Anita and Me. Meera Syal

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СКАЧАТЬ papa is a liar also? Is that it?’

      I pretended to take a great interest in a mossy crack in the yard concrete, running my sandal along it, deliberately scuffing the leather. I knew how I looked, pouting, defiant in the face of defeat, sad and silly, but I could not apologise. I have still never been able to say sorry without wanting to swallow the words as they sit on my tongue.

      Mama knelt down on the hard floor and cupped my face in her hands, forcing me to look into her eyes. Those eyes, those endless mud brown pools of sticky, bottomless love. I shook with how powerful I suddenly felt; I knew that with a few simple words I could wipe away every trace of guilt and concern ebbing across her face, that if I could admit what I had done, I could banish my parents’ looming unspoken fear that their only child was turning out to be a social deviant. ‘I did not lie,’ I said evenly, embracing my newly-born status as a deeply disturbed fantasist with a frisson that felt like pride.

      After my mother had retreated back into the kitchen, Mrs Worrall came out and stood in her doorway, wiping her large floury hands on her front, watching me kick mossy scabs across the yard. ‘Come and give us a hand, Meena,’ she said finally. I hesitated at the back door; I’d seen glimpses of her kitchen practically every day, I knew the cupboards on the wall were faded yellow, the lino was blue with black squares on it and the sink was under the window, like in our house. But I’d never actually been inside, and as I stepped in, I had a weird feeling that I was entering Dr Who’s Tardis. It was much bigger than I had imagined, or it seemed so because there was none of the clutter that took up every available inch of space in our kitchen.

      My mother would right now be standing in a haze of spicy steam, crowded by huge bubbling saucepans where onions and tomatoes simmered and spat, molehills of chopped vegetables and fresh herbs jostling for space with bitter, bright heaps of turmeric, masala, cumin and coarse black pepper whilst a softly breathing mound of dough would be waiting in a china bowl, ready to be divided and flattened into round, grainy chapatti. And she, sweaty and absorbed, would move from one chaotic work surface to another, preparing the fresh, home-made meal that my father expected, needed like air, after a day at the office about which he never talked.

      From the moment mama stepped in from her teaching job, swapping saris for M&S separates, she was in that kitchen; it would never occur to her, at least not for many years, to suggest instant or take-away food which would give her a precious few hours to sit, think, smell the roses—that would be tantamount to spouse abuse. This food was not just something to fill a hole, it was soul food, it was the food their far-away mothers made and came seasoned with memory and longing, this was the nearest they would get for many years, to home.

      So far, I had resisted all my mother’s attempts to teach me the rudiments of Indian cuisine; she’d often pull me in from the yard and ask me to stand with her while she prepared a simple sabzi or rolled out a chapatti before making it dance and blow out over a naked gas flame. ‘Just watch, it is so easy, beti,’ she’d say encouragingly. I did not see what was easy about peeling, grinding, kneading and burning your fingers in this culinary Turkish bath, only to present your masterpiece and have my father wolf it down in ten minutes flat in front of the nine o’clock news whilst sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by spread sheets from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.

      Once, she made the fatal mistake of saying, ‘You are going to have to learn to cook if you want to get married, aren’t you?’

      I reeled back, horrified, and vowed if I ended up with someone who made me go through all that, I would poison the bastard immediately. My mother must have cottoned on; she would not mention marriage again for another fifteen years.

      ‘Shut the door then,’ said Mrs Worrall, who swayed over to the only bit of work surface that was occupied, where a lump of pastry dough sat in a small well of white flour. Otherwise, all was bare and neat, no visible evidence of food activity here save a half-packet of lemon puffs sitting on the window sill.

      ‘What you making?’ I asked, peering under her massive arm.

      ‘Jam tarts. Mr Worrall loves a good tart. Mind out.’

      She bent down with difficulty and opened the oven door, a blast of warm air hit my legs and I jumped back.

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘What yow on about? It’s the oven.’

      I’d never seen my mother use our oven, I thought it was a storage space for pans and her griddle on which she made chapatti. Punjabis and baking don’t go together, I’ve since discovered. It’s too easy, I suppose, not enough angst and sweat in putting a cake in the oven and taking it out half an hour later.

      ‘Yow ever made pastry?’ I shook my head. I’d always wondered what the crispy stuff on the bottom of jam tarts was, and here was Mrs Worrall making it in her own home. I was well impressed. ‘Hee-y’aar,’ said Mrs Worrall, putting a small bowl in front of me in which she poured a little flour and placed a knob of lemony butter. ‘Always keep your fingers cold. That’s the secret. Now rub your fingers together…slowly. You wanna end up with breadcrumbs …’ I squeezed the butter, feeling it squash then break against my fingers, and started to press and pummel it into the flour like I’d seen mama do with the chapatti dough.

      ‘No! Too hard! It’ll stick! Gently, dead gentle …’ I slowed down, tried to concentrate on feeling each grain of flour, made my fingers move like clouds, and saw a tiny pile of breadcrumbs begin forming at the bottom of the bowl.

      ‘I’m doing it! Look! Pastry!’

      Mrs Worrall grunted. ‘Not yet, it ain’t …’

      She left me to it whilst she quickly rolled out the large lump of pastry into an oval and pressed a cutter over its surface, slipping the tart cases into a large tin tray. Her fingers moved swiftly and lightly, as if they did not belong to those flapping meaty arms. She then took my bowl off me and stared at the contents critically. ‘Not bad. Now binding. Use warm water, not cold. But the fork has to be like ice, see …’

      She poured in a little liquid from a steel, flame-blackened kettle and handed me a fork from a pan of cold water in the sink. I pressed the crumbs together, watching them swell and cling to each other, until they gradually became a doughy mass.

      ‘It’s like magic, innit?’

      ‘No. Your mum does that,’ she said. ‘This is your one. Alright?’

      I nodded, and she quickly rolled out my dough, which I noticed stuck to the rolling pin much more than hers, cut out a small shape and placed it onto the tray before shoving the whole thing in the oven.

      As Mrs Worrall began washing her hands, a low uneven moaning drifted in from the room at the other side of the closed kitchen door. It sounded like an animal, wounded, like the time a juggernaut lorry had swerved right across the crossroads outside our house, and missing our gate by inches, had ploughed instead into the fields opposite, mortally wounding a chestnut bay called Misty. One of my earliest memories is of feeding old bits of chapatti to Misty, I must have been tiny as papa had to hold me up whilst I held out my hand, palm flat as he instructed me, and felt Misty’s soft whiskery muzzle lightly nibble and suck the bits off my hand. ‘Now she’s a real Punjabi horse, eh?’ nodded papa with satisfaction, patting her lightly on the neck before letting me down. He talked to her softly, in Punjabi, I presume, though I could not tell what exactly he was saying, and he smiled when her ears pricked up and she snorted, rolling her eyes, as if she now understood every word.

      And the next time I saw her was from my bedroom window, when she was lying on her side in the grass as Mr Ormerod and my papa СКАЧАТЬ