Nurse, is that Schwarzwald Kirsch Torte you have on your trolley? Or is it a Marquise? Or are you playing tricks, and is it fruit cake you’re torturing me with today? What kind of cake is it, Nurse?
And might that be Earl Gray you have in that bucket? Or Lapsang Souchong? Or Lapsu Songchou? Or none of those, but just plain old Assam. I mean that’s fine by me, but only if it comes in a polystyrene cup. Tastes better that way.
Those biscuits look good, but are you sure they’re not sad? Are they sad biscuits, Nurse? My grandmother always said the biscuits were ‘sad’ and I felt sorry and lifted the lid to see them there, glum in their tin. What she meant was that they weren’t crisp as they should have been, but soft because the oven wasn’t right. Some looked sadder than others and I always wondered which part of the story they were sad about. Which bit had got them so upset.
And then my grandmother was sad, as well. The oven had been too low, or the oven was too high. And for the time being, it was the sadness of the biscuits or the flatness of the cake that mattered more than anything. Because it was safer, we all knew, to talk about those smaller sad things than the other, bigger ones.
"I'll knock a cake up," she says, bringing sugar and eggs from the larder, flour, and butter papers. She squeaks open the kitchen drawer and rumbles in it for a wooden spoon, beaters she pokes into a mixer. The scale is old, its sticky weights are furred with dust. But mostly she measures by eye: a brick of softened butter, a stream of snow-white sugar. The air in the kitchen is warm, pale and dusty with motes of flour. She tucks the bowl in the crook of an arm and with the other hand, she clatters the beaters in circles.
"This will be nice for you," she says. "Take some for the train, why not?"
But I already know I will not eat the cake. I won't even look at it. The lid on its tin will remain shut, quite tight. I know it, you see. I know it down to its little skewer hole where she tested for doneness, and to the topmost sultanas black and bloated, scorched by heat; and the air inside the tin will be moist, still faintly warm.
So no, I will not take the cake. There is kindness in it. I saw it go in with the nuts. I watched how gently she folded, how carefully she worked. How much care there was amongst the fruit and eggs and spices.
"You'll enjoy this," she says, winding the spatula round. "Some on the train, some for your studies." And I wished it were that simple. Me, just able to enjoy my cake. Me, relishing the sweetness, thinking quite happily that the fruit cake my grandmother make is the very best fruit cake of all. But it wasn't as simple as that.
"Another piece of cake, love?" when we were sitting, the two of us, about the fire. And I could taste the almond then, the hints of spice. Because when we were together, there was no goodbye to spoil it. Nothing whatsoever to ruin the cake she’d made.
Have some on the train. And thinking how impossible that would be when the line between was fragile, with nothing but a slice of cake to keep me attached.
This cake…do you see? There's love in it…and kindness. Love, stirred by an old, familiar spoon; love baked in with butter and nuts. So, eat it? No, I couldn't. Not on this departing train with the miles stripping by. Because I only have this. This one thing…this tin with its cake inside.
So, no, Nurse. Thanks, but I won’t be staying for tea.
AB - 10.2.23
Don’t be sad! Everything’s fine. ❤️
That made me sad x