––––––––
He watched the movement of her hands. Steam rose from the pan on the stove. There were no other sounds but the noise of the bubbling water and the knife cutting into the wood.
Usually by this time he would have been outside, walking up and down the vines. He checked them at this time every morning. Today, he didn’t move.
Her fingers were pale brown and thin. Delicate. The sun was streaming in from the window behind her, the morning was warm. As always at this time of day, at this time of year, the dust particles hung in the air. The dust particles that so offended his wife, as if they were an indication of the house being unclean.
If she knew he was watching her, she did not let on, did not turn. It was her first day, and she knew to keep her head down and get on with the job. She had to prepare lunch for seven people.
He watched her slice the onion and finely chop the garlic. She did not use a garlic press. She washed her fingers, rubbing soap into them. She wiped down the board and took a white bag from the fridge. She stood at the board and removed three large cuts of pork, which she began to cut into strips.
Pitt looked down at his empty coffee cup. He had finished it nearly half an hour earlier. He wondered what Daisy would think if she came back and found him still there.
Halfway through chopping the pork she stopped, reached over and turned off the gas. She blew a strand of black hair away from her eyes and rubbed her wrist across her forehead, the point of the knife held away from her face. She cut up the remainder of the pork.
Pitt wondered what she was preparing. Daisy always made sandwiches. If she laid some crisps or nuts on the table, she thought she was being experimental.
She lifted the board and pushed the dissected pork into a glass bowl. She walked over to the shopping bag with which she had arrived that morning, and removed two small bottles, then proceeded to sprinkle soy and fish sauce over the meat. She turned the pork over, coating it. Her fingers gripping the bowl seemed strong.
Pitt swallowed. He stood to get himself a glass of water from the fridge.
*
It was a large, open farmhouse kitchen, space in the middle for a table, windows on three walls. It held them there, the four players, captive in its claustrophobic silence. Pitt, taciturn and brave; Yuan Ju, poetic in her movements; Daisy, neurotic, scared, continually agitated; and Mrs Cromwell, malicious and unforgiving – the one who, in the end, would wield the sword.