully acknowledge all contributions.
STELLA DOUGLAS
(Author of The Marvellous Mrs Raffald)
Celandine Cottage,
Bethesda Row, Hatherstall, Yorkshire
Chapter One
Hatherstall, West Riding of Yorkshire
November 1931
Josephine Baker had made him cry. Only, it wasn’t really Josephine’s fault. It was Stella who had made her father cry.
She had looked through the box of records and deliberately picked out a song that might lift the mood. As Josephine rhymed blue skies and bluebirds and the band played with brassy exuberance, Stella had found herself smiling. It brought back a memory of Paris, of dancing barefoot on a warm pavement, colliding with laughing strangers, and of the amusement in Michael’s eyes. But when Stella turned away from the gramophone, she saw her father with his head in his hands.
‘Daddy? What is it?’
She went to him and put her arms around him. Oh Lord, what had she done? This music made Stella think of stage lights in crowded cellar clubs and Rhum Saint-James cocktails in Montparnasse, but she was suddenly conscious of the minor key, and the lyrics were about being in love, weren’t they? The song’s sunny optimism now seemed garish – and interminable – as she felt her father’s shoulders shake. It was too much, too soon, wasn’t it? Should she be standing here, saying soothing words, or leaping to still the gramophone needle?
‘I should stop it, shouldn’t I?’
But then the trumpets had their last flare, the drummer hit his final beat, and the song was abruptly over. A door closed on Stella’s memory of Paris, an over-bright light blinked out, and she felt both regret and relief at that. The record crackled as the turntable continued to rotate, a noise which seemed to emphasize the improbability of blue skies and underline the stillness of this room.
Stella squeezed her father’s shoulder, walked to the gramophone and lifted the needle from the record. She looked out of the kitchen window at grey skies, at clouds heavy with rain slanting down on the horizon now (she imagined making the mark with a wet brush in watercolour), and the winter colours of the fields. She would paint this day in umber, sap green and Payne’s grey. Hatherstall was blackthorn and hawthorn, bramble and bog-cotton, sooted brick and millstone grit. It was the Liberal Club and the Mechanics’ Institute, chapel voices singing ‘Jerusalem’, and the wrong kind of brass bands. At this moment, Paris felt so distant that it might just have been an image projected onto a wall by a magic lantern.
When she turned back to him, her father had sat himself up and taken out his handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What a bloody fool. What must you think of me?’
Stella returned to her chair at his side. There were tears on his cheeks as his eyes met hers and she wanted to stretch her fingertips out and gently wipe them away. There were new lines and shadows on his face too, she saw now, as she looked at him closely.
‘No, it’s my fault. I should have thought. Was it that you remembered her playing that record?’
Her mother would often have her father carry the gramophone into the kitchen and she’d put on Al Bowlly or Paul Whiteman as she worked here at this table. She liked the big sound of the American bands and knew the lyrics to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs. Stella couldn’t recall that she’d ever heard her mother playing Josephine Baker, but did that record have a particular significance for her father?
He seemed to be making an effort to compose himself now. She heard him take a deep breath. He straightened his knife and fork, reminding Stella that their dinner would probably be burning in the oven, but it didn’t matter. She put a hand over his.
‘It just reminded me of what she was like,’ he said, looking down at the table. His fingers traced the grain of the wood and he shrugged his shoulders before he looked up. ‘Of how we were, of how it used to be.’
Stella laced her fingers through her father’s. She knew what he meant. They used to be a family who had music in the background, who practised their Charleston steps in the kitchen, checking their reflections in the window, and who laughed a lot. In her mother’s day, this room had always been full of music and laughter. Now, in the spaces between their words, it was silent and the atmosphere was heavy with her mother’s absence.
‘I understand. I’m sorry,’ Stella said.
Would they ever be a family who danced around the kitchen table again? At this moment, it seemed unlikely.
* * *
‘I made my father cry today,’ Stella said. She was glad that she’d caught Michael before he left for the restaurant, but his voice on the telephone seemed dreadfully far away. ‘I thought it might be cheerful to have some music in the background, but it reminded him of my mother.’
‘Your poor father,’ his said. ‘He must miss her terribly still. And poor you too! How upsetting for you.’
‘I’m trying so hard – honestly, I am, Michael – but some days I can’t seem to get anything right.’
Stella wished that she could put her head on Michael’s shoulder and tell him how the slightest thing upset her father now, how fragile he seemed to have become, and how sometimes they sat in long silences because she was frightened of saying the wrong words. There were days when they were irritable with each other and she felt tension knotting in her stomach. She longed to have a conversation that wasn’t threaded with tripwires and, just briefly, to be able to tell someone how she was feeling. She wished she could have a face-to-face conversation with Michael, like they used to, both of them pulling their feet up onto his sofa, a direct, candid conversation that didn’t have to be curtailed by him running off to his next shift at the restaurant.
‘It’s still early days, I suppose, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How long has it been now – nearly twelve months? Is he looking after himself?’
‘He puts a clean shirt on every day and he’s keeping the house tidy, but he seems to be shrinking.’ Stella tried to juggle the telephone receiver as she poured herself a brandy. ‘When I walked in today it struck me that he looks like he’s wearing someone else’s clothes now. It’s not just that he’s lost weight, I’m sure that a couple of inches have disappeared from his height, and there’s a gloss that’s gone off him too.’
Her mother had given him that, Stella realized, with her top-of-the-head kisses, her rich fruit cakes and her special smiles. Stella supposed that gloss was love. She wished that she could find a way to restore it, but all her well-intentioned gestures had seemed to misfire recently.
‘Are you regretting moving out?’ Michael asked. ‘Are you having second thoughts about taking on the cottage?’
Stella could hear the concern in his voice and was grateful for his understanding. Michael always understood. But with the crackle on the telephone line, her image of him seemed to slip out of focus.
‘I had to get back to work and I thought it might do him good to try to establish a new routine. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, though. Every time I walk out of the door I ask myself that and I’m not sure of the answer. I’m only five minutes away, but perhaps it’s five minutes too far?’
Did her father sit crying at the kitchen table when he was on his own? Did he often feel hollowed-out, as he’d told her he did today? Left on his own, might he do something foolish?
‘I wish I was closer,’ said Michael. ‘I wish I could come up. I would, if I could.’
‘If I can get away before Christmas, I will.’
‘You’ll be working around the clock. I remember what December is like.’
She wasn’t looking forward to Christmas, in truth, and wasn’t sure that she ever would again. It would be the first Christmas without her mother. She’d been so frail on the last Christmas Day they’d had together. She’d hardly eaten anything, but had sat there in her new blouse with a brave smile on her face. Like a ghost at the table, that memory would always be there at Christmas now, wouldn’t it? Stella did understand why her father had cried. On days like today, she found it difficult to come up with words that might make it better. But she had to keep on trying, didn’t she?
‘If I can, I’ll come down to London for a few days in the new year. I’ll have to see how my father is doing, but I’d so love to see you.’
‘Do. Please. I miss you, darling,’ Michael said.
‘Let’s speak again soon. I miss you too.’
Stella caught her own reflection in the kitchen window as she put the telephone back on its cradle. She saw herself mirrored against the November colours of the garden. Lucien’s voice had been there in the background as Michael had rung off and she thought of them stepping out into the early-evening London streets now. She could picture the glimmer of the lights in the shop windows and the bustle of the crowds in their winter coats, all winding their way to theatre seats and cinema screens and restaurant reservations. Stella missed all of that too. But when her father had dried his eyes, he’d kissed her hand and thanked her for being there. As she’d finally seen the corners of his mouth lift, she’d been glad she was there.
She was grateful that she could talk to Michael – she couldn’t confide these feelings to anyone else – but she missed seeing the signs of understanding on his face as they sat together on his sofa, and having him put his arm around her. He often said that he missed her when they spoke on the telephone, but did he miss her in quite the same way that she missed him? His life was so busy, so full, so high-speed, and then there was Lucien. Stella had begun to suspect that there might be some variance in their interpretation of the words ‘I miss you’.
Chapter Two
When Stella had told Michael and Lucien that she’d moved into a property called Celandine Cottage, they had laughed at how twee it sounded and a particularly hideous garden gnome had arrived in the post the following week. Stella supposed they imagined inglenooks and mullioned windows, crooked quaintness and hollyhocks, but Bethesda Row was a terrace of old weavers’ cottages, with smoke-blackened stonework and cellars that regularly flooded. What a fright they’d have if they saw her cracked kitchen sink, the rotting window frames and the bloom of mould on the pantry walls. When Stella thought of the bright, modern flat that she’d left behind in Pimlico – everything so comfortable and efficient – the contrast couldn’t be greater. She wished that Michael could find the time to come up for a visit, but she imagined herself feeling some embarrassment as his eyes took in the corners where the drawing pins were holding up the wallpaper.
She leaned against the range and warmed her hands now. She’d been writing about modern gas ovens this week, with thermostatic controls and easy-to-clean enamel surfaces, but meanwhile she was cooking on a museum piece. If she had a reliable oven, she’d make génoise sponges and soufflés, Stella told herself, splendid things en croute and en papillote, raised pies and marvellous puddings. If her oven behaved itself, if everything didn’t emerge from it covered in black smuts, she’d actually test the recipes she wrote. She pictured a sun-lit tabletop jostling with this impressive fare; instead, her kitchen table was presently the home of her typewriter. There were little balls of dust shifting underneath the keys, she’d noticed yesterday, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last rolled pastry there. It wasn’t good to be a cookery writer who didn’t cook, Stella realized. She was well aware of that. Come to think of it, she hadn’t done too much writing recently either. It was just so difficult to find the motivation at the moment.
Stella filled the teapot and stood with her hands around it. Celandine Cottage was altogether a mean little house, she considered, definitely not worth two pounds a week, and very possibly haunted. Mr Outhwaite, her landlord, had openly told her that his father had passed away here and the property was still furnished with the old man’s rugs and armchairs, all suspiciously stained and dinted and marked with tobacco burns. When Stella sat down, she settled into old Mr Outhwaite’s hollows, she ate off his plates, saw her reflection in his mirrors, and her clothes emerged from his drawers with a faintly sour smell. She was fortunate to have a bathroom – several of her neighbours still had outside privies – but there were handles on the walls and, for all of her efforts with white vinegar, she couldn’t get rid of the grey limescale ring in the bathtub. She’d once woken in the night and thought that she’d seen old Mr O standing at the end of her bed, a wheezing shape in a rumpled nightshirt. In the morning she’d told herself that it had been just a dream, merely her overactive imagination, but had it been? Did old Mr Outhwaite resent her being here? Stella did want to believe in an afterlife – she clung to the idea of being able to see her mother’s face again – but Outhwaite Senior wouldn’t have been her first choice of ambassador from the other side.
She could smell old Mr O as she stepped into the front room now, a faint but distinct whiff of pipe tobacco, wintergreen and long-unlaundered underclothes. Stella had taken to exorcizing him with lavender pomanders, pots of hyacinths, sprays of Mitsouko and gardenia-scented candles. She lit one now and a cigarette for good measure. Didn’t they puff smoke at bees to keep them in abeyance? Might it work on the ghosts of unwashed old men too?
It was perishingly cold in here. She tried to stir the fire back into life with the poker, but smoke billowed into the room and she had to open a window. Stella hugged her hot-water bottle on her knee and cradled her teacup in her hands. What would people think of her, sitting here huddled in one of her mother’s old jumpers? In London, Stella had been known for her bold prints, her daring taste in hats and her joie de vivre, friends told her that, but had she even remembered to put lipstick on this morning?
If this property was her own, she’d throw out all the shabby, sticky furniture she contemplated now. It would give her pleasure to make a bonfire of it in the garden, to pull up the carpets, whitewash the walls and scrub the floorboards. She often liked to think what she might do to the cottage if it were actually hers and she had the money to remodel it. She spent evenings hanging hypothetical curtains, choosing paint colours and Hepplewhite chairs. It was pleasurable to ponder how one might spend imaginary money. But if she had the option, would she really stay here? Wouldn’t she go back to London?
Calderdale was the wet watercolours of her girlhood, all ink and earth colours. This village was old stones stained green, crow caw and lapwing cry, the smell of coal fires and leaf mould, sodden moors on the skyline, and factory chimneys in the valley below. It was a place where the past always seemed to be looming darkly over the present, a landscape of ghost stories and standing stones, massive with forgotten meaning, a difficult silence hanging around the cenotaph, and the Roman roads over the moors shining like lead in the rain. It wasn’t that Stella disliked Hatherstall – it was a fundamental part of who she was and always would be, she knew that – but she longed for lighter skies, brighter conversations and bed sheets that didn’t always feel slightly damp.
She sat up in her chair now and pulled the handbrake on this chain of thought. Such thoughts did no good, she told herself in her most sensible magazine columnist’s voice. Instead, she deliberately refocused her attention on the patterns of the Chinese shawls that she’d picked up in an antiques shop yesterday, their peonies, pagodas and birds with fantastical tail feathers. (The blue-green silk was the precise colour of Michael’s eyes, but she shouldn’t linger on that observation.) They were just the thing to hide Mr Outhwaite’s upholstery, bringing a quirky, artistic touch to the room, and hadn’t the man in the shop mentioned that he might be able to source some Kashmiri embroidered cushions too? Stella reminded herself that sometimes in life one just has to throw an interesting textile over inconvenient realities, put on a red lipstick, take a deep breath and look forwards.
