Читать книгу Pick Your Poison - Lauren Child - Страница 9

WHEN RUBY WAS TEN her father was due to take part in a tasting for the Olivarian Society, so called because in order to become a member of this esteemed club one had to blind taste twelve different types of olive, identifying the variety and the region in which they grew.

For reasons to do with bad weather in Boston, Sabina Redfort had failed to make her Twinford flight and was stranded at the east coast airport. Mrs Digby the housekeeper was on annual leave, Brant Redfort refused to leave his daughter home alone and his daughter refused to have a sitter. Therefore it was decided that Ruby would have to accompany her father to the club on Fuldecker Avenue, a grand old-fashioned building with plenty of carved wood and marble. It being highly irregular to bring a child to the club, Ruby was taken to the small club office, where she might read and wait out the two hours until her father was ready to go home.

Brant Redfort was blindfolded and led to a table on which twelve olive dishes were then placed. There were three olives that Brant Redfort found very difficult to place, but he filled in what he could and, once finished, his completed papers along with the olives were returned to the club office.

Ruby, who was fond of olives, had been his home-study partner and now had a very keen palette and a wide appreciation of olives from all regions. She decided therefore to take the test herself and, finding her father’s answers to be good but not great (considering the time he had given to this pursuit he should really have excelled), she amended his test sheet accordingly.

She detected every herb and every spice, and almost every variety of olive: young, old, barrelled in oak, pickled in sea brine, from the western slopes of Mount Etna and from the northern coast of Corfu.

Brant Redfort was declared a worthy Olivarian and was sworn into the club with a hearty cheer, and Ruby was able to get back to her book.

Some several years later …