Well, that’s them gone. I am shaking with anger. I go back into the kitchen fuming. The washing up isn’t even quite finished yet. One leaves the pans until last and I have real horror to deal with, a saucepan whose bottom is layered by burnt risotto with a covering of last night’s cold greasy water. It is very important to give anger, its outlet. I know how it can build up. I am going to defuse it in the saucepan. Washing up is a combat situation.
The burnt black stuff at the bottom of the pan, charred stumps, makes me think of a forest in wartime – the Ardennes in 1944 perhaps, and the greasy water lying over it could be dense fog which stops the Allies getting forewarning of the coming German offensive. This scurvy ring higher up the pan could be the level of cloud cover. (It is actually where the rice boiled over – something which should not happen with a risotto.)
Right, I have got this saucepan nicely set up, bending over it like a staff officer in the map room. Let us study this forest. It could be a South-east Asian jungle; then my detergent could be the defoliant the Americans were using. But no, that was an inglorious war and I propose to fight a triumphant campaign. First thoughts were best – it is the Ardennes. The Allies were taken by surprise by the German counter-offensive, as I was when my rice boiled too high and for too long. We now have to re-deploy. The charred rice at the bottom does for the forest – blasted oaks and scorched woody scrub – and also for the German units picking their way through what remains of its cover. Those fragments of rice that have remained white can be seen to be patches of snow turning now to slush in the heavy rains.
There is an odd area in the middle which is a bit greasy, but where the rice has not stuck. That stands for Bastogne. Brigadier McAuliffe is holding out there with the 101st Army Unit. He is saying ‘Nuts’ to the surrounding burnt risotto. As for me, I am with General Patton’s Third Army Corps, hastily moved from the Saar to the relief of Bastogne. Patton is very much a lady’s general, I like to think, with his ivory-handled revolvers and his polo ponies, his dash and his swagger – oh yes, and his determination that at all times his men, whether in the Tunisian desert, the dusty Sicilian hills or the Ardennes, should be smartly turned out. Patton had no time for slovens. Not that I knew Patton, of course. He died at the end of the war.
This may all sound silly; I’m sure it does. But I’m a great believer in what some of the magazines I read call ‘role models’. They are talking about pop stars and trend-setters in the world of fashion, but I am thinking about the people I read about at school:
– that Spartan boy who kept a fox stuffed up his tunic, and the fox gnawed at the boy’s vitals, but the boy never flinched until he died;
– Sir Philip Sidney nobly expiring at Zutphen;
– Captain Oates trudging away from Scott’s tent so that his companions’ provisions might stretch a few days longer;
– and of course T. E. Lawrence with his matchsticks.
I need to think about people like that to get me through my working day. Their examples act as a pick-me-up when I am feeling low – as now with General Patton for aggression. Shirley Conran hasn’t got it: Patton has. And as for treating a pan as a battlefield, isn’t that what generals do in real life? According to what I have been told, they sit drunk as stoats in their officers’ messes in the evenings moving salt cellars about as if they were tank battalions and tracing rivers on the table by dipping their fingers in the wine. My re-enactment of the Battle of the Bulge is at least getting something useful done.
But enough digressing. I’ll get through this faster if I concentrate my forces. Back to the Ardennes. Success = concentration of forces × mobility. I am fully equipped, as one would expect an American army corps to be – nylon brush (my favourite, the motorized section, I think), dish mop, dish cloth, Brillo pad, detergent and tea towel. There is a poised moment when a balance of terror prevails – my terror of getting down to actually doing the pan, balanced against my terror of putting it off and putting it off. At every moment of challenge there is always the possibility that I may walk away from it. But no, a balance of detergence is unreal. The equipment is there to be used.
Get rid of the cold water. The skies are clearing. A tentative scrape with a dry brush. The scouts are being sent out. And now a barrage of hot water, terrorizing and disorientating the enemy, but otherwise inflicting few casualties. When the barrage breaks off, one is amazed by the silence in the woods. No bird sings.
Lost in the forest, my mind begins to wander. What about Patton’s ivory-handled revolvers? Ivory goes brown if it is too long in the shadow. His guns will have been all right under the North African sun, but in the Ardennes forest in winter time? I don’t like to think of those handles with unsightly brown streaks. It’s silly really and it spoils things. I’m not Patton’s batman and this sort of thing is wrecking my concentration.
Peering through the water, which is once again greasing over, I imagine the debris of warfare everywhere – abandoned trucks, used cartridge-cases, blanco tins and strands of wire going nowhere. Possibly rubbish tips booby-trapped by the enemy. It seems inconceivable that this place can ever be cleaned up, and the reek of charred corpses is all pervasive. Areas of dirt and cleanliness lie cheek by jowl. The front is fluid, confused. Isolated units of germs stagger about the bottom of the pan. They are the victims of combat fatigue and conflicting rumours. Frantic movement alternates with periods of bored immobility. They cannot believe that Patton could have moved so swiftly. (Patton is, like my Philip, the man of surprises. I never quite manage to get out of Philip what he does in his office all day long. His hours at the office seem to get longer and longer, but every now and again he catches me on the hop by returning home unexpectedly early. This time I must be ready for him, have the house spotless and tidy for my returning warrior. I thought Philip was a man of destiny when I married him. He certainly is a man of mystery.)
Logistics is a matter of attention to detail, making lists and conserving stores. But the preparations and the softening-up operations are over. Now for the attack with all the élan I can give it. The detergent hits the bottom of the pan running. My brush tracks over the same area. Bash! Crump! Thud! Bash! Bash! Bash! Then the storm of steel with the Brillo pad. It is mounted against one of the more weakly defended sectors, forcing the road to Bastogne. And there is fairly concentrated nibbling along a broader front. The germs are rarely seen – only their debris. They are running scared. They are trying to get out of the killing zone, but it is not easy in this waterlogged confusion. Tank tracks churn vainly in muddy lanes. And anyway, which way? The force surrounding Bastogne is itself now beleaguered.
Burnt risotto is easier to deal with than I expected. The germs are operating on extended supply lines and this time Mucor has pushed his Wehrmacht a little too far. A final push and the enemy crumbles before the Brillo pad. It is easy to visualize Patton’s triumphal cavalcade into the main square of Bastogne. Only mopping-up operations remain. Then I see my face in the bottom of the pan. It is wreathed in a smile of triumph.
That round to me, I think. I am in a thoroughly good humour now and I go out into the hallway to taunt Mucor. Mucor is sullenly silent. Then I catch the smell of stale dish-water on my hands. I should wash them but I haven’t had a bath today. I should have a bath.
Slowly, slowly and sinuously, I begin to strip.