Recipes for Love and Murder (2 page)

‘Can you see something there in the veld plants?' I asked.

‘Heavens above, it's warm,' she said.

She took an envelope from her pocket and fanned her face with it.

‘Let me give you some milk tart.'

I cut slices and put them on our plates.

‘It's just got to rain soon,' she said.

Now she was following the invisible bird as if it was jumping all over the table. I pushed the plate towards her.

‘It's your favourite,' I said.

I could tell Hattie had more to say than the weather report. Her face was red, as if there was a hot thing in her mouth, but the corners of her lips were tight where she was holding it in.

Hattie was not one to be shy to speak, so I did not try and rush her. I poured our tea and looked out at the dry veld. It had been a long time since the rain. Across the veld were those low hills of the Klein Karoo, rolling up and dipping down like waves. On and on, like a still and stony sea. I picked up my melktert and bit off a mouthful. It was very good, the vanilla, milk and cinnamon working together to make that perfect comforting taste. The texture was just right too – the tart smooth and light, and the crust thin and crumbly.

Hattie looked into her cup, as if her imaginary bird had jumped in there. I could see a real bird in the shadows of a gwarrie tree, too far away to see what kind. I love those old trees. Some of them are thousands of years old. They are all knobbly and twisted like elbows and knees, and their leaves are dark green and wrinkled.

Hattie sat up straight and had a sip of her tea. She sighed. This is what stoeps are for. Drinking tea, and sighing and looking out at the veld. But Hattie was still looking inside her cup.

‘Delicious,' I said, eating the last melktert crumbs on my plate.

My bird flew closer and landed in a sweet-thorn tree. It was a shrike. Hunting.

Hattie did not touch her milk tart, and I couldn't sit still any longer.

‘What
is
it, Hattie, my skat?'

She swallowed some air and put the envelope on the table.

‘Oh, gosh, Maria,' she said. ‘It's not good news.'

I felt the tea and melktert do a small twist inside my belly.

CHAPTER TWO

Now I'm not one to rush into bad news, so I helped myself to more tea and milk tart. Hattie was still drinking her first cup of tea, looking miserable. The envelope just sat there, full of its bad news.

‘It's from Head Office,' she said, running her hand over a bump in her throat.

Maybe the air she had swallowed had got stuck there.

Hattie didn't often hear from Head Office. But when she did it was to tell her what to do. The community gazettes are watchamacallit, syndicated. Each gazette is independent, and has to raise most of its own funds through advertising, but they must still follow the Head Office rules.

The shrike dived from the branch of the sweet-thorn tree down onto the ground.

‘Maria, they say we absolutely must have an advice column,' she said.

I frowned at her. What was all the fuss about?

‘Like an agony aunt column,' she said. ‘Advice about love and such. They say it increases sales.'

‘Ja. It might,' I said.

I was still waiting for the bad news.

‘We just don't have the space. Or the funds to print the four extra pages that we'll need to add one column.' She held her hands like a book. I knew how it worked. Four pages were printed back to back on one big sheet. ‘I've tried to rework the layout. I've tried to see what we can leave out. But there's nothing. Just nothing.'

I shifted in my chair. The shrike flew back up to a branch with something it had caught.

‘I phoned them on Friday,' said Hattie, ‘to tell them, Sorry we just can't do it, not right now, I said.' Her throat became all squeezed like a plastic straw. ‘They said we can cut out the recipe column.'

Her voice sounded far away. I was watching the shrike; it had a lizard in its beak. It stabbed its meat onto a big white thorn.

‘Tannie Maria.'

Was the lizard still alive, I wondered?

‘I argued, told them how much the readers adored your column. But they said the advice column was non-negotiable.'

Was the butcher bird going to leave the meat out to dry, and make biltong?

‘Tannie Maria.'

I looked at her. Her face looked so tight and miserable – as if her life was going to pot, instead of mine. That recipe column
was
my life. Not just the money. Yes, I needed the extra food money; the pension I got after my husband's death was small. But the column was how I shared what was most important to me: my cooking.

My throat felt dry. I drank some tea.

‘But I've been thinking,' Hattie said. ‘
You
could write the advice column. Give advice about love and such.'

I snorted. It was not a pretty sound.

‘I know nothing about love,' I said.

Just then one of my chickens, the hen with the dark feathers around her neck, walked across the lawn, pecking at the ground, and I did feel a kind of love for her. I loved the taste of my melktert and the smell of rusks baking and the sound of the rain when it came after the long wait. And love was an ingredient in everything I cooked. But advice columns were not about melktert or chicken-love.

‘Not that kind of love, anyway,' I said. ‘And I'm not one to give advice. You should ask someone like Tannie Gouws who works at CBL Hardware. She always has advice for everyone.'

‘One of the marvellous things about you, Maria, is you never give unsolicited advice. But you
are
a superb listener. You're the one we come to when there's anything important to discuss. Remember how you helped Jessie when she couldn't decide whether to go and work in Cape Town?'

‘I remember giving her koeksisters . . .'

‘You listened to her and gave her excellent advice. Thanks to you, she is still here with us.'

I shook my head and said, ‘I still think it was the koeksisters.'

‘I had another idea,' Hattie said. ‘Why don't you write a cookbook?
Tannie Maria's Recipes
. Maybe I can help you find a publisher.'

I heard a whirring sound and I looked up to see the shrike flying away. Leaving the lizard on the thorn.

A book wasn't a bad idea, really, but the words that came from my mouth were: ‘It's lonely to write a book.'

She reached out to take my hand. But my hand just lay there.

‘Oh, Tannie Maria,' she said. ‘I'm so sorry.'

Hattie was a good friend. I didn't want to make her suffer. I gave her hand a squeeze.

‘Eat some melktert, Hats,' I said. ‘It's a good one.'

She picked up her fork and I helped myself to another slice. I didn't want to suffer either. I had no reason to feel lonely. I was sitting on my stoep with a lovely view of the veld, a good friend and some first-class milk tart.

‘How about,' I said, ‘I read people's letters and give them a recipe that will help them?'

Hattie finished her mouthful before she spoke.

‘You'd need to give them some advice.'

‘Food advice,' I said.

‘They'll be writing in with their problems.'

‘Different recipes for different problems.'

Hattie stabbed the air with her fork, and said, ‘Food as medicine for the body and heart.'

‘Ja, exactly.'

‘You'll have to give some advice, but a recipe could be part of it.'

‘
Tannie Maria's Love Advice and Recipe Column
.'

Hattie smiled and her face was her own again.

‘Goodness gracious, Tannie Maria. I don't see why not.'

Then she used the fork to polish off her melktert.

CHAPTER THREE

So it was on the stoep with Hattie that we decided on
Tannie Maria's Love Advice and Recipe Column
. The column was very popular. A lot of people from all over the Klein Karoo wrote to me. The letters I wrote back gave me the recipes for this book: recipes for love and murder. So here I am, writing a recipe book after all. Not the kind I thought I'd write, but anyway.

One thing led to another in ways I did not expect. But let me not tell the story all upside-down, I just want to give you a taste . . .

The main recipe in this book is the recipe for murder. The love recipe is more complicated, but in a funny way it came out of this murder recipe:

RECIPE FOR MURDER

1 stocky man who abuses his wife

1 small tender wife

1 medium-sized tough woman in love with the wife

1 double-barrelled shotgun

1 small Karoo town marinated in secrets

3 bottles of Klipdrift brandy

3 little ducks

1 bottle of pomegranate juice

1 handful of chilli peppers

1 mild gardener

1 fire poker

1 red-hot New Yorker

7 Seventh-day Adventists (prepared for The End of the World)

1 hard-boiled investigative journalist

1 soft amateur detective

2 cool policemen

1 lamb

1 handful of red herrings and suspects mixed together

Pinch of greed

Throw all the ingredients into a big pot and simmer slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon for a few years. Add the ducks, chillies and brandy towards the end and turn up the heat.

CHAPTER FOUR

Just one week after I sat on the stoep with Harriet, the letters started coming in. I remember Hattie holding them up like a card trick, as she stood in the doorway of the office of the
Klein Karoo Gazette
. She must have heard me arriving in my bakkie and was waiting for me as I walked down the pathway.

‘Yoo-hoo, Tannie Maria! Your first letters!' she called.

She was wearing a butter-yellow dress and her hair was golden in the sunlight. It was hot, so I walked slowly down the path of flat stones, between the pots of aloes and succulents. The small office is tucked away behind the Ladismith Art Gallery & Nursery in Eland Street.

‘The vetplantjies are flowering,' I said.

The little fat plants had pink flowers that gleamed silver where they caught the light.

‘They arrived yesterday. There are three of them,' she said, handing me the letters.

The
Gazette
office has fresh white walls, Oregon floorboards and a high ceiling. On the outer wall is one of those big round air vents with beautiful patterns that they call ‘Ladismith Eyes'. The office used to be a bedroom in what was one of the original old Ladismith houses. There's only room for three wooden desks, a sink and a little fridge, but this is enough for Jessie, Hattie and me. There are other freelance journalists from small towns all over the Klein Karoo, but they send their work to Hattie by email.

On the ceiling a big fan was going round and round, but I don't know if it helped make the room any cooler.

‘Jislaaik,' I said. ‘You could make rusks without an oven on a day like this.'

I put a tin of freshly baked beskuit on my desk. Jessie looked up from her computer and grinned at me and the rusk tin.

‘Tannie M,' she said.

Jessie Mostert was the young
Gazette
journalist. She was a coloured girl who got a bursary to study at Grahamstown and then came back to work in her home town. Her mother was a nursing sister at the Ladismith hospital.

Jessie wore pale jeans, a belt with lots of pouches on it and a black vest. She had thick dark hair tied in a ponytail, and tattoos of geckos on her brown upper arms. Next to the computer on her desk were her scooter helmet and denim jacket. Jessie loved her little red scooter.

Hattie put the letters on my desk, next to the beskuit and the kettle. I worked only part-time and was happy to share my desk with the full-time tea stuff. I put on the kettle, and got some cups from the small sink.

Hattie sat down at her desk and paged through her notes.

‘Jess,' she said. ‘I need you to cover the NGK church fête on Saturday.'

‘Ag, no, Hattie. Another fête. I'm an
investigative
journalist, you know.'

‘Ah, yes, the girl with the gecko tattoo.'

‘That's not funny,' Jessie said, smiling.

I looked at the three letters sitting on my desk, like unopened presents. I left them there while I made coffee for us all.

‘I want you to take some photos of the new work done by the patchwork group – they will have their own stall at the fête,' said Hattie.

‘Oh, not the lappiesgroep again. I did a whole feature on them and the Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging last month.'

‘Don't worry, Jessie darling, I'm sure something interesting will come up,' said Hattie, scribbling on a pad. I didn't think she'd seen Jessie rolling her eyes, but then she said: ‘Or else you can always find work on a more exciting paper. In Cape Town maybe.'

‘Ag, no, Hattie, you know I love it here. I just need . . . '

‘Jessie, I'm truly delighted you decided to stay here. But you are a very bright girl, and sometimes I think this town and paper are too small for you.'

‘I love this town,' said Jessie. ‘My family and friends are here. I just think there are big stories, even in a small town.'

I put a cup of coffee on each of their desks, and offered the tin of rusks. Hattie never has one before lunch, but Jessie's eyes sparkled at the sight of the golden crunchy beskuit and she forgot about her argument.

‘Take two,' I said.

When she reached into the tin it looked like the gecko tattoos were climbing up her arm. I smiled at her. I like a girl with a good appetite.

‘Lekker,' she said, and her hip burst into song.

Girl on fire!
it sang.

‘Sorry,' she said, opening one of her pouches. ‘That's my phone.'

The song got louder as she walked towards the doorway and answered it.

‘Hello . . . Reghardt?'

She went out into the garden and her voice became quiet and I couldn't hear her or her fire song any more. I sat down at my desk, and dipped my beskuit into my coffee. It had sunflower seeds in it, which gave it that roasted nutty flavour. I looked again at the envelopes.