Grace's Table (16 page)

‘Dad! Not cool.' Nick rocked forward on his chair with a thud and pushed his father's hand away from his cousin.

Peter shrugged and added the slice to Richard's plate.

‘That'll probably do me, thanks Peter. Got the coronaries to think of, you know, and it's all about moderation when it comes to those little fellas.' Richard tapped his chest with an index finger.

‘If I couldn't have meat – good meat – I reckon I'd starve,' Peter said. ‘Coronaries or not.'

‘I'd rather starve,' Jorja said.

‘Is it the flavour you don't like or the killing?' Nick asked.

‘Both. Plus I don't like the thought of eating anything with a face.'

Jaxon and Tom set up a chorus of distressed
baa
-ing down the other end of the table.

‘
And
…' Jorja scowled at the two boys, ‘I'm bothered about what livestock does to the environment. Not that I'd expect you two cretins to understand anything about that.'

‘Not wind again!' Peter looked to the ceiling and the fan ruffled his hair.

Jorja's fringe started to slip.

‘Can everyone, please, just change the subject.' Susan snapped her napkin out flat and laid it across her lap.

Kath reached over and gripped Jorja's hand. ‘At least you're true to your beliefs, Jorja. It's admirable. Maybe we could all take a lesson from you.'

Grace admired Jorja's stand as well. For a young voice to remain strong in the midst of what was proving a hostile, meat-eating majority showed real commitment.

‘You know, Peter,' Grace said. ‘I might just pass on the lamb today too.' She poked her fork into the slice on her plate and placed it back on the serving platter. ‘There's plenty of other goodies on the table to keep me alive, and healthy.' She winked at Jorja, who tried hard to hide her pleasure.

‘Don't encourage her, Mum. She'll tell us she's going vegan next.'

Grace ignored Susan and thought of Pa instead, of the lambs he'd slaughtered in the barn. She felt his old bones turn in their grave.

‘You know what, Gran. I might join you.' Nick passed his meat back too.

‘Looks like there's mutiny in the Meat Works,' giggled Jane.

‘Great. All the more for me.' Tom licked his lips.

Peter had sat down, burying the carving fork in the lamb, where it stood upright like Excalibur's sword, and clattered the knife onto the platter.

‘So is everybody going to hand back their lamb? I needn't have carved at all!' He crossed his arms, daring other dissenters.

‘I'm rather partial to roast lamb and I don't have it often, being on my own, so I'll keep mine, thanks, Peter. But I'll eat respectfully afterYC what you've had to say, Jorja.' Ada saluted Jorja with her glass.

‘Thanks, Aunty Ada.'

‘Ditto,' Kath said, also raising her glass.

‘You other three just aren't true Bakers.' Peter took up the carving knife again and used it to hold down the joint as he extracted the fork.

The three dissenters laughed. ‘Maybe that's where you're wrong,' Grace said, ‘maybe we're more baker than butcher.' She reached for the basket of dinner rolls, took one and passed it along.

Pulled apart, the roll revealed a soft, white centre. Against all the dark meat on plates around the table the bread looked pure, a symbol of goodness among the blood. Des had used bread to mop up such juices on his plate; it would end up sodden and soiled. Grace tore a small piece from the roll and put it in her mouth. It tasted innocent.

When the bread basket made its way to Susan, she refused it: ‘I'm trying to cut back on the evil white carbs.' And she passed the basket on to Peter.

Quiet came over the table. It was broken only by
Could I please have
or
Would you mind
passing requests and the clatter of serving spoons as people helped themselves to vegetables and sauces. The long wait for the meal meant appetites depleted the piles quickly. Jorja shared her vegetarian gravy with Nick and Grace. She passed it to each without request or show.

Strangely, Grace didn't miss the colour of meat on her plate. Nor the taste, which sometimes smelt so strongly of earth, grass and grain that she imagined the animal's last meal still making its way through the fibres as she chewed. She'd always taken meat in small quantities anyway and had cringed at the way the juices soaked into mashed potato, tinging it pink, or bathed lettuce in a dressing of animal fat and blood. As she added the various vegetables to her plate from the bowls that came her way, she imagined again how Pa would be turning in his grave, but she could also see Des's bony knuckles rapping on his coffin, demanding he be let out to put a stop to her tomfoolery. She smiled at his powerlessness.

‘Joke to share, Grace?' Richard had taken one of his regular pauses between mouthfuls, knife and fork neatly crossed in a space he'd created on Bev's fine white china plate – he was the only person Grace had trusted with its care.

Grace looked at her son-in-law, momentarily caught for what to say. She didn't think Susan and Peter would appreciate their mother smiling at thoughts of their long dead father made powerless by the grave.

‘I was thinking of a patient I had once.' The man who sprang to mind justified her smile. ‘He was a funny fellow. An old headmaster or government official – I can't remember exactly which now. Anyway, he took issue with the meals at Moreville.'

‘I can imagine most people taking issue with the meals in a nursing home.' Richard took up his knife and fork again. ‘The one hospital meal I ever had, when I had the old snip-o, smacked of cheap cuts and mass production.'

‘Well, if you'd had it done under a local anaesthetic like everybody else then you wouldn't have had to stay in overnight.'

‘Some acts on the body are best experienced subliminally, Susan.'

‘Like to hear you say that on a labour ward.'

‘This man's issue,' Grace continued, ‘was more to do with the colour of the foods. For some reason he couldn't stand green anywhere on his plate. He'd eat the greens if they were served on a side plate, but not if they came out on the main one.'

‘He sounds just like me. I can't stand greens on my plate either but it doesn't stop Mum putting them there.'

‘And I'm glad she does, Jaxon,' Richard said, ‘green foods are nature's special little powerhouses.'

‘Reckon they're Devil boogers,' Jaxon said.

Tom, quick to add visuals, picked up a pea from his plate and placed it inside his left nostril. ‘Beware the Devil booger,' he growled.

‘Tom – you are such a pig.' Meg scowled at her brother.

Tom closed his right nostril off with a finger and snorted the pea in his left back onto his plate.

Peter's laugh was loud, hearty.

‘Well, for this man, peas were a no-no, as were broccoli, cabbage, beans.'

Jaxon's head looked set to nod off his shoulders.

‘Well, one day cook had made parsley dumplings on top of a braised steak dish.'

‘Braised because they were cheap cuts.' Richard nodded knowingly round the table.

‘The trouble was you couldn't really see there was parsley in them until they were cut open. Well, when he did.
Nur-rse!
he bellowed, fit to wake the dead.
Let me remind you of the rules
.'

‘Must have been a headmaster,' Tom said, with some authority.

‘He banged his knife on his plate,' Grace rapped hers for effect, ‘until I thought it was going to break. All the other residents were watching by this stage, mouths open in a great show of mashed food. No greens on the Governor's plate, he yelled, and turned the whole lot upside down on the table and stormed out with as much dramatic effect as a walking frame permits.'

Jaxon nudged Tom. ‘I'm gonna try that.'

‘What about green jelly, Grandma, did he eat that?'

Grace laughed. ‘You know, Meg, I think he did.'

‘So it was a control thing,' Susan said.

‘Psychotropic drugs are my guess.'

‘Or maybe he was just plain angry,' Kath offered, ‘about where he'd ended up.'

‘Nah – just another old kook if you ask me, like most of them in that place.'

‘That's not fair, Peter. A lot of them weren't kooks.' Many had been forced into Moreville by circumstances other than broken minds.

‘Not as unfair as you having to work at a place like that aged fifty-something.' Peter reached for the gravy boat and poured more over his meat. He wiped the spout clean with his finger then licked it.

‘Only fifty. And besides, I didn't have a choice.'

‘I wish I'd been in a position to help you out,' Peter said.

‘It wasn't your job to help me. It was mine. And it's something I wish I'd done sooner.'

The prospect of losing your home is a powerful motivator, Grace had learnt.

Peter took up his wine glass, sat back in his chair and looked at Grace. ‘But it was a miserable place to work. The few times I went there it smelt so bad. People called out all the time. Strapped in chairs. Made me think of POWs.'

‘I admit it was no five-star resort.'

But neither was ageing a five-star experience. Some days when Grace entered the facility, she felt as though a crystal ball was pressed up close to her face, demanding she look into it, closely. The future could be a painful place to spend too much time.

‘He should have provided for you better. It was his job.'

Peter's comment surprised Grace. It suggested a rub she didn't know existed.

‘He probably thought he'd be around long enough to do just that.' Susan rounded on her brother. ‘Dad didn't have the benefit of the big income you have now. Money to throw here and there on trinkets and cars.' Susan flipped her hand in the air as though tossing gold coins.

At least Peter had something to show for his spending, Grace supposed. Des had thrown his money away on sure bets and hot tips. But Grace decided to be kind.

‘Maybe you're right, Susan. Maybe that had been his hope.'

Peter shrugged, unsure or unprepared to commit either way. But his face looked troubled as he brooded over the possibilities.

‘And they weren't all like the man who had a thing about greens. I met lots of nice people too – ones who really appreciated what I did for them. Some even became friends, so it wasn't all bad. In fact, Peter, a lot of it wasn't bad at all.'

Peter looked at Grace over his glass, still not convinced.

‘Did you meet any boyfriends, Grandma?'

‘I made lots of friends, Tom, some of them boys.'

‘Ooh, Grand-ma's got-a boy-friend,' Meg sing- songed.

‘That'll be enough, you two!'

There was another rub. This one Grace knew about.

‘Never would've said anything like that when I was a kid.' Peter brought his glass to his mouth. ‘Never would've had cause,' he mumbled into it.

Grace had never expected to find a lover either, long after she was forced to find the job. Not that she'd ever described Jack using such a word. She considered it a term best left for young girls. She'd declared to Ada and Kath, ‘I have a new companion.'

Kath, sharp when it came to matters of the heart, and loins, said, ‘Companion, eh? Does that mean you haven't slept with him yet, or that you have and he was crap so you plan on sticking with just going to the movies together?'

Grace blushed like a girl, which she supposed answered the first part of Kath's question. ‘I feel stupid calling him my lover. I'm too old,' she said.

‘But not too old for the sex?' Kath's laugh was rich, dirty.

‘Well, you're looking better for it.' Ada had nodded approval. ‘It was getting so I could barely see you side on. You're looking womanly again.'

And she felt it. She had thought she'd seen the last of that sexy woman, even before Des had died; the one who'd once kissed her way round a man's body. Neither Grace nor Des had ventured a hand across the chasm that existed in their shared bed for several years. She'd wake in the night sometimes with an ache, but knew Des wasn't the man she wanted to soothe it. She'd roll away from him and pretend desire no longer existed. It was good to roll into a man again.

They'd met over a broken backrest on a bed. It was a pain of a thing, as Grace remembered it. She'd prop a patient up to feed them, or give them a view other than upwards, and without warning it would snap down flat again, giving the patient a terrible jolt.

‘It's the sixth time it's been fixed,' she said to Jack, when he arrived on the ward to repair it. ‘What have I got to do to get the job done properly?'

‘Wish I'd been employed here sooner then you could've got me to come and fix it the first time,' he said.

‘So you're the man to call?'

‘I am now,' he said, and gave her a wink.

He reminded her of Pa, with his timber carry box of meticulously maintained tools. He set the box down carefully on the speckled grey linoleum and lowered himself onto one knee. One tattooed forearm on the mattress held him steady as he poked his head under the bed to look at the mechanism.

‘It's got the same complaint I've got,' he said, bringing his head out again.

Grace looked askance.

‘Dinosauritis.'

It took her a moment to get it, but when she did, she laughed. ‘That's a common complaint around here,' she said, ‘and not easily treated.'

‘Luckily the bed's not terminal with it.' Jack took a number of tools from his box and put them to work on his patient.

And he was right – he should have been employed by Moreville sooner. Not only did the bed never play up again, but she could have met him when she was younger.

He gave her his direct number to the nursing home's workshop after that. Hate to see a woman disappointed, he said. She was only a year off retiring, so she didn't get to use it much. But eventually she allowed him to fix things in her home.