The door opened with a slow, reluctant shriek of now long somnolent iron hinges being forced to fulfill their function. There was dust of course: dust everywhere, so thick that George realized that there was no way anyone could have hidden their passing. Either the signs of their passage would be clearly written on the floor, or the places where dust had been wiped away entirely would be even more obvious.
“Okay, we're going to check the inside to make sure no one else came,” George said quickly, before his younger siblings could run off to explore. “We're going to stick together, and we're going to make our way all around the house on this floor. If we don't see any changes in the dust besides for ours, it's probably safe.”
“What if they climbed in through a window on the second floor?” Peter asked, trying to be helpful.
“Then we'll still see signs of them when they came down to this floor,” George told him. “But good thinking,” he added, knowing Peter was looking for approval. Peter had tried very hard and been very good for all of this, so George always praised him when he wanted it. No one expected Grace to earn anything. She was just their baby.
So they started to make their way around the house. It turned out to be a fascinating trip. What had been little more than a source of bewilderment and horror to prospective – not to mention adult – buyers fascinated the children: all the cogs and wheels and chains joined together in vast configurations that awed even George. Peter opined that an mad old scientist must have lived here. Grace, with the odd prescience of the innocent, said that if he'd really been any good he would have made his house keep itself clean. Peter loftily said if it had really been a he then he'd have had more important things to do. George hastily moved to interfere before Grace could turn that into an unholy sibling squall.
“Hey, what do you think that...” His brief pause to decide on what to say next trailed off into a longer, stranger silence as he incredulously turned his face towards the kitchen and eating room.
“What are those...smells...?”
“That's food!” Peter crowed, ecstatic and already half crouched like a sprinter off the starting line.
“No wait!” George shouted, grabbing his siblings shirts before they could run headlong for the source of the aromas.
“Why? I'm hungry,” Grace whined.
“Yes, but where did that food come from? We didn't put it there, and it wasn't there when we passed through the rooms before. There's something wrong, I don't like it.”
“But we do need to eat,” Peter pointed out, trying his best to be reasonable, even though his young patience was strained almost to the edge trying to ignore the mouthwatering aromas. He was so hungry, hungrier than Grace probably, since she was a girl and he was still growing and all. Mama had always said boys his age should have more food, right? He hadn't had a proper meal for ages, and he could smell all his favorite favorites.
George sighed. They did need to eat, and poor Peter was at his limit. “Okay, slowly though. With me.”
So they approached the entrance to the kitchen at a creep, George putting down each foot slowly, eyes never leaving the entrance. Grace impatiently waited for each step to finish, then crossly took two quick little steps of her own. Peter imitated his brother's stride meticulously – step by slow, careful step until they reached the doorway. And there...
....was a feast.
Every favorite each of them had been fantasizing of, every drink they had missed, it was all there, perfect, laid across the table with three place settings. If the food was best hot it steamed, if it was best cold there was condensation on the outside of its container. It may as well have materialized out of their dreams.
George just stood stock still, knowing it was impossible and not daring to trust it, even though his own mouth watered just as badly as Peter's. The truth was that he was the hungriest one, because he was the one who had gone without whenever there wasn't enough. Peter stayed in the doorway because his brother did, but he felt like he could have inhaled the food from where he was, he was so hungry. It was so hard not to beg.
Grace squealed “Pudding!” and dove headlong for the table.
George tried to catch her but wasn't fast enough: he had to chase after her as she clambered up onto a chair and leaned across the table for the pudding bowl.
“Let go let go let go, I want it, it's not fair, it doesn't even belong to anyone, let go! I want the pudding!”
“Grace, you can't trust it, it's not natural!”
“It's food, and I'm hungry, you stupid George, just because you don't like it—”
“We don't know how it got there!”
“It was put there, stupid.”
“Yeah, but how? By who? There's nobody here! And it wasn't there two minutes ago!”
“The house put it there for us. So we could eat it. So let me eat it! It made me my favorite pudding!”
“A house can't make anything!”
“This one does, the mad scientist must have taught it.”
“That's not possible Grace.”
“So how did it get here then? Stupid brother.”
George stifled his growing annoyance enough to say, patiently, “If we don't understand it, then we shouldn't eat it. We don't know what will happen.”
“It's there so we can eat it, who cares about anything else!?”
“We can't!”
“I hate you!” Now Grace was really furious, her little face scrunched up and red and blotchy while tears leaked out of her eyes. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I'm always hungry and cold and thirsty and now you won't let me eat anything, I hate you! Stupid George!”
George realized it was useless to argue. He picked her up and forcefully began to carry her across the room as she kicked and screamed. “I hate you, I hate you, I'm hungry, it wants us to eat it, it even says so!”
By reflex, even though he knew she was just ranting, George said, “Don't be silly, it doesn't say anything.”
“Yes it does stupid brother, it says right on the table!”
“Grace—” George began, now preparing for a good and proper telling-off.
“George,” Peter interrupted. “....it – it really does say something on the table.”
George stopped, stared, turned. He'd been holding Grace under his arm and facing backwards, so now he was seeing what she had been.
On the table, a space had been cleared among the dishes for two words, spelled in bright green jelly beans.
PLEASE EAT
George stared. Slowly, he went back to the table. He stared some more. Slowly, and almost against his better judgment, he picked one up, and nibbled it.
Lime flavor. Grace's favorite.
“Look, this...this just...this just proves that none of this makes sense! Something is weird here, that must be why it's empty, we need to go, now! We can't stay here, it's not safe!”
“But it wants us to George,” Peter said, finally buckling in to begging. “It wants us to, and it's right there, please George.”
“Look, we can't—” George's voice cut off. In the exchange he'd turned his head back towards his brother. And in the two seconds he'd looked away, the words had changed.
PLEASE STAY. PLEASE. LET ME COOK FOR YOU.
I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU.
“But—why?” George asked softly.
This time, he saw it. Or rather, he saw that there was nothing to see: one moment one way, one another.
I'M LONELY. PLEASE STAY.
The words were written in green and red and yellow: green lime jelly beans, red chewy candies that Peter adored, and lemon drops. George loved lemon drops.
George chewed his lip. “But—”
PLEASE. PLEASE.
George turned around. His hungry siblings stared with identical expressions. George took a deep breath.
“All right – let's eat!”
“Yeaaaaaahhhhh!”
So they survived the war after all, and on royal fare. The house was solid, and no one else e
ver came. The bombs missed them, just as they'd hoped. And they had no need to take the risk of going back into town. Because they had food. Such food. Even though it always knew how much they could eat, at first the house kept making too much anyway, it was so happy to have people to feed again. The children dreamed of more food than they could eat, lots of everything they'd been wanting, and the house delightedly gave it to them. Eventually both they and the house calmed down and meals became less extravagant, but no less exquisite. That was something the house would always excel in. And so it went, for nearly three years. But everything must end, even – perhaps especially – war. At some point the children realized that they just couldn't keep hiding in the House anymore. Life was returning to normal in London. They might have relatives who'd survived. They needed to go to school (largely George's concern actually). They couldn't just stay in an abandoned house on the outskirts of the city for the rest of their lives. So they returned. There were a few false starts. They got put in places they didn't want to be, like orphanages. Relatives weren't showing up. Each time, they fell back on what they now called The Cooking House until they could start over again. Eventually, life settled into a shape that suited them. They were, in the end, in an orphanage, but it was a good one, and they agreed it was time to accept it and move on. George worked part-time jobs steadily as he studied, his goals twofold: become solvent enough to support himself and his siblings together, and acquire The Cooking House. It was just an abandoned house, and he was sure few, if any, knew its secret. It would be cheap, if he could only find the owners.
It was a bit of a tangled path, but George had two years before he graduated and all the odd lines provided by his various jobs to follow. Bernard, failing to sell the house to a proper buyer, had eventually passed it up to an Estate Agent for pittance. The Estate Agent, in turn, had been regretting the deal ever since. It was now a dusty file in the agency's cabinet, and it took some steady convincing for them to dig it up. Somewhere along the way, he managed to make some good impressions with the right people. When he graduated, he had a lease-until-acquirement plan worked out, and a job. The siblings moved in.
Well, not officially, not at first. Grace and Peter still had to stay at the orphanage most of the time, but they visited frequently, as in fact they had all taken turns doing in secret ever since they'd left. Because they'd come to understand something about the House in those three years they'd hidden there. Whatever it was that gave it life, that life had one purpose, one wish: to cook. So long as it had people to cook for, it was happy. And so they all made it their responsibility to be sure the House was never long without dinner company. They owed it so much, after all.
And besides, the food was always perfect.
Three more years passed. George wrangled Peter a part-time job at his company, where he steadily built credit towards a permanent position on his graduating day. George's own hard work paid off in the usual way: he was slowly but surely moving up in the company, and was now beginning to have to make more important decisions, and meet with other people of business. As Peter's graduation year approached and Grace's string of admirers wrought havoc on her older sibling's hair, George found himself responsible for something quite, quite serious. He needed to get this exactly right.
Of course, he thought of the Cooking House.
It had always set for the food as well as cooked it. When George asked, by the simple method of standing in the kitchen and worrying about it, it assured him classier settings were well within its power – the meal would lack for nothing. Grace was given severe warnings on the penalties of bringing anyone, boy or girl, over that night (she sulked for a week). Peter, a member of the company in any case, however low-ranked, agreed to perform as server, thereby helping to cover for the fact that the food was essentially being conjured into being. The House, after some very carefully focused worrying, agreed to manifest the food in the adjacent room, where Peter would fetch it out. Everything was arranged.
The day – or rather night – arrived. The House was as good as its word: the table looked wonderful, and the client was duly impressed. Peter, smartly dressed and scrubbed painfully clean, did a credible job as waiter, carrying in dishes so perfect they might have been created just so an instant before. Which, of course, they had, but the client wasn't to know. Everything went exactly, exactly as they'd hoped.
Then the client choked on his food.
Both George and Peter were horrified. The House had never produced a dish that had so much as an imperfect texture, let alone something you could choke on. And yet there their client was, desperately trying to dislodge a large lump that had inexplicably found its way into his dish and then disastrously down his throat. Much desperate pounding dislodged the object, but the client was weak and rasping: it seemed to have done some damage on the way out. Shaken and stunned, George arranged for an ambulance: the client was escorted away with assurances that he would be fine.
George, however, was not.
In many ways, it resembled the day Bernard had found only one place setting for his guest. But unlike Bernard, George understood the true nature of the Cooking House, and the implications of what had happened. Surely only some horrible accident could have caused this, but what? He refused to contemplate that the House had deliberately sabotaged him. He and his siblings had come to see it as a family member, a close friend and benefactor. And until today, the shoe had fit. Why, he wondered, standing in the kitchen. Why had this happened?
HE WAS LYING
“...what?”
HE WAS LYING
George stared at the words for one second, two, three.
Then he bolted out of the house to do some research.
By the time the client had been released from the hospital, George had confirmed what the house had told him: the client had lied about the property. Carried out, the deal would have been a disaster. He presented the information to the company: they agreed that things had worked out quite fortuitously all around, assured George that they did not consider any of the mess his fault, and commended him on his detective work. Life went on unchanged, and most importantly, unharmed. Even his reputation at work was intact.
In fact, the only thing that changed was George's decision to hold all his business meetings at the Cooking House.
The decision paid – literally. Apparently it was only a short step from knowing who would come and what they'd want to eat to knowing which ones brought trouble with them. It did not seem to matter whether the client even knew there was a problem: the House simply found less violent means to show it. A drink that was too warm or cold, a dish with a little too much salt – when your standard is absolute perfection, any variation stands out. George never had any trouble spotting the signs. George's business record became impossibly spotless and his reputation in business circles began to approach legend. Everyone, of course, wanted to know how he did it, but no one could quite bring themselves to credit the Food Test, as it came to be known, at face value. Wild rumors circulated, ranging from connections with M15 to a pact with the devil. The company heard it all but merely shrugged. George's results were both spectacular and profitable – so long as it wasn't illegal, it really didn't care how he did it, so long as he could do it to order. And, rumors of illicit use of government intelligence aside, legal it seemed to be. George continued to work hard, and he was now the most reliable employee in the company. Promotions came regularly.
George dealt well with his success. He had always been organized and steady, so his new responsibilities didn't faze him. He was intelligent and likeable, so he had no trouble with his employees either, or at least no more than expected. And for all the hard decisions, he had The Cooking House. It never steered him wrong. The company rose in the world, and George rose with it. It soon looked likely that eventually, George would be the company.
And then one day, something changed. He invited a new client to dinner, and the client brought his daughter, Annette, a young and charming women with a warm s
mile. She seemed to get along with Peter as well, and had a calming effect on Grace, who had of recent years been driving both her brothers to despair. But even more than any of that, for the first time, The House began to make changes to the meal that weren't mistakes. Annette's dishes would have some extra little touch – a flower in her napkin, a sampling of some favorite of hers that wasn't in the other's dishes, some extra pink vanity that never failed to bring a smile to her face. The House was never wrong. Before long, George was bringing her for meals without her father.
Six months later, George, with a ring in his pocket and a terror in his heart, invited her to the most important meal of his life.
If she could accept the truth of the Cooking House, he would ask her to marry him.
The meal, of course, was perfect. Like always. Soft candlelight, flowing napkins and fragrant flowers, everything a wooing meal should be. They were both nervous, so nervous it was hard to eat even the House's cooking. They both knew what this meal was, and both knew the other knew. But neither had any way of knowing what the other would really do.
For something so important, any uncertainty can feel like doom.
So when George brought in empty plates at dessert time, Annette was immediately and irrationally frightened. Because so much hinged on tonight, and she didn't know what it meant. Everything seemed like a prelude to the moment of truth – hard or soft. Good or bad.
It was the not knowing that was so hard.
He put a dish in front of each of them, and sat down. She could tell that somehow, this was important. She hadn't thought she could possibly be more nervous.
“Make a wish,” he told her softly.
“Wh..what, anything?” she asked. Confused, and almost afraid to show it. What if it was a test?
“No, for dessert. What do you want to eat?”
She looked at him, then at the plate, then at him again. She still didn't understand. But she was afraid not to go along.