Recipes for Love and Murder Page 3

  Jessie cleaned the last smudges of chocolate off her plate. Then she sighed and stroked one of the geckos tattooed on her arm. She sometimes does that when she is happy.

  ‘I’d better get back,’ she said, standing up and opening a pouch on her belt. ‘Here’s your letter.’

  It felt hot in my hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Jessie left I did not even clean up; I went outside and sat on the metal chair in the shade of the lemon tree, and opened the envelope. The handwriting was the same as the other letter.

  Dear Tannie Maria,

  I’ve always enjoyed your recipes. I read them every week.

  I am ashamed to be writing to you now for advice. I’ve made my bed and I should lie in it, but then after what’s just happened . . .

  I promised to love and obey this man. My husband. The love has dried up, but I do my best. He does his bit too, he pays for our son who has cerebral palsy and is in a special needs home.

  The beatings only happen when he is drunk or jealous. If I don’t fight back it’s not too bad. He says he is sorry afterwards, which in an odd way I believe, and that he won’t do it again, which I don’t. Sometimes something snaps. I think it has something to do with his own father and with his time in the army. He has nightmares about the army. Not that I’m making excuses for him – I’m just saying he’s not a monster.

  My mouth was dry and I stood up, leaving the half-read letter on the chair. I went inside and poured myself a glass of water from the fridge. My hands were shaking a bit. My chest hurt as I swallowed. It happens when I drink cold water too fast. I went back to the letter in the garden and carried on reading.

  The beatings are about once a month. The sex once a week. So I have twenty-five days a month when he doesn’t bother me much. I have a lot of happy hours with my woman friend, who comes to visit when he is out. I work only two mornings a week, so am at home a lot. She and I have a kind of love for each other, though I prefer to keep it platonic.

  She gave me the ducks. Three white ornamental ducks. We fixed up the pond for them to swim in.

  Those ducks were the first things I’ve ever loved in a totally pure way. Without guilt or pain. Pure bright joy. I could just watch them for hours. Swimming. Waddling. Rooting in the grass. Lying with their beaks tucked into their feathers.

  He shot them.

  All three of them.

  With his fucking shotgun.

  They were sleeping.

  I wanted to kill him. I grabbed a kitchen knife and ran at him. He held my arms, until I’d cried myself into exhaustion.

  My husband had drunk a bottle of Klipdrift brandy. He was jealous of my friend and of the ducks. But the final straw was the curry I made. He said the lamb was tough and the curry too spicy. He said I didn’t care about him. He was right on both counts.

  Could you please give me a recipe for a good mutton curry?

  And any other advice?

  Yours sincerely

  Bereft woman

  I sat there for a long time with the letter on my lap, looking at my veldskoene, remembering things I didn’t want to remember. The sun slowly chased me out of the shadow and I felt its warmth on my legs and shoulders. But I was shivering and felt cold. Then suddenly I was hot, the sun burning my skin. A wind rustled the leaves in the tree and I stood up and went inside.

  There were unhappy feelings in my tummy. I ate the last frozen banana, and it pushed aside those feelings. I couldn’t feel much other than chocolate bananas in my stomach any more. But my mind, my mind was still going where I didn’t want it to go. My hands were shaking again.

  I made myself a big mug of coffee with lots of sugar and took it outside to the stoep table, with the woman’s letter and my pen and paper. I thought the sweet coffee would pull me right. But even after that whole mug of coffee I still felt down. I was full of a sadness that I couldn’t shake off. All those years that I had spent with a man who was much the same as her husband. Not exactly the same. He had not shot my ducks. I did not have ducks. Or a good friend to give me white ducks. And my beatings were more like once a week, and the forced sex once a month. If I was lucky. But still the story felt the same. Even the Klipdrift brandy was the same. I didn’t ever run at him with a knife. And I didn’t leave him. I had been scared of dying. And scared of living too.

  When Fanie got a heart attack and died, something broke free in me. But while he was alive, I just could not escape. Even the priest at our church said it was my duty to stay by my husband, so I stayed and stayed.

  I hoped this woman would not do the same. I picked up my pen. We would of course not print what she wrote, but we could publish a recipe and a letter from me. I spent a long time working out what to say: writing and crossing out. It took me two hours and a bowl of mango sorbet. In the end I said:

  I lived for too many years with a man that beat me. Bruises and bones can heal. But the heart, the heart can be damaged for ever. Love is a precious thing. If you are with a man who abuses you, you should leave him. I know there are many reasons why it is hard. But you can find a way.

  You can do better than I did. You can save your heart.

  Then I wrote out my best recipe for a slow-cooked lamb curry. (My mind jumped to a duck muscadel dish, but of course I didn’t write it.) You will find the mutton curry recipe at the end of the book, with all the other recipes. It is a very tender and delicious curry with excellent sambals.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A couple of weeks later I was walking in my veldskoene down the path to the office, in the morning heat. I could hear voices as I got close to the door.

  ‘That’s super-duper,’ said Hattie, ‘I knew you could write a great fête article.’

  ‘Ag, Hattie, please. Now, the story I wanted to discuss with you. Local farming practices and how overgrazing and pesticides are totally mucking up the ecosystems— ’

  ‘Maria,’ Hattie said, clapping her hands together as she saw me, ‘just look at that pile of letters on your desk. Isn’t it marvellous?’

  I stood under the ceiling fan and felt the air dry the sweat on my face and neck. My brown cotton dress felt rumpled and sticky though it was perfect when I put it on this morning. Hattie was sitting at her desk and she brushed a speck of dirt off her smooth apricot cotton trousers. I don’t know how she always managed to look so smart. Jessie grinned as she handed me a glass of cold water. Her smile was bright in her round brown face.

  ‘Dankie, skat,’ I said and gave her a Tupperware. ‘Bobotie for you.’

  ‘Ooh, lekker,’ Jessie said, and put it in the small fridge.

  She stood for a moment with the fridge door open, and lifted her thick ponytail up, away from her black vest. She let the air cool her face and the back of her neck.

  Girl on fire, sang Jessie’s cell phone. She took it out of its pouch and pressed a button which turned the song off.

  ‘Just a reminder,’ she said.

  ‘Goodness, Jess. We don’t need reminders that it’s hot,’ said Hattie.

  ‘No,’ said Jessie, smiling. ‘It’s reminding me to check on a certain website that should be ready by now . . . ’

  She went and clicked some buttons on her computer. I sat down at my desk with my glass of cool water. It had been two weeks since we’d started the column and the letters were flowing in. A lot of people were hungry for my recipes and advice. It was quite a responsibility, but I was enjoying it. When I gave someone a recipe, I usually cooked it for myself too. When I wasn’t writing, I was cooking. More than I could eat myself. Sometimes I froze the extra food; often I brought it to Jessie.

  I put down my glass and picked up the thick handful of letters on my desk.

  ‘Jinne,’ I said. ‘How am I going to choose?’

  I laid them out like a solitaire game on my desk. There was only space to print one or two letters per week, and I felt bad for the people I couldn’t answer. Some of them gave addresses, and I sent them replies. But most of them didn’t.

  ‘Ma
ria, darling, we’ve been working on your problem,’ said Hattie. She looked at Jessie, who was in front of her computer. Jessie nodded and gave Hattie a thumbs-up sign. ‘And we are delighted to tell you we’ve got a website up now. I got sponsorship from Klein Karoo Real Estate Agents. We can post loads of your letters up on the website. And people can email their letters to you.’

  ‘Come have a look,’ said Jessie.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thanks, skat.’ I didn’t want to sound ungrateful. ‘The thing is, I am sure most of the people who write to me don’t have web thingies. They are just . . . ordinary people.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, y’know,’ said Jessie. ‘Many people have internet in their homes. And lots of the little towns have got internet cafés these days.’

  I went to look at the website on her screen. It was called the Klein Karoo Gazette, just like the newspaper. Jessie clicked on something and a page came up that said: Tannie Maria’s Love Advice and Recipe Column. There was a drawing of a nice tannie who didn’t look like me, holding a lovely cake in the shape of a heart.

  ‘It does look nice,’ I said. ‘I know I’m behind the times and all . . . with this website stuff.’

  ‘Oh, do tell her, Jessie, what you organised.’

  ‘I spoke to the manager of the Parmalat cheese shop,’ said Jessie. ‘They have bought some ad space next to your column, and . . . you know how they have that notice board up in their shop with announcements and stuff? Well, they’ve agreed to put up a second board, just for Tannie Maria’s letters and recipes.’

  ‘Ag, moederliefie,’ I said, smiling at them both. ‘That is so sweet.’

  ‘And now,’ said Hattie, ‘we can pay you a bit more for your work. What with all the extra letters you’ll be posting.’

  ‘Most people keep their letters anonymous,’ I said, ‘so I can’t post to them.’

  ‘No, darling, I mean posting on the website, and the notice board.’

  ‘About Parmalat,’ said Jessie. ‘They ask if you could put dairy products in your recipes. Cream and cheese and that.’

  ‘All of them?’ I asked.

  ‘Um, no, but in a lot of the ones that go up on the board.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘I like cheese.’

  I was going to make some coffee before starting work, but the handwriting on one of the envelopes stopped me. I pushed the other letters aside and sat down and opened it.

  It was from the woman with the dead ducks.

  It said:

  A note for Tannie Maria (not for publication)

  The mutton curry was superb. It seemed to pacify my husband a little. I kept some for my friend, who loved it.

  I am making a plan that will allow me to leave. I will just have to tread water till I get it right.

  Thank you.

  Sometimes I wished the letters to me weren’t anonymous. That I could write back. I suppose there was the danger that the woman’s husband could get his hands on my letter. I wrote back to the duck lady inside my own head: You can do it! I’ll send you every recipe I know to help you.

  I have a drawer in my office, where I keep my thank-you letters. But I didn’t put her letter there. I felt worried about her; she hadn’t escaped yet. I was going to take her letter home and put it in a special place.

  I made us all coffee and then read through the other letters. Hattie and Jessie were arguing about an article, but I tuned their voices out while I worked on my laptop. I like writing by hand but it’s easier to fix mistakes on a computer.

  By lunchtime I had a headache but a good feeling in my heart. There were only two letters left to answer. To all the other people – teenagers and grannies, men and women, writing in with their problems and their dreams – I had given some small advice and a good recipe. The best recipe, the one that kept reminding me it was lunchtime, was the potato salad with mint and cream. I needed to go home at once and test that one out. I also wanted to take the duck lady’s letter home. I couldn’t reach her, but I could look after that letter as if it was a piece of her.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I told Hattie.

  My house was cooler than the office. And I had some ice-cold homemade lemonade.

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ said Hattie, glancing at her watch, ‘it’s one o’clock already.’

  ‘I’ve done most of the letters, and will bring them tomorrow.’ I said. ‘I just need to work out which are for the paper and which are for the cheeseweb.’

  Hattie laughed. She had a tinkling sort of laugh. Cool like water.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘I’m too hot and hungry to talk right.’

  Before I got in my little blue bakkie, I opened the doors on both sides and chased the heat waves out. Still the seat burnt my skin wherever my dress wasn’t covering me. I left the windows open when I drove and the air dried out my lungs.

  The hills were lying low, as if they could escape the heat. Towerkop rock, on top of the Swartberge, wasn’t shy of the sun, sticking its bald, split head high up into the sky. The sides of the mountain looked fuzzy and wobbly.

  When I got to my house, before I even poured myself that lemonade, I took the letter to the kitchen shelf. To the big recipe book my mother had given me. I opened the pages of Kook en Geniet. I folded the duck lady’s letter between the pages, and closed the book around her words. Like it was holding her, sending her everything she needed.

  I spent the afternoon with my potato salad, preparing it and eating it at my stoep table, and then I sat beside the leftovers with my last two letters and my pen and paper.

  One letter was from a young girl with no friends and a school cooking project. The other from an old man living alone on a farm, with too much mince in his freezer. I could feel the unhappiness of the writers, and I sat with it for a while, trying to work out what I could give them. They were asking me for recipes, but it’s obvious that they were lonely and wanted love. I did not have a recipe for love.

  But if I could give them really good recipes, easy ones they could make themselves, they could invite someone to eat with them. I knew the recipe for a perfect macaroni cheese that I could give to the girl. And for the old man, the best spaghetti bolognaise. And even if they ending up eating them on their own . . .

  ‘If you are honest with yourself,’ I said to the potato salad, ‘is the feeling of love really any better than the satisfaction you get from a good meal?’

  Food is good company, but it doesn’t answer back, not in words anyway. Maybe that is one of the reasons why it is good company. But it did communicate with me somehow, because next thing I knew I was polishing off the leftovers of that cream and mint potato salad.

  My mouth was full of delicious flavours and my tummy full, and I answered my own question: ‘I think not.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning my phone rang. It was Hattie.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she said. ‘Nelson Mandela died last night.’

  When I put the phone down, I made myself a cup of coffee and took two rusks and sat out on the stoep. But before I could bring the coffee to my lips, the tears started leaking out of me.

  Mandela was ninety-five and had been sick for a while, but it still came as a shock. I looked out at the brown veld and the wrinkled gwarrie trees and the distant mountains. My tears made it seem like rain was falling, but the sky was wide and empty. I knew that people all over the land were crying with me for Tata Mandela.

  Then my belly started shaking and tears from deep inside me came up and I realised I was crying for my own father too. My pa who had left me too soon.

  I looked out at the veld and let my heart be filled with my sadness and my pride for my father and for Mandela.

  Sometimes I thought that my father left my mother because of Mandela. But of course I couldn’t blame Mandela, who had, after all, sat for over twenty years in prison on Robben Island, a long way from the Klein Karoo. I knew my father did love my mother – with her brown eyes and soft hands, and her delicious food – bu
t I also knew that the Klein Karoo, even with its big veld and open skies, was too small for him. And my mother’s mind too narrow.

  To my pa, Mandela was a freedom-fighter and a great leader; to my ma he was a terrorist and a kaffir (though she did not use the K-word in front of my father). They did not often argue in front of me, but this was a disagreement that I heard more than once.

  My father was the African correspondent for a newspaper in England, the Guardian, and he would travel a lot. Over the years, he came home less and less, and then he stopped coming back altogether. He would send money and postcards. The cards made my mother angry. Eventually the postcards stopped, although the money carried on every month. When I missed him I would read the old postcards that I had rescued from the rubbish bin (and sometimes had to stick together where my mother had torn them). I kept them in a book my father used to read to me when I was little – Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. And I waited to grow up, because when I was eighteen I would go and find him, and visit some of the wonderful places on the postcards and in the Just So Stories. But that’s not how it turned out.

  When I was eighteen my mother got a long-distance phone call saying my father had died in an accident. She seemed just as upset that it was a black man who gave her the news as by the fact that my pa had died.

  The money from my father stopped, but the Guardian continued with a small pension for my mother. I got a job at Agri – the Farmers Co-op – to help cover the bills. I lived with my ma right through my twenties.

  In 1990, the apartheid government finally lifted the State of Emergency. Political organisations – including the African National Congress – were unbanned, and all political detainees and prisoners were released. Mandela was free at last. But the country was full of fighting and blood.

  Mandela led the reconciliation talks and somehow took us down a path to peace. In 1994 all South Africans were allowed to vote in the first non-racial democratic election. The ANC came into power and Mandela was our president.