The Devil's Larder Read Online Free PDF

like peasant serviettes, they ate their first meal alone as a married couple. Their entertainment was the
food, and then the flames. The evening was not spoiled when he lay down and put his head – and nose – into her lap, the doting spaniel, and whispered to the folds and pleats of her
skirt. Nor was it spoiled – in bed and in the middle of the night – when he pushed up her nightdress, pulled down his own pyjamas and wrapped himself around her like a cashew nut. She
should ignore him, he had said. And that is what she did. He hardly cost her any sleep.
    Next day, he left her with the basket on the dunes, while he went off with nets. He did not kiss her on the lips before he walked away. His mood had changed.
    That evening, they sat a foot apart in front of the fire and dined on mackerel, grilled in mustard sauce. The enamelled fish skins pulled off like paper. The flesh was oily white. She’d
never tasted fish as good. Then there were stewed blackberries and crab apples for dessert, with tinned cream, and the last slice of their wedding cake. They did not speak. Again their
entertainment was the flames.
    He was the first in bed that night and he pretended to be sleeping when Rosa came upstairs into the attic room. But he was watching her, she knew. Only one eye was shut. He watched her at the
mirror combing out her hair. He watched her rubbing aloe cream into her face and throat. She went to urinate and clean her teeth and every sound she made was shared by him. He hardly breathed when
she switched out the lamp, took off her clothes by moonlight and hung them, with her underwear on top, across the wooden footboard of the bed. The bedroom smelled of mackerel, she thought.
He’d turned his back to her. He was a cashew wrapped around himself. She said goodnight. She patted him on his shoulder. She did not know how long he lay awake because the sea air had made
her tired and she was soon asleep. She did not wake to breakfast on a tray. This was day three. ‘You’d try the patience of a saint,’ he said when she was still in bed at ten
o’clock. She found this judgement pleasing in some way.
    He did not leave her on the beach alone. His bad temper needed company, and witnesses. Instead, he helped her with the wood and – as he’d done when he was teaching flute – took
too many opportunities to touch her arm, her waist, her hair. He was much noisier than her. He stamped on the larger pieces until they splintered. He kicked the broken driftwood into piles, then
threw it up the beach into the open basket.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. They had agreed to take the kitchen bucket and some nets a little way along the coast where there were pools – and shrimps, they hoped. Rosa followed him,
carrying her shoes and stepping in his puddled footsteps. The sun came out when they were halfway down the beach. Her shadow jogged ahead of her and clipped her husband’s heels. He took his
shirt off and hung it over his shoulder.
    They did not have much luck with shrimps. The tide was going out. He pulled his trousers up above his knees. She tucked her skirt into her knickers and waded into the sea. They needed to go
deeper for the shrimps, her husband said. He went back to the beach and took his trousers off and then his underpants. She watched him from the shallows as he ran into the water. She had not seen
him quite so naked before. He did not stop until he was waist deep, amongst the furthest rocks, and then he concentrated on the shrimping.
    ‘There’s hundreds here,’ he said. ‘Come over, Rosa. Bring the bucket.’
    ‘It’s deep,’ she said.
    ‘Take off your clothes like me. Come on, I need the bucket now. I’ve got our dinner here.’
    She didn’t take her clothes off, though. She waded in fully clothed. Her skirt worked loose and spread out around her like a picnic rug. She hid behind the bucket while he shook the
shrimps out of the net.
    He let her peel and wash the shrimps. They ate them at the