Twenty-One: Blancmange vs. Toast
August 21st, 1978
Remus likes plain food. Bread, cheese, a bit of meat. Potatoes. Fresh fruit, vegetables straight out of the garden. He’s easy to please, really, when it comes to food. This is probably a good thing, since he has no money and no cooking skills, apart from toast and tea. He’s good at toast and tea.
That day they bunk off work and take the train out of the city, looking for somewhere to remember that they are young, still just boys, really. It’s summer, Sirius says, wheedling Moony into coming, and it works, because Moony can never say no to Padfoot. And because he wants to believe that they are just boys, two boys in a field in the country, breathing in the scent of hay.
Sirius, however, likes his food fancy. It’s a relic of his days as the heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black Madmen. He likes foie gras and coq au vin, and has a strange fondness for blancmange. He likes wine. He comes home frequently with take-away bags from Chinese and Greek and Indian restaurants, which, though cheap, is much more interesting than a sandwich thrown together from whatever’s in the kitchen.
Remus would just as soon take the sandwich.
All the grass is brown, past the damp heat of July and into the scorching heat of August. They chase each other across the field, leaping over a low stone wall and nearly crashing into a short and stumpy plum tree. “Look Moony, plums!” Sirius says joyfully, sounding as effusive as a puppy.
“They probably belong to somebody, we shouldn’t eat them.”
“They’ll never notice.”
It’s just another of those things that go to show that, had they been born several hundred years earlier, Sirius would have been a noble, and Remus would have been a peasant. And Remus is perfectly happy with this. He likes his peasant-food, likes the way no one expects anything of him, like marrying a suitable girl for the good of the family, or being an aristocratic git always above his company. All those things Sirius would have done had he not left home.
Of course, had they been born several hundred years earlier, Remus would never have met Sirius, never become his friend.
They sit under the tree, leaning together and licking plum juice off their fingers. Remus wishes vaguely for a straw hat and a piece of hay for his teeth, just to complete the picture of summer. Sirius, elegant and languid, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his arm across Remus’ shoulders, looks like a painting of a Greek god.
Remus thinks he’s getting romantic in the heat, or something. He tries to put all thoughts of picturesque paintings out of his head.
And Sirius may have rather aristocratic tastes, but he’s the unwilling prince, wearing his crown only because he was born to it, and not because it suits him. He’s spent his summers romping through fields and stealing apples off the neighbour’s tree, swimming in rivers and lakes. And here he is, sprawled in the dirt and grass and messily eating warm plums, the picture of recumbent youth. This is where the line is blurred, where it doesn’t matter that Sirius loves blancmange and Remus goes for toast.
He’s left the blancmange for the toast and the plums, and done it happily. Sometimes simple food is best.
Day Twenty-two