Work Text:
1928, Toronto
'Absolutely not,' said Madrun. She was elbow-deep in batter for a culinary dish Jims couldn't identify, which only highlighted the urgency of the point he was trying to make. Madrun did not take it this way. Her eyes narrowed as she swivelled to face Jims, batter and flour still coating her formidable arms.
'What,' she demanded, 'is wrong with my cooking that you have to intervene?'
'Nothing!' said Jims, tripping over himself to get the words out. 'Nothing at all! But – '
'No buts,' said Madrun.'Cooking is like having a baby. Either you're having one or you're not.'
Jims couldn't see how this comparison held up at all, but refrained from saying so. Madrun had picked up a wooden spoon to make her point, and was brandishing it as she saw fit. Jims had learned years ago to maintain a healthy terror of the wooden spoon at all times. Especially when wielded by Madrun.
'It's just,' said Jims, careful to eschew all usage of But, 'Wednesday is your night off. And Sunday too, all day. Grandfather Gil doesn't want Mum doing anything, see? So I have to learn to cook.'
'I,' said Madrun, with a terrifying wave of her spoon, 'Will prepare a dish for her to heat up before I go.' Another gesticulation of the spoon for emphasis, this one sending batter spattering onto the floor, propelled by the vehemence of the motion.
'I will further,' she went on in truly terrifying efficiency, 'put something in the Frigidaire for Sunday. And when I can't, I shall arrange with the senior Mrs Ford's girl to prepare extra for Sunday dinner.'
'The senior Mrs Ford' being what Madrun absurdly called Grandmother Leslie. Jims wasn't sure who thought it more ridiculous; Jims or said grandmother.
'You can,' said Madrun with tremendous dignity, 'eat there on Sundays, I'm sure. In fact,' with another animated wave of her spoon, 'In my day it was positively normal to all take Sunday dinner together. Encouraged even. My daughter and I ate together every night, would you believe, with her Nan. I cannot think why it has fallen out of practice.' And she muttered something darkly in Welsh that bypassed Jims' imperfect lexicon but probably had to do with the good old days and how superior they were to the decadence the young people indulged in today. Or something.
Jims opened his mouth, realised the next sentence started with But and closed it resolutely. Instead he said, 'Won't that get in the way of everything else you do on a Wednesday?'
Madrun harrumphed. Jims thought if he looked hard enough he could see the steam coming out of her nostrils. She said, 'Not half so much as teaching you to cook! Boys aren't supposed to learn to cook, anyway.'
Vaguely Jims thought of citing his aunts, and their belief in his ability to do anything. But they weren't there in the kitchen, being subjected to the wild and varied gesticulations of Madrun's wooden spoon. That was Jims. He was the one smelling nothing but what he presumed was batter for the haddock in the Frigidaire, getting the brunt of Madrun's opinions. Madrun set the spoon down. Specifically, she stuck it in the bowl of batter, where it stood upright, like some wooden flag demarcating the mixing bowl Madrun Land. Then she wiped the batter off her arms with a damp tea towel, and got a cool, water-dappled arm around Jims's shoulders in atypically demonstrative fashion.
'Cooking, fy machgen, is what I do. Go.' She gave Jims a push in the direction of the kitchen door. 'You go. Play with the little boys. Cricket, or lawn bowls or something. The one with the stick.'
'Hockey?' said Jims, and tried not to smile.
No luck. Madrun clucked profusely, and swatted him affectionately on the back of the head with her tea towel. Jims took this for agreement, even as she bustled him out of her kitchen, his hands protectively cradling the back of his head against further onslaught by tea towel.
That was how Jims found himself alone on the kitchen steps, contemplating Madrun's effort at a herb garden. She had done it in English fashion, whatever that meant. All Jims understood of this was that it meant that the basil, mint, thyme and other herbs combined to perfume the air around the back of the house. It could be dizzying in hot weather. Today it felt like an aggressive reminder that he had no very good grasp of what smell went with what plant, much less what each of these herbs did.
Well, Madrun wouldn't help. She would have been ideal, because she was brilliant at cooking, but no matter. Jims set off, through Madrun's herb garden, down the street, and along to the tram stop with a mind towards catching a car towards Castle Frank and Grandmother Leslie.
Jims' first thought was that he ought to have called ahead, because the house was dark. A quick survey of the windows suggested no one was in. Still, he'd come too far to turn back now. Jims doubled back to the door with its brass knocker and gave it a rap. Nothing. Another rap. More nothing.
Jims was about to give up when his grandmother's singsong came from the other side of the door, 'Half a minute!'
The door swung open and Jims stumbled into her arms. She smelled all greeny and gardeny, which made sense once she said, by way of greeting, 'Forgive me darling. I was out round the back with the roses, and didn't hear you at first.'
She led Jims into the sitting room, where someone was halfway through tackling a puzzle that had more yellows than Jims thought entirely normal. The box, propped upright on an end table for comparison, showed an orange canoe on golden water sailing into a goldy-yellowy sunset.
'Owen's trying at it,' said Grandmother Leslie, seeing Jims observing it. 'Not making much headway, though. Why don't you give it a go? I'll put tea on. Or would you rather something else?'
What Jims wanted was to launch straight into the necessity of his learning to cook. But experience with Madrun made it clear that this was completely the wrong tack. Jims sat down at the coffee table and squinted at the puzzle pieces. Who knew there were so many shades of yellow? He had stuck exactly four together – in two separate pairs, mind – by the time Grandmother Leslie returned with tea and a platter of drop-scones. It was impossible to eat these and tackle the puzzle, so Jims sat back on his heels in relief.
'There's cream,' said Grandmother Leslie. 'Jam, too.'
There was. It was strawberry, and it looked and smelled homemade. Jims thought that Madrun, were she here, might have accused it of failing to set. Unfortunately, since no one had taught him how to cook, he was unable to confirm if this was in fact the case. All Jims knew was that even now the jam was sliding off the cream and jeopardising his grandmother's carpet. Deftly she slid a plate under it and into Jims' hand. That was all right, then. The carpet with its miles of Persian weaving, was safe. Of course, the scone made talking difficult, the combination of thick cream, jam and doughy scone sticking in his throat. Jims sipped at his tea, and found that helped. He also wondered if that had been the point of the scone. If, perhaps, Madrun had rung ahead to remind Grandmother Leslie that little boys weren't supposed to know how to cook. Well, Jims was just going to have to remind her that he was almost fourteen, if so, and as such, not little. He took another sip of tea. Grandmother Leslie slid onto the floor so that she was opposite him at the coffee table, looking far more elegant and collected than was strictly normal for a grandmother sitting limbs akimbo atop a Persian rug. But that was Grandmother Leslie for you. She held up a piece of yellow puzzle experimentally.
'Water, sky, or reflected sunset?' she asked. Then, as Jims leaned in, considering, 'You never came all the way over here unannounced for drop-scones and puzzles.'
Jims hadn't, but he found now with the scone lying thick in his stomach, that it was hard to articulate the original petition. He thought of Madrun with her draconian wooden spoon and quailed. Observed that the puzzle piece under scrutiny definitely wasn't the orange canoe.
Jims recalled that this was Grandmother Leslie, former goose girl of Four Winds, and good at listening. 'Well,' he said fidgeting wildly with his teacup, 'I wanted…that is, you need to teach me to cook.'
'Oh?' said Grandmother Leslie, sounding surprised.
On the other hand, she didn't weaponise the puzzle piece under speculation, or even brandish the teapot like a military standard, so perhaps all was not lost. But then she said 'Why would that be, darling?' and Jims knew it was useless. She was looking at him with concern, the way Jims had seen James Anderson scrutinise ailing livestock in the days of the Anderson Farmstead. The way Cap looked when he was critiquing a particularly egregious copy error in The Toronto Star. Or, more worrisomely, perhaps, the way Grandfather Gil looked when concerned with the general wellbeing of one of the family. The scone was consolidating in Jims' stomach the longer they sat there in silence, the sea of yellow puzzle between them, fragmented canoe sailing off into a gaping horizon. Still, the thing needed saying. Jims plunged bravely into the thick of it.
'The Doctor – I mean Grandad – everyone says Mum shouldn't do anything until the baby is born,' said Jims. 'And,' because now he had started he couldn't seem to stop, 'I thought that might include cooking, because of all the heavy pots and things. It's mostly fine, I mean, Madrun mostly does the cooking except on Wednesdays, because that's her night off, which means someone has to cook, and it can't be Mum. And Cap doesn't know how – I don't think – and I know I don't know how, and obviously the little boys can't, so, you see...'
'Darling boy,' said Grandmother Leslie, contriving in spite of the coffee table to pull Jims into a hug he hadn't set out to solicit. 'Don't worry about that. We can do that.'
'But…'said Jims, feeling failure lapping at his heels, 'but…you might get sick, too. Or something could go wrong. You might have to go to a function with Grandfather Owen, and I still wouldn't know how to cook.' It seemed terribly important to impress this last pertinent piece of information upon her. Grandmother Leslie ran a hand through Jims's hair. He forbore to point out that he was really too old for such treatment. Was, in fact, 14, or almost-14, plenty old enough to know such culinary basics as how to roast a chicken, if only someone would show him. Grandmother Leslie said, 'It isn't your job, darling. You'll have all the time in the world to worry about that sort of thing – later. Let me do that now.'
Jims couldn't let her. He knew for a fact that Grandfather Gil believed she had never properly recovered from her brush with the Spanish Influenza all those years ago. It would only take a bad bout of ordinary 'flu, and she might be dead, and then where would Jims and family be? Madrun would have to forego her Wednesdays off until they had imported Susan Baker from Ingleside to look after them. True, the aunts would try to help, but what if Grandmother Leslie were to die unexpectedly while they were both abroad? These things happened. All it took was one university professor to request their cumulative knowledge of indices and Maple St would be doomed. Well, as much as Madrun would let them be doomed. Still, it was hardly fair that Madrun lose her nights off in the name of the Fords not starving to death.
He couldn't say any of this to Grandmother Leslie. Somehow the words got stuck in his throat, which was atypically tight. It was probably the fault of the drop-scone. He sipped more tea and fussed with puzzle pieces, managing to complete the stern of the little canoe, and the tip of a paddle. Talk shifted to other things; Elektra the Maple St kitten, school, and how the Ford-Grant cricket rivalry faired. Jims and the little boys were winning, which they ought to enjoy while it lasted, since clearly they would lag behind as and when something happened to precipitate their starvation. Though, naturally Jims didn't phrase it that way. It wasn't fair on Grandmother Leslie to insinuate that she would fail them on that front. So Jims asked instead about the tapestry rug she was sewing, and came and peered over her shoulder at it dutifully when she produced it for him from her work bag. She reciprocated by asking what Jims was reading, and he didn't feel he could tell her about The World Screamed and Professor Challenger, so hedged and gabbled something instead about how much they all were enjoying The Giant Horse of Oz, which had been her birthday gift to Liam. Then he kissed her cheek and extricated himself from all of it; tea, polite conversation and the puzzle of variegated yellows.
'And don't worry, darling,' she said as she saw him off. 'We'll be sure to look after you.'
Jims kmade all the right noises, but it wasn't enough. At almost-14 he had outgrown being looked after, anyway.
'You've got,' said Jims, 'to teach me to cook.' As he said it he swung himself upwards so that he was sitting, legs dangling on the kitchen counter of the St. George St flat. Persis, watching him, thought he had rarely looked so childish. Remarkable, given he'd sprouted up recently and was half-sat, half-hunched on the impossibly small counter of her impossibly-small kitchen. But the thing with Jims was that she tended to forget his youth, between his captaining of cricket matches and cross-city misadventures. He swung a too-long ankles so that they knocked against unsuspecting cupboards and collided with the handles, which were positioned for someone considerably less lanky than Jims.
He was so earnest that Persis, watching him, felt compelled to say, 'There are probably better-qualified people for that position.'
Jims shrugged. He said, 'Susan's awf'lly far away, and anyway, Mum says she never gives anyone the whole Susan recipe. She said she left the baking powder out of the Jam Tart recipe Mrs Morris wanted from her the other day – that's Mum's friend from the Reds – ' this titbit for elucidation – 'and that she halved the amount of sugar in the recipe for Victoria Sponge that Irene Howard wanted…though Mum also said she didn't understand how anyone couldn't know how to make a Victoria Sponge, which I don't, by the way. And Mum still says Susan tampered with her cream puffs the one time she tried to make them. But the point is…'
Here Jims was brought up short as he struggled to recapture the point of this culinary ramble. He gave his ankles an extra swing for good measure. One of them collided with a cupboard handle, and he offered Persis a grimace. 'The point is,' he said, rubbing at the afflicted ankle, 'I can't ask Mum, because of the baby. That's sort of the point. And I can't ask Cap, because I don't think he knows. I did ask Madrun, but she…'Another pause as Jims appeared to consider exactly why and how Madrun, guardian of the Maple St kitchen, had failed him '…She had …opinions,' said Jims, finally, with emphasis.
'I think,' said Persis, propping her elbows on the counter, 'the word you're looking for is explosive. Knowing Madrun, she had explosive opinions.'
Jims tried to nod sagely, a difficult demand on his little body, which was even now bent double in laughter. 'And Mrs Grant is…' Another conversational lacuna.
'Irritating?' offered Persis. 'Exasperating? Sombre? Severe?'
Thinking all the while that if Cass heard her she would be, probably rightly, taken to task for saying all these things in front of Jims, who was really only the oldest of the children, and thus of the 'little pitchers with big ears' variety. But he was weeping with laughter, his hands clutching at his sides, and it was so good to see it. She'd invent ever so many more descriptors of Gertrude Grant if it would keep Jims in high spirits. He'd been all tense and coiled when he arrived on the St George St doorstep. Even Hal the porter had noticed, because he'd said as much when he'd rung up to the flat to let her know Jims was there. This – Jims giggling childishly from atop her counter – this was better.
'I was going to say school-teachery,' said Jims, his breath coming back. 'And not everyone wants to talk about the War of the Roses or Wordsworth's Daffodils, or what have you, over dinner.'
Well, quite, thought Persis. She submitted, also almost-certainly ill-advisedly, to good-natured laughter at this observation by Jims. It was true, wasn't it?
'Come on,' said Persis, 'can't have you learning to make casserole over Wordsworth and Byron, can we?'
Not that she was good at casserole. But that hardly seemed the point. Deftly she sorted through the amassed rack of cookery books on their shelf over the sink. Down came, in no particular order, The Anglo-Chinese Cookbook, courtesy of Una Meredith, Lessons in Cookery, pilfered from her own mother's collection, Everyday Dinners– a Cass contribution, and From our Tuscan Kitchen, also Cass. She passed them off to Jims as she went, pausing over the last to observe, 'There should be something, somewhere in one of those to give you a place to start from, don't you think?'
Jims concurred, and they betook themselves to the little kitchen table, where followed an immersive half hour as Jims poured over recipes and their attendant pictures. Now and then Hera appeared and walked over a pertinent page with her delicate, tortoiseshell paws, but she disappeared again when it became all too apparent no one thought her the centre of the universe. All the while Jims read on.
Some pages went by without so much as a glance, Jims observing with the turn of a page, 'Anthony won't eat that,' or, 'Liam doesn't like Mussels. Why aren't they spelled the same was as other muscles, Aunt Persis? Do you know?'
Persis did not, but was willing to wander down that diversionary road with him, which explained how they came to be still pouring over cookbooks when Cass returned from her stint at the university library.
'Rupert Liddell has managed to misplace – ' she began, her voice drifting lilting and bell-like down the hall. But then she saw Jims and whatever Rupert Liddell had managed to misplace was lost in her abrupt conversational about-face at the sight of Jims and Persis at the kitchen table.
'Baking?' she asked.
'Cookery lessons,' said Persis. 'Or that's the theory.'
'Well, you're doing it wrong,' said Cass, who was an expert at mincing words when it suited, but apparently didn't feel occasion warranted it. Never had, with Persis, which was nice in a roundabout way.
Jims blinked dazedly.
Persis said, gesturing Cass-ward, 'I told you. People better qualified than me.'
'Any particular reason we're running a cooking school?' asked Cass, joining them at the kitchen table and appropriating one of the cookbooks.
Off went Jims into his spiel about the need for someone not Madrun who could cook meals on the nights the housekeeper had off, and who wasn't his expectant mother. He said all of this while scrutinising and ultimately dismissing an innovative treatment of eel, and so missed the mute inquiry Cass shot over the top of his golden head; Shouldn't we be doing that? Persis shrugged, and gestured at Jims, now intently analysing the ingredients list of a recipe for haricot bean soup. Let him be useful. He needs to be.
There was a lot one could say about Cassandra Hargreave. She was staunchly Anglican, highly musical, often exasperatingly principled, and as discussed, would go out of her way to take the long conversational way round an uncomfortable social truth more often than not. What she wasn't was one to call the kettle black, and since she was an inveterate doer in crisis, she conceded the point graciously.
'What's an Egg Raggut?' asked Jims of no one in particular.
Both women scrambled for an explanation and came up short. Egg ragout was not hte kind of thing made regularly by indexers of anthropologists who travelled abroad as often as their academics. Next, Jims queried the nature of a Jerusalem Artichoke. ('It looks funny for an artichoke! And is it really from Jerusalem?) Gently, Persis prodded him towards a more immediately achievable recipe. Cass poured out. Jims settled on the mercifully mundane haricot bean soup.
Persis watched as Cass began subdividing ingredients at the table according to function. Periodically Jims picked something up, gave it a meditative look, and set it down again. Hera the cat climbed fastidiously through the open window, leapfrogged onto the table, and attempted to fit her velveteen nose into the milk jug. She was unsuccessful, and swished away in a swirl of insulted feline, this being the latest grievance of her day. Persis handed Jims a paring knife, handle-end first for ease of dicing the thyme, and Cass clucked because that was no way to handle a knife and what kind of lesson was that for Jims. Persis opened her mouth to caution Jims on its usage, but he beat her to it. She opened her
'Not to worry,' he said, as the knife clicked against the table, 'I'll be careful. I'm terribly grown up you know.'
Wasn't that just the problem. Hera slunk back into the kitchen, apparently with the express purpose of nosing the diced thyme. Finding it severely wanting, she stalked off again, aggrieved. Jims laughed. He had a laugh like a sunbeam, or maybe like a child, bright, wild and unselfconscious. So that was all right. He couldn't be as grown up as all that if he was surprised by joy that easily.
As if testing a theory, Persis bowled an apple at him across the table. Jims caught it and took a bite. Definitely only half-grown-up. Better and better.
'I hope,' said Persis, 'when you've become terribly competent at this cooking stuff, you'll still let us do for you occasionally.'
Jims looked properly scandalized. It was a credible impression of one Susan Baker in an indignant mood. 'Of course,' he said. 'This is so mum won't have to cook - not you. You're for always.'
'And anyway,' said Cass, 'it's good for him. Proves that knowing how to cook a roast isn't a failure of feminism on your part, it's a life skill. He'd have to learn eventually.'
Impossible not to laugh. Even Jims joined in, though Persis strongly suspected he didn't grasp the joke.
Afterwards, they made him tea while the haricot soup bubbled to itself. They sent him home with it too. Jims was just young enough - and proud enough of his first culinary forre - that it never occurred to him to argue.
'Don't be a stranger, hm?' said Persis as she bundled Jims and his cooking out the door.
Again that shocked, Susan Baker expression.
'Never,' said Jims. 'You two are for always.'
Then he was gone, the smile like a sunburst and the soup, it had to be supposed sustaining him on the long trek home to Maple St and Rilla.