A landmark for the new millennium 4 страница

Future population

Margaret

Old Margaret was just the kind of cook that we wanted. Lots of cooks can do rich dishes well. Margaret couldn’t. But she A22 ______ to cook simple, everyday dishes in a way that made our mouths water. Her apple-pies were the best pies I’ve ever tasted.

But to A23 ______ the truth, even Margaret sometimes miscalculated. A large, royal-looking steak would be set before Father, which, upon being cut into, would turn A24 ______ to be underdone. Father’s face would darken with disappointment. He would raise his foot and stamp slowly and heavily three times on the rug.

At this solemn A25 ______ , we would hear Margaret leave the kitchen below us and come up the stairs to the dining-room door.

“Margaret, look at the steak.”

Margaret would peer with a shocked look at the platter. She would then seize the platter and make off with it.

Father and Margaret were united by the intense interest they both took in cooking. Each understood the other instinctively. I have to A26 ______ that they had a complete fellow-feeling. Mother’s great interest was in babies. She loved her children and her happiness depended A27 ______ them. She wanted to keep Father pleased somehow, and if it was too difficult or impossible she didn’t always care about even that.

At table it was Father who carved the fowl, or sliced the roast lamb or beef. I liked to A28 ______ him take the knife and go at it. And usually the cooking had been as superb as the carving. Sometimes it was so perfect that Father would summon Margaret and say in a low voice, “You are a good cook”.

Pierre and Faniry

At the age of twenty-one, Pierre – that was the name of the winegrower – had been sent by his father to spend some time with his uncle in Madagascar. He A22 ______ at the island and within two weeks he fell for a local girl called Faniry, or "Desire" in Malagasy. You could not blame him. At seventeen she was ravishing. In the Malagasy sunlight her skin was golden. Her black, waist-length hair, which hung straight beside her cheeks, framed large, fathomless eyes. It was a genuine love at first A23 ______, for both of them. Within five months they were married. Faniry had no family, but Pierre's parents came out from France for the wedding, even though they did not strictly A24 ______of it, and for three years the young couple lived very happily on the island of Madagascar.

Then, one day, a telegram came from France. Pierre's parents and his only brother had been killed in a car crash. Pierre took the next flight home to A25 ______ the funeral and manage the vineyard left by his father. Faniry followed two weeks later. Pierre was grief-stricken, but with Faniry he A26 ______ down to running the vineyard. His family, and the lazy, idyllic days under a tropical sun, were gone forever. But he was very happily married, and he was very well-off. Perhaps, he reasoned, life in Bordeaux would not be so bad. Pierre thought he had married an angel, but soon he found A27 ______ that he was wrong. He had A28 ______ a fatal mistake in marrying Faniry.