you ready for tea, sir?’
‘Not just now. I thought as the women in my life are finally sleeping, and it’s a little cooler, we would prepare a British breakfast staple.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘This afternoon, your English lesson is marmalade.’
We never had lessons on a Sunday.
‘This is not to be rushed,’ he began. ‘You may relinquish your dinner duties; Adeline and I can fix something for ourselves tonight. Once we start we have to keep a close eye on the proceedings.’
I gave a feeble nod, imagining how good my bed would feel at this very moment.
‘Where is your notebook, Santina?’
I lifted it out of my pocket, where I kept it.
‘Excellent. Now, whilst the marmalade is cooking we will write up the method. No time will be left idle. There is much to do.’
I had made some jams in the past but this process was a different beast. He stood over me, marshalling the way I dropped the ten scrubbed oranges and four lemons into a large stock pot, covering them with water and describing in more detail than was necessary how we would let it reach a boil, and then simmer for the next three hours, clamping the lid down to stop valuable vapors escaping. ‘A perfect poach is required, not an exacerbated boil, you understand?’ Though his words were clipped and could be mistaken for a military pace, there was a boyish skit to his lilt when he and I worked in the kitchen. He was in his late thirties, but when he spoke of food or poetry the years fell away, lifting veils through which I could spy the Major as a much younger man.
Whilst the room filled with the uplifting citrus smell, we set to work on my handwriting. It wasn’t the scrawl of last autumn, but there was still hesitation. He wrote a sentence and I copied. Any mistakes were noted and required me to repeat the word in question. The afternoon should have felt interminable, but I loved the intimate focus of these moments: the sound of the dish of the day brewing behind us, the soft scratch of my pencil upon the paper. The quiet way he would speak, directing my hand with gentle instructions, wooing my pencil to do the right thing.
Finally we removed the pot from the heat and set it aside to cool.
‘I shall take tea now. Please call Adeline to join me.’
He left.
I stood in the empty kitchen, steamy with the fresh, hopeful scent.
I could hear Elizabeth beginning to stir but decided to leave her a while longer whilst I fetched her mother. I ran up two stairs at a time. Adeline’s door was shut. I tapped softly, then a little louder. Still no answer. I eased the door open and peeked inside. Adeline was at the far side, crouched down. She had a pencil in her hand and was tracing intricate patterns across the length of the wall where the floor tiles met the plaster. I’d noticed the Major had set a sketchbook upon the table. I didn’t think he’d had scrawling on the antique walls in mind when he had done so.
‘Madam?’
No answer. The artist was lost in her work.
I coughed. She stopped, then froze me with an icy glare. My mouth opened a little but no sound came out. She returned to her creation.
‘Madam, the Major has asked you to join him for tea.’
The speed of her pencil accelerated. Elizabeth’s cries reached us from the kitchen two floors down. These stone walls were unforgiving; thick but live, amplifying every sound.
Adeline began to weep. I went toward her.
‘Stay where you are!’ she yelled without looking at me. ‘Stop that Godawful screeching.’ She whipped round to me. I could see her eyes were bloodshot, spidered with anguish. ‘Now!’
She rose to her feet and lunged toward me, sending me flying out of the room toward the stairwell. The Major was at the table now, oblivious to the protests of his daughter.
I prepared a bottle, lifted Elizabeth, and before I returned to the dining room to feed her I told the Major about Adeline’s current mood.
He gave a stiff nod. I felt like a student who had displeased her teacher.
He stood up from the table, walked through the kitchen and placed a hand on the lower side of the cooling pot. ‘Forty-five minutes more and we will continue,’ he announced, then left. I heard the library door close behind him.
I returned to a Major tetchy with impatience. ‘You’re three minutes late.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘This is alchemy, Santina. It requires precision. I expect deeper understanding from you.’
Together we lifted the oranges out of the cooled liquid, sliced them open and scooped out the pulp and pits into a smaller pan, reserving the peel. To the pulp we added a jug of water and set it on a medium heat for about ten minutes. I held a colander whilst the Major lined it with cheesecloth, placing the cooked pulp into it.
Whilst it cooled in the cloth, dripping into a bowl underneath, we sat at the table and cut the orange peel into thin strips, his eyes darting over my work to make sure each piece was the same length and width. I followed his instructions to gather the corners of the cheesecloth, squeezing the pulpy contents into a tight ball. My hands were sticky with the juice. He handed me a towel to blot them dry and then a large wooden spoon, so I could stir these juices back into the original poaching liquid. He tipped in the peel and placed the lid back on top. As soon as I became aware of the comforting quiet in which we worked, it hardened into an awkward silence, like a tray of boiled sugar crisping into brittle.
‘This, we leave overnight,’ he said.
My eyebrows raised before I could stop them.
‘You had no idea about the importance of time in this process, did you?’
I couldn’t tell whether he was about to castigate or educate. The lines between the two were random, dirty twists of floured dough upon a tired wooden counter.
He took a breath, his eyes softened. ‘O Time! who know’st a lenient hand to lay, softest on sorrow’s wound, and slowly thence, Lulling to sad repose the weary sense, The faint pang stealest unperceived away.’
This time I was tired enough to let my confusion float around me and hover, lost and soothed in the tone of incomprehensible words.
‘William Lisle Bowles wrote that, Santina. Why do you think we started the process of marmalade?’
We returned to exhausting questions: short, sharp arrows whizzing by my ear.
‘I will tell you why. Because the process is long but finite. It requires attention, stamina and precision. And so does educating oneself in another language. I do not tire easily, and I expect you to be collaborative with your attention. When you returned from your luncheon elsewhere, you were skittish, forgetful, and a little frantic, dare I say it. In this vein you will learn absolutely nothing. Now, I could have chosen a different dish, something we may have eaten right away, like the kedgeree, when we began your education back in the spring, but I didn’t. Language, education, must be savored and labored. But it is a joyful
