“Let me,” said Keiko. She picked up the end of one apron string and held it while she walked around Malcolm for the other. Each string had an extra ten or twelve inches neatly stitched on to the end.
Malcolm made a single huge movement, brushing Keiko off him. She took a step backwards, but he was smiling down at her.
“Don’t crowd me,” he said. He tipped out a thick slice of beef and a cluster of dark kidney then wiped his bloody hands down his clean apron. Keiko squeaked.
“You use up paper, I use up aprons,” Malcolm said, looking away and missing Keiko’s quick smile, then he took out a flat wad of kitchen paper and unravelled it carefully to reveal a knife, ten inches long and four inches high, the blade glittering and the handle gleaming almost as much through use and care. “Which reminds me,” he added, “how did the pilot pan out?”
“Are you going to do it, Malcolm?” asked Fancy. “Because if you are, we can’t talk about it.”
Malcolm shook his head. He had his eyes fixed on their faces as his hands worked away at the beef, the blade in his right thunking over and over again down into the meat and his left scraping the cubes away from it and flicking fatty scraps aside.
“Be careful,” Keiko said.
“Good idea,” said Malcolm, solemnly. “I’ll do that.” Keiko and Fancy laughed and he turned back to his work, nicking at the kidneys with the point of his knife now, stripping nameless strings away from them.
Fancy turned back to Keiko. “I’ve had a couple more ideas.”
“Too late,” said Keiko. “The new questionnaires are printed.”
Malcolm was mixing the flour and suet, stirring his knife round in the bowl, adding water drop by patient drop.
“Listen,” he said, and they both leaned forward. He added another drop and from the bowl came a sticky sound as though a small creature was chewing on something wet.
“Nearly there,” he said and smacked his lips. Another drop and the sound changed again, slower and more muffled, then he put down the water jug and knife, lifted the tangle of dough out of the bowl in both hands, and began to work it around on the board, the blood between his fingers streaking and spreading through the ball as he kneaded.
“You never warned me you were printing them already,” said Fancy, grimacing as she watched Malcolm working.
“Already?” Keiko cried. “It starts tomorrow. I’ve almost finished the stimuli for the first full run of the actual study-the questionnaire after next.”
“The food ones?” said Fancy. “Get lost, you have not.”
“Kale juice to lower blood pressure,” Keiko said, “chocolate worse than cheese for cholesterol, toxins concentrated in the skin of apples but solved by peeling them, and fecal contamination in ready-to-use organic salad leaves.”
“And you’ll check back later to see if some idiot thinks there’s shit in kale?” Fancy said.
“Uh, to see if the message stays attached to the context so… yes, roughly.”
“What do you think, Malcolm?” said Fancy.
Malcolm shrugged, the movement making the cloth of his shirt creak. He had rolled the pastry out and now he took a bowl from the box and started to press the sheet of dough into it, working with deep concentration, his hair falling heavily over his face. Then he lifted the chopping board and Keiko was astonished to see the pile of meat and sliced onion disappear comfortably into the bowl that had seemed so small under his hands, hardly room for him to move his fingers around. He carried the filled bowl to the sink and held it under the cold tap.
“No!” said Fancy. “What are you doing?”
“Making gravy,” he said, grinning.
“You can’t pour water into pastry, Malcolm,” insisted Fancy. “Even I know that.”
“But suet pastry,” said Keiko, “it is like dumpling dough, isn’t it?”
“Hmm,” said Fancy, “I’ve never really believed in dumplings. How can you boil flour?”
“How can you not believe in dumplings?” asked Keiko, laughing and trying to catch Malcolm’s eye.
He waited until their attention was back on him and then walked carefully back and set the brimming bowl down again. He laid a blanket of dough over the top and tucked it in fussily, nipping at the edges with dampened fingers. When it was tamped down to his satisfaction, he took a piece of folded foil out of the box and fitted it over the top, then tied it tightly to the rim of the bowl with a length of string and fashioned a handle, his thick fingers working quickly over the knots.
“Now,” he said, dangling the trussed bowl from one fingertip, “you steam it gently for five hours and it’s ready.” His smile widened as Keiko and Fancy’s faces fell.
“Malcolm, this was meant to be lunch,” Fancy began, but he held his free hand up towards her and inclined his head patiently with his eyes closed.
“This one goes home with me tonight,” he said. “And this one”- he lifted an identical pudding basin out of the box-“which I prepared earlier and cooked for four hours this morning, goes back in for an hour and will be ready at one o’clock sharp.” He began to tidy away his things, lodging his scissors safely in the middle of the ball of string and stacking the used plates.
“So that was all for show?” Fancy said.
“Keiko wanted to watch,” Malcolm said.
“Right, my turn,” said Fancy. “And if you think that was impressive…”
Craig arrived as she was sorting through a heap of packets tipped out on the table. He rapped on the door, shouted hello, and strolled along the corridor towards them, his shoes making the same metallic clunk as his uncle’s on Keiko’s thin strip of carpet.
“Where’s Murray?” he asked as he entered the kitchen. Fancy rolled her eyes and Malcolm turned away towards the sink and started to run hot water.
“Would you like a drink?” said Keiko.
“Wait two minutes,” said Fancy. “Watch this, Malc. Sherry, cream, choc chip cookies.” She poured a pool of sherry onto a plate, took a biscuit daintily by its edge, dipped it briefly and laid it down. When there was a soaked biscuit on each of four plates, she plopped dollops of cream down on top of them. Then more biscuits, soaked and pressed down on top of the cream, and she carried on until there were four squat towers of biscuits, spreading slightly at the base as the sherry softened the bottom one. She spread the rest of the cream on top and shook a packet of chocolate buttons over them. Most of the buttons stuck, a few landed on the plates, and one rolled away under the fridge.
“Ta-dah! And the really neat part is…” Fancy poured sherry into four glasses, filling each one perfectly to the brim and ending with the bottle upside down and empty. Keiko clapped and Malcolm followed her, clumping his hands together three times then letting them drop to his sides again.
“Nothing like good home packet opening,” said Craig. “Isn’t Murray coming? Where is he?”
Murray was in the workshop. He sat on his heels by the Harley, at his side a blue four-bottle wine carrier holding chrome polish, wax, and leather food, the last compartment stuffed with a soft roll of chamois leathers and yellow dusters around a dry paintbrush that he used for the awkward corners. Beside the Vincent was a red wine carrier; there was a green one by the Squariel, and two yellow ones lay between the two BSAs, the finished Golden Flash and the poor deformed Bantam, which sat cocked onto their rests at just the same angle, their front wheels turned in to face each other, looking like two dancers frozen in the middle of their minuet.