In the kitchen when Goedele and I
came in from the garden, where we had been sent to pick berries, there was a
gently pervading scent of roses, sweet and floral yet not quite sickly. The
kitchen was at the opposite end of the room to the sofas. To one side of it was
the door out onto the balcony. It had a dark wooden frame, but as it was made
entirely of glass it kept the room full of sunlight. The bottom half of the
door to the garden to the right of the kitchen – through which we had just
entered – was made of the same dark-hued wood, and the upper half of the same
glass. In front of it hung a curtain of wooden beads and an Indian
dream-catcher. The cast iron doorknobs to both doors worked the wrong way,
twisting towards the door frame to open.
Darkwood cabinets formed an L-shape
from floor to ceiling between the doors. The ones underneath the work surface
contained the regular bin, the bin for plastic, a compost bin, pans, frying
pans, some utensils, olive oil, sunflower oil, cider vinegar, and soy sauce,
each in their own particular place. On the work surface stood a food mixer and
a stack of plates and pots of cutlery that I had placed there after the
previous night’s meal, having just washed them. The sink was white ceramic,
cracked in places, with two circular plastic washing up bowls: one for washing,
one for rinsing. The washing up water was poured down the drain, and the
rinsing water was poured over the garden. It struck me as funny how different
families developed their quirky little rules. The tap jerked and bounced from
trapped air in the pipes. Behind the sink was a little window with a 4-way
frame, and all that could be seen of the outside was a tangle of leaves,
casting a beautiful green light into that corner of the room. Apparently ants
came out along that window each night, but they were always gone by the
morning, for I never saw them. Still, if there were ants, it disturbed me
slightly that the washing up was often set to dry on the very same window sill
and that it was the permanent residence of chopping boards and cheese boards.
Above our heads were cupboards to
the ceiling in which were stacked pottery dishes with the same bluey glaze, and
an impressive supply of dark chocolate. Open shelves displayed old tea tins bearing
enamel inscriptions: Ceylon, Earl
Grey, Darjeeling. They contained not tea but
spices or aromatherapy ingredients, each labelled in Michelle’s handwriting on
a strip of paper stuck down under yellowing sellotape.
Beside the open door was the
cooker, and a tiny dish of used matches and a box of new ones for lighting it. The
cooker was a rickety, old, white metal gas oven and hob. Two rings worked well,
but two were temperamental and needed frequent coaxing. Over one of the gas
rings was perched a curious contraption. A well-used silver pressure cooker was
propped up at an angle over the flame with a metal weight. Unseen in the pan sat
about a kilo of freshly-picked rose petals, covered in water, with a metal
filter over them. Snaking out from the top of the pressure cooker where the
valve should have been came a length of plastic tubing, which was suspended almost
vertically above the pan by a piece of string that tied it to a cupboard handle.
From the peak where the tubing was secured it had been allowed to hang down
again once more, where it fixed around an end of copper tubing of just slightly
inferior width. The copper tubing formed a coil which was submerged in a bucket
of cold water and protruded out of a sealed hole in the bottom of the bucket,
under which a plastic funnel had been placed in the neck of a glass bottle in
expectation of liquid.
Michelle was in the process of
distilling rose petals to make rose water. Intrigued by the makeshift
machinery, my curiosity demanded an explanation. And so it was explained to me.
As the water in the pan with the rose
petals boiled, the steam, perfumed by the roses, would rise up the tubing. The
filter was there to stop the petals themselves from rising up, thus clogging
the system, and the tubing was fixed high enough up with the string that drops
of boiling water could not jump up to such a height that the water fell down
the other side, diluting the essence of the steam. The steam passed through the
plastic tubing regardless of direction and height, and upon reaching the copper
submerged in cold water it would condense back into liquid form, dripping as
rosewater into the bottle. Apparently the whole process took an hour to create
a litre of rosewater. I wondered at how it could be worth her while. But I
discovered later that she sold it in small quantities at a high price.
Michelle believed whole-heartedly
in the health benefits of rosewater, and was passionate about sharing them,
whether that was with me for free, or with her customers at a cost. Rosewater,
so I was told, was gentle, soothing and softening for the skin – and particularly
the face – if used externally. Used internally, either as an ingredient, for
example in cakes or jam or sprinkled over fresh berries, or diluted in water as
a cordial, or simply sipped neat, it was said to have a calming effect much
like lavender. I patted a little onto my cheeks, which had taken a bronzing from
the sun that day. It was true -- my skin did feel soothed by it. Perhaps it was
the rose essence, or perhaps just that it was a cool liquid. In any case, I
went to sleep that evening smelling sweet.
As well as being in the pressure
cooker, roses were strewn in their hundreds over the wooden table – that took
pride of place in the middle of the room – as if in a field. The huge, heavy
wooden table had a bench down one side and chairs with wicker seats down the
other. The wicker was scratchy to the touch, and my legs quickly decided that
they preferred the fabric throws on the sofas. It was far too big a table for a
couple living alone. I supposed then that Xavier and Michelle rarely did live
alone if they took in WWOOFers. At
one end of the table was the drawer of mystery, containing anything that might
be needed at any given moment: glue, scissors, rubber bands, pens. Above the
table hung a light, which I suspected may once have been oil-powered. If it had
been, it had since most definitely been converted to electric; I could tell
from the light switch on the wall.
Goedele and I were set to work, stripping the
petals from the sepals and stalks, ready for infusion. The younger and tighter
the buds were, the harder they were to demolish. The trick was to pinch them
hard between finger and thumb and twist. Petals would scatter from our hands
then, although our fingers would be strangely sticky, covered in the flowers´
fragrant nectar which seeped from them like lifeblood. By the time we had
finished, the tabletop resembled a fairytale nuptial bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment