has come out of.â Visitors to the house of course did not understand why, if there was nothing to be said, we said nothing. They would endure our smiling silence in growing discomfort and embarrassment until they eventually left in a state of mind close to fear. I felt sorry for them, but knew that by not compromising we had provided them with a rareopportunity. If they were too frightened to take it, that was their
karma
.
âDoing nothingâ meant not interfering with other creatures, except when absolutely necessary in their own interests. Thus one would rescue a drowning wasp but one would never shoo a bluebottle from the room. One would try to do as little damage as possible to the world one lived in. A certain minimum of damage was unavoidable: one could not walk without trampling on millions of invisible organisms, or drive without smashing insects on the windscreen. Nevertheless one walked with care, mindful of the ground before oneâs feet, and one went out in the car only when it was essential. Above all, one was very careful what one ate.
We were all, of course, vegetarian, although Alex and I had renounced meat only within the last couple of years since meeting Simon. I had done so grudgingly at first. It was all very well for Alex, I thought: she had been brought up on a vegetarian diet. I hadnât, and I liked meat. Why should I give it up? But I did give it up, mainly because it seemed ridiculous for two people living together, sharing everything else, not to share the same food.
Having given up meat, I found myself developing a revulsion for it. I perceived each cutlet, joint and kidney to be part of a corpse, and was sickened by the cruel machine which bred and killed, bred and killed, year after year, uncomplaining thousands of sad-eyed animals for a populace too rich and fat and greedy to know or care what it ate. I saw with loathing the red pulpiness of the butcherâs hands, the veined face and dead eyes of the farmer, the pallid grossness of people who day after day crammed their mouths and bellies with other creaturesâ death. I heard with incredulity the lamentations over the rise in beef prices, as if the price paid by the housewife were more important than the price paid by the bullock. Editing, as part of my job, the cattle market reports for the local paper, I gripped my pen in fingers trembling with anger and disgust.
And every now and then, unable to resist the lure of depravity, I would buy myself a Cornish pasty for lunch.
It was usually a gesture of defiance against Alex, after some trivial domestic dispute in the course of which I had been manoeuvred into acquiescence. There is not much meat in a Cornish pasty, but there is enough to make a V-sign. Even as I did it I knew it was unfair, that Alex had never tried to make me give up meat and that I was blaming her for a choice I had freely made. Even as the rank flavour flooded my mouth I knew that I did not like meat and that I was defiling my mind and body for no purpose at all. It was a gesture of independence remarkable only for its perfect stupidity. I always returned to the fold greatly irritated with myself after such an indulgence.
The other members of the group had progressed far beyond this stage, if indeed â which I doubted â they had ever been subject to dietary lapses. Abstinence from meat they pushed to its logical extension of abstinence from eggs and all things made with eggs. Now it happened that a new-laid free-range egg, boiled for four minutes until the yolk was just firm and eaten with sea salt and freshly milled black pepper, was one of my greatest pleasures. Indeed I was apt to reflect sourly, in the times of simultaneous abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, meat and sexual activity which life with Alex occasionally imposed, that it was just about my only pleasure. Moreover, we had our own chickens, and they had just come into full lay. Every day I would go out to the orchard, open the
Maggie Ryan, Blushing Books