The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs

Author:Annabel Abbs [Abbs, Annabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2022-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

‘That’s beautiful, miss,’ I say, hoping she will carry on reciting, for the sound makes me feel like I do when she touches me. Less alone, I think. That I am not by myself.

But then she frowns and looks at me, worried. ‘In all the excitement I have not given you your wages, have I?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t like to ask with all the – the excitement.’ I don’t tell her it has been heavy on my mind, for I must give the nurses their gift when I next visit Mam and I need coins for Pa, who still owes the carpenter that made his new crutches.

‘That was remiss of me,’ she says, vexed. ‘Most remiss and I apologise.’ She gets up and goes to the dresser drawer where she keeps her money tin. But as she rises, something falls to the floor. I assume it’s a cookery book and she’s been planning menus. She doesn’t notice and is busy sorting shillings and pennies from her tin, pressing an extra sixpence piece upon me in a most apologetic way, then locking the tin with her curly key.

‘May I take my wages to my room now, miss?’ I cannot risk losing even a ha’penny, I think, hurrying to the attic where my purse is safe beneath my mattress.

When I get back to the kitchen little Lizzie has arrived and is tying on her apron. But Miss Eliza has gone. My eye falls on the dark shape of her book, still lying beneath the table. How distracted she must be, I think. For Miss Eliza is a most organised and tidy lady and would never leave a cookery book on the floor. The sorting of my wages must have taken her mind off things.

I stoop and pick up the book and that’s when my heart misses a beat. It’s not a recipe collection. It’s a book of poems. Her poems. The poems I’ve longed to read since first I came here. What happens next is not worthy of me. But I cannot help myself. Instead of placing the poems where Miss Eliza will find them, I slip them under my apron and scurry to the attic. Hatty is at the washstand, splashing cold water on her face. I slide the book under my mattress and go back to the kitchen, heart beating like the wing of a bird.

By the time I finish cleaning and laying the stove my fingers are iced with cold and black with coal dust. I refill the scuttle and light the fire, prodding and blowing at it until the flames are good and fierce. I’m about to flake the cold turbot onto a plate when Miss Eliza returns and starts looking round the kitchen, most anxious.

‘Ann, have you seen a small book? Bound in blue silk?’ She circles the table, her hands wiping at her skirts, her eyes darting here and there.

Now is my chance to be honest and truthful. My tongue flaps, bewildered, and my brain blurs.

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