Money To Burn by Cadell Elizabeth

Author:Cadell, Elizabeth [Cadell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: The Friendly Air Publishing
Published: 2016-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

In the course of the following morning, Leigh became aware that a man could fall deeply in love with a woman without becoming blind to her imperfections. Auriol was enchanting, he acknowledged, but she had some very irritating ways, and most irritating of them all, he thought resentfully, was her complete ignorance of the fact that a man—a man who was accustomed to using his body in pursuits more strenuous than sketching or fishing—liked his meals at regular intervals. A kitchen, in his opinion, was a place well-stocked with provisions and vessels in which to cook them; a hostess was someone who busied herself in the kitchen for some time before a meal, causing delicious smells to fill the nostrils of guests and assure them of a hearty meal to come. He had travelled much, and he had seen good kitchens and bad; good cooks and indifferent cooks, thoughtful hostesses or careless ones—but always, he remembered nostalgically, there had been food: hot food or cold food, lashings of it, served on the dot. He had never before thought so often or so longingly of food; it had appeared, and he had eaten it; only now, when it failed to appear, did he appreciate the plenty of the past.

Meals could always be had at the Raven, but satisfying though they were, Leigh considered that it was far more pleasant to sit on the green sward outside the cottage, watching the river as it flowed lazily by, eating off the small, square table and helping Auriol to make the coffee afterwards. Meals could have been so pleasant—if anybody had troubled to produce them. But Auriol and Raymond were accustomed to going into the kitchen whenever they were hungry, cutting off huge slices of bread and eating them with butter and cheese and fruit. It was good, simple, healthy food, Leigh acknowledged—but he did not consider it a full-scale diet. He stood six feet two in his socks—the socks had holes in them and needed a woman’s care, but it was no use expecting a girl like Auriol to notice a little thing like that. He weighed just under two hundred pounds. He found English air bracing. He wanted meat—beef for preference, undercooked from choice, with rich, flowing gravy. He wanted stews, thick and strong and dark-brown; he wanted soups with tit-bits of chicken or mushroom swimming in them—and to hell with the dietitians.

And now here was the same old patter, he realised miserably, ten minutes before the lunch for which he was craving.

“Raymond, are you hungry?” This was Auriol.

“Not particularly; why?” That was Raymond, looking up for a moment from his sketching.

“What’s the time?”

“Haven’t got my watch on. Do you know, Leigh?”

“It’s almost one,” Leigh told them, and tried to keep reproach out of his voice.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Auriol. “I thought it was about eleven. Is anybody specially hungry, or shall I get something light?”

“I’m not keen on anything heavy,” said Raymond. Did this fellow never eat? “How about you, Leigh?”

He loved her, God help him.

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