‘Eat / Eat / Eat’ by Emma Devlin
The main house – that’s not the bricks and walls, that’s the bars of light in the morning, and the turning, flashing silver of teapots and spoons – the main house is full tonight. Six dozen of them meet once a year and eat, and they eat what they’re given, which they’re given by me. I’ve a tendency to stand and watch the ladies, who come to these things dressed like 17th century milkmaids, and they’re all soft heathery colours, their hair spilling like silk in the candlelight. The men don’t make that kind of effort. Most of them are wearing suits too big for them, the trousers pooling around the ankles and hiding, I’ll bet, the indignity of faded, slipping socks. To those men in particular I give the stuff that’s slightly overcooked, or runny, or over-salted. Every year they wolf it down, none the wiser, and chase it with a mediocre wine.
I work these things to make a bit of extra money, but the watching is good too: once I saw a woman pocket a salt shaker, and she left a sprinkle of salt wherever she went, and she went everywhere, and it was only when it started crunching under the other ladies’ boots that anyone noticed and when she was caught she fled the house, a ring of salt hanging behind her, I swear, in her perfect silhouette. That lady has never been asked back.
Half these women are more into each other than into the men. The men haven’t figured this out.
I’m still not sure what they meet up for, to tell you the truth. Some annual banking thing, which makes the whole house stink. A very particular smell, money, and that is something like smoke, vodka, tea, cardamom, lemon, sunlight, seawater. I’m outing myself as a synesthete here, which drove my teachers mad, because ‘blah blah blah sunlight doesn’t smell’, but I’m here to tell you that it does, and it smells likes money.
And anyway the women are more interested, as I say, in each other, and this is where the good watching comes in again, and food is excellent for this: people make eyes at each other over dessert, which I serve up on a silver dish – the likes of which the salt lady might pocket if she ever got the chance, God love her – and I’ve seen a lot of eyes.
I read the other day about the ancient bodies of two women found in a bog, twined together – though a little flattened, unfortunately, under the circumstances – and the papers said that scientists thought they must have been very good friends. I think most of the very good friends of history were probably in love with each other, thank you very much. I wonder what the weather was like in those days, for the women in love with each other. It was probably a lot better, to be honest, because there weren’t as many hurricanes. The planet wasn’t warmed up yet, so I imagine it must have been cold, and icy. There weren’t as many oceans either, so people walked for miles from here to France and Germany to meet each another. People walked where the seas are now, and there must be fish swimming in the prints lefts by their feet, and seaweed and molluscs and all sorts of down, dark things growing on the rocks on which thousands of toes were stubbed and –
Someone has been stubbing their cigarettes out on the bark of the trees kept in the hallway. Those poor trees would see a lot more if there was a decent source of light, but there’s only the cool, yellow overhead lamps by which you could hardly see your own feet. I dream of those trees, of sneaking back in here in the middle of the night, after the kitchens and the halls are cleaned, and of setting them loose so they can walk back to where they came from, only I imagine their way is blocked now by the sea.
I dream of the faces under those trees, pressing their faces together in the shade, until next year, until next year.
From issue #10: autumn/winter 2020
About the Author
Emma Devlin is a PhD student in Creative Writing at QUB, with publications in The Honest Ulsterman, Sonder and others. Her short story ‘Home, Sisters’ won the 2019 Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition and was published in The Irish Times. She tweets from @theactualemma.
