A Taste for Nightshade
Martine Bailey
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The track led into a sort of tunnel made of forest. They left daylight behind, a thousand leaves hemming them into dusky shade. As she traipsed behind Jack's torn blue jacket, he squinted into the foliage, hearkening to every cracking twig or bird-chirrup. After what seemed an age, they came out into blessed sunshine again. They were in a clearing, their ears filled with a thundering wind, the air itself trembling. A few paces further they came upon the source: above them, a waterfall tumbled from a clifftop as high as a church steeple. The water fell in milky blue strands, shooting spray in the air that danced in rainbows of gold, pink and blue. At their feet was a deep and inviting lagoon. It fair took her breath away. Jack crouched to look at the pool's edge, where a mud bank was scrabbled with marks. "We should go back," he said. "Something drinks here." She didn't care. She was spellbound. "Look, a cave!" Across the lagoon stood a dark entrance hung with pretty mosses, like a fairy grotto. "Just one peep," she whispered, for there was something powerful and secret about the place. "Then we can go back." But Jack was still peering at the tracks around the water's edge. "Whatever drinks here, it's not here now. I dare you, Jack. A quick look around the cave and then we'll be on our way." She had a notion, from some story or other, that caves were places where treasure was hidden; she reckoned pirates might have left jewels and plunder behind long ago. "It's the end of the rainbow," she laughed. "Let's find our crock of gold.”
“On December the twenty-third, the park was hazy from clammy mists that muted and softened all color and distance. Michael had not set off for Whitelow after breakfast, so I bundled myself into my redingote that was as thick and warm as a man's, and pulled on my sable hat and muff. Even so, the chill pinched my nose as I hurried along paths of mushy leaves, sending startled birds pink-pinking up into the air. Claw-like seed pods clung to my skirts; the fine flowers of summer drooped slimy and black. I collected a few posies of evergreens to paint: stiff pine cones, jewel-like berries of black and scarlet, and oval seed pods as lustrous as pearl.”
“Next morning I had to get outside, and so began a period of long walks in the park. Early November continued bright, with the last sun of the year shining low and coppery over the woods. Striding through heaps of rusty autumn leaves, I ached to see beauty dying all around me. I felt completely alone in that rambling wilderness, save for the crows cawing in their rookeries and the wrens bobbing from hedge to hedge. I began to make studies in my book of the delicate lines of drying grasses and frilled seed pods. I looked for some lesson on how best to live from Nature, that every year died and was renewed, but none appeared.”
“The room had been decked with late-blooming roses that cast up a sugary glasshouse scent. Yet amongst the profusion of china and silver, the atmosphere was one of flamboyance, rather than celebration. Mrs. Croxon announced that we should eat 'exactly the Bill of Fare as given by a most genteel Countess at Bath'. I had no appetite for sardines in mustard, creamed oats and kidneys, for I had a stomach full of butterflies, as my mother had called my fits of nerves.”
“Save for the accident of her low birth, Peg might have been a person of fashion; a vibrant beauty, painted by an academician in oils. Intending to make a quick end to it, I started mixing the lily green I had made especially from crushed flowers, hoping exactly to tint her eyes, rattling my tiny brush in the jar. Then I subjected her to my closest gaze. "Your eyes," I said, musingly. "They are a very unusual green; in different lights they reflect brown and blue. Do they perhaps reflect whatever light falls on them?" Peg replied that she couldn't say. "Do, please, sit very still." I looked very hard, then used my green with a wash of yellow ochre to tint the iris, and a ring of burnt umber. A pinprick of white titanium gave them startling life. I was happy with them; surely even Peg would admire her lively cat-like eyes.”
“Sal and Henry return with a gust of warm garden air and I settle down to create miniature roses from sugarpaste using tiny ivory spatulas and crimpers. I will have no antique tester bed crowning my cake, only a posy of flowers: symbols of beauty and growth, each year new-blossoming. I let Henry paint the broken pieces with spinach juice, while I tint my flowers with cochineal and yellow gum. As a pretty device I paint a ladybird on a rose, and think it finer than Sèvres porcelain. At ten o'clock tomorrow, I will marry John Francis at St. Mark's Church, across the square. As Sal and I rehearse our plans for the day, pleasurable anticipation bubbles inside me like fizzing wine. We will return from church for this bride cake in the parlor, then take a simple wedding breakfast of hot buttered rolls, ham, cold chicken, and fruit, on the silver in the dining room. Nan has sent me a Yorkshire Game Pie, so crusted with wedding figures of wheatsheafs and blossoms it truly looks too good to eat. We have invited few guests, for I want no great show, and instead will have bread and beef sent to feed the poor. And at two o'clock, we will leave with Henry for a much anticipated holiday by the sea, at Sandhills, on the southern coast. John Francis has promised Henry he might try sea-bathing, while I have bought stocks of cerulean blue and burnt umber to attempt to catch the sea and sky in watercolor.”
“Women dream in courtship, but wedlock wakes them.”
“We'll have beef pudding all in the George style," Peg announced, not caring to mention that, as even Nan could not make it, she had ordered it to be delivered cooked from the inn, and hang the expense. She herself made the most excellent apple pie from Mother Eve's Secrets, licking fingers sweet with muscovado and cinnamon.”
“They all hushed as Brinny, the one murderess of their crew, told them of the making of her bride cake, with primrose yellow butter and raisins of the sun, fattened on smuggled brandy. The further they sailed from England, the fonder they grew of the pleasures of home: plum trees with bowed branches, brambles in the hedge, cream from a beloved cow.”
“There had been a method to bake fruit cake amongst the receipts I found in Peg's quarters at Delafosse; written inside that book of hers titled Mother Eve's Secrets. For an unthinking moment, I thought I'd found something of worth amongst Peg's hoard. She had always been a fine pastry cook, her puddings dripping with hot syrup, her desserts as light as sugared clouds, her tea-board a never-ending array of ratafias, cakes, and tarts.”
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Book Keywords:
reality, december, food, natures-beauty, pleasures-of-life, cookbook, uncomfortable, pathway, happiness, lagoon, decorating, sketching, wedding, november, eye-colors, english-countryside, flamboyant, waterfall, reminiscent, wedding-cake, wedding-flora, apple-pie, pudding, cave, exploring, home-is-where-the-heart-is, tunnel, dinner, painting, marriage, beef, blossoms, wedding-reception, sweets, autumn, winter, pastries, cake, watercolor
