The Stolen Lunch: A Short Story
I grabbed the foil package tightly and ran to my little orange Mini parked outside. It was a stifling hot July day and I knew I needed to get this treasure out of the sun as soon as possible. I drove as fast as I could through the winding rural roads, high-banked hedges thick with greenery masking the view and risking a head-on collision every time I threw my car around the tight bends. “Come on, we can do this” I shouted at the engine as I pushed my foot down a little harder.
“Here, don’t tell anyone but it’s the finest piece of salmon you can get” said the sweaty chef at the end of our long summer shift. “The tail end. No bones whatsoever. I can’t use it on the menu as it won’t make a tidy fillet so go and enjoy but shhhh. It’s between me and you right?’”
I’d been working all summer in a fish restaurant tucked in the middle of nowhere in the Kentish countryside. I was earning money to take me on my travels – my gap year before ‘gap year’ had even been coined a ‘thing’. The job was tolerable. The team was ok. The young blonde male restaurant manager (only a year older than me) with an over inflated ego and sense of self-importance was nauseous but hey, every shift saw my own ego inflate as the bank balance rose. It was worth it. The vision of that remote Asian idyll was firmly locked in my mind. Shift after shift slipped away. Time disappeared without a murmur as the dream got closer.
Ilse was our elderly German neighbor. She had lived next door for as long as my memory allowed. Her husband had died and she was now alone, still working relentlessly, that turn-of-the-century work ethic never leaving her, despite her aging years. Time had greedily stolen her health as well as her youth and she was now in sheltered accommodation, a little one-bedroom ground floor apartment in the heart of our village, crammed full of memories and eight decades worth of memorabilia to match.
She was my destination that day. I rang the doorbell. I was gasping for a cold drink but exhilarated that my reckless driving had firstly allowed me to arrive with my parcel in tact and secondly, I’d arrived. Alive. Period.
I delivered with pride the promised delights. “Hey, we did it” I grinned as I handed it over. “All good?” I asked anxiously. “Oh how ‘vunderful “ she exclaimed. “Ya, let’s get going”.
She set to work creating our ‘stolen lunch’.
We sat down at her small table. The now lost dining room did not mean lowering of standards. The silver cutlery sat atop the linen tablecloth, the side plates perfectly aligned to the vintage china dinner plates. Water sparkled as the sun caught the dimples in the green glass, shimmering invitingly whilst the crystal ice cubes bobbed up and down.
The moment had arrived. In came The Salmon. Pink, succulent, perfectly poached, the lemon slices lining the skin, wrapping it like a delicate shroud. The new potatoes, glistening with yellow butter, smelt delicious as the green speckles of parsley exuded their summer fragrance. Freshly steamed asparagus joined the party and once the salmon was introduced to its partner of home-made hollandaise sauce (a skill now buried in the archives of classic cook books), it was perfection personified. No matter how great the cook, if the ingredients are pure, the cooking respectful and the flavouring discreet, the taste is by consequence always divine.
And as the tastes from this most simplistic of dishes revealed themselves, so the stories unraveled. Of a young nurse in the Red Cross who rescued prisoners from the hell of the Russian camps and traipsed with them across Europe, at the end of WWII, to bring their broken bones and trampled spirits back to the motherland. Of a young woman trapped on the freer side of the Berlin Wall, her family lost for years in the East, unknown to her as she then forged her life in the stately homes of Europe. Of a housemaid who swept out the chimneys at 4am ready to light the fires to keep the noble blood warm. And how she rose from the life below stairs to become the ‘Cook’ in these fine houses, bringing to them too the delights of Summer Salmon.
We added my memories, as a child visiting her in the grand house in our village, when Lord and Lady had taken to Europe and freed their home for little feet to run wild, sliding along the full length of the highly polished ballroom floor; for tiny hands to spread themselves over the ivory keys of the grand piano and tinkle a song that sounded musical to our ears only; and to race through the grounds, flying down to the lake over the manicured greens to tumble and turn and roly-poly a perfect path through the grass, laughter ringing in my ears as I screeched at the joy of the freedom of space and time. Summer’s sweet song.
As the meal came to an end, I looked up into her watery aging eyes. I knew right then this was a moment in time. A moment that was heading to the archives, to be buried in my memory, my memory of a person that was unlikely to hear my own stories as they were only just about to begin.