The Devil's Larder

50

WHAT COULD BE a better wedding gift for two dear friends? A newly germinated love-leaf tree for the glassed-in balcony of their first apartment. It was, in fact, a sort of palm, Roystonea labia. We did not know whether they were green-fingered but, never mind, they’d have to care for it. The label in the pot described our gift as ‘edible, low-maintenance and with a modest habit, 2 metres at ten years’. What caught our eye, though, were the claims made by the sales leaflet that came with every purchase. It said:

The inner meat, shoots and tender terminal buds of the lip palm, or love-leaf tree, from Madagascar can be harvested as a vegetable and eaten as a dressed salad or with rice-and-pork dishes. Tradition forbids the picking of the foliage before or after the palm’s seventh birthday. Shoots of a seven-year-old plant, also known as heart of palm, palmetto d’or or millionaire’s salad, are, however, thought to bring good fortune and rejuvenation to their consumers and are regarded as potent aphrodisiacs.

With this growing gift, then, we’d plant a time bomb in their marriage. Here was a loving meal, seven years in preparation, to whet their appetites.

The lip palm flourished on their balcony. We checked whenever we went round, that first year of their marriage. The leaves were glossy and unpicked, the soil was damp, the plant was growing up. We envied them the hungry years ahead. We were aroused ourselves, just at the prospect of the harvest on their seventh anniversary.

IT IS A MIRACLE they’ve stayed together for so long. They’ve both got other friends and lovers. We never see them in each other’s company, not even in the shops or at the railings of the school. Their love was so shortlived. There was no heart to it. It has to be the little girl — she’s six this year — that stops them splitting up.

We went round to their place about a week ago, to babysit. Their daughter was asleep by nine. We must both have had the same thing on our mind. We’d done our sums. The lip palm was seven. We went out onto their balcony like thieves, armed with a kitchen knife. I think it was a shock, a disappointment, too, to find the centre of their tree removed. They must have cut and eaten the meat, we guessed — too good to waste — and gone off in their separate cars to spend their resurrected passions with more recent friends.

We managed to cut out what remained of the freshest shoots and foliage. We did not bother with the salad dressing or the pork and rice. We ate palmetto, on the balcony, like chocolate. How good it was! How young we felt as, with their daughter sleeping in a distant room, we did what two dear friends should do when they have passed their seventh, loving year.