Bruno's Challenge by Martin Walker

Author:Martin Walker [Walker, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sugar Lumps

It was a warm evening in May, a quiet time at the riding school once the horses had returned from their exercise, been brushed and given their water. The chickens had followed the mother hen back to the coop, with Napoleon the cockerel watchfully bringing up the rear. The dogs, after their run with the horses, were stretched out companionably on the grass, watching the humans. Bruno and his friends were sitting at the big table in the courtyard as the charcoal in the barbecue burned slowly down toward the required glow. They were enjoying a bottle of white wine from the town vineyard, a refreshing, unpretentious blend of Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc, while waiting for Florence and Miranda, Pamela’s partner in the riding school, also English, to bring the children down after bath time.

The baron, however, decided in his traditional way that he would prefer a glass of absinthe after his labors on the river. He’d caught eight plump trout that had now been gutted and stuffed with slices of lemon and sprigs of fennel, ready for the barbecue. He went to the bar in the big living room for the bottle, put it on a small tray with a jug of water and the silver absinthe spoon he had years earlier given to Pamela, their hostess. He returned with the tray and looked frustrated.

“Sorry, Pamela, but I can’t find the sugar cubes.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Pamela, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but Miranda and the children have decided we should ban sugar from the house and use honey as a sweetener instead. Apparently growing sugarcane or even sugar beets uses vast amounts of water, quite apart from what it does to the teeth.”

“So there’s not even one sugar cube left to go with my absinthe?” asked the baron.

“Wait a moment, Baron,” said Bruno as he headed for the ancient Land Rover he’d inherited from a hunting friend and delved into a storage panel in the door. He returned with a small oblong wrapped in paper. “Two brown-sugar cubes, courtesy of the café at the gas station.”

“Thanks,” said the baron. “Why do you have that bandage on your forehead, Bruno? Did you walk into a door?”

“Something like that,” said Bruno, watching as the baron unwrapped the paper and carefully centered a sugar lump on the slotted spoon that was now balanced on the rim of a glass above a generous portion of absinthe. He began to pour water from the jug onto the lump, drop by drop, so it slowly crumbled the sugar and dripped into the absinthe.

“I thought that stuff had been banned in France since the nineteenth century,” said Jack, Miranda’s father. “They called it La Fée Verte, the Green Fairy, and claimed it caused alcoholism, crime, incest and insanity. Remember those paintings of absinthe drinkers by Toulouse-Lautrec?”

“Reversing that ban was one of the few good things the European Union ever did,” said the baron, still concentrating on his precise dripping of the water as the last of the sugar crumbled through the slots in the spoon into the drink.

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