— It’s best to keep them really, tempting though they may be. You never know when they may come in useful. Besides, none of them is self-contained. Each recipe requires the contents of at least two other tins, and I never seem to have the right combinations. I do now have two out of three for Beef Strogonoff, though, because cook gave me a tin of it today and I have a tin of rice. Let’s see, it says open the tin and empty contents into a copper-bottomed saucepan, stirring slowly on low heat. Add salt and paprika to taste. Meanwhile open large Gala tin of fried rice, oh dear I only have a medium tin, but this says serves six, empty contents over a dessertspoonful of ground-nut oil in a copper-bottomed saucepan and heat slowly, chop a handful of fresh parsley take a medium tin of Gala sauté carrots, you see that’s the one I don’t have.
Some of the gruel’s globules remain attached to the rounded white sides of the bowl. The light over the table makes a moon in the darkness beyond the window. The squint seems wider tonight, and yet less blue. The pale eye that doesn’t move is fixed on the shelf of can-recipes, but the mobile eye stares towards the reflected moon in the darkness beyond the window.
— In an emergency of course one wouldn’t bother about proper dishes. One might be glad to have just the fried rice. Or guavas.
— What a wind there is tonight. The shack seems about to take off.
— Yes and it’s raining too, listen. Most extraordinary weather for the time of year, we should be having Spring showers. I like it though. I hate the stillness of a sickly sky. I can identify with the wind, especially the night wind.
— Hello, is there anyone there? It’s Mrs. Tom.
— Who-ever’s that? Oh dear, why can’t they come round the back, they must know I’ve got lodgers in front. I am so sorry, Mrs. Ivan. I didn’t know — you don’t? Oh, it is kind. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. Just a minute. Who is it? Oh hello Mrs. Tom, goodness me you look like a sea-lion under that raincoat. Could you come round the back? Mr. and Mrs. Ivan live in this room.
— No, I just want to give you a message, anyway I’d only wet your kitchen, it really is streaming. You know you need a gutter along the roof of this porch, or do you call it a verandah, look at it, I’ve had to cross through a curtain of rain. It’s from Mrs. Mgulu. She rang through and asked me to let you know urgently that the kitchen light reflected in the darkness beyond the window remains quite still despite the wind. It is the still centre of the storm. No one has ever photographed the inside of the moon. There is of course a very real danger of disintegration, but that is a risk worth taking. Mr. Blob: thank you very much. Mr. Swaminathan, thank you. Sometimes it is sufficient to formulate a need for the need to vanish, or proliferate rapidly as the case might be. Identity has its chemistry too. Mr. Swaminathan will be there to help, and if there are any objections that side of it can be arranged in the morning, she says, after all it’s an emergency, the gale blew it down, so would he come at once. Mrs. Mgulu emerges from the bedroom, wearing something diaphanous. My husband is speaking to the nation in half an hour, can you possibly put it up again by then? Oh don’t worry about the Labour Exchange, my dear, Mr. Swaminathan sways gently from one foot to another, smiling cryptically. Mr. Swaminathan is my arranger of all things, my right hand. Well I must rush off or they’ll be wondering where I’ve got to at home. Oh dear this rain, it’s like a bead curtain you really must get him to put a gutter up there. Goodnight. Here goes. Wow! Pshshsh. The noise must have been continuous, but leaps into hearing now to be shut off and muffled. The wrinkled wood is quite static in the pool of light, which overspreads the table on to the still and red stone floor. As static, at any rate, as the network of minute lines on the back of the wrist. A microscope might perhaps reveal which is the more alive of the two, the fear or the expectation.
— That was Mrs. Tom.
— I know.
— She came across in all that rain, with Mrs. Mgulu’s black raincoat over her head, you know, the one I was so hoping Mrs. Mgulu’d give to me. I said to her you look like a performing seal in that raincoat. She didn’t mind, though, she’s a good sort is Mrs. Tom. Up to a point. She should have known about the lodgers, though, and they were in bed and she was peering in like anything, for all the world as if a bit of slap and tickle were going on during the very interruption. It’s true they were whispering.
— What does Mrs. Mgulu want?
— Mrs. Mgulu? Why should Mrs. Mgulu want anything? Oh, you mean Mrs. Tom. Well she had a message for me from Mrs. Jim up at the house. She’s feeling ill and wants me to come early tomorrow and do the market for her. I said I would, of course, poor dear she’s tired herself out. She’s anaemic you know, I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s pernicious, and she has gallstones. Will you have some more gruel?
The circle in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. It steams less and appears quite flaccid. The wrinkled wood is dead in the pool of light.
— Lilly, help me.
The skin around the eyes, both the mobile eye and the static eye, is waxy. There is no reproach in the mobile eye, the emotion expressed is nearer to concern. The static eye expresses only off-ness, which emphasises whatever the mobile eye is expressing, reproach perhaps, or puzzlement as to whether the inaudible voice has or has not raised itself from its condition of chronic aphonia.
— Lilly, how do you identify with the wind?
— The wind? I just listen to it. And sway a little. In my mind I mean. It has the rhythms of strength. The night wind especially.
— It has the rhythms of anguish.
— Well that’s up to you, isn’t it?
— The wind is only the wind, you know that, it carries no significances.
The mobile eye rests on the bowl of gruel.
— Start with small things. Believe in the bowl of gruel. And eat up, now, while it’s still hot.
— How is Mrs. Mgulu?
— Well, it’s funny you should ask. I think she looks quite ill, at least, as far as one can tell, she’s always beautiful in any circumstances. She wears an alexandrite in her left nostril you know. But then, she will complicate life for herself. Even this market business, for instance, it’s a sort of health fad, really, she could get everything delivered, and of course she does, but not vegetables, she doesn’t trust the tradesmen she says, and she’s probably right, so Mrs. Jim goes to the market early and chooses everything. Though they’ve a big kitchen garden now as well. No radioactive fertilisers and no chemical insecticides. Oh she did a lot of thinking on that. But it won’t start producing till the Spring. Why that’s almost now, isn’t it?
— Do you think everything’s all right up there? In this gale I mean.
— What, in the kitchen garden?
— Well, anywhere. The roof, the aerial for instance, or the telephone wires.
— Mrs. Jim rang up all right. And, it’s a solid house you know.
— Didn’t Mrs. Tom say something about Mr. Swaminathan? I thought I heard his name.