Read Wild Lavender for Free Online Page A

mattress. The simple bed I’d had at home suddenly seemed like a divan fit for a queen. I closed my eyes and imagined myself lying in it, curling my knees to my chest and disappearing into a foetal ball.
    The first meal I had to prepare was lunch the following day. The kitchen was as depressing as my bedroom. The flagstones and the walls held in the chill, which was made worse by the draught blowing through a cracked window pane. Aunt Augustine squeezed herself into a straw chair to supervise me, her swollen feet submerged in a pail of warm water. I poured in a few drops of lavender oil, telling her that it would soothe the inflammation. The scent wafted up and fought against the mouldy dishcloth stink of the kitchen. I imagined the lavender fields rippling in the breeze, their layers of purple swishing in the dappled sunlight. I could hear my father softly singing ‘ Se Canto ’, and was about to join him for the chorus when Aunt Augustine broke the spell: ‘Pay attention, girl!’
    I lifted a pan off its hook. The handle was greasy and inside the bottom was encrusted with food. I swiped it with the dishcloth when Aunt Augustine wasn’t looking. I’d hated it when she’d sent me to the cellar earlier to fetch some wine. The door to the cave creaked open and all I could see was a web with a black spider hanging in it. I removed the spider with a broom and crept into the airless space with only a lamp to guide me. The cellar reeked of mud and there were rat droppings on the floor. My skin crawled and I jumped from imagined nips. I was terrified of being bitten by a rat because Marseilles was legendary for its diseases, a hazard for any port city since the days of the plague. I had grabbed the first two dustybottles I saw without even bothering to check the contents.
    I collected water from the pump outside the kitchen door then peered into the basket of vegetables on the bench. I was surprised by the quality of the produce. The tomatoes were still firm and red for so late in the season, the aubergines were weighty in my hands, the leeks were fresh and the black olives looked succulent. In the dirty kitchen, the fragrance of good produce was as welcome as an oasis in a desert.
    Aunt Augustine sensed my admiration. ‘We have always eaten well here. I was famous for it. Of course, I am not the cook I once was,’ she said, holding up her clawed hands.
    I studied her, trying to find the woman behind that grim face, the fiery young girl who had disobeyed her parents and run away with a sailor. It lingered in the set of her broad shoulders and her manly chin, but in her eyes I saw only bitterness.
    Once I had assembled the ingredients, Aunt Augustine shouted her instructions above the sounds of the steaming pots and hissing pans. At each step I had to bring the food to her for inspection: the fish to show her that the skin was cleanly off; the potatoes to prove that I had mashed them properly; the olives to demonstrate that they had been finely chopped despite the bluntness of the knife; even the garlic to show that it had been crushed to her specifications.
    As the cooking progressed, Aunt Augustine’s face became flushed. At first I thought it was because nothing I did seemed right. Take that back, you’ve shredded those leaves just like a peasant. Too much oil, go and wipe it for goodness sake. How much mint did you put in this? Did you think I was asking you to make mouthwash? I thought it was a lot of fuss from a woman who couldn’t be bothered to serve fresh tea. But as the temperature of the room rose, and her instructions became more frenzied, I saw that the blush in her cheeks was the inner passion I had searched for earlier. She was a conductor whipping her notes of fried fish, butterand rosemary into a gastronomic symphony. And the aromatic vapours seemed to draw the lodgers from their rooms. I heard voices and footsteps coming down the stairs almost half an hour earlier than the specified time for lunch.
    When