Vikram, the mind behind the kitchen, drops in once or twice each retreat and gets upset because people are improvising: they’re not following the recipe book to the letter. Usually it’s the foreign women; they want to show off how much better their French or Spanish or Indian cooking is. They come to a place where we’re supposed to be unravelling our egos and start showing off how much they know about herbs and sauces like we were on TV. Ines is standing over the bratt pan. Her face is bright with goodness, currying broccoli with red peppers, tasting it and adding this, tasting it and adding that. Not me. Beth Marriot sticks strictly to recipe. I do music, not food. Though I do know a thing or two about the whims of the bratt pan, which is more than Ines does. I’ll step in and explain, if she asks before it’s too late. The first time we went out together Jonathan asked, ‘Can you cook, Beth?’ ‘My mum’s so good at it,’ I told him, ‘no one would dream of competing.’ ‘I love a girl who can’t cook.’ He laughed. ‘Gives me a chance to show off the restaurants I know.’
With Jonathan you always wondered whether he had said the same thing to ten other women before you. Or fifty. Later I realized what he meant was, I love a girl who doesn’t act like a wife, who isn’t trying to possess me. Carl cooked. We had no money to eat out. ‘You’ll have to learn when we have a family, Beth,’ he said. ‘We’ll have maids by then,’ I told him. ‘We’ll be rich and live in hotels.’ Carl hated it when I said that. He had no idea what he’d do with the loot if Pocus made it big. ‘You spend so fast, Beth,’ he said.
Is Vikram gay? I don’t think so. Dasgupta men are beyond sex. They’ve taken vows. He’s squat but trying to be tall. With a neat little beard. He makes you feel fantastically stupid if you ask a question. ‘Anyone who experiments with the recipes is guilty of an act of vandalism,’ Vikram says. His visits coincide with the arrival of the delivery van. We tramp out into the rain and pick up boxes of celeriac and carrots and lettuces. The van driver winks at me as he slaps down a sack of oats. He must be pushing sixty.
‘The deliveries are carefully calibrated to fit the recipe schedule,’ Vikram says. His accent is Indian, but upper class. ‘If you swap ingredients, one day you’ll find you haven’t got something you need.’ He stands in the cold room stacking the stuff on the shelves while we tramp back and forth. He knows where everything goes. Ralph was risking a hernia, carrying three boxes of spuds at once. ‘You’ve left your apron on,’ Vikram told him. Ralph looked blank. ‘The apron is not to keep your clothes clean. It’s to protect everybody’s food from coming into contact with where those clothes have been. When you’re going to get dirty you take the apron off.’ Ralph cocked his head. His long hair dropped and showed an earring. He really is a cute boy.
What makes me think Vikram might be gay, or have been gay, is this prissiness he has, speaking so correctly, always very Indian and very posh. The Dasgupta must be great for gays who don’t want to come out. You can forget the whole issue. Why bother telling the truth about your inclinations in a place where all physical contact is forbidden, even handshakes? I will never hug Mi Nu. Or touch her. Vikram wants each retreat’s servers to make the kitchen tick like clockwork, to turn out the Dasgupta recipes time and again, always the same, the way the Dasgupta chanting turns on at six in the morning and the Dasgupta video at seven in the evening. He pins up printed sheets with cleaning rotas, days across the top and tasks down the side: ‘Servers’ Toilet — Male/Female — Kitchen Drainage Grids, Hats and Aprons (laundry)’. We’re supposed to initial a box the day each job is done. Everything must happen so regularly it doesn’t really happen at all. Does that make sense? I mean it would only be a happening if it didn’t happen.
‘Where’s Paul?’ he asks. ‘Tea-towels should be laundered, not dried on the radiators. They’re breeding bacteria.’
I like Vikram. Whatever problems he’s had in the past, he’s on top of them now. That’s how I want to be. He goes round the kitchen checking things. The veg grinders haven’t been cleaned properly. That’s Rob. There’s always someone who loves using the grinders but hates cleaning them. Why do I chuckle when Vikram shakes his dark head and wags his brown finger? I wonder why he doesn’t tell me my hair has got loose from my hat. He scolds everyone but me. Perhaps I’m incorrigible. When I flash him a toothy smile he turns away. Never mind. I’ve forgotten my diarist for a few minutes, forgotten the envelope in my pocket.
The kitchen gets pretty wild after ten. People hardly know each other’s names yet, never mind the equipment. There are still new servers arriving and old servers leaving. We’re starting to panic. We must have lunch on the table at eleven. After three hours on their bums the meditators must find their food. They’re suffering serious deprivation. Day one, adzuki bean stew. Day two, baked potatoes with grated cheese. Day Three, rice, kichada beans and curried tofu. People eat mountains. Plus the salads. Plus the special-needs menus: cheese and salad sandwich for Maureen Moss, glucose drink for Rita Howell. And the notices to write for vegan and non-vegan. And the covered portions to take to the teachers’ bungalows. Meredith has sliced into a fingertip. I love the sharp knives here. I love choosing the right knife for whatever vegetable I’m chopping. There’s blood on the broccoli. Kristin forgot to zero the scales and her soya mayonnaise is wrong. Everything’s so frenetic, so completely un-Zen. Kristin is calm, though. She has that Baltic dourness. Big pale lips, wry smile. She knows soya mayonnaise is not important. Ines is in tears because the bratt pan keeps turning itself off. Her curry won’t cook. Paul’s fretting. Paul should never have been made kitchen manager. I pull out my steamed rice and kichada beans from the Rational Oven. There’s a lovely fluffiness to the white and yellow. Like a cuddly toy. A million miles from the hard grains I washed.
‘Ladle it into saucepans,’ Tony proposes, ‘and cook it on the stove.’
Tony only arrived yesterday. He’s the oldest server this retreat. A professor, he says. Every job he’s assigned he needs to be shown how to do it: how to scrub a turnip, how to peel a squash, how to mash potatoes. Some professor.
‘It’s too late!’ Ines is wailing. ‘It’ll take for ever.’ She’s forgotten the rule about going to the hall to meditate if you can’t stay calm. They’ve just started ladling the curry into saucepans when I go over and show them the trick with the thermostat.
‘It sticks. See? You have to jiggle.’
The bratt pan sizzles. Ines holds tight to the big wooden stirring paddle while I twiddle the knob. She’s afraid I’m trying to take over, I’ll steal her glory. I’m still leaning over the pan — the curry does smell good — when I realize Tony is gawping down my cleavage. God! Ralph I’d have expected, but not the professor, balding with bushy eyebrows, bad breath, needing to be shown how to undo a bra, no doubt. What is it with me and older men?
But wrong. When I stand up, it’s Meredith. She’s planted right there beside me, holding out her bandaged finger, smiling, looking.
‘Beth!’ she shouts ‘You cracked it!’
The red Ferrari syndrome, Jonathan called it. ‘Or, rather, the two red Ferraris.’ Even people who weren’t remotely interested, he laughed, just couldn’t help looking. ‘Your tits are so there, Beth. Two spanking Ferraris double-parked on a zebra.’
Jonathan. Jonathan Jothanan Thanajon. I thought I’d got you out of my head weeks ago and now you’re creeping right into the pre-lunch commotion. It’s the diarist’s fault. Damn you both. The curry has started to bubble. Ines is happy. Her tits went the way of all flesh years ago. Two old bangers. Bless them. Bless everyone. Accept everything.