BY NOW, I EXPECT, the copper has oxidised. In a dim, neglected cupboard, verdigris probably coats my wife’s formerly gleaming batterie de cuisine, like a crust of mould. I daren’t look, in case a smell lurks within or some cuprous exhalation seeps out. I can’t abide the hand-staining, nostril-wrinkling nonsense of smearing and dabbing with copper-polish.
Yet I recall our expensive and intrusive charlady, when we first moved to America, covetously fingering the burnished pots. She suggested, by analogy with other clients — richer, perhaps, or more ostenatious than ourselves — that the pans should dangle above the kitchen range, like the clusters of fake grapes and plastic lobsters that used to decorate the ceilings of professedly Italian restaurants in England.
I’m not above a bit of vain exhibitionism: paintings…
You're reading a preview of
The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023