Season to Taste (16 page)

Lizzie sat for one and a half hours and chewed what was in her mouth, and swallowed. Then she went upstairs to lie down.

She slipped under the duvet in all of her clothes, and she lay very still, on her back, and stared at the ceiling for a while.
Oak, he'd wanted. For its longevity and rotund glory. A tree that would go on when he was gone. The garden and its trees growing
down in the dark by the wall would be there after she'd left. So early, and he'd been out already. Trying to dig a hole. In
the frost. She'd got dressed into the clothes she'd been wearing all weekend. Nothing new bought for years. No linen trousers,
no nice shoes. Nothing like Joanna. Through to the kitchen. Because of the job? Because of Joanna? Because of the cakes? Because
of the Pearl? Because she hadn't had the imagination to get away? Bringing the spade down on the back of his head. Then the
small mental adjustment. Doing it again. Nothing. Like a car crash. She'd turned him over, slipped on the grass, his head
had lolled in the hole; she'd hauled it back up, and tried to pull him down at the feet and straighten him out on the grass.

There was meat to eat. She would have to press her mouth against a wall of cold thigh.

She lay there retching, and she curled on her side.

There was still all this to go.

“I am sorry,” she said, and she heard the words come right out.

One could learn to be alive.

She'd put the last of the bones and fat in the stockpot with bouquet garni and celery. She would need the clothes peg on again
while it boiled and simmered and this she would do with candles burning before she went to bed, and reduce it with wine, then
blend again, reduce for an hour more till she got a stock which could be stored. She had to keep going. And ignore what sounded
to her like repeated knocks on the front door. A little scratching at the bathroom window. Only wind, she thought. Only trees.

There would be a final meal.

Lizzie Prain chopped her husband into bits.

They had been an isolated couple.

Living quietly.

In the Surrey Hills.

Five minutes from the A31 to Farnham.

It's an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The cushions on the garden chairs had been there Lizzie's whole lifetime.

They'd been bought by his aunt.

They'd listened to the news on the radio, not having a subscription or being members of a newspaper readership. Or members
of anything at all.

Not that she'd wanted it.

Not from the sofa. With the television on. And not feeling anything for him. How could she have felt anything for him?

Though it might have been nice to meet some people.

It might have been nice.

She blinked, and she understood that it was mechanical. There was nothing to fear. She would go north on the train, after
that frozen emotional state—one movement at a time.

She came back from Scotland on Thursday. I'd been there since Sunday. I came back from work that night and saw that the lights
were on. At first I thought it might have been her husband returned from abroad. I put my bike up against the yew hedge and
went in.

The dog was sniffing around in the hall. I stepped into the kitchen and saw the bags there, by the back door. The cool bag
was open and it was full of sopping, stinking newspaper and polythene. I didn't want to go near it. Even Rita recoiled. She
barked and growled, sat back on her haunches, then leaped forward and backed away. I called out for Lizzie. I didn't go out
to the garden and I felt sure that she wasn't in the house. I assumed she'd gone for a walk in the lane or popped up to the
pub for a drink, so I took the box of pizza I'd brought, and then went into the living room with a book. There wasn't anything
in that room but the old sofa and a fireplace. I'd been using the fire in the evenings.

While I was sitting in the living room the back door to the kitchen opened and banged shut. I heard her washing her hands
at the sink. I knew it was her, without having to look round, so I simply stayed where I was, with an unchewed bit of pizza
in my mouth.

All of a sudden I felt very scared. I can't honestly explain where the feeling came from, but it was real and had no thought
attached to it. It was as if my heart just stopped for a beat or two, and my nervous system was flooded with adrenaline.

I stood up and turned round as she came into the room.

“I've dug a hole in the flower bed, Tom,” she said, without even saying hi or explaining why she'd come back. She was smiling.
Her face was shining with sweat. She looked almost pretty, and very bright.

I said: “Oh, right. OK.”

“And tomorrow I'd like us to plant a tree!”

Her voice was very forced; her smile was wide and seemed to be stuck there.

I offered her a slice of pizza. She came on over to the sofa, picked up a slice, and sat down beside me. Her boots were muddy
and old. I could smell the soil on her. I didn't want to ask about the cool bag. I thought that she'd had some food and forgotten
about it on the train. Something had gone off, and in her hurry to get back she hadn't noticed. It wasn't like her to be like
that. She was such a clean and hygienic, practical sort of woman. But she was acting strange. I wanted to ask what had happened
up there to bring her home.

“Have you had a good day?” she said, turning very deliberately on the sofa to look at me. She folded her hands and placed
them demurely in her lap.

She said how much warmer it was in the south of England than it had been in Scotland.

“Did the men come to take the freezer?” she said.

I said that they hadn't turned up. “I called them but no one answered the phone. It didn't go to voicemail so I couldn't leave
a message.”

Lizzie turned around again, sat back against the sofa, but was still very erect. She looked around, and sniffed the air, as
if she had never sat on that sofa or breathed the air in that room.

“How strange that they didn't come,” she said, and then she turned to me with that fixed bright smile again.

“I could ring them tomorrow,” I said.

“No matter,” she said. “I will.”

“Maybe they felt they couldn't get the lorry up the lane. Maybe they came and tried. It's muddy down at the bottom there.
And bumpy.”

“They wouldn't have come in a lorry too big to fit down the lane. I said it was small, quite tight. With overhanging branches.
I said it would be a job.”

“I'm sure they'll come,” I said, and I went for another slice of pizza.

I didn't ask her how Scotland had been. It was obvious it hadn't been great. I looked at those small, very round, slightly
panicky blue eyes, so close together, like the eyes of a doll.

“I'm not asking for anything,” she said. “You can stay here with me or you can go. It's entirely up to you.”

I said nothing. I just looked at her and smiled.

“It's perfectly all right. Tom?”

I smiled again, and I felt my whole face crinkling with it and my heart leaped into my mouth with apprehension for her, for
us, for everything. She could feel it too. She sat back. I saw her shoulders drop. After a while she took a very deep breath,
and then collapsed back into the sofa.

“I can stay in the shed,” I suggested. “If that would be easier?”

She shrugged. “Don't be silly. The shed!”

“But you said before you thought it was a good idea. It is. It'll be great! I'm sure I'll like it!”

“It's fine,” she said. “Just stay in the house.”

We said nothing much else that night. We finished the pizza and then we sat in the warmth of the fire, and we made cups of
tea to take upstairs. I had my book. Lizzie wanted to lie down on the mattress and sleep. She brushed her teeth. I brought
a blanket up. I opened up my sleeping bag and put it over both of us. She didn't say a word. We were still in all our clothes.
I put my arm under my head and I lay there for a while with my book while she fell asleep.

Once the potatoes had boiled, Lizzie ran up the lane towards the farm. If she ran, she felt, she would work up an appetite
for his head. It had been defrosting overnight in the small space at the front of the shed—and the shed stank, so she'd left
the door open and would need to go in there later in the afternoon and give it a good dousing with bleach.

She came to the farmhouse and crunched across the gravel, past the two saloon cars both spattered with mud, and up to the
front door. She knocked. There was nothing. She knocked again. Inside someone was calling. One of the twins came to the door
and opened it a crack.

Lizzie stood on the front step with her shoulders hunched. The door opened a little more. Lizzie could see a bony shoulder
in a pale pink vest, a hip protruding from gray tracksuit bottoms.

“Are you Claire?” said Lizzie, placing her foot just inside the door so as to ease it open a little.

“Hi,” said the girl. She called back into the house. “Mum!”

There wasn't a response. Lizzie looked beyond the girl into the wide hallway of the house. She remembered doing the babysitting
here and thought about how people could go to a new experience happily, bounding forward, full of hope. She had been like
that too. She had felt uncomfortable, but she had quite liked the challenge. Though they had thought her weird. She could
have found someone to help. She could have gone to see a therapist of some description, or made a friend. There would have
been someone to talk to, wouldn't there?

“Are you Claire, then?” she said, her eye on the foot of hers that was now wedging open the door. She straightened up and
folded her hands, nun-like, in front of her waist.

“Yeah. I'm Claire. Nic's not back yet. She's back tonight. Mike's here. He's upstairs. Do you want to speak to him?”

“Actually, I'd like to speak to your grandad,” said Lizzie.

The girl looked at her watch. “Still asleep,” she said.

A black Labrador slid around the girl's legs and bounded down the steps. Claire said, “Ralph.” The dog went on.

Claire grimaced. Lizzie turned and watched the dog bound across the grass and down towards the pool of muddy water around
the fence to the field. She wouldn't have to do this again. She wouldn't have to be here anymore. There was only the head
left. Then she was free.

“It's just that I found one of his signs yesterday,” she said. “It was taped to the back of my car. Could you tell him please
that my husband left me and eloped to South America with a woman from the Pearl. It's in Guildford. Do you know it?”

Claire was looking at her fingernails.

“It's a prostitute place,” said Lizzie. “Where people go for—”

“Yeah, I get it,” said the girl.

“Obviously, it's my own private matter, and I don't appreciate being stalked…”

“Grandad's not exactly well,” said Claire. “I'll tell Mum and everything and we'll definitely make sure it doesn't happen
again, but don't worry. He's not all there.”

“Does he find it funny?”

“No. He's just not sure.”

“Not sure?”

“Of himself. Or anything. Of where he is. Who belongs where. Guess he thinks like he's alive and trying to mix with people
somehow. Trying to…don't know.”

“Does he stay in his room most days?”

“Most days. He comes out when it's quiet. Like once or twice a month he goes for a walk. Or goes to the pub. Sometimes he
gets lost. He's in his own head. Can be hard to keep tabs on him.”

There was a pause.

She turned back into the house again and shouted for her mum.

Mum didn't come.

Claire looked like she wanted to go in and wanted to find something to say to please.

“I like your jumper,” she said.

Lizzie wasn't sure she'd heard her. It was as if her senses had become precisely and finely tuned now to getting only what
she needed. It was cold, and ever so slightly exciting. It was her determination now—her wits—being tested against the world.
It was as if her own head—in preparation for eating his—had become detached from her body, and she was up now, in the clear,
clean, cold air, enough of her money in her wallet to get her away from here and into a new life, and fuck everyone else.
Yeah. And she liked that feeling.

Then Tom came to the door, slinking up behind his sister, in a T-shirt and jeans. His cheeks were still bright red; his eyes
darting a little in their sockets.

Claire slid away and Tom was standing there, six foot two with a bit of tissue on a bleeding spot on his neck.

Lizzie smiled. She said: “Hiya.”

“Hi,” he said, shyly. “I've been thinking about the shed. Can I come tonight?”

Lizzie paused.

“To look at the shed?” he said. He put a hand on his stomach and two tears popped out of his eyes.

“Man!” he said. “What is it with you?”

Lizzie backed away.

“Don't worry,” she said, lifting a flat palm up in the air like a policeman. “I'm going anyway. It doesn't matter what happens.”

“No, wait!”

He came after her, ankles creaking. He wasn't wearing shoes. They stood in a thin patch of sunlight on the gravel driveway.

“I want to come and help you clear the shed,” he said. “Please. Let me come and help?”

She got the head from the shed and brought it into the kitchen and put it down on newspaper on the floor. She took the twisty
off the bin liner and peeled the label off. She reached into the bag and pulled his head out, cradling it against her stomach
with the plastic underneath it to prevent any loose hairs dropping off him and onto the floor. She felt the cool wet slime
against her stomach. It had passed through her apron and was seeping through her shirt. Her pale yellow apron from the farm
shop in Seale would have to go in the wash now. She would put it on a hot wash and leave it out on the line to dry while she
was gone.

She ran her hand down the back of his head and drew an imaginary line where an incision would be made with an axe.

She would get the brain out, cook it in the oven, eat it for lunch and then think about what to do with the rest. The cheeks
could be cut away easily and fried as they were in the frying pan, and the eyes could be used, also, taken out with a knife
and blanched in a little oil. Or steamed, wrapped in a lettuce parcel. She ran her fingers round to the front of his head
on her stomach and made sure that the lids were closed. She felt the matted hair. She closed her eyes and trembled. She tried
to imagine that she was holding a sculpted head in her hands, and then it was simply a matter of chipping away at the bits
she needed.

“Fine,” she said, and she took a breath. There was no sound in the kitchen. Rita was running round and round the garden. Inside
the house it was only her. She wasn't afraid.

Out on the grass she took the axe high in the air and thwacked it down on the back of his skull.

Jacob's head split open in two clean pieces and Lizzie bent down with the carving knife to cut out his brain. It was easier
than she'd thought it would be. She peered down and found the inside of his head very pink, very delicate, some white in places:
not an awful lot to see. The brain was distinctive: snug in its socket, it was exactly like a piece of white coral, with the
consistency of toothpaste when she touched it, and much smaller than she'd imagined.

She scooped the brain out with a spoon and tipped it into a small ceramic roasting dish. The dog barked and trotted after
her as she carried the dish back into the kitchen. Then she put it in the oven with nothing at all to go with it. There was
milk in the fridge, and Lizzie felt compelled, suddenly, to pour the milk into his head and then press the two bits of his
skull together, filling him back up somehow, correcting the difficulties he'd grown up with, the ways in which he'd let himself
down. Something to do with the whiteness of milk, not the symbolic significance, but the taste of it, how soothing it was,
made her want to pour it into his head. Instead she pressed the two pieces of his skull back together, then wrapped him back
up in the bin liner, tied it with a twisty and went out to the fine rain in the garden, where she stood holding it under one
arm and looked at the trees.

After a while she perched at the outside table. She sat for a few minutes and did not reach a conclusion.

She listened to the sound of the woods and willed her thoughts out into the trees. After she had done this, thoughts would
come and they would drive her mad.

She put the head down on the table and left it there while she went back into the kitchen to check on the brain.

She looked at her watch. The brain had cooked. It didn't smell. It had gone a pale golden color, and when she pressed it,
it felt firm, slightly crisp at the edges. She put it back in the oven. It might work with some soy sauce. If she crisped
it up a little more in her small frying pan, it would be like eating a pile of crispy noodles.

She heated sesame oil in the pan and broke the brain up with a fork while it fried. She used a slotted spoon to transfer it
onto a plate and ripped off a sheet of kitchen roll. She sat down at the table with a glass of wine. It was the last of the
fourth bottle from the fridge. That was fine. It was perfect. She took a bite. The brain had a bitter flavor, something very
deep and pungent—a grainy texture, but nicely crispy and salty on the outside.

She ate his brain in ten mouthfuls. Then she washed everything up in the sink. The head was still on the outside table in
its bag. Lizzie looked through the kitchen window at it, and then she gave up trying to think about how to make eating the
rest of it easier for herself. There wasn't an answer. So she put it back in the freezer and piled the garden cushions up
on top. Upstairs she brushed her teeth, had a shower, and dried herself with the only towel she had left. Then she lay down
on her bed and placed her hands on her chest.