The Storyteller's Daughter (15 page)

The potato whispers something to me but I can't understand him. Before I can ask him to repeat himself, he pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and blows his nose loudly.

Then there is a mass movement towards the front of the church. The coffin lid is open and everyone wants to pay their last respects.

‘I should be first,' I say out loud, but nobody listens.

I try and work my way towards the front, becoming increasingly desperate to have a glimpse inside the coffin, to lay down the flowers that I now seem to be carrying, but suddenly I am engulfed by a wave of vegetables. They are all clamouring to reach the front, shoving me out of the way. A turnip elbows me in the ribs, and a stick of celery wearing high heels steps on my foot. Neither of them even bothers to apologise. I am almost crushed between an inconsolable cauliflower and a sobbing cucumber, before being tossed around amongst a group of hysterical mushrooms. Suddenly the noise is unbearable. There are hundreds of them, all wailing and crying, pulling at each other's stems in an attempt to reach the coffin while I seem to be getting pushed further and further back.

‘I should be first!' I cry.

Suddenly my feet slip from under me and find myself lying on the cold, hard church floor surrounded by pulp. I look up and see that the vegetables are going soft, turning to mush, their squishy insides leaking out from their split skins, mixing with their tears and running through the metal grates in the aisle.

I can only watch in horror as they wail and lament, gradually turning to soup.

“Cut the celery into slices,” orders my mother, handing me a knife.

I examine the celery stick closely and then viciously chop it in half, the knife slamming against the chopping board.

“That's for treading on my foot,” I snarl.

“Sorry, darling?”

“Nothing,” I mutter, “just a strange dream I had last night.”

“And when you've done that, you can dice the lamb.”

She slides a dish along the worktop to me, a cold, red, bloody shoulder of lamb inside it. I turn away and cover my mouth, almost retching.

“You know I can't stand raw meat,” I tell her. “I'm not touching it.”

“Don't be such a baby! How are you ever going to cook meat if you can't even touch it? It's no different to when it's cooked. It's the same meat.”

“It's the smell, you know that. It makes me nauseous.”

I've never told my mother about my nightmares and how they smell of raw meat. She would only worry.

My mother rolls her eyes impatiently and lifts the lamb out of the dish to dice it herself.

“When you've chopped the celery,” she continues, “add it to the pan with the potato and mushrooms, then you pour on the stock. You bring that to the boil, add the bouquet-garnis and some seasoning… Meg, are you listening to me?”

I rub my eyes sleepily. We have been at this for four hours now. Under my mother's watchful eye and clear instruction I have made spinach and nutmeg soup, chocolate and blueberry flapjacks, gruyère cheese straws and now we are on to lamb stew. She apparently decided, during her short period of bed rest, that the time has come for me to learn her recipes, and she's on a military-style mission to teach me.

“I could put off teaching you for another year, and then another year, but what's the point?” she said yesterday, “I don't want to wait until I'm an old lady to teach you.”

I came down this morning to find the work surfaces packed with ingredients, and a schedule of what we will be cooking over the coming week stuck to the refrigerator. She has literally crammed the next seven days full of cookery lessons. I'm not sure I understand the schedule correctly, but she doesn't seem to have left us any time to eat or sleep.

“I'm really tired, can we have a rest?”

“We can rest once we've made the maple syrup and pecan muffins.”

“But I don't need to know all this stuff,” I say wearily.

“Cookery is not a matter of need, Meg, it's a matter of desire, of passion. You don't just cook because you have to, you cook for the pure joy of it. Now, have you sliced the potatoes?”

“But maybe we could just cook one thing a day.”

“That's not going to teach you anything. There are so many lovely recipes I want you to learn. We have so many to cover.”

“Couldn't you just write them down?”

“That's not the same! I need to show you personally. You need to know how to make the perfect passion fruit cheesecake and the sweetest grape and white wine jelly. It's all in the mixing, it's all in the blending. How can I write that down? I can't. I need to pass it on properly. I need to show you myself!”

My mother is scaring me. She seems frantic, crazed, grabbing the celery and the knife from me and chopping at a hundred miles an hour, sending pieces of celery flying through the air and scattering across the work top.

“You need to listen to me, Meg. You need to watch and learn.”

“But why do I?”

“Because you need to, that's why! You need to know how to do these things. You need to know all the things I have learnt. You need to remember!”

She bangs the knife down on the chopping board, frustrated, suddenly looking close to tears.

“Remember what?” I ask.

She is breathing fast, her face flushed and full of distress. She stares at the tiny pieces of celery scattered across the chopping board as if she is trying to decipher some sort of pattern.

I gently touch her shoulder. “I will remember,” I say softly.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, the tension slowly leaving her body. Then she turns to me, searching my face as if she doesn't understand what I have just said, as if she can't remember what just happened.

I carefully pick up the knife. “Tell me what to do next.”

If I could capture time I would put it in a bottle, and I would keep this Summer trapped forever inside. The flavour of our cookery lessons, the colour of the roses that bloom around our front door, the breeze that blows gently through the open kitchen window, the scent of the Columbian coffee my mother drinks in the mornings… I would keep it always bottled inside a glass prison, mine to keep for the rest of my life. Every now and then I would carefully lift the cork, just enough to hear my mother's laugher as she listens to Jonathan Ross on the radio, or breathe in the heady scent of her perfume, or taste the strawberries that we pick from the garden and eat with French toast on the sun drenched patio in the mornings. But time is not a willing captive. The days pass too soon, slipping through my fingers like sand. I grab for a moment, only to find it is no longer there. I take a photo with my mind, only to find it is already fading. I try to slow the hands of time by doing less during the day, insisting that my mother and I only bake for two hours at the most. The rest of the time I make sure we sit in the garden, read, talk, eat, anything that might eke out the hours. My mother snoozes on her sun lounger, listens to the radio, reads a novel, pots plants, picks berries and flicks through recipes. I try to keep as still as possible, knowing that the moment my attention is diverted another hour will pass me by.

It's no good though. The sun continues to rise and set, the world continues turning, and in this battle against Old Father Time I know I am destined to lose.

One day, out of the blue, my mother asks me, “When are you going back to university, Darling? Surely you're missing too many lectures.”

We are munching on our lunch of brie and grape baguette, sitting in front of the television watching Nigella prepare a three-course dinner party for thirty guests. Apparently it can be done in twenty minutes with no more than a packet of frozen prawns, some flat-leaf parsley and a seductive pout.

“I'm not going back,” I say, as casually as possible, despairing that she should even ask me such a question.

My mother looks genuinely shocked.

“Not going back? Why ever not?”

For a moment it goes though my mind that I could lie to her. I could tell her I'm not enjoying the course, that the university burned down, that I've decided to quit scientific research and join the circus. It would be easier for both of us, but it wouldn't be right. Carefully, I put my plate down on the coffee table.

“Because you're sick, mother, and I'm staying here to look after you,” I tell her, calmly.

“Oh, don't be silly, I'm fine!”

I dig my fingernails into my thigh.

“No,” I state clearly, as if talking to a child, “you're not fine. You're very unwell.”

“I've just been a little under the weather! You
must
go back to university. You've worked so hard. I won't hear – ”

“I'm staying here!” I snap, losing my patience.

“Meggie,” she laughs, “I really don't think that's necessary.”

“Mother, look at yourself!” I cry, unable to hold back my emotion. “You're sick! How in God's name can you go on pretending like this? Like nothing's wrong? How do you do this? How do you make up these incredible lies and convince yourself they're the truth?”

She frowns and shakes her head slowly. “Lies? I have no idea… ”

“You're always lying! You never tell me the truth about anything! You've been doing it since I was tiny, telling me all these ridiculous stories. How my first tooth was so sharp you used me as a can opener. How I drank so much milk you bought a cow and kept it by my cot. We lived in a flat, Mother! As if the council would have allowed us a cow! You turned my whole infancy into a lie just like you're turning your illness into a lie!”

My mother's cheeks have turned pink and her eyes are wide, full of hurt. She looks so fragile and childlike curled up on the big red sofa that I immediately regret my outburst, but I just can't handle this anymore. I just can't.

“I… I don't know what to say,” she says meekly.

“The truth,” I plead, “just say the truth.”

She runs her fingers through her brittle hair and looks contemplative. I swallow the lump in my throat and sit on my hands, afraid that I will either burst into tears or throttle her.

“You're right,” she says, sadly. “I haven't been very honest with you.”

When she draws her hand away six or seven dull auburn hairs are caught between her fingers. She examines them closely.

“There was no cow,” she sighs. “Keeping a cow next to your cot would have been ludicrous. I don't know why I told you that. I suppose I thought it sounded more interesting than the truth.”

I shift to the edge of the sofa, leaning closer, longing to hear her tell me something, anything about my infancy that's real.

“You were lactose intolerant, so drinking cow's milk was never an option,” she explains.

I nod encouragingly, wondering if finally, after all this time, her lies are about to give way to the truth.

“So I bought a goat and kept her next to your cot. You were just so thirsty all the time that I couldn't keep up. You would guzzle goats' milk like there was no tomorrow, and it seemed the perfect solution until you began bleating and growing tiny horns out of your head… ”

I stand up, walk out and slam the door behind me.

Upstairs in my room I take the flier out from where I have hidden it between two books on the shelf. I am so angry right now that my hands are trembling, but I'm not sure whether I'm more angry at my mother or myself. I'm meant to be sensible and rational and pragmatic, so why do I keep kidding myself that my mother is ever going to tell me the truth?

15 Gray's Inn Road. I shouldn't have to rely on a dubious clue to find out about my own life! I shouldn't have to go off behind my mother's back in search of an address to which my mother may, or may not, have had some vague connection! But then again, I shouldn't have to lead the farcical life that I do. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, refusing to let go of the dream that one day my mother will give up her charade and finally be honest. Maybe a stubborn baby grows into a stubborn adult. But was I a stubborn baby? Who knows. And that's just the point.

I've tried to make her talk to me. I have tried and tried and tried. And I'm sick of trying.

I pull my London A-Z down from the shelf.

Mark was right.

I'm running out of time.

Chapter 9

‘London stinks.'

Under the bus shelter, perched on cold plastic seats, we watched the fine drizzle coming down against the dirty grey buildings and waited for the number 192.

‘Does it, Sweetheart?' asked my mother distractedly, rummaging in her purse, checking that we had enough coins to actually get us wherever it was we were going. As far as I knew she hadn't brought any Jamaica cake with her this time, which meant she wouldn't be able to bribe the bus driver into letting us stay on board for an extra couple of stops. Had we been going in the opposite direction then two pieces of coconut ice would have sufficed, but for the driver of the 192 it was Jamaica cake or walk the final mile. He drove a hard bargain.

‘All you can smell when you live in London are cars and buses.'

Right on cue an old BMW with blacked out windows drove past, its stereo booming, spraying muddy puddle water at our feet, and coughing a cloud of black smoke from its exhaust pipe. The smell of petrol and oil made my stomach queasy.

‘But that's not all London smells of, is it Darling?'

My mother clipped her purse shut, looking disappointed. It looked like we would be walking that final mile after all.

‘There are lots of other wonderful smells. Once you get past the stench of the traffic. Aren't there?'

She turned to me and I shrugged. I was into shrugging lately. Shrugging and looking miserable. It seems to be what all the kids were doing nowadays.

‘Close your eyes,' my mother said.

‘
Nooo
,' I whined. My mother was always telling me to close my eyes for one reason or another. To imagine this. To visualise that. To remember the other.