The Cookbook of Common Prayer

by Francesca Haig

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to get to them yet,’ she says. ‘Had a meeting with Sylvie’s cardiac specialist today. And I haven’t managed to do a sweep of Papabee’s flat for at least a week – God knows what’s growing in his fridge by now.’

  I ought to be there to help her. She’s doing it all herself: scrambling to stay on top of hospital and school runs; feeding Teddy and Papabee and not feeding Sylvie; and also somehow staying on top of her own work, and the increasingly elaborate lie.

  It’s been three and a half weeks, and we still haven’t told Sylvie the truth. Worse than that: Gill’s told her Dougie and I are travelling together. She’s given Sylvie a letter that’s supposed to be from Dougie. The lie is growing bigger and I can hardly keep up.

  ‘You’ve left Florence by now, OK?’ Gill says to me. ‘Remember that, when you call her. I’ll put it all in the next letter. You’ve taken the ferry across to Cephalonia. It’s been hot there – high-twenties every day.’

  I look around my cramped flat, the white-grey London sky outside.

  ‘Is this mad?’ I ask her. ‘Is this whole thing mad?’

  The whole situation seems so far-fetched already – Dougie dead; Sylvie in hospital; me on the other side of the world with my son’s ashes in a box – that I can’t tell any more what’s normal, what’s acceptable.

  ‘Are we making it more complicated than it needs to be?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know how to make it simple, if simple means Sylvie dead.’

  I can’t argue with that. Sylvie dead stops all debate. It’s the place that my mind won’t allow itself to approach.

  ‘You should ring her tonight,’ Gill continues. ‘She misses you, you know.’

  Does she? Is Sylvie even capable of thinking beyond herself, that ever-shrinking orbit of her attention? It’s the nature of anorexics to be self-absorbed. If anyone could have got through to her, it would have been Dougie, but his letters went unanswered.

  ‘I’ll ring her tomorrow,’ I promise Gill.

  Every few days I call Sylvie on the ward phone, but the conversations are always stilted. She didn’t want to talk to me when I was at home, and my being here hasn’t changed that. She asks about Dougie, and I keep my replies brief, not wanting to sink deeper into the quicksand of the lie. ‘He’s on the mend,’ I say. ‘Leg still really painful, but he’s not whinging too much.’ I have excuses prepared in case she asks to speak to Dougie: I left him in town when I came back to the hotel – even with a broken leg, he’s got more energy than me! Or: He’s not up yet – he was drinking with some Canadian lads we met last night. God knows what time he came in. But I don’t need any of my excuses – she hardly talks at all. Calling her from England is mainly a very expensive way of talking to myself.

  ‘I miss you, sweetheart,’ I say to her. I wonder whether it’s really her I miss, or just the girl she used to be before she got sick. Before she began hating us for refusing to let her die.

  ‘I should go,’ she says. ‘I think somebody else wants the phone. Tell Dougie hi from me.’

  The truth is that I don’t look forward to those phone calls any more than she does. I picture her bony hands holding the phone, but it’s Dougie’s hands I’m seeing. I’ll do anything to keep her alive, but it’s even more painful now that I’ve seen the scratches and the broken fingernails on Dougie’s hands that show how hard he fought to live. He won’t get to do any of the things that he planned, or that I imagined for him. The Engineering degree he was going to start next year, and the career that would follow. Marriage, maybe, and kids. All of it.

  Staring out the window, with the phone in my hand, I realise that I no longer have those sorts of hopes for Sylvie. My thoughts never get beyond the next weigh-in, the next ward-round. I don’t wish for great things for her any more – just more days.

  Roast beetroot salad for the week after your son’s post-mortem results are released

  Preheat the oven to 190°. Set one beet aside, and chop the others into hefty chunks. In a roasting tray, stir the chopped beets with sea salt and a liberal dousing of olive oil, and roast for about 40 minutes, until they’re sticky and seeping with black juice.

  Drain the preserved lemon well and dice finely. Toss with the roasted beets, throwing in a handful of roughly torn basil. Add a good dash of balsamic vinegar, half a teaspoon of ground coriander, and ground pink peppercorns (add more than you think you need, if only for the satisfying rasp of the grinding itself).

  Take the single beet that you left unroasted, and a large radish. Slice them into rounds, as finely as you can, to scatter on the salad. You can use a mandolin, if you have one. Otherwise, just slice them as thinly as your knife and your courage permit – thin enough that if you press your finger against a sliver, you’ll see your fingerprint through the radish’s translucent flesh. Don’t think about scalpels.

  Gill

  When Teddy’s asleep I settle down in the study to write the second letter.

  I’ve hardly written any letters for years – these days it’s all emails, or texts, or cards on special occasions. For years Gabe and I even resisted doing a Christmas round-robin letter. We used to roll our eyes reading those middle-class litanies of achievements, the boasts disguised as self-deprecation.

  This year Clem sat his grade 6 clarinet exam, and we were proud (and relieved!) that he received an A, as he didn’t seem to do much practice! Lucinda is representing Queensland in the Under-18 netball team, and next year will be Head Girl – now, if we could only persuade her to tidy her room…

  After Sylvie and her sickness had swallowed up the last of our free time, we finally gave in, but we tried to keep our Christmas letters short: important news, one or two anecdotes. I used to find myself staring at my laptop screen and envying those other families with their normal news, their normal lives. For three years, our main news was that Sylvie was doing her utmost to die. Sylvie remains unwell, I used to write, and is still in hospital, but we’re hopeful that next year will be better. How could any letter ever tell the truth about that?

  These new letters are easier. I open a fresh document and start.

  Dear Sylve,

  The rest of our time in Florence was great. Went to the Galleria dell’Accademia. Kind of funny to queue up for so long to see the statue of David when literally every shop and street stall is selling magnets and postcards and assorted David crap (resisted temptation to buy Mum a novelty David apron with fig leaves over his junk). Thought I’d reached David-saturation-point – but actually it was pretty amazing when we finally got to him. Crazy how Michelangelo managed to make marble look so much like flesh.

  Then: south on the trains (thank God for podcasts – can only admire the view for so long…) all the way to the bottom of Italy and across to Greek islands. Arrived at Cephalonia this morning, after a whole night on the ferry from Brindisi. Two American guys on the boat had guitars (I learned at Easter that anywhere there are backpackers, there’s always at least one guy with a guitar, who usually can play Stairway to Heaven and nothing else…). We all stayed up most of the night (not Dad, obvs) out on deck.

  Coming towards the islands, the colour of the water is ridiculous. Makes the water at the Neck look like dishwater!

  I check the ferry schedules online, and download the train timetable from Florence to Brindisi. I know Sylvie has no way to check any of this stuff, but it matters to me. I need to get this right. I even dig out our old atlas from the bookshelf in Sylvie’s room, and trace the journey down to Brindisi, in the heel of Italy’s boot, and then across to Cephalonia by sea. Trailing my finger across the map, I close my eyes and feel the slight churning of the ferry’s engine. I taste diesel fumes and salt.

  Gabe

  The doorbell rings. At first I can’t even place that loud buzzing sound – in my weeks here, nobody’s rung the bell for this flat. I’ve had no deliveries, no visitors. The insistent buzzing comes again, before I work out that it’s the doorbell and run down the three flights of stairs.


  It’s Rosa, Dougie’s girlfriend, holding her good arm up across her forehead to keep the rain off her face.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Rosa.’ I pause. ‘How are you?’

  A few raindrops have settled on her eyelashes – or she’s been crying. She’s no longer wearing a sling, but her injured arm is still encased in plaster.

  She shrugs. ‘You know.’ She gestures over her shoulder at the rain. ‘Wet.’

  ‘Sorry. Come in – please.’

  She follows me up the stairs to my flat. In the living room I go to help her off with her jacket, given the cast on her arm, but she doesn’t notice, or pretends not to, and manages it herself, clumsily. She tosses the jacket on the table, and I think of all the hundreds of times that Gill and I used to pick up Dougie’s school blazer from wherever he’d chucked it when he came home.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ I sound like a waiter, or a salesman in a car showroom.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not. I was out this way, so I just thought I’d come. I wasn’t even sure if you’d still be here.’

  ‘I’m staying until the inquest,’ I say. ‘Things to do. You know.’

  She nods, and I wait. But she doesn’t seem to want to talk – about Dougie or anything else. She walks around the living room picking things up and putting them down again.

  ‘These aren’t my things,’ I say. ‘All the stuff – it came with the flat.’

  Am I worried that she’ll judge me for those generic trinkets – the Ikea prints on the wall; the mirrored lamp; the tacky coffee table book called Cats of the Greek Islands. Actually, I like that book. I like flicking through it, imagining a world in which something could be as simple as that. A cat. A blue painted door. A pot of geraniums.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she says.

  She’s looking at the rope, roughly bundled on the couch. At first I think that it’s freaked her out because she doesn’t want to be reminded of the flood. But she’s looking from the rope to the ceiling, and back again, and I see the exposed beam up there and realise what she’s thinking.

  ‘Christ,’ I say. ‘It’s not for that.’

  She’s taken a step back, towards the door. ‘I mean, I know it must be hard. I get it – I do. It’s hard enough for me. And when it’s your son – I can’t imagine. But—’

  ‘Jesus, no, I swear. I’m not planning on topping myself.’ I’m laughing now, because it’s all so absurd, having to reassure this girl, whom I hardly know, that I’m not actually going to kill myself.

  ‘That’s for the inquest,’ I say. ‘I ordered the same rope that they used in the cave – for research.’

  I’m not sure whether this explanation is reassuring. Rosa stands with her good arm crossed over the cast, her eyes still shifting between the rope, the beam and me.

  ‘I’m trying to find out all the details of what happened,’ I continue. ‘What went wrong.’

  ‘How does that help?’

  ‘Knowing the details?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Though that’s another question, I suppose. But the rope – how does that help?’

  ‘It gives me a feel for what happened. Literally, I suppose.’

  She nods and moves a little further into the room. ‘You’re sure the rope’s not for anything else? You promise?’

  ‘I promise. I couldn’t do it to Gill and the other kids, for one thing.’ It’s true. That’s the relief and burden of family. ‘Anyway, if I were just going to hang myself, I’d get some cheap rope from a hardware store. Not that one – that particular rope cost me a fortune.’

  She’s close enough to the rope now to flip over the price-tag, still tied around one end of the rope, and makes a whistling shape with her mouth. ‘Worth it?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I want to take the rope from her, hide it away somewhere, but the couch is between us, and it’s too late. ‘Sorry – I wasn’t expecting you. I wouldn’t have had the rope out if I’d known you were coming. I’m sure you don’t want to be reminded.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, a bit too quickly. ‘I don’t remember. It doesn’t remind me of anything.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ It sounds more abrupt than I’d intended, so I add, ‘Do you want tea? Or coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be nice. Thanks.’

  I put the kettle on, and its loud rattle takes the edge off the silence. She sits on the arm of the couch, but she’s still staring around the room, not hiding her curiosity. Her eyelashes are white, her eyebrows too. Skin white and blue like the inside of an oyster shell.

  Why did Murphy save her, and not Dougie? It’s a question I’ve tried not to ask. Perhaps she was closest to the exit. Perhaps Murphy saw she wasn’t as strong a swimmer as Dougie (all those years at the Neck, in and out of the sea). Maybe because she’s a woman – does that old seafaring rule about women and children apply to caving? I don’t know – don’t want to know, because then I’d have to admit to myself that I wish it were her in the box of ashes, and not Dougie. And that seems a terrible thing to think while she’s sitting here, so small and pale, her arm still in a cast. None of this is her fault, I remind myself.

  ‘I don’t really have anything else to do, at the moment,’ she says. ‘You know – while I’m off work.’ She looks at me. ‘Do you mind me coming here? I mean, are you busy?’

  I’m not sure how to answer that. It’s true that emails are mounting in my inbox from work. Then there are those other tasks that are harder to explain: maps to scour, and articles and meteorological forums to read.

  ‘Not really,’ I say, opening the box of tea bags. ‘Not right this instant, anyway.’

  ‘Is this normal?’ she asks, once I’ve brought the drinks to the coffee table. She gestures at the rope. ‘I mean, do you have to do this? Isn’t this the police’s job?’

  ‘The coroner’s, actually,’ I say. ‘But I just want to be sure—’ My voice trails off. I change the subject. ‘How are things at the school?’

  ‘You know they want to name a boat after him?’

  ‘The headmaster told me.’

  ‘So what do you think?’ she asks.

  ‘Honestly? I don’t really care. It doesn’t seem important. I suppose if it makes them feel better, I don’t mind.’

  ‘I think it’s a stupid idea,’ she says. She swings her legs, kicking her heels against the couch. ‘A boat, for fuck’s sake. It’s bad luck, for one thing. I mean – he drowned.’

  I smile, but she apologises anyway. ‘Sorry. Do you find yourself making bad jokes like that, since he died?’

  ‘Dougie would say my jokes have always been bad. You know: Dad jokes.’

  ‘I don’t seem to find anything very funny any more. Except for inappropriate things that probably shouldn’t be funny, like the idea of those honking poshos at the school naming a boat after Dougie.’

  I put down my mug. ‘What was he like?’ I ask her.

  ‘You’re asking me? He was your son.’

  ‘I know. And I know what he was like at home. But over here – what was he like? With you?’

  She’s quiet for a long while.

  ‘He was full of energy. He always wanted to be doing something. Sometimes on weekends I wanted to just take it easy – you know, watch TV and sleep in. Maybe go to the pub. But he always wanted to go somewhere, see something. Go to Bristol, go to Bath, go into town. It made me feel lazy.’ She bites down, hard, on her bottom lip. ‘I don’t know if it was because he knew he was only here for a little while—’ She shakes her head immediately. ‘Not like that,’ she says, watching me. ‘I just meant, he knew he was only in England for a year. I don’t have any crazy idea that he knew what was going to happen. I don’t believe in any of that stuff.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ I say. ‘Though since he died, I’d quite like to. I get it now, why people suddenly turn religious.’

  I’ve always liked churches – I never believed in any of it, but I like the architecture, the paintings, the history. When Gill and I travelled
around Europe together in our mid-twenties, I used to drive her crazy, wanting to go inside every old church that we passed. I used to like craning my neck back to stare at the stained glass, and squatting to read the gravestones used as flagstones in the aisles.

  Here in London, I’ve spent a long time sitting in the front pew of the empty church near High Barnet station. Yesterday I even slipped fifty pence into the locked box at the side to buy a candle to light. I don’t believe in prayers, but I lit the tiny tea-light candle anyway. I wasn’t sure how long to stay and watch it burn; how long I’d have to wait before I’d had my fifty-pence worth of comfort. I think of Rosa’s question about the expensive rope. The boat that the school wants to name after Dougie. The price of our consolations.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask. She’s sitting with both hands wrapped around her mug, holding it in front of her like a begging bowl. ‘How are you doing, really?’

  She scrunches her nose. ‘You’ve got your own things to deal with.’

  ‘We’re dealing with the same thing, aren’t we? More or less, anyway. I think Dougie probably would have wanted me to help, if I could.’

  She stares straight back at me. ‘I could say the same thing. But what are we supposed to do?’

  What can anyone do, with death? That’s what makes it death: the incommensurability of it. It’s done, and nothing she or I can do can make any difference to that hulking fact.

  I’m thinking of the candle in the church. I’m thinking that maybe that’s what prayer is: what we do when we don’t believe, but we do it anyway.

  ‘They’re offering me therapy,’ Rosa says. ‘At the school. But it’s with the matron. She’s qualified as a therapist too, apparently, but it’s too weird trying to talk to her about Dougie, when usually she’s the one I’m sending kids to if they’ve been scratching their heads and I need her to check for nits. I have to see her in the dining hall every mealtime, slurping her tea. I can’t talk to her about any of this stuff.’ She looks around the room again. ‘I’d much rather be busy. I feel like I might be going crazy, just hanging around the school. And the whole place will be shut up in a few more weeks, when the kids go home for the holidays.’