"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 5
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By the time she reached the gravy, he was laughing. By the time the storm blew itself out at dawn, they were both asleep on the floor of the cabin holding hands."If I ever die," Frederick told her the next morning, "I want you to tell me how to make a pie. It's the only thing that works."They landed at Madras in September on the hot white beach below Fort St. George, with the surf booming and the palm trees bending in the wind, and the smell of spices and wood smoke and flowers so strong that Grace stopped on the sand and closed her eyes. She loved India from the first moment.They lived in a small white bungalow outside the walls of the fort with a deep veranda and a garden full of hibiscus and a tamarind tree. Frederick drilled his men in the mornings and came home at noon when the heat made everything stop.Grace, who could not bear to sit still, found her way into the kitchen house behind the bungalow where the regiment's cook, a gentle gray-haired Tamil man named Muthu, was preparing their dinner. He was horrified to see an officer's lady in his kitchen. She would not go away.After a week, he gave up and began to teach her. He taught her everything: how to roast and grind spices on a flat stone, how to temper mustard seeds in hot oil until they popped, how to make a dozen kinds of curry, rice that was never sticky, flatbreads cooked on an iron plate over the coals, and the soup—the thin, fiery, golden pepper water that every Tamil grandmother made for a cold or a fever or a broken heart. Muthu's wife made it, and her mother had made it, and now Grace made it, standing at the coals in the kitchen house with sweat running down her face while Muthu watched and nodded and corrected her pepper.Their bungalow became famous in the regiment. On Sunday nights, half the young officers of the 49th found reasons to call on Lieutenant and Mrs. Ashdown at suppertime, and one of them came every single week.He was a major, 10 years older than Frederick, quiet and dark and serious with a long brown face and a slow smile. His name was Nicholas Fane. He was the younger brother of the Duke of Aldridge, and he had been in India for 12 years, and he had no family there and no wife and few friends. He did not talk much. Most evenings, he sat on the veranda with a glass of arrack and listened to Frederick laugh, watched Grace cook through the kitchen house door, and ate everything she put in front of him with a kind of quiet astonishment."I've lived in this country 12 years," he said to her once, "and I never knew it tasted like this. You've given me India back, Mrs. Ashdown. I thought I'd lost it a long time ago."