Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

“I was thinking about a wedding present,” said Cat. “I suppose that they have everything they need, as everybody does these days.”

Much of it ill-gotten, Isabel said to herself, remembering the conversation about the gangster father. Though so much was ill-gotten, when one came to think of it. How did anybody become rich other than by exploiting others? And even those who did not exploit could enjoy the fruits of exploitation. Rich Western societies were wealthy because of imperialism, which had been a form of theft, and now the poor in those rich societies strove to obtain more generous payments from the state, which could only pay them because of the position of relative economic advantage which past plunder had set up. Living, just living, it seemed, meant that one had to participate in a crime; unless, of course, one changed one’s definition of a crime to include only those things that one did oneself. And surely this was the only practical way of looking at it. If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.

With these burdens on her mind, she went inside, where Eddie, wearing the same style of apron as Cat, was opening F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

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a large new hessian sack of wholewheat flour, leaving the unpicked neck open for customers to dig into with a scoop. He looked up at Isabel and smiled, which she thought was progress.

She walked over to him and held out her hand to shake his; Eddie lifted up his hand, which was covered in flour, and grinned.

Cat led the way into the small office which she kept at the back. It was a room which Isabel had always liked, with its shelves of samples and its well-thumbed Italian food producers’

catalogues. Her eye was caught by a large poster on the wall advertising Filippo Berio olive oil: a man riding an old-fashioned bicycle down one of those dusty white roads which meander across the Tuscan countryside. Underneath the poster, Cat had pinned a leaflet from a Parmesan cheese factory which showed great rounds of cheese, hundreds of them, stacked up in a ware-house. She had been there, she thought, to that very factory, some years ago when she had been visiting a friend in Reggio Emilia, and they had gone to buy cheese direct from the factory.

There had been a mynah bird in a cage in the front office, where they cut and wrapped the cheese for visitors, and the bird had glared at the visitors before screeching, scatologically, Bagno, bagno! Later she had heard that the bird had been relegated to a cage outside after a visiting Brussels bureaucrat had complained that the hygiene regulations of the European Union, that vast pettifoggery, were being flouted by the juxtaposition of bird and cheese.

“You don’t have a sliver of Parmesan, do you?” she asked. “I have a sudden urge. Inexplicable.”

Cat laughed. “Of course. I’ve got a magnificent cheese which we’re working through at the moment. It’s just the right age and it’s delicious.” She stepped over to the door and called 3 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h out to Eddie, asking him to bring in a small piece of the cheese.

Then she took down a bottle from a shelf, uncorked it, and poured a small quantity of Madeira into a glass.

“Here,” she said. “This will be perfect with the Parmesan.”

Isabel sat down with Cat at her desk and went over the list which her niece had prepared for her. As she did so, she sipped at the Madeira, which was strong and nutty, and savoured the generous portion of cheese which Eddie had put on a plate for her. The cheese was rich and crumbly, a good cheese-mile away from the cardboard- like powder which people assumed was real Parmesan but which was nothing to do with Italy. Then, when everything had been explained, Cat passed over to her a small bunch of keys. Eddie would lock up that night, and the following morning Isabel would be in charge.

“I feel very responsible,” said Isabel. “All this food. The shop. Locks and keys. Eddie.”

“If anything goes wrong, just ask Eddie,” said Cat reassuringly. “Or you can call me in Italy. I’ll leave a number.”

“I won’t do that,” said Isabel. “Not at your wedding.”

Not yours, she thought, but you know what I mean; and then, unbidden, there came into her mind a picture of Cat at the altar, in full bridal dress, and a Sicilian bridegroom, in dark glasses, and outside one of those raggedy brass bands that seem to materialise out of nowhere in Italian towns, playing old sax-horns and tubas, and the sun above, and olive trees, and Mr.

Berio himself laughing as he tossed rice into the air.

She raised her almost-drained glass of Madeira in a toast to Cat. “To the wedding,” she said with a smile.

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S H E WA L K E D B AC K , conscious of the keys in the pocket of her jacket. Grace had left by the time she arrived at the house and everything looked neat and tidy, as Grace always left it: The house has been graced, she thought. Grace was a most atypical professional housekeeper, a woman whose interests ran well beyond the domestic, who read novels and took a close interest in politics (even if her allegiances were notoriously shifting in that respect); a woman who could have had much more of a career had she chosen but who had been put to this work by an unambitious mother. Isabel would not have had a housekeeper had she been given the choice, but there had been no choice; on the death of Isabel’s father, Grace had assumed that she would remain in office, and Isabel had not had the heart to question this. Now she was glad that Grace had remained, and could not imagine what life would be without Grace and her views. And Isabel, who did good by stealth, had quietly placed money in an account for Grace’s benefit, but had not yet revealed the fund’s existence. She assumed that Grace would retire one day, even if there had been no mention of this. Still, the money was there, ready for her when she needed it.

She went into the kitchen. Grace left notes for her on the kitchen table—notes about household supplies and telephone messages. There was a large brown envelope waiting for her, and a piece of paper with a few lines in Grace’s handwriting.

Isabel picked up the envelope first. It had not arrived with the normal morning delivery because it had been misdelivered to a neighbour, who had dropped it off. Isabel lived at number 6