raised himself up to meet my eye. ‘I get you. But help – support – is always better. Right?’
I kissed him in place of a reply. Stevie had always been my responsibility. I was still the one who needed to make everything all right for him. Our generous, warm, bacon-fat days together were destined to be short. Moreover, Duchenne’s was carried in a female carrier but overwhelmingly it affected the male offspring. Passed on, from the mother to the son. I was responsible, in the eyes of those who judged such things. All my fault. I was his cherisher, I had to be, whatever might happen, whatever had happened.
‘He’s a good boy, my baby. You’ll like him.’
‘Of course,’ said Thomas. ‘He does sound wonderful. You’re … Come here.’
After that night, I slapped on nicotine patches and chewed punitive mints after meals. By our third Friday we were doing dinner at the proper-bonkers Lunar (my next test for him: they name tapas-sized Portuguese dishes after dwarf planets and the décor is holiday-misadventures-on-acid, but the guy can cook). He saw past all the crazy-name petiscos, straight to me. And me? I could barely see past the mental fug of non-smoking and the heat-haze from Pluto’s pataniscas de bacalhau, or think past our awed mouths, or get past this interior tightening, this fresh hot-blooded ache …
My phone rang during pudding.
I saw the caller’s name. It took everything not to turn it off altogether – my fingers strained but I simply passed the water jug. Had to let it ring: Stevie was with Ange and my mobile was our mum-hotline. The ringing stopped.
‘What’s wrong?’ Thomas reached for my restless hand.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Thought stupid PPI was dead already.’
I turned the ringtone down as low as it would go and raised a pastel de nata to his lips.
On our next date, I would take care of dinner.
The first time you cook for a man is important. It doesn’t just tell him about your tastes, it tells him what you think his tastes are. I had weighed and measured Thomas, more than he would ever know. And so I would cook for him, but not nursery food, no shepherd’s pie cuisine; I was nobody’s bloody nanny. It was summer, but I would not do him the usual platter of cracked shell and bivalve and sea juice. Despite the ordered hair, any fool could see that he was a man who might be persuaded to crunch, suck and snap a bone, when no one else was looking. Meat then, the best, rare sirloin. A bastardised tagliata. A well-hung porterhouse – charred, smeared in garlic, olive oil, lemon and Parmesan, on a bed of rosemary and rocket. Europe slain, seared and bloody on its greenery, there all for him on a plate.
‘I’m going to cook you something,’ I said. ‘Something simple, but a bit different.’
‘Oh good! I’ve always wanted to try real home-cooked Caribbean food.’
‘But, actually I—’
‘I mean, I’ve had a bit of jerk chicken once or twice at a barbecue, but that was just … they were from Devon.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said.
Mean. It would have been mean, self-defeating and, as the kids had it, ‘awkward’, to say anything more than:
‘Uh-huh, I’m going to cook you up a real Jamaican treat.’
‘Great. What, might I ask?’
So, of course, I had to say:
‘Well, wait and see. But it will be wonky and homemade. It may be naked. Or saucy.’
My mother had fed us well; we ate it all up, with thankful mouths and hands ready to do the dishes. She had grown up in the hills near Negril, where food had winked and dangled from every last tree and nigh on every day had ended in satiety, but for us she worked hard at all those meals that aspired to Englishness, the cabbage-and-potato dinners you could make from ingredients bought from up the road, boiled hard. Just like her cousin, Ionie, who had come over a few years before; just like any other 1970s housewife round their way. One generation on, I stirred up flavours from our blended world in a reduced-to-clear cast aluminium pot from a department store off the M40; a Dutchie by any other name.
She had never sat me down and told me a recipe from back Home – I doubted she even thought of such recipes as formalised processes, never mind written-down documents – and I am sure I never asked. Although a certain amount of osmosis had let the right knowledge flow from her generation to my own, I did not wear the wisdoms of ‘our’ food around me in the way she did, easy as a shawl on a cool Home Counties evening.
And so, two nights before I first cooked for Thomas, I ordered a small cookbook, Jamaican Home Cooking Secrets, for next-day delivery. When the driver, a young West African guy, rocked up with my parcel, my eyes dropped to his trainers, though he had no obvious ability to see my shame through cardboard. I don’t know why I felt so bad; I was born in Basingstoke.
I read, and chilled. Nothing tricky or unfamiliar here; not a single ‘Secret’ worth the name. Just enough prompts to turn the pages of memory: my mother’s island childhood at the kitchen ‘fire’, written down and bound. A right result.
The simplicity itself made me a touch cocky. For my dearest English Thomas, I might start slow: Brown Stew Chicken. I would perform the optional washing of the supermarket chicken with lime even though there was no need: no germs, no heat, and competent fridges. But some traditions existed for good reason; the lime also sharpened the dish. Still, only two-thirds of the Scotch bonnet, without seeds, for my man. The stew would get hotter each time until he became accustomed to ‘our’ levels. I was sure he would like all the teasing, the special treatment.
I tasted the stew.
As sauce hit tongue my mind was shaken by something more surprising than savoury, a memory so strong that it might have come from behind me, or just beyond the door.
I lifted the spoon and turned it in my hand, a dripping totem.
Wah yuh ah duh? Mo salt, yuh si mi?
I turned to face the empty kitchen, then back to my chopping board. I choked on a laugh, silent but fierce, almost a shudder. The black tear fell into the stew.
Dat better, gyal.
The chilli caught the back of my throat.
‘OK,’ I coughed. ‘I hear you.’
A quarter-pinch of allspice and the flavours dropped, settled. This was the right stuff for Thomas. This food sang of bright afternoons to be devoured before they darkened, of passion plated high, of a belief that hungers had to be sated. These dishes stirred you right back.
Not enough though, yet.
I had never once bought callaloo; spinach or kale were more readily available in High Desford. However, I had tracked down a supplier in Brockton – forty-minute drive, plus a full five minutes of speed bumps, mind you – where I bought an astonished boxful of the leafy veg, common to even the most spit-poor yards in Jamaica. Including the petrol, it cost more than Stevie’s shoes. But that green haul of social climbers deserved a Thomas to appreciate them. At the same time, I did wonder whether preparing this authentic Jamaican meal for him was in itself inauthentic, from a woman mostly reared on plain grey mince and plastic butterscotch desserts, just like him. Still, I knew it was a dinner that told more truth about me than lies. Each mouthful would seduce. A sweet smack of plantain and it was done: our hot lovers’ spread.
Thomas, as it happened, would never forget it. Nor would I.
Halfway through, the door went bamm-bam-bam. I knew it was Demarcus, still too much man for doorbells. Thomas shot up, rice falling to the table from his brandished fork.
I opened the door to Demmie, coiled tight as ever and dressed sharp, holding my sleeping son.
‘Y’alright?’ he nodded darkly at Thomas, who sank back down and started piling up my killer crisp-soft plantain