Comfort and Joy (25 page)

‘She wants your childhood to have been lovely,’ I say, ‘and so she’s reinventing bits of it. It doesn’t matter if she contradicts
herself. They all do it. We’ll do it too, I expect, when the children are grown up. And she wants to fit in with us – the
rest of us I mean. She’s feeling quite defensive. Don’t call her out on it.’

Pat is now chatting enthusiastically to Flo about the eating
habits of babies she has known, and about the marvellous biodiversity of her own children’s diets.

‘I guess. But I don’t like it,’ says Sam. ‘It makes me feel argumentative.’

‘Nobody likes the rewriting of history,’ I say. ‘But it’s just what people do. Kate’s always telling us that our childhoods
were “idyllic”, which is true up to a point but kind of bypasses the bit where she and Julian split up and everybody went
mad and Evie and Flo were completely traumatized for years.’

‘Fucking families,’ says Sam with feeling.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘You have to force yourself to remember that you have your recollection, and she has her recollection, and
it’s okay if they aren’t the same. Here, have some of these little crispy things. They’re called
briouats
. They’re delicious.’

‘There’s an incredible amount of food on this table and dinner hasn’t even really kicked off properly,’ Sam observes, biting
into the pastry.

‘It’s Christmas Eve. Don’t do your weird foody freak-out. The “we are all bourgeois pigs” thing. Now’s not the time.’

‘No, it’s nice,’ says Sam. ‘God, these are good. I don’t mind it tonight, for some reason.’

‘Did you have a nice walk this afternoon?’

‘It was fantastic. The boys were mesmerized by everything. My ma loved it. She wanted to have a tooth taken out by some filthy
street dentist. It took ten minutes to convince her that it wasn’t a good idea.’

‘Really? Doesn’t sound like her.’

‘Yes. She was staring and staring at him – you know those blokes in the main square, they basically have a pair of pliers
and a couple of cloths?’

‘But didn’t she think the set-up was too dirty?’

‘She didn’t, oddly. Or, she may have done, but then she asked me how much it would cost and when I said “about 20p” she
became very keen. She only has two real teeth left and apparently one of them is sore. I thought it would be a sad way for
it to go.’

‘She loves a bargain, your mother.’

‘Anyway, after that she wanted to buy some tortoises, so then I had to be the bad guy again and try to convince her not to.
And then we went into the souks – I took her to the jewellery one, and at that point she really cheered up.’

‘I’d have thought most of the stuff was too big and heavy for her, no? Too Eastern?’

‘Yeah, a lot of it was.’ He laughs. ‘Though I like the idea of her going to her OAP nights completely bedecked in Marrakesh’s
finest.’

‘Well, so, what – did you get her anything?’

‘Mm.’

‘Spit it out, Sam. What?’

‘There was a gold curly necklace she took a real shine to.’

‘Curly, how?’

‘It was writing.’

I can suddenly see exactly what happened.

‘In Arabic?’ I say.

‘Yes,’ says Sam. ‘She wouldn’t be deterred. Mum. Mum! Show Clara the necklace I got you.’

‘It’s that nice,’ says Pat. ‘I’m that absolutely delighted with it. I love it, son.’

‘Let’s have a look, then,’ I say, getting up and walking around to where Pat is sitting.

I’ve seen the necklaces before.

‘Lovely,’ I say, which it is. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Aye,’ says Pat. ‘What’s it say again, Sam?’

‘Allah,’ says Sam.

‘The merciful, the compassionate,’ murmurs Moustafa, who has just deposited more flatbreads on the table. He looks
at Pat, and then at Sam, and then at me, shakes his head very faintly and walks back to the kitchen.

‘Thankee, Mooza,’ Pat says to his departing form. ‘Thankee kind. That’s right,’ she adds happily. ‘Allah. They didn’t have
one that said Pat. Or Patricia.’

‘It means “God”, Ma,’ says Sam. ‘Remember? The guy in the shop explained it.’

‘Aye, God,’ Pat repeats. ‘That’s lovely, isn’t it? Everybody likes God. And the wee baby Jesus.’

‘We are all His children,’ says Evie.

‘Charming,’ says Kate. ‘Very nice, Pat. Quite right. Why shouldn’t you wear a Muslim necklace? All monotheistic religions
are basically the same.’

‘Aye,’ says Pat, who comes from Northern Ireland and lives in Eire. ‘I love my necklace. But I wish Sam had let me buy a couple
of wee tortoises.’

‘I bought some when we came here when I was little, do you remember, Kate?’ says Evie. ‘I felt so sorry for them. They pack
them into those awful tiny cages, all stacked on top of each other.’

‘I remember having to smuggle them into Britain,’ says Kate. ‘In my handbag. I think they were illegal at the time, tortoises.’

‘And Daddy was furious,’ says Flo. ‘And you said fine, you were going to take them out of your handbag and leave them to roam
about the airport. Do you remember? And then he refused to sit with us.’

‘He feared arrest, the fool. Anyway, they absolutely loved Notting Hill, those tortoises,’ says Kate. ‘They
thrived
on west London soil.’

‘What happened to them?’ I ask.

‘They wandered off to hibernate and we never saw them again,’ says Kate. ‘Such is the way of tortoises. They have wild, ancient
souls. Very spiritual beasts.’

‘Aye,’ says Pat. ‘You’re not wrong. They’re that wise. You can tell by their faces.’

Dinner now starts arriving in earnest, dish after dish of it in enormous quantities, not least because half the table is vegetarian
and half isn’t and so the already generous quantities of food are doubled.

‘This is the most food I’ve ever seen in my life,’ says Pat. ‘It’s like a foreign wedding.’

‘Please don’t sniff it all,’ I say, trying to make my voice sound pleasant and amused, but tormenting my napkin at the very
thought of it.

‘It smells nice,’ Pat concedes, mercifully sniffing the air rather than the table. ‘But I’ll just be having some plain chicken
for my main. Your mum organized it for me. Thanks for that, Kate,’ she says.

‘You’re welcome, but you’re really missing out,’ says Kate. ‘And I don’t know how good your mashed potatoes will be – they’re
hardly the national dish. That
méchoui
smells so fantastic that even I’m tempted to try it. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a taste? It’s roast lamb, except over
charcoals, and cooked for hours and hours. There’s nothing overwhelmingly …
complicated
about it.’

‘Ooh, no,’ says Pat. ‘I wouldn’t fancy that. You don’t know where the lamb’s come from, do you?’

‘Its mother the sheep, one expects,’ says Kate.

‘Imagine it’s barbecued,’ says Sam. ‘Which it kind of is.’

‘No thank you,’ says Pat.

‘Imagine the barbecue is at home, in someone’s back garden,’ says Kate.

‘Oh,’ Pat laughs. ‘You’d never get anything like this back home.’

‘But that’s precisely why we’d all love you to try it,’ Kate persists. ‘And the tajines … try the tajines. They’re just meat
and vegetables, Pat. Stew. Barbecued lamb and stew and some salads. Perhaps if you imagined them being carried to the barbecue
by overweight ladies with ham-like arms, clutching Tupperware and speaking English? Do you see? It’s perfectly normal food,
except nicer. Live a little.’

‘I don’t like the look of those wee yellow seeds,’ Pat says, eying up a bowl of couscous with mistrust.

‘They’re grains,’ says Flo. ‘Like rice, but not.’

‘And anyway,’ Pat says, looking coyly down at her abdomen, ‘I have a delicate stomach. I don’t want to be getting diarrhoea
from foreign food. Tumtum ow,’ she adds for the benefit of Fatima, who is hovering nearby with more plates. ‘Bad lavvy.’

‘How absolutely revolting,’ says Kate. ‘Please don’t update us on your gastric anxieties while we’re eating, Pat.’

‘I just like plain food,’ says Pat, patting her stomach. ‘Plain food is best, for me.’

‘I despair of you,’ says Kate, but she says it in such a way that Pat smiles at her companionably. I don’t. It really irritates
the crap out of me, this food thing – not just the sniffing (though,
God
, the sniffing) but the reluctance to try anything new. Is that wrong of me? Is it culturally insensitive, unattractively
prejudiced towards the simple, plain foods of the British Isles? I don’t know. But it gets on my nerves. I want to shout ‘IT’S
NOT MADE OF POO!’ about every dish Pat refuses with a wince and an unintelligible phrase in her weird new language (‘Mercy
no, yucka eat’). The food spread out before us on the table is so appetizing – and so delicious – that it would test the mettle
of a gastric-banded hunger-striker. And she literally won’t try a single mouthful of it. Her loss, but it’s pretty maddening;
also she’s a woman in her sixties.

Actually I think that deep down Pat would probably like to try it, or some of it, but the ‘your food versus my food’ thing
has become such an issue over the years, such a significant
statement about herself – it basically means ‘I’ll go along with your middle-class lifestyle, but only up to a point’ – that
she couldn’t even if she wanted to. It’s a line that she’s drawn in the sand. At least she’s stopped turning up at my house
with a whole suitcase of ‘her’ food – fizzy drinks, tinned pies, crinkled oven chips stacked in a giant cool-bag, plastic
bread, crisps, cans of mince. She did this for three years, until she could be sure that I wasn’t going to make her eat anything
‘weird’ or, God forbid, ‘foreign’ (curries are considered British), and that I was familiar with the concept of the crisp.
Imagine it the other way around: me going up to her house with a couple of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, some vegetables, pasta,
yogurt, salad, all because I considered her food so alarming that I didn’t want to put it in my mouth over the few days I
was staying. I mean, rude to the nth degree. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she wouldn’t be offended at all. And at least with
the chicken and mash that’s now placed before her by saintly Fatima, there is only one plate to be sniffed. Pat duly raises
it to her nose, inhales deeply and sets in down again.

‘No spices, nothing,’ says Fatima, looking a bit baffled. ‘Like Madame ask.’ I wonder if she maybe thinks Pat is a tragic,
and possibly insane, invalid.

‘Lovely fresh smell,’ says Pat.

‘How’s everyone back home, Ma? Did you get a chance to speak to them?’ asks Sam.

‘I had a quick word,’ says Pat. ‘I’ll call again in the morning to wish them a merry Christmas.’

‘Are they all okay?’ I ask.

‘They’re fine,’ says Pat. ‘Tony’s a bit down, you know, because of the time of year, but he’ll be all right.’

‘Oh God, is that still not sorted?’ I say, not altogether kindly. But I know what conversation we’re about to have next and
I don’t much care for it: it makes me feel like the late Michael
Jackson, tearing at my clothing with misery and wailing about how we must all think of the Earth’s children. The problem is
that, where Pat comes from, if men and women separate acrimoniously and they have children together, it is an accepted fact
that one of them will behave like a bastard: there’s no attempt made at imagining what things would be like if both people
behaved – or could be persuaded to behave – well. What drives me mad about it is that it’s so resigned: all the platitudes
come out – ‘He lives for that kid,’ and so on – but no one ever seems interested in helping to nudge things in the right direction.
So for instance if the father – Sam’s brother Tony, in this case – is denied access to said child by a still-angry wife and
for no good reason, it is taken as a given that that’s quite simply that: the unhappy status quo is now how things are, and
nothing can be done to challenge it.

‘It’s a shame, so it is,’ says Pat. ‘You should see the presents Tony’s got for him. Trucks and everything. Lego.’

Every time we have this conversation, I tell myself that I need to keep my mouth shut next time. And every time I fail, because
I say:

‘Why doesn’t he just take them round?’

‘He’s tried for the past two years. She wouldn’t let him in,’ says Pat.

‘He’ll never know if he doesn’t try again,’ I say. ‘This might be the year she regains her sanity.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Sam says. ‘She wants to punish him.’

‘Actually, it
is
that simple. It is unbelievably simple. If she’s behaving that badly, he goes back to court. I bet you even a lawyer’s letter
would do it.’

‘He doesn’t want to go to court,’ Pat says. ‘All that fuss. And they never believe the dad,’ she adds, as though she were,
in fact, an expert in family law.

‘I think he’s prematurely defeated,’ I say, immediately
resolving to keep my mouth shut next time. ‘I think you all are. Sorry, Pat. But you know how I feel about all this.’

I am, tonight, particularly incensed by the idea of Tony’s little boy being deprived of his dad’s company over Christmas just
because his mother is antagonistic. I turn towards Tamsin and Jake, who are engrossed in a shopping conversation with Flo
and organizing a visit to the leather souk, where the tanneries stink to high heaven. Pat has turned away and is already tucking
into her chicken with gusto and telling Evie about the tortoises.

‘Don’t wind yourself up,’ says Sam.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not fair on her. Or on Tony. Or on anyone. But it pushes all the wrong buttons. Does it really
not occur to a single one of them that this little boy is growing up thinking “Where on earth is my daddy?” – to which the
answer is “About a mile down the road”? Or that he’s going to start thinking – if he doesn’t already – “Why doesn’t my daddy
want me?” I mean, you know. It’s so demeaningly simple-minded, their approach. It could all be avoided so easily.’

‘You over-identify with this,’ says Sam. ‘Calm down.’

‘Too bloody right I do,’ I say. ‘I can’t help it. It’s very much my … territory, as you know, but that’s not the reason. The
reason is that it just sucks and everybody sits around going “Oh dear” and doing nothing about it. They’re not stupid people.
What’s the matter with them?’