it gives out a very satisfying crunch. He chews away with ohhs and ahhs as he goes. ‘I plan to savour all of these. I won’t be offering these out to just anyone.’
I don’t want to be rude so I take my offering and hope that holding my breath will help. I take a deep breath and cough with the fumes.
‘Sarson’s vinegar. My Nancy only ever liked the best.’ With that, his eyes start leaking again.
‘If I eat this, will you tell me why you’re crying over pickled onions?’ The question surprises me. It’s not one from my official list and I’m not prone to spontaneity. But in this moment, I feel closer to knowing the answers than I ever have. Maybe this is the subject that’ll finally teach me the answer to my question: What causes a broken heart, and is there any way for it to heal?
6
Clive
Clive helped himself to a second Allium cepa. This shallot variety was his favourite to be pickled. He shouldn’t be having two; he’d end up with indigestion. But he wanted to enjoy them over his remaining days and who was he to know how many of those were left? He was rather hoping not too many.
The problem was that the onions were taking him straight back to where it hurt. The memory that kept repeating. And now there was this young creature, who looked like a gracious gazelle and yet seemed uncomfortable in her own skin. Unconsciously, she was wringing her hands, one rolling over the other in an almost continuous motion. It was mesmerising.
Biting into the onion, Clive savoured the tang and tingle of the snack. When he had more than one his lips became kind of numb and he wished it was possible for that sensation to crawl across the rest of him.
‘There’s a lot to it,’ he said in answer to the difficult question. How did he explain everything to this girl who’d appeared at the end of his bed? She was eyeing the onion she was holding with growing suspicion. ‘Eat up, and I’ll start at the beginning.’
She took the tiniest of nibbles, barely digging her incisors beyond the first layer. Her face with its freckles a shade darker than the rest of her skin curled in disgust.
‘You’ll need two bites and bigger ones than that to fully savour the taste.’ He hoped he’d not wasted a pickled onion on someone who wasn’t going to appreciate the full flavour.
‘It’s just so…’ Keisha licked her tongue on her lower lip.
‘Tangy? Take a bigger bite. At the moment I reckon you’ve just sucked some vinegar off the surface.’
Fair play to the girl, Clive thought as he watched her pop it whole into her mouth and chew, the grimace disappearing as she went.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s very… oniony? I’m not much of a foodie, sorry.’
Clive let out a soft chuckle. He was impressed she’d actually eaten it. He’d been offering them out to the nursing staff for days and none of them had taken him up on the gift.
‘I don’t think my allotment produce is on the wanted list for many foodies. Although it should be of course.’
Keisha nodded, still clearing her mouth.
‘I’d offer you a drink if I were at home. They don’t really let me play host here. Now, would you like to indulge me and listen to the tale of how I met Nancy?’
The nodding hadn’t stopped so Clive took the opportunity to tell his story.
‘I wasn’t much of a dancer when I was young, but my brother Ken really was. Ken convinced me I needed to do something different, which was to go to an afternoon tea dance. My heart really wasn’t in it. Not at a time of day when everyone would be able to tell what a bad dancer I was. At least if it had been darker and there was a bit more drink on the go then no one would have noticed the lad with two left feet. I sat on the side lines, tried to hide away. I was quite stunned when she came and asked me to dance. Even when I explained I wasn’t really capable of such things, she still persisted. She told me that no one ever learned to do something by not starting.’
Talking about it made Clive’s feet want to drum out a foxtrot, as if he’d awoken an ancient longing that was part of his DNA.
‘And did you start?’ Keisha asked, glancing at Clive’s bouncing feet.