In the Kitchen (43 page)

'It's my grandson,' said Nana, twinkling. 'He's getting married to a lovely girl.'

'I know,' said Gabe, putting his hand over hers. 'But not for a while.'

Nana touched the fragile blue-grey curls at her temples. She sank back in her chair.

They stared at the television. An anti-war demonstration in London. BRING THE

TROOPS HOME NOW read one banner. UK OUT OF IRAQ said another.

'OUR BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS,' read Nana. 'These whatsits, Muslims, there's no understanding them, is there? I mean,' she said, her voice rising, 'we've took 'em in. We've give them a home.'

Gabriel looked at Ted. Still asleep.

Mug shots, terror plots, training camps, grainy videos.

Nana mopped her eye. 'What have we done to them? And we've to check under our beds every night. Not safe, none of us. Are we? Not safe in our own beds.'

The only thing Nana would find under her bed was a chamber pot. Maybe a Trebor mint. Our own worst enemies, Charlie had said. Worrying over nothing. That was what she meant. Something like that anyway.

The news review moved on to a celebrity package. WHAT'S HOT, WHAT'S NOT. WHO'S

WED, WHO'S FLED. WHO'S MINTED, WHO'S SKINTED. Every five seconds a spinning tabloid headline.

'I've got to nip out,' said Gabe. He needed a cigarette, needed to get his shopping done. 'Will you be OK?'

'Course I'll be OK,' said Nana. 'I'm not ga-ga you know. Now what's all this?

What they showing now? Why don't they just give over, these Muslims?

Protesting this and protesting that.'

'No, it's a parade, Nana. An Eid festival, earlier this year, right here in Blantwistle. I think they've gone over to the local stations.'

'Look how they've blocked the road,' said Nana. 'There'll be no traffic down there today. It's dreadful, in't it? It is.' Nana clacked disapprovingly on her sweet. 'I was saying to Gladys only today, I said, Gladys, how is it these Pakistans take over all them houses, buy up the whole bloomin' street, and you know, they've not a mortgage between them, they club together, that's what, though how they get the money I do not know. And Gladys, well, I've known her all me life, and she says to me, Phyllis ...' Nana's face trembled, her lips parted and closed. 'Phyllis ...' Perhaps she had remembered that Gladys was dead, that there was, in fact, nothing they could have said to each other today. 'Ooh,' she said, taking refuge in the television. 'Ooh, look at all them children. They've ever so many, haven't they?' Nana looked at Gabe, anxious to know that this time she was speaking sense.

Gabe hesitated. She peered up at him as if from beneath the edge of a cliff.

Would he stamp on her fingers or lend her a hand? 'Yes, Nana,' he said, 'that's right.'

Nana sighed. She was back on solid ground. 'No one can call me a racialist. I don't hold with any of that. But I tell you one thing I've noticed about the women. When they go shopping, know what they do, they squeeze all the fruit and all the vegetables. And then we've to buy what they've touched and left behind.'

The high street was strung with lights and garlanded with decorations. The wet pavements spooled colours into the drains. Pedestrians slapped this way and that under the influence of heavy bags or alcohol. A couple of squad cars stood by.

Our religious festival, thought Gabe.

'Merry Christmas, mate.' A man in a tracksuit and gold chain greeted Gabe. No reason, just friendly. You stopped expecting it when you'd been in London so long.

'Merry Christmas,' said Gabe. He smiled.

'Merry Christmas,' said the man to a woman almost entirely blotted out by a large black sheet, a black veil over her head.

The woman turned her face to the ground and quickened her step.

'And a happy New Year to you,' said the man, still amiable.

The woman didn't acknowledge him. She turned down a side street. Gabe paused to watch her beetle away, a black shell, a solid casing, broken only by the flick-flack of her heels.

Fuck you, he thought.

He didn't think that. No. He hadn't thought it, as such. He was thinking about the kind of reaction people might have. Like your foot flying up if the doctor hits a certain spot on your knee. A thought flying into your mind. Not his mind, but other people's. Well, it wasn't right, but you could understand sometimes.

The thing was, that woman – those women – they'd decided there was only one way to look at things. Black and white. This is who I am. This is what I am.

Easy. All your answers, ready made. Not like the rest of us. We have to make it up as we go along. Maybe Fairweather had that right.

Fuck you for having what I don't.

No Whitsun Walks any longer, no Mothers' Union parade. Kids in shined shoes and new clothes, it still happened, but only for Eid. Large families, clubbing together, kinship and community ... all the things that Nana missed most.

When Gabriel got back to Plodder Lane, Dad was in the kitchen making a shepherd's p
ie.
The potatoes were on to boil. Dad was emptying a packet of mince into a frying pan with some chopped onions. Gabe would have recommended softening the onions and browning the meat separately.

'What can I do?' he said.

'Wouldn't say no to a brew.'

Gabriel filled the kettle. On the windowsill was a reindeer he'd made at primary school out of a toilet roll, pipe cleaners, lolly sticks and cotton wool. He gave it to Dad as a Christmas present and Dad brought it out every year.

Ted scattered some gravy granules into the pan and stirred the mixture vigorously. 'Stick a bit of hot water in here.'

Gabe poured some from the kettle.

'Nana likes it with a touch of ketchup cooked in.' Ted squeezed out a dollop, closed the lid, flicked it up again and added a dollop more. 'Look about right?' he said.

'Ah,' said Gabriel. 'About right, yes.'

'I've to break down these lumps,' said Ted. 'They clog her teeth.' He worked carefully, bending close to the stove.

This was what it was all about, thought Gabriel. All those cookery programmes and glossy magazines, the food porn. True, they'd never feature someone like Ted Lightfoot, cooking for someone like Nana, with ketchup and gravy granules.

But this was what it was about, not filling a hole in a stomach but filling a hole in a life.

'Dad, I'm sorry I haven't been around more.'

'We manage. We don't do so bad.'

'I don't mean just now. I mean ...'

'When yer mum were alive.'

Gabe scratched his head. 'Yes. No. All of it. Dad?'

Ted smiled. He wiped his hands on his butcher's apron. 'You got things to ask, son, I wouldn't put it off too long.'

'Do you ... I've got this memory ... Mum with the rag-and-bone man. He brought her home. I don't know. Do you remember? Do you know the time I mean?'

Ted reached in the cupboard. He was so thin he was painful to look at, sketched in a few brisk strokes. 'There it is,' he said. 'Flour. Spoonful for the thickening – Nana taught me how.'

Answer enough, thought Gabe. He said, 'When Mum was on the medication ...'

Should he say it? Where was the point in raking over old ground? 'She changed so much, it was like she lost her personality. Like she wasn't her any more.'

Ted took a fork and tested the potatoes. He drained them and the steam that rose from the colander for a moment obscured his face.

Gabe thought, no, he won't reply.

'I agree with you,' said Ted. 'In a way. Point is, she wanted it. She were tired. It were exhausting being her all the time.'

Ted clattered the pan into the sink. Gabe took over and did the mash. The rain tapped on the window. The lino squeaked under their feet.

It used to be Mum with Nana in the kitchen, the two of them cooking the tea.

They clacked away like a pair of knitting needles, never lost for something to say. There must be a trick to it, a knack, which Gabe and Ted hadn't stumbled on yet.

'I'll fix those tiles behind the taps tomorrow,' said Gabriel.

'Christmas Day tomorrow,' said Ted.

'Oh yes.'

Ted moved slowly, gathering crockery for the table, a head of broccoli from the fridge. His brown slacks looked so empty it was difficult to imagine a pair of legs inside. He was shorter than he used to be.

'I heard about Hortons,' said Gabriel. 'Closing down.'

'Aye,' said Ted. 'That's right.'

'That's a shame,' said Gabe. 'Last of the mills.'

'Aye. Last one.'

Gabe opened an overhead cupboard to find the cooking salt. The handle pulled loose in his hand.

'Dad?' he said. 'That's bad, isn't it? Hortons going down.'

'Can be done cheaper elsewhere, Gabriel, that's all there is to it. Economics, in't it, when all's said and done.'

'They were good jobs, though,' said Gabe. 'The area needs good jobs like that.'

'Noisy, dirty places, is mills,' said Ted, with his hands in the washingup bowl.

Why didn't he get his hands out of the soapsuds? Ted always ran his hands firmly over the nearest hard surface when he wanted to make a point.

'Steady employment though, wasn't it?' said Gabe. 'Not like this casual work Harley picks up.'

'It were on a cycle,' said Ted. 'Cotton industry ... seen that many booms and busts ... There was times ...' His voice trailed away.

The back of Gabe's throat was scratchy. He coughed but it didn't clear. 'I remember the works outings,' he said, 'when we went to the panto, all of that.

People doing stuff together, you know, something to be said for it.'

Ted dried his hands on his apron. The band of white hair around his bald head was longer and fluffier than Gabe had ever seen it, making it seem like even his skull had shrunk.

'Community,' said Ted, 'I suppose we had that. There were ...'

'Go on, Dad. Go on.'

'Always another side to everything, that's the truth.' Ted spoke quietly.

'Community's good for those what's on the inside, but if there's some inside there's others what's out. I'm thinking of yer mother. Thinking of my Sally Anne.'

Gabriel went to bed early. The curtain seemed to stir, but it was only the play of the moonlight behind the thin fabric. He lay on his back, hands under his head, feeling pleasantly drowsy. He wasn't doing too bad. He'd recommend a heart attack (perhaps not a real one) to anyone. It was galvanizing. He'd got a lot done in the last week. Here, with Dad and Nana, of course he was a little more lethargic. But what could he expect? As soon as he walked into the sitting room he was half asleep from the ticking of the carriage clock, a little faint at the smell of polish and sherry and mints. But he'd talked to Dad, that was the important thing. Had a couple of long talks. Dad wasn't his old self. He kept hesitating. Gabe wished he'd go back to being sure of everything, though he'd never liked him that way.

He switched the lamp off. He turned on his side and flipped the pillow over to lay his cheek against the cool. Michael Harrison. Now what did happen to him?

There was a kid you could point at, label, say he won't come to any good. But it was up to Michael in the end, wasn't it? Jenny said she'd ask around, someone would know. Tomorrow, he must remember: find out about Michael, and get the turkey in the oven by quarter past ten.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THEY'D ENDED UP STUFFED AS USUAL. NONE OF THEM COULD MOVE quite yet. Gabe sat with the others at the dining-room table feeling bloated and flushed. He was warm and weary and irritated and congenial and bemused, bobbing gently in the soup of family. There was plastic holly and plastic mistletoe on the sideboard, a blanket and tablecloth over the table to preserve the mahogany, a double string of Christmas cards along the back wall. 'Twas ever thus.

Nana had swapped her Harvey's amontillado for her regular Yuletide bottle of Advocaat, which she cradled in her lap as she slept. On the shelf of her mighty bosom there had gathered bits of roast potato, carrots, peas, parsnip and pudding, altogether nearly enough for another lunch. Opposite her, Ted wore a paper crown and nursed a can of Boddington's, which he said was all that he could face today. They'd filled his plate anyway and it still sat there showing off his skeletal frame. Next to Ted was Jenny, with her fat arms and violent hair. They looked like an illustration in a children's book, the pair of them, some fable or morality tale. Round from Jenny was Harley, no, Bailey. It was difficult to tell the two apart. They'd dyed their hair crow-black, wore long choppy fringes, pencil-tight jeans, studded belts, lip rings and eyeliner. They seemed to have checked tea towels tied round their necks. Both stroked alcopop bottles with one hand and texted under the table with the other. Perhaps they were texting each other; perhaps texting was their vestigial communication skill.

During lunch Gabriel had tried unsuccessfully to engage them in conversation, though his interest, he had to admit, was more anthropological than avuncular.

Bailey looked up now and – for a millisecond – made eye contact. She tugged her fringe over her face.

'I had a goth phase,' said Gabriel. 'When I was your age probably.'

Bailey twisted her narrow shoulders. 'I'd rather die,' she said, 'than be a goth. Seriously, I'd kill myself first.'

'Baaay-ley,' said Jenny.

Gabe smiled at Jenny to show she wasn't to bother. It hadn't been a bad lunch, he decided. The ingredients weren't of the best quality, the turkey unavoidably dry (it had been frozen), the vegetables overcooked (for Nana's teeth), the gravy oversalted (by Jenny), the roast potatoes a little greasy (Dad's contribution), but Gabe's chestnut stuffing had turned out a treat, and the bread sauce was perfect and all in all he'd enjoyed it, cooking for the Lightfoot clan.

Harley put his phone on the table. He said, 'She's only emo 'cos she's gone and copied us.'

'You?' said Bailey. 'You? You're not even emo, you're a poser.' She risked a direct glance at Gabe. 'He only does it for the clothes and that.'

'Baaay-ley,' said Jenny.

Ted stood up and shuffled out of the room.

'What?' said Bailey. 'It's true. I've wrote poetry and that since I was, like, twelve. I've always been true emo.' She hugged her matchstick arms across her chest. 'Emo's what's in your heart, not what's on your back.'