The Silent Mrs B.

By Judith O’Reilly

Thirteen years had passed since Violet Bainbridge had spoken. She regretted her last words. “Cup of tea, officer?” So dull. Surely, your last words should be an insight into living, which future generations could remember. On consideration, if she had another go-round, she would advise listeners to “jiggle it”, as it had been her experience if something mechanical went wrong, a jiggle could work wonders. Of course, that wasn’t profound either. Perhaps then, her parting advice should be “Love like there’s no tomorrow”, because in her experience sometimes there were no tomorrows.

Naturally, there were moments she missed conversation. But not enough to break the silence which brought her clarity and comfort. Anyway, it had been too long. She didn’t think she could speak now even if she wanted to. But that didn’t mean to say she couldn’t communicate. Communication, she had learnt, did not necessarily require words.

Violet reached for the tin of corned beef and used its key to saw away its lid. She turned it upside down on the chopping board and picked up the knife. The onions were already in her cast iron pan, glossy and fat with oil, the potatoes sliced and drowning in her white bowl. The knife slid through the meat. How large had her mother cut the pieces? She paused for a second considering the issue. The length of her fingertip up to the first knuckle perhaps. The meat would break up in the pan anyway. She scraped it from the board and pushed it around the frying pan with a spatula, seasoning it to her taste, and picturing her mother’s frown of concentration as she cooked. “A bit of help’s worth a lot of pity, our Violet”, Mam would say, kissing her forehead, before wrapping an apron twice around and handing her a wooden spoon. Violet pressed down the cooked beef and onions and poured yesterday’s cold gravy over it, before laying the slices of potatoes in concentric circles. Forty minutes, she thought. A meal meant to feed a family which cost less than a coffee on the high street these days. Her mother was no fool.

A grilled avocado next, she decided, cutting the fruit apart and easing out the stone with a spoon. The breadcrumbs, mixed with paprika and parmesan were already prepped and the grill on. She covered the surface of the avocado, taking care to fill the hollow with the mixture. The first thing she had ever cooked for her husband. Would he remember what she’d privately called ‘The Avocado Wars’?’ His mother asking time and time again, if Violet had ever eaten it. “An acquired taste, dear.” No girl good enough for him, and certainly not Violet from a two-up, two-down with an outside privy. Saying to Tony that she’d like to cook a meal for the three of them one night. And Sheila, exiled from her own kitchen, sitting at the dinner table in her best silk blouse, desperate to find fault. A chicken roasting in the oven. A black forest gateau bursting with tinned black cherries and whipped cream, pressed over with splintered dark chocolate. “Right fancy,” her father’s verdict as she left. “Watch the old trout don’t curdle it.” Laying down the grilled avocado on the placemat. A statement. That she loved Tony and she was going to marry him. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had avocado this way before,” she’d said, her tone pleasant. “I’ll give you the recipe if you like, Sheila.” And a look had passed between the two women. An understanding which, over the years, deepened into respect and finally, to their mutual surprise, love. Deep enough to bring the old lady into her home and care for her, to wash her and wipe her and feed her beef tea and pressed tongue sandwiches. To hold her in her arms as she passed from this world.

The avocado took only minutes. The oxtail was a different matter. When Tony had been at the start of his career in the bank and she’d been a teacher, they’d eaten it once a fortnight. They’d been saving for a deposit so only cheap cuts of meat went into her basket. Five hours, she remembered as she placed the chunks of oxtail into the casserole and scraped the sliced carrots, shallots and crushed garlic in after. She rifled the wine rack and found a fruity Valpolicella. Too good to cook with really. But it wasn’t as if they were watching the pennies anymore. And thank the Lord that she had four ovens in her kitchen, bearing in mind all she had to do today. She set the second oven to 140 degrees and the timer for five hours. “You’re a genius,” Tony used to say, kissing her fingertips as he took the first mouthful of the rich oxtail stew, the meat falling from the spurred spine in strands, the gristle and cartilage dissolved into something silky and almost sweet.

Then there had been the early years in Sweden when Tony took a posting abroad. Having to leave her family and friends and job behind. Finding solace and meaning in rosemary and garlic studded reindeer, wrapped around in thinly sliced Coppa; the golden striped, pink fleshed Arctic char in white wine and dill, and the smoked salmon she laid out and sprinkled with brown sugar before dribbling over the oil and lime juice stiff with chives and tomatoes and lime zest. Reading recipes and cookbooks in bed, like Tony read his biographies of great men. And while he re-lived battles and mountains climbed, she planned dinners to please him, to impress his colleagues, and to prove to herself she existed.

Today, the reindeer was already on the long kitchen table, alongside the marinading salmon and the arctic char. Each reminding her of who she used to be. Of how she used to feel about Tony and how he used to feel about her. The bitter-sweetness of lime forever associated with loneliness and the glittering snow; the gamey flavour of garlic-infused reindeer of Tony’s growing distance from her.

But then, she’d had her daughter Flora, and Flora was enough. Flora was everything. They came back home and Tony was a good father. And through Flora they found each other again. At breakfast, watching her eat porridge and cinnamon rolls, waiting for her kiss goodbye and the cheery wave through the window. Then later, over dinner, hearing about her day – her friends, her triumphs and disasters. The dinners of tagliatelle Flora loved, covered over in tomato or cream sauces, fajitas they would stuff with paprika chicken tangled in red and yellow pepper strips – spitting-hot on a cast iron griddle. Handmade pizzas and Chinese stir-fry. The vegan year. The glowering judgment Flora heaped on them for their choices. And dutifully, Violet had mastered the sprouting beans and pulses. Because anything that made Flora happy made her happy. Serving medjool dates stuffed with nut butter and sprinkled with cacao powder for no other reason than to see her daughter’s smile. Flora’s “You have to try it, Daddy”, and Tony’s pointblank refusal.

The fajitas and the dates, the tagliatelle and a wok of stir-fry already sat on the table. This is everything I am, Violet thought. Everyone I loved and everything I ever had to say is here in this food that took me a lifetime to cook.

She picked up a date and bit into it, her mouth filling with the exotic nutty sweetness. Flora. Who went to university and never came back. Whose death at 18 was a tragedy, everybody said so. Except Violet who said nothing. Not one word. She didn’t speak, because what was there to say. And she figured her silence was better than a scream.

But even so, after the first few months, she went back out into the world. The local shopkeepers knew her. She would point or write them notes. And she left casserole pots and foil-covered plates on the doorsteps of her neighbours when she heard of a loss or a grief, when a husband left, when a house teamed with children, when an elderly neighbour came out of hospital. Beef and ale stews bulging with thyme and horseradish dumplings. Ham boiled and then roasted with mustard and demerara sugar, speared with cloves, on a bed of savoy cabbage and surrounded by floury boiled potatoes. Meals meant to give courage and strength. Each one tailored to a need she noticed, or a particular sadness she glimpsed. Potted shrimps heated and covered with cream mixed with brandy, Worcester sauce and a shameless dollop of ketchup, her speciality for divorce or a broken heart. Kidneys sautéed in butter and finished with red wine and mustard for a hollow-eyed mother whose grown child disappointed. A chicken pie pressed between two slices of white bread for those she sensed needed comfort, but she couldn’t guess at why.

The pots and the platters were always returned washed. Sometimes she would open the door and there’d be flowers on the step or a card. Best of all, she’d lift off a lid and inside would be a child’s scrawled Thank you, Mrs B or a picture of a smiling face. She kept them all, pressing them under magnets of places she and Tony travelled – Pisa, Paris, Portugal. Her fridge door fluttering with other people’s gratitude as she pulled it open. But in reality, she should thank them, she thought. Because who else was there to feed these days, but herself and a man who had lost his appetite for food, for her, and for life itself. Without Flora. Without his darling girl, Tony didn’t know how to be. He was fading out of existence. Thinner every day. Greyer. So small and pale that soon, he would be invisible. In the first year, he’d been strong. For her sake, she knew that. Then, as inevitable as winter, he’d suffered a breakdown. And when he recovered, he’d lost himself in work. Three months ago, he had retired and was now busy dying each and every day.

You can’t starve yourself to death, she wanted to say.
But couldn’t get the words out.
You can’t leave me here alone. Her eyes spoke for her. But he saw only his

newspaper and the television and the lawn he cut on Sundays. So she had decided to speak to him with food.
I love you.
I’m still here.

Stay.

The message spelled out in a white chocolate ganache and strawberry cake she’d first made for his 40th. Now displayed alongside the beef tea she’d made his dying mother, and the nut butter their daughter had loved. A shot glass full of salt tears standing alongside a

cottage pie – the only thing she’d cooked in the early months with Flora gone. Violet had planned this for weeks. Her kitchen table an altar to all the evenings spent in front of the fire considering recipes and watching old films together. No crime dramas for them. No missing children or dead girls. Pouring all she didn’t say with words, into the food meant to tell him that she was trying to stay alive too. That it was a fight. Like the Avocado War. Against an enemy even more dangerous than his mother. Against Death itself.

Leaning against the sink, Violet opened her mouth but no sound came out, not even a scream.

So instead, she crossed over to the fridge – flutterings – and pulled open the door. Lifted out a bottle of vintage Veuve Cliquot. Paused, while she considered it in her hand. Hesitated. Then pulled out another. She went to their wine fridge in the pantry and pulled out four more. Six. Twelve. Filled ice buckets and put out champagne flutes. Took out stacks of plates and the best silver cutlery. Damask napkins. More glasses. More wine. Red and white, uncorking the red, chilling the white.

She sat down at the laptop on the desk against the furthest wall and drafted a simple invitation. Violet and Tony, Drinks/food. 6pm tonight! Please come! Her hand trembled as she read the invitation. The neighbours she had never spoken to. Only ever fed and smiled at. Only ever taken their children’s drawings and stuck them to her fridge. Would they think it strange? Would they turn up? But she was committed now. She pulled on her coat and crossed this way and that with her pieces of A4 paper.

The first to ring the bell was Belinda (divorcing - kidneys in red wine and mustard). “Oh my word! It smells a-may-zing, Mrs B!” she said, holding out her arms to Violet who found herself moving into them. Next up, Sam and Emma (redundancy – Hungarian goulash and noodles.) By 6.15pm the kitchen was heaving with conversation and laughter. The oxtail casserole out. The corned beef pie. The roasted chicken. Violet almost didn’t hear Tony come in. It was only the cheer from her guests that made her glance across. Standing in the doorway, her husband’s face was puzzled, as if wondering if this was his house. His eyebrows raised, he looked for Violet in the crowd. And she willed him not to turn and run. His gaze switched to the table and his brow furrowed. He moved a step closer till he was right up against it. He breathed in and she wondered what he was smelling. The rabbit fricassee of their honeymoon in the Borders? The Chicken Maryland of their family trip to Florida? She took up a fork from the table and dug it into the corned beef. “ ‘A bit of help’s worth a lot of pity, our Violet’,” she said, and her voice was cracked and croaky. Hearing her, his eyes widened and she carried the fork to his lips. He took in the forkful and chewed and swallowed. His gaze never shifting from her.

There was silence now in the kitchen, even the children were hushed as Violet dug into the grilled avocado, breaking through its parmesan crust. “ ‘I’ll give you the recipe if you like, Sheila.” Tony’s mouth twitched into a smile and opened like that of a small child.

She took up a date loaded with nut butter and Tony’s eyes filled with tears. Hers too. His mouth stayed shut as if he couldn’t bear to remember the girl they had lost. But she kept the date there, bumping stickily against his lips. “ ‘You have to try it, Daddy’,” Violet said. And with her other hand she wiped her own cheek dry. Tony bit into the date and chewed, and she knew the sweetness and the loss he tasted. There was colour in his cheeks when he’d finished.

“Delicious,” he said.

He looked round at the unexpected guests that filled his kitchen, and gestured to the food, then took Violet’s hand in his. “Please everyone, dig in. My wife, as you know, is a remarkable cook.” He kissed her fingertips.

Judith O’Reilly is the author of Wife in the North and A Year of Doing Good (both published by Viking Penguin, 2008 and 2013 respectively). Wife in the North reached number three in the UK bestsellers’ chart and was in the top ten for five weeks. It was also a top ten bestseller in Germany. It sold into ten countries, was serialised by The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and was based on Judith’s eponymous blog which was named as one of the top 100 blogs in the world by The Sunday Times. Judith’s blog is credited with kicking off the popularity of domestic blogging in the UK.

Wife in the North and A Year of Doing Good were both non-fiction. Killing State is a commercial political thriller and Judith’s first novel. At least the first one she's allowed to leave the house without her.

Judith is a former political producer with BBC 2’s Newsnight and ITN’s Channel 4 News, and a former education correspondent with The Sunday Times where she also covered politics, undercover reporting and general news.  She still occasionally writes for The Sunday Times. 

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