For Jean, anesthetized by fierce sun and strong drink, the whole experience took on a misty, trancelike quality. When she finally climbed back down to earth she was surprised to notice her shirt torn and her bare arms striped with scratches. She had felt nothing.
Howard was astonished to learn that she had never eaten a cobnut, a deficiency he was determined to put right. While she unpacked the picnic, stepping uneasily into Gretchen’s role, Howard disappeared indoors and returned with a dish of salt and some nutcrackers.
“A cobnut has many layers,” he said with great solemnity, “and you have to unwrap them all to reach the prize. Observe.”
He stripped off the leafy outer case, cracked and discarded the shell, scratched off the woody skin and then finally rubbed away the inner membrane to reveal the kernel, naked and marble white. This he dipped in salt and presented to Jean on his open palm like a pearl on a cushion.
“So much effort for such a tiny morsel,” said Jean. “Even worse than peeling a grape.”
“There are no shortcuts,” Howard insisted. “You have to remove every layer or it tastes bitter.”
Jean crushed the polished, ribbed nut gently between her teeth, allowing the flavor—a combination of buttery sap and new wood—to fill her mouth.
“It is lovely,” she sighed. “But you would tire of peeling them long before you tired of eating them.”
“It’s self-limiting,” Howard agreed. “You could hardly gorge on them. But that’s part of the appeal.”
He continued dutifully preparing a little mound of these delicacies for Jean and Aunt Edie to share, taking none for himself.
“Gretchen has gone quite mad,” Aunt Edie protested as Jean plied her with veal and ham pie, chicken, zopf bread, sandwiches and tomatoes from the hamper. “Does she think she is feeding the whole village?”
“This is only half of it,” Jean said. “You need to leave room for the cake and biscuits.”
“I have a horror of waste,” said Aunt Edie with some asperity. “I can’t help it.”
“Well, Gretchen has a horror of want,” said Howard. “Years of doing without take people in different ways, I suppose.”
Jean felt a fresh surge of love for Howard for having defended Gretchen so tactfully against a mean-spirited remark, even when she was not there to appreciate it. It was the essence of the man, she thought, and absolutely typical of her twisted bloody luck that the very quality she admired most in him—loyalty to his wife—was the one that put him forever out of her reach.
He lay beside her on the blanket, defending the hamper from incursions by Chester and stroking the spaniel’s silky ears. There was something intimate about sharing this bed-sized space; he felt it too, she was certain. The heat had stolen their appetite and they could hardly do justice to the picnic. Out of respect for Margaret, Jean forced herself to try one of the spitzbuben, a pair of cookies sandwiched with jam, which attracted a trio of persistent wasps. Having dispatched these pests with a rolled napkin, Howard removed the remains of the food to the cool of the pantry.
“I may fall asleep,” Aunt Edie said to Jean while he was out of earshot. “But I expect you two will be able to entertain yourselves one way or another.”
Jean wondered if there was any undertone to this remark and looked up sharply, but the old woman’s expression, as far as it could be read behind its scaffolding of spectacles, was neutral.
“It’s a pity Gretchen and Margaret couldn’t come,” she said firmly. “They’re such fun.”
Aunt Edie stared at her. “Margaret is an angel, of course, but for all her charms one would hardly call Gretchen fun.”
She shut up smartly as Howard reappeared and closed her eyes. Jean thought she must be shamming, but within seconds a faint purring came from her parted lips.
“I see you’ve been keeping Auntie entertained,” said Howard, picking up one of her trailing shawls and draping it across the top of the sunlounger so that it shaded her face.
“She was finding me scintillating company right up to the point where she fell asleep,” Jean replied, fanning herself with Gretchen’s hat. There was no breeze and the air was like molten metal.
“Let’s find some shade,” Howard suggested, helping Jean to her feet. “We could play tennis if it was a bit cooler, but I think it might kill me if you make me run around like you did on the badminton court.”
“I seem to remember I was the one doing the running.”