Grace's Table (7 page)

Des declined dessert; Grace ordered one. When it arrived, Des spoke to her, said something about nicking in next door for a minute, left Grace to finish on her own.

Grace's dessert bowl had long been cleared but Des still hadn't returned. She watched the odd assortment of couples around her – some chatted intimately, held hands across the table; others didn't say a word to each other, but stared off, instead, at some undefined spot in the room. With calm resolve, Grace gave one final dab to her lips with her napkin, gathered her handbag and got up from the table to take herself home. On the way out she saw Des in the public bar. He was with a group of men who each had their hands round a glass of beer. Grace remembered how his white teeth flashed as he laughed, sharing a joke even the barmaid enjoyed. She never knew if he went back to check on her. She never asked to be taken out again. Grace clicked off the reel to the memory.

‘Your father never liked eating out much.' Grace rained another row of peas into the pot.

‘That's because you fed him too well at home. Keep them a bit hungry. That's my motto.'

‘Is that why Richard's skinny as a pin – you starve him?' Grace joked.

Susan laughed. ‘His mother says he's been scrawny since birth. Just before we married she told me if she'd never been able to fatten him up then I didn't stand a chance either. I didn't hesitate to tell her he put on a kilogram in the first month after our wedding. She put it down to inactivity beyond the bedroom, not my cooking.'

It was Grace's turn to laugh. ‘Did he lose it again – the kilogram?'

‘Yes, by the next month. Like I said, you have to keep them a bit hungry. Not that I ever told his mother he'd lost it. For years she always thought he weighed a kilogram more than when he left home. Richard said she'd squeeze his sides whenever she saw him. I think she was trying to work out just where that extra kilo was. Middle age takes care of it for me now.'

Richard's mother's inability to relinquish her role as feeder – reduced as it was to an advisory level, and even then the advice taken begrudgingly, knowing Susan – didn't surprise Grace. She supposed it was the only means by which his mother could continue some sense of control over her son's life. To hand over the secrets and idiosyncrasies of his eating since birth, packaged like precious memories and entrusted to the care of another to be remembered. For some, Grace thought, this must feel like a blood-letting, but for others the task of feeding could carry a more malevolent power. It provided an avenue through which perceived wrongs could be redeemed – the worst, fatty cut to the belligerent; the yolk with a blood spot to the cruel; a disliked dish to the ungrateful.

Grace had sometimes taken pleasure from these acts, having few other ways of demonstrating her hurt. She supposed it was a childish victory, nothing more than school-ground retribution. And often the punished failed to notice they had been anyway. Unless, of course, she'd served up something Des disliked. Then she was sure to get his attention, especially after that time she took over buying the meat.

Some of Grace's friends had envied her a husband who took the responsibility of meat purchase off the weekly shopping list. Grace had resented it. Des would bring home the week's supply of meat on payday, already wrapped and labelled for her to put straight into the freezer. Some days he'd even take a bundle out to thaw, leave it in the sink on his way to work, without so much as a
Thought we could have pork chops for tea
or
What are the chances of beef casserole tonight?
Just icy chunks left to seep blood down the drain and attract flies. And if the label had come off, sometimes she had to wait till it thawed before she could work out what it was she had to cook for that evening's meal.

But there was a day when Grace had opened that freezer and been faced with the usual two-pound bags of mince for rissoles, steak or chops for grilling, joint for roasting – and she'd slammed the door shut on the predictable lot, making the old Kelvinator rattle on its feet.

It was a determined woman who got in the car that morning and drove to the shop where Des worked. She went there wanting skirt steak to make beef olives, or a boned leg of lamb that she could keep the tin of Keens from, season it instead with a mixture of spices from India or Africa or fill it with a farce flavoured with lemon peel and garlic then wrap it tightly in foil and slow-cook it. She wanted meat that could be served with pasta or rice – no mash, no fried onions, no pumpkin, no frozen peas. She wanted to make complicated dishes, dishes fragrantly exotic. Dishes Des wouldn't like.

Sitting in the car she watched him work his lady customers like a craftsman. She didn't know if he saw her there, though he easily could have. All he had to do was look up when he was taking sausages or liver or bacon from the window display and he'd see her sitting behind the wheel of the Belmont, watching him. He didn't wave if he did notice her, not that she would expect him to. The footpath had always marked a fine divide between his place and hers and he rarely acknowledged her across it when she'd walk past the shop on her errands.

Inside, she could see it was busy – two, three deep at the counter – but this didn't dampen Des's enthusiasm to give each of his customers time for a laugh and a longer chat than was necessary. Grace could see the way he held a woman's eye as he handed over packages of meat. He'd rest his hand on the bundle for a moment when he placed it on the countertop, not releasing it until he was ready, once he'd got one more smile, one more blush. Young or old, he'd flirt with them. The only difference was he'd pass the older customer's packages over more quickly, then scan left or right again to see who was next, showing whoever it was his perfect teeth.

Did her butcher husband recognise the intimacy he shared with these women as he guided them on what might be good to feed their husbands, those wives who were always looking for new ways to please? He could hint at what would get them the greatest praise, a kiss even or more, if the cut was particularly flavoursome, especially tender. She imagined him saying,
The lamb's at its springtime best, it'll melt in his mouth
or
Leave the front door open when you roast this pork and he'll smell how much you love him even before he's unlatched the gate
. They'd leave his service with a wink and a tightly wrapped package containing the promise of a good night, not just a meal of meat.

The Casanova of quality cuts, that's what Grace thought as she watched him work.

Once numbers had dwindled inside, Grace got out of the car, locked the driver's door and crossed the footpath divide. She'd come for choice, not false affection. She entered the shop and stood behind a slim woman in hugging tweed trousers and a knitted sweater that made a prize of her breasts. Grace looked down at her own fitted skirt and button-through blouse and thought:
You'll do
. If Des looked at her, thigh-level first then up to her face, as he had previous customers, then, yes, she'd definitely do.

It had been so long since Grace had stepped inside a butcher's shop that she'd forgotten the smell. Quarters and halves of carcasses hung along the back wall. There were trotters and honeycombed tripe and hindquarters, small and large, held up by hooks through knee joints. What animal they once were, or part thereof, was awfully clear. One of the butchers was using a bandsaw to dismember those larger sections into smaller portions. Grace watched the marrow and fat gum up the blade as he sectioned a lamb's back into loin chops. The sawdust on the floor caught the bloody drips and made his footsteps soft.

Des worked over a forequarter of beef at a deeply worn and stained wooden block. The open chest cavity glistened at Grace and the white rib bones that showed through reminded her of the toothy, laughing entrance she'd seen at Luna Park. She'd always considered that mouth to be a macabre welcome to a place of fun, like being swallowed by a greedy giant. This rib cage had a similar effect.

Des held a large cleaver in his right hand. He raised it above his head and brought it down hard on the ragged and bloodied neck end. The action was done with such authority and strength that she imagined if the animal's head had been still attached then he could just as easily have hacked it off in one blow as well. A quick and efficient beheading. For a moment she faltered in her cause, even considered turning around and leaving the shop before he noticed her there. This wasn't a place for the unsure, not when things were being done around her with such certainty. But it was too late for that.

‘What can I get for you, love?'

Grace's gaze was taken away from Des's back and she looked into the playful eyes of one of the other butchers.

‘I'd like a pound of thinly sliced veal, please.'

‘Grace, what are you doin' here?'

Grace tried to appear brave. She looked around her as if Des might have lost his senses. ‘Buying meat,' she said.

‘We can't have run out at home.'

‘No, we haven't,' she said, ‘but I wanted something other than what was at home.'

Des looked at her incredulously, like she might be the one who'd lost her mind. ‘How could you want somethin' other than what's at home? There's a pile of meat in the freezer.'

‘I want veal,' she said. ‘There's no veal in the freezer.'

Des looked flummoxed. ‘Veal?'

‘Yes, veal.'

‘I don't like veal. It's got no flavour.' Des embedded the cleaver into the timber block then picked up the severed neck end and flung it into a bucket on the floor.

Grace shrugged. She noticed the man who was serving her had paused, knife edge resting on the pink slab in front of him, torn between slicing it thinly and putting it back in the refrigerated cabinet.

‘A pound, please,' she said.

‘So what're ya gonna do with it?' Des sounded sulky, like Peter when he'd been told off.

Grace wouldn't be put off, she decided. She smiled sweetly at the man as he carved off the slices.

‘Make veal parmigiana,' she said, ‘with garlic bread, I think, and a nice green salad.'

‘Bloody wog food.'

The butcher serving Grace secured her paper-wrapped package with twine, looped the long end of it round his index finger then snapped it free from the roll with a jerk of his hand. He placed the parcel on the counter in front of her, held his hand on it as though she might consider returning it. She didn't wait to see if Des would offer to put the cost of the meat on his tab. She opened her purse and handed the man a note.

Thanking him, she left the shop with her neatly wrapped package, but not without hearing, ‘You've got yourself a feisty one there, Des.'

The cleaver came down hard again as the shop's door closed behind her. She imagined the animal's spine severed in two.

For a while after that Grace had made her own weekly meat list. She'd stand and wait her turn like all the other women, flirt even with some of the butchers on occasions, and order her meat for osso buco and stroganoff and moussaka. Her inventiveness proved short-lived though, because before long she went back to giving Des exactly what he liked.

‘There were plenty of times your father thought he'd been starved.' Grace took another pea from the diminishing pile.

Susan snorted. ‘Not the way I saw it. You always gave him a mountain of food – much more than he needed.'

‘That's because he'd complain if he saw too much of his plate at the start of a meal.'

‘Do you think those comments about being expected to live off china flowers were a complaint? They were jokes, Mum. He wasn't really asking for more but you always gave it to him. And given the state of his heart – his diabetes – it would've done him good to see a bit more of his plate, not less. It was a dangerous habit you got him into.'

‘Dangerous habit I got him into? Don't blame me. Your father was responsible for his own eating habits.'

Between them, in the sudden quiet, peas popped into the bowl.

Des had always been a dangerous eater. The closeness to animal fat all his working life – fat that kept his hands soft, clothes stained and hair slick – never deterred him from liking his food cooked in it. If asked about his favourite meal, Grace knew, he'd say it was a breakfast fry-up:
The working man's heart-starter
, he called it. But Grace thought his eating habits marked him as a weak man. It was a weakness that would eventually strangle him by the coronary arteries at the age of fifty-four.

‘You're a damn fine cook when you put your mind to it,' Des said to Grace, long after her triumph at the butcher's had served its purpose.

Des appraised his plate. Two thick sausages, their ends turned up like old boots; two long rashers of streaky bacon, the fat brown and crispy as he liked it; two fried eggs, sitting like perfect breasts, bathed in oil and out sunning themselves; and potato cubes fried with onion.

‘Tomato?' Grace asked.

‘No. That'd spoil it.' Des pinched a generous amount of salt between thumb and forefinger from a small bowl beside his plate, a bowl Grace made sure was always full, and sprinkled it over his food. ‘You not eating?'

Grace shook her head. ‘I'll have something later.'

‘You should be having something like this.' Des pointed to his plate with his knife. ‘You're looking scrawny.'

Grace sat down and sipped her tea. She watched as he trawled a square of toast through a ruptured yolk and lifted it to his greasy-cornered mouth. The sound of cutting and scraping across a china plate filled the otherwise quiet kitchen. In the distance Grace could hear the rhythmic squeak of a child's swing toing and froing and the busy attempts of a fly trying to find its way out of the flyscreen at the kitchen window.

‘Get us another bit of toast, would you.'

Grace got up, cut a slice from the loaf and put it in the toaster. She waited at the bench while it cooked.