Bacon without nitrites
VOLUME 13 CHAPTER NINE his match in her. Claire was an extremesports enthusiast, and had insisted Bruce accompany her on an ill-fated para-mountain-biking trip to Skye. Paramountain-biking is one of the more dangerous of the extreme sports, involving, as it does, cycling over the edge of a cliff or down a steep hillside on a bicycle attached to a large kite-like wing. The theory is that the cyclist, along with the mountain bike, sails upwards, in the way of a glider caught in ascending thermals. The sensation is said to be like no other: the earth shrinks beneath one, the wind, unconstrained by any surrounding structure, envelops the rider with its touch, and by continuing to turn the pedals one feels as if one is actually riding across the sky.
It is not, of course, a sport for everyone, and Bruce, for all his courage, did not take to it. His initial flight was less than successful, and the one that followed even less so. On that second at Nine Mile Burn. James had left James Gillespie’s School in Edinburgh, where he had been the winner of the German Language Cup, the Senior Art Prize, and the Lord Provost’s Award for General Attitude. Matthew had been hesitant about taking on a male au pair; Elspeth less so. “Don’t be so old-fashioned,” she said to him. “These days it makes no difference. Boys, girls – it’s all the same.”
Matthew had struggled with this claim. Were boys and girls all the same? He knew that the days in which there were male roles and female roles were well and truly over, at least with regard to employment and public office, but he had a lingering feeling that the personal psychologies of men and women had not yet coalesced into a truly androgynous composite. It struck him that there were still differences of outlook, and that even if men had become gentler and more sympathetic, and woman, by the same token, had become harder and less feeling, comfort them when they scraped their knees – as they were always doing – or acquired the bruises that were the inevitable concomitant of running around the furniture at low level?
Elspeth thought he could be capable of doing all of this, and she proved to be right. James soon revealed himself to be more than capable of looking after the boys, as well as being an enthusiastic house-cleaner. He cycled to the supermarket in Penicuik, where he did the shopping unbidden, but with economy and insight into the household’s needs. He fixed the dishwasher when its complicated filter system clogged and regurgitated; and he was, they discovered to their delight, a talented and inventive cook.
So when they sat down to dinner that evening, the Danish cutlery and the Moma-approved plates at the ready, it was to a meal concocted by James.
“I got hold of some scallops,” he said. “And I’ve made some bacon to go with them.”
“Made bacon?” asked Matthew.
It was Elspeth who answered. “James cures his own bacon,” she said, “Don’t you, James?”
James smiled sweetly. “I do. I cure in a mixture of salt and spices. Which means there are no nitrites in it.”
“You don’t want nitrites,” said Elspeth. “No, you don’t,” said James, rising from the table to check up on a pan on the Aga. “And it’s really quite easy. You get hold of a pork loin and you rub the salt into it. Really rub it in. And you mix the spices with the salt – oregano, rosemary even – that sort of thing. Then you put it in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge for three days.”
“He dries it out in the fridge,” said Elspeth. “Then it’s ready,”
Matthew gazed at James, who had returned the table. James smiled back at him, the dimples in his cheek appearing as his smile broadened. He is very attractive, thought Matthew – adding, very quickly, to women, that is. And then he thought: Pat? No. Ridiculous thought. Inappropriate. But then …