Zimmer: Lunar Visitors & Fields of Poppies Awash with Red...

4

Need to see a man about a plant...

Jack Walsh

Haughty Culturalist

Amelia liked that. She flipped the card back and forth between her fingers. The woman at the nursery had assured her that if she was after “something special” then Jack, a retired botany professor and horticulturalist, was “your man.”

She wasn’t quite sure what she was after yet.

But perhaps, with a bit of guidance, she’d find just the right specimen or two.

Her grandfather had always prized his snapdragons most of all. He would tease her and make her giggle, contorting their little mouths, doing the different voices of the Rat Pack. Amelia smiled to herself. But it was a sad, bittersweet smile.

After her Nana had finally passed away, the cancer getting the better of her in the end, her grandfather had become a lost soul. He’d continued to toil tirelessly in their greenhouse, but with a frantic new fervour, and without any joy. Even the plants had seemed sadder for it, without his singing and shenanigans.

His Alzheimer’s hadn’t been long to follow, as if his mind simply could not fathom the loss, like some incurable chain reaction she was forced to stand by and watch, powerless to stop. The undoings of a broken heart.

She had continued to live with him, trying her best to manage the estate and help with her grandfather’s deteriorating condition, until it demanded constant care. Amelia had found him a good home in a nearby town and made all the necessary arrangements for the big move. And so it was that she’d packed up her own small life and moved with him.

It had been the easiest decision she’d ever had to make, for they were all the other had left, and she was no deserter. As much as she had worshipped and adored her Nana, her Papa had been the greatest love of her life. The quiet but constant gardener who’d always treated her with sudden indulgences in malarkey when it was just the two of them.

Once he’d settled in the home, she’d visited him religiously. Some days Amelia had wheeled him out into the gardens to read to him from his many favourite poets, and especially Edward Lear when she had wanted to make him laugh.

On his bad days, she’d played My Fair Lady on their old vinyl player.

The score had been a shared love affair between him and her grandmother and it almost always lifted his spirits, closing his eyes and humming, nodding gaily to himself, his expression altered, even if only for a moment. On his best days, they’d flipped through his collection of Peanuts, both being big fans of Charles M. Schulz. Those were truly treasured days.

Amelia sighed a heavy sigh and found reassurance in the dozing feline beside her on the sofa. She looked once more at the tiny card in her hand, willing herself back into the present. Rain pattered on the roof as if the very sky had given itself over to her melancholy.

She missed him so.

Placing the card on the coffee table, she picked up Aphrodite’s Table and listlessly paged through it. There was still the matter of her list to attend to. She resolved to see the retired professor first thing the very next day. It could wait.

Today she planned to stay close to the creature comforts of home.

She had committed to making Bellamy’s ‘Heart-Warming Smoked Haddock Pie’ and she wasn’t about to let her trip to the markets go to waste. Her debut attempt in the kitchen the day before had cheered her and it was the perfect weather for it.

Amelia looked on at the cat, amazed at how serene she could be. Finding some solace in that, Amelia got up, book under her arm, and picked The Best of the Rat Pack out from among her old CDs and inserted it into her player, fiddling with the settings on the old Kenwood sound system she’d inherited, her Papa’s other pride and joy. He’d always known the real way to her Nana’s heart was through music.

“Today, we dine in your honour, you silly ol’ geezer.” She blew a kiss heavenwards.

Jersey sleeves rolled up, she removed the smoked haddock from the fishmonger’s from its wrapping and placed it on the chopping block. Next came the leeks and onion, potatoes, fresh parsley, dill and petit pois from the greengrocer’s in her carry bag. Then the buttermilk, milk and farm fresh butter from the local dairy shop. Finally she hauled out a sack of flour from the far recesses of her pantry cupboard. It gave Amelia a sense of all things right in the world to have it laid out before her like that. She opened onto the page for the recipe and propped it up.

Make sure you are in your warmest woollies for this one. (Check.) Inhale deep and slow and then exhale, feeling all your worries, cares and concerns slowly wiped clean. Like a readied kitchen counter. (Check.) As you lovingly tend to this particular favourite of mine, imbuing as you do the smoked, flaked haddock in milk with the inviting autumn leaf orange of turmeric, think on Cleopatra, rumoured as she was to have bathed herself in milk and honey with threads of saffron. This dish is sure to whisk away any winter blues, as lush as cashmere (or a bath of milk and honey!) for the spirit and the belly.

First, the potatoes. She peeled and then chopped them into quarters, finding even this soothing, before dropping the chunks into an ample pot of lightly salted hot water on the stove. Bringing the milk with the smoked haddock to the boil in another pot, she stirred in the paprika and turmeric and added a couple of bay leaves, before turning down the gas to let it simmer, as it turned a soft sunset-soaked hue.

While the two pots took care of themselves, she set to work with a large pan, lightly sautéing the diced leeks and onion, her senses relishing in the sizzling sweet aromas as it all caramelised and softened in the browning butter. Potatoes relinquishing to a prick with a thin blade, she returned them to the pot after draining to mash with a fork adding a generous dollop of salted butter (The more butter, the better!) and the buttermilk until, light and creamy, it formed undulating fluffy peaks. She added flour to the caramelised onion and leeks and slowly began to stir in the milk and fish ladle by ladle into the pan with a wooden spoon.

As she stirred each ladleful in the pan, she marvelled as the sauce thickened just as the recipe had promised as if by some magic alchemy and the aid of a simple wooden spoon. It was strangely but deeply satisfying. The last of the sauce in the pan, she spooned it all into an oven dish, with the petit pois and a bounteous sprinkling of fresh dill and parsley before the final crowning glory of the mountainous mashed potato, dotted in the slopes with extra blobs of butter for good measure.

“Into the oven with you then,” Amelia proudly announced, her mood turned for the better, to the tune of Sammy Davis Jnr.’s ‘Mr Bojangles’, a song both her Papa and her mother loved so. Surprising even herself, like old times, she sang and danced and danced and sang until the oven timer buzzed in what felt like no time at all, the fish pie triumphantly golden and a moreish meal for one to behold.

“Domestic goddess here we come... You don’t know what you’re missing, Ailuros,” she whispered in the cat’s ear, yet to bat even an eye to the world. (Hadn’t she read that the average cat can sleep 17 hours a day?)

Amelia wondered what it was, the intonation in a voice, or the scent of someone you love when engulfed in a hug, or in a mouthful, that it just felt like being completely at home.

Could she cook her way into making her woefully bare house a home? Maybe with the help of Ailuros by her side?

For the first time since the strange guest’s arrival, Amelia admitted to herself that she ardently longed for the stray to stick around.

To make Amelia’s home, her home too.

Pretty please, she secretly asked of fate, fearing that if she spoke aloud the cat might disappear into thin air as if it had been no more than a figment of her imagination. The pint-sized, precious creature seemed to read her thoughts, stretching out a front leg, though still sleeping, and curling a paw inwards, softly grazing her human’s leg. Amelia turned a pinkie finger and pressed it inside the tiny paw, daring herself not so much as to blink lest this newfound tender spell be broken.

There it was again. That long-forgotten feeling she had been so hesitant to name. But this time she couldn’t deny its presence in the room. It was everywhere. And it had a name. Happiness. Again, tentatively.

That night, Amelia awoke parched and drenched in her own sweat.

Ailuros at the end of the bed none the wiser, resting peacefully.

As she poured herself a tall glass of cold water, her dream came to her like a stuck record. It was the majestic aerialiste yet again, face turned away from Amelia as before, wings folded on her back, lounging lazily in a field of deep red poppies, a black bird on her arm.

This time she tilted her head to the side, revealing features almost feline with glowing eyes and ears raised and alert, set upon high. (For wasn’t it that cats had first been worshipped for the lunar like reflections their eyes cast in the dark, spirits in commune with the moon…?)

How do you like my garden now?

The apparition had spoken, barely turning to look at Amelia, her gaze somewhere far off in the distance. And that was when Amelia had woken. Staring only into the beady eyes of the black bird in the end, she’d been planted there, firmly, mute, before that surreal bright red field of poppies and hypnotic creation of her own unquiet imagining.

How do you like my garden now?

The words now echoed in her head. The voice her mother’s.

Amelia checked her bedside clock. It was 3a.m. Sleep evaded her. Flushed. Muddled. She poured another glass of water and drained it quickly, her thirst unquenchable. She removed her drenched vest and leggings, skin still damp, and wrapped her mother’s sky blue robe around her, tying it loosely at the waist.

Taking care to do so quietly, Amelia retrieved the box of her mother’s things and carried it from the bedroom and into the lounge. She placed it gently on the coffee table. Slowly removing one item after the next, she eventually came upon the small box within that she’d been looking for. Scrawled on the brown outer wrapping paper was a message.

Now, Amelia, no peeking! Not until you’re thirty five. That may seem like a lifetime now but the time will come soon enough I promise. Pinkie promise. Love mom

As a little girl she’d always had the habit of snooping around and peeking into places perhaps she shouldn’t, discovering things meant to stay hidden, from birthday gifts to expensive imported bars of her mother’s best chocolate or salty liquorice.

But her mom had meant it with this particular mystery. And yet even now, at its intended age, she had never been able to bring herself to opening the box to reveal the long-awaited contents, as if it would be the last goodbye she wasn’t ready to utter yet.

The final curtain on her mother’s memory. Exit stage left.

“Thirty five, my sweetheart, now that’s a number!”

Aside from being the year of her grandfather’s birth, it was, for her mother, the perfect combination of 3, 5 and 7, Georgina Young’s three favourite numbers.

Amelia regarded the small parcel in brown paper as if it were a ticking time bomb in the middle of her lounge. She returned all the items back into the bigger box except for the one small box and tiptoed back into her bedroom, ever mindful of Ailuros.

She pulled back a drawer from the chest and placed the parcel among her grandmother’s perfume, glove, picture and cigarette case and compact mirror set, before covering them all again with her few pairs of socks and stockings.

Carefully, Amelia climbed back into bed, again not wanting to disturb the cat, feeling as though her mother’s portrait of the figure in red was burning right through her, forehead still clammy and feverish. The words came back to her as, exhausted, she began to drift off. How do you like my garden now?

Amelia got up only hours later to the sound of her alarm clock, though it seemed like no time at all since she’d finally dozed off. She felt oddly invigorated given the restless night she’d had. Arming herself with a balloon whisk, a large stone pestle and mortar and a piping bag, splurges of the day before in town, just for this very occasion, she got straight to work with the ‘Breakfast of Champions: Churros con chocolate.’

Not forgetting the all important soundtrack, she set up some Motown classics on YouTube, her ever trusty and failproof get-up-and-go morning music when she felt so inspired. She pounded away at a couple of dried red chillies in her new pestle and mortar.

As much as her arms bore the brunt – arms that usually saw little exertion beyond typing at a keyboard most days – she had to admit she revelled in it, feeling positively primeval.

Regretfully done with the task, she left it to one side for the spicy hot chocolate to follow, and went on to sifting the flour and salt into a large bowl, creating a well in the centre for the water as the recipe instructed.

Stirring ever so conscientiously on this culinary maiden voyage, she was intent on ensuring there were no lumps. Satisfied, she transferred the mixture to a large saucepan and cooked it on a low heat, again stirring constantly, her right arm beginning to ache once more.

Leaving the mixture to rest for the hour, Amelia decided to shower and dress in the meantime, but not before placing a pot of milk to simmer away with a stick of cinnamon.

Showered and fresh, but again feeling all the clothes in her wardrobe to be completely lacklustre, Amelia pilfered through her mother’s box yet again but to no avail. Her figure was simply no match for the great Georgina Young. Point 4 would see to that, of that she’d make sure. In the end, if only a little disheartened, she settled for one of her many white and off-white blouses and the ever reliable, if somewhat tired, pair of Calvin Klein denims.

She sometimes reminded herself of Smurfette with her limited options.

Little for it for now.

Back in the kitchen, she busied herself next with the hot chocolate, slowly melting the quality dark chocolate in a metal bowl above a pot of steaming water. Playing the part but fooling no one, least of all the cat, she began to boogie to the music, swaying her hips and tapping her toes as she whisked in the warm, cinnamon-scented milk and condensed milk. Even if she looked ridiculous, it was thrilling to pretend.

Adding the fiery chillies to the hot chocolate, Amelia next tested a drop of batter in another large saucepan on the gas stove taking care that the oil was just hot enough, but not too hot, to make for the perfect churros, soon to be dusted with fine muscovado sugar.

She found them utterly charming as she piped the doughy concoction bit by bit into the hot oil, like half-formed letters of a secret language. Making sure to first feed the cat, she once again took her place at the head of her patio table, a glorious day if ever there was, full of promise. Her mouth bursting with flavour, she savoured every dunk and crunchy, delectable bite, the none-too-subtle heat of the chilli rising to her cheeks in the warmth of the favouring sunshine. Fortifying her from those fretful early hours.

“Dos cervesaz, por favour!” She laughed, remembering the only Spanish her mother had ever taught her, hailing Ailuros like a waiter. “And today we see a man about a plant!”

Field of Red Poppies by Kirstin McCoy