Toast (11 page)

On Saturdays Dad used to buy a crab and we would spend much of the afternoon taking it to pieces. We would spread yesterday's newspaper out on the table and then twist off the claws and legs. He would crack open the fat orange and black claws with his hammer and leave me to wheedle the flesh from the spindly legs. He always got more out than I did, and often in one fat piece. At about four in the afternoon, he would make crab-and-watercress sandwiches for us all, carefully keeping the white and brown crabmeat separate with the sprigs of watercress in between. It took about two hours to prepare the crab, twenty minutes to clean up the kitchen and retrieve all the bits of shrapnel that had shot all over the room, and barely five minutes to wolf the sandwiches.

After Mum died we never had crab again, nor any of Dad's favourite things like tripe and onions or liver and bacon or cauliflower cheese. He never cooked himself a kipper or made roast pork with crackling. I don't think he even cooked a steak, let alone had it with mushroom ketchup and crinkle-cut chips, which he loved. It was as if he couldn't bear to think about that stuff any more.

A few things didn't change. On Saturday mornings he would still peel four big mushrooms and cut off the stalks with his penknife, then put them in a transparent Pyrex dish with some butter, salt and a few shakes of mushroom
ketchup. Covered with a lid they would cook slowly in the slow oven of the Aga till they were as soft as a bit of braised steak. He would then lift them on to a couple of rounds of hot toast and dribble the juices from the dish over the top.

Sitting alone at the vast empty kitchen table, tucking into his mushrooms on toast, he seemed so much smaller now – like he was wearing a coat that was too big for him.

I ate almost nothing at school. For the first six months after Mum died I lived on cheese-and-onion crisps and chocolate marshmallow ‘teacakes' – the ones with the red-and-silver foil – bought with my dinner money. The nearest thing I had to a meal was the cheese on toast or spaghetti hoops Dad made when he came home in the evening. Heaven knows what Dad ate.

We have started having chicken pies for tea. Eating a slice of pie is like being in love. Nothing Dad makes for tea – cheese on toast, spaghetti hoops, baked potatoes – is quite so comforting as having my own little pie. The pastry is soft and crumbling, the filling rich with dark brown gravy. The whole thing tender as a bruise. Sometimes we have steak and kidney instead, with frozen peas on the side and a knob of butter. Dad doesn't make the pies of course, they are Birds Eye, but that doesn't stop them being my favourite tea.

Everyone seems to be talking about another pie, a bigger
one, that comes in a tin and you cook it with its lid on. Dad seems reluctant to buy one, even though we have seen it advertised on the TV. He says he doesn't think I'll like it. A pie in a tin seems such a neat idea but I can tell he's not keen. I think he's scared it won't work out, like when he tried to make flapjacks and we couldn't get them out of the tin or when he made Heinz chocolate sponge pudding and it boiled dry.

‘I think we've done something wrong,' mutters Dad, looking down at the deflated pie with its sodden, slimy pastry. ‘Don't eat it if you don't want to.'

I have to eat it. I've been nagging for it for weeks. The filling smells like the food we put out for the dog, though in all fairness it tastes a whole lot better. The pastry is like a soggy dishcloth and smells like one too. I don't like to say that on TV the pastry is all puffed and crisp. I don't know what he's done wrong this time.

I may have rolled the pastry for a mince pie or fingered the butter, flour and sugar crust for a crumble, but at nine years old I had yet to cook an entire meal. My cooking had been confined to things I could do unsupervised, safe things. So protective had my mother been of her son's precious fingers I had yet to turn an oven on or light the gas.

Next to the kitchen was a small scullery, a back-up
kitchen with a sink, a low-fangled cream Belling cooker and grill, a fridge whose door squeaked. It wasn't a room you could feel at home in, no heating and no room to move, but its existence kept the main kitchen free from potato peelings, the stink of grilled kippers on a Sunday morning and the dripping chaos of Mother's washing up. I could reach the controls of the oven, but lighting the grill meant standing on a stool or the creaking chrome-and-blue steps with their wonky leg.

Since my mother had gone, my father's evening meals had been an almost steady stream of toasted cheese and Cadbury's MiniRolls. He had his pipe, of course, but I wasn't sure if that constituted a meal or not. He would come in, weary and smelling of oil, and then fiddle around making my tea. Every meal was seasoned with guilt. His. Mine. ‘You might at least do the plates.' He said it just once. From then on I washed up after every meal, standing on a stool to reach into the deep steel sink.

I was never sure if he expected me to make my own tea as well. There was nothing said. Just his disappointment hanging in the air like a deflated Yorkshire pudding. His favourite meal – tripe and onions – was a recipe known only to him. His way with the venous and quivering sheets of blubber was a mystery I had no intention of unravelling. Smoked haddock, his runner-up, held no such trepidation. It looked as easy as making a cup of tea.

If a boy saves his pocket money up for three days he can buy enough smoked haddock to feed a tired and hungry
man. My savings weren't quite enough, I was a few pennies short, but the man in MacFisheries gave it to me anyway. ‘It goes under the grill, doesn't it?' He came round to the front of the counter and put his arm around my shoulders. He told me to warm the grill first, to rub some butter on the fish and cook it for about ten minutes. Then he warned me not to get fancy with it. He led me out of the shop, still with his arm around me. ‘He'll enjoy that, your dad.'

The Belling was one of those where you had to push in the knob as you put the flame to the gas. Easy when you aren't standing on the kitchen steps. Every click and spark makes your heart jump. You catch your breath and wait for the thing to go up in your face.

A fillet of smoked haddock takes about five minutes to cook under a domestic grill. You rub it with butter, shake over some black pepper, but no salt, and let the flames do the rest.

The haddock lies saffron yellow under the grill. The butter glistens on the fat flakes of fish. All is plump, sweet and juicy. It never looked like this when Mum cooked it.

Where is he? He is always here by six o'clock. It's now ten past. I cut two slices of bread and butter them. I have never known him eat more. Twenty past, half past. Where is he? The haddock is starting to curl up at the edges. The butter has set to a grainy slime, the fish is now dull with a milky residue that has trickled down and into the grill pan.

The fish is turning the colour of a pair of old stockings, the edges have buckled like a dead frog in the sun. My father's beloved smoked haddock is stone cold.

I hear the purr of my father's new Humber in the driveway. His fish looks more like roadkill than supper. Perhaps I should just chuck it in the bin so he won't know. Then he wouldn't feel bad about being late. But the pong hanging in the kitchen will give me away. Damn Auntie Fanny, if she hadn't just died I could blame her.

My father comes in, his face a bit red, his hair newly cut. Aftershave. His piece of fish is now on the table, sandwiched between two glass plates. ‘Where have you been? It's ruined.'

‘No it's not, it's just how I like it.'

As he sits down and starts to eat I leave the room. It was supposed to be such a treat. Why be late tonight of all nights? He hasn't had smoked haddock for tea since Mummy died. Suddenly, the tears come from nowhere, they just well up. A great hot wave. Later, I walk into the kitchen to see if he has finished. He is sitting with his head in his hands. He's crying.

Today is my tenth birthday and no one has even mentioned a party yet. I guess they must be keeping it as
a surprise. Last year's was one of the best days of my life. Mum said she couldn't cope with so many people any more so we held it at a big house on Coleway Road called the Pines. All the crocuses were out in the garden and because it was so close to Easter everyone gave me chocolate Easter eggs. I ended up with about thirty eggs, then Mum told me off because when the last person arrived I said ‘Oh no, not another egg', and he looked really disappointed. She said something about me being ungrateful.

The Pines had someone there to organise the party. There was lots of running around and screaming. Much more than we had been allowed to do at other kids' parties. The best bit was the birthday cake, even though Mum didn't make it herself. She said it was too much for her. It was a great cake covered in Smarties and candles. We all took slices of it home, wrapped in paper serviettes, though mine stuck to the paper and all the colour came out of the Smarties. I felt bad afterwards because Paul Griffith's dad gave some of the boys a lift home and David Brooks was sick in the back of his car. I can't remember what happened to all the chocolate eggs.

I can't help feeling I should be doing more to help my dad, but I don't really know what. I have offered to cook my own tea but he says he doesn't want me messing with the Aga too much. He told me about an accident that happened a while ago when one of the Aga hotplate covers fell down
and trapped the cleaner's hand on the hob. I have told him I will be very, very careful but he says that I shouldn't mess with it.

He bought sausages for the first time the other day but they were disgusting, like little pink rodents. They were the pinkest things I have ever seen. Mum used to buy big fat bangers with lots of black and green flecks in them. The ones Dad bought were on a polystyrene tray and didn't have any skin. He said he won't do them again. My dad hates shopping for food.

He leaves for work in the morning before I get up. I get washed and changed and walk to school with Warrel, who has been very sweet and kind to me since Mum died. I think his mum must have told him to be nice to me. Adults talk to you differently when your mum has died. A bit like you are stupid or made of glass. When your mum dies you remember everything people say. You put each word under a magnifying glass. It's like they are talking in capital letters. When your mum dies you notice little things more, like your senses are all cranked up a notch.

Apparently, I am not having a party this year. Dad says only girls have parties when they are ten.

My bedroom was small, barely wide enough for the bed, single wardrobe and chest of drawers, but at least I didn't
have to share, like Adrian and John. My bed is the thing I remember most clearly about the house, the feathery softness of the pillows, the thick stitching on the Witney blankets, the missing tufts on the yellow candlewick bedspread. Yet I never felt truly safe there, the way I should have.

Going to bed had always been fraught. I wanted to stay up a bit later, a request always refused, kindly but emphatically by Mum; impatiently, and with eyes ablaze, by my father. When I was in trouble over something, usually for being cheeky or thoughtless, my father would send me to bed with the stern warning: ‘I'll be up later to give you a damn good hiding.' I would snuggle down under the sheets, praying he would forget, twitching at every creak of the wooden floorboards in the hall, screwing up my eyes and burying my face at the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. I would lie there scrunched up in a ball under the sheets for an hour or more till I fell asleep. He would (almost) always forget.

After Mum died, going to bed was laced with a different horror. Night after night Dad would be out at one of his Masonic lodge meetings or working late at the factory. Sometimes I didn't even know where he was. With Adrian now at college and John living in London, I had to put myself to bed. Every floorboard at York House creaked; even with the lights on, the hall and staircase had a slightly malevolent air, the oak panelling making the house seem older and more sinister than it was. The fact that Auntie
Fanny had died in the bedroom next to mine less than six months before didn't exactly help. You wouldn't think it was possible to miss an old woman who couldn't hear a word you said and smelled of pee.

I would watch television till nine o'clock, then go and phone my Aunt Elvie. I would ask her, beg her, to hold on while I went upstairs and got ready for bed, then I would come running down and say goodnight. Having her listen while I got into my pyjamas made me feel safer. I could be back upstairs and snuggled into a ball under the sheets within seconds of her putting down the phone.

I never told my father I was scared to be alone at night. I don't know why. I just didn't.

Once in a while Dad would return home earlier than usual, a cancelled meeting perhaps, and take me off to the sweet shop.

The shelves were stacked with jars with stoppers so wide the shopkeeper could hardly get her hand round to screw them off. There were barley sugars for the elderly, mint humbugs for the patient and toffee eclairs for anyone without false teeth. My father bought buttered Brazils, their outsides gritty with sugar that would scratch on your teeth. Or pear drops that smelled of my mother's nail-varnish remover. I saw jelly babies coming over the counter, multicoloured
liquorice torpedos and Clarnico Mint Creams. I would rarely see any of them again.

‘What would you like? Go on, choose whatever you want.' I turned down everything except packets of Refreshers, Love Hearts and fairy drops. He always winced when I asked for fairy drops. ‘Are you sure you wouldn't rather have some Brazil nut toffees?' he said, trying desperately to make a man of me.

You are probably supposed to like fairy drops for the nubbly spheres of multicoloured sugar that crown the little buttons of chocolate; but I liked them for the same reason I liked Cadbury's Flakes or Munchies, because no matter how fresh they were, I always thought they tasted ever so slightly stale.