Thicker Than Soup

Cover

Sally slammed John's car door.
The Restaurant
, he'd said.
Seagrams, Seagrams
. It was all about his beloved restaurant these days. The weekend at her mother's had been agreed months before, when she'd decided to go to the Bakers' Guild AGM. But now, at the last minute, he'd decided he had an auction he really
had
to go to. Damn him!

Seeing a vacant ticket window she moved quickly. “Return to Paddington,” she snapped, “back on Sunday.”

The teller raised an eyebrow and snapped back. “Running late. An hour.”

“Sorry, er…please,” she apologised and then realised he'd told her something. “Pardon?”

“Weather. Train's late. Sixteen-fifty, platform two.”

Turning at the blast of a car horn she watched John narrowly avoid a taxi and curling her toes in her boots she recalled her father's words from childhood;
Kick a rock when you're angry and your own foot will hurt
. She sighed. Of course Seagrams took John's time, and the auction was important. And yes, she'd kicked another stone.

*

Huddled into a corner of the nicotine browned café she stirred sugar into coffee and waited for her train. It hurt to be left out of John's plans and, it had to be said, his lack of interest in her recent work hurt too. He knew little of the Board meeting in November and the fight she'd fought and lost – on her birthday, of all days – to avoid redundancies, or the distress of ensuring the retail bakeries targeted for closure were staffed throughout Christmas whilst informing staff they'd start 1981 without their jobs. Just over a year ago, when she'd been invited to join the Board as Personnel Director she'd seen an opportunity to influence, to participate in the future of Black and Emery. At only thirty-one, and the only woman, she'd welcomed the challenge. What a fool she'd been to consider herself a co-member of the timeworn grey-beards. She'd been no more than salve on growing rumblings of inequality. In trying to persuade the male bastion that closing thirty retail outlets and the Research and Development Lab, known fondly as The Kitchen, was ill-considered, they'd combined their strength. They hadn't listened or even, she was sure, read her report. Fools them, she'd decided, to believe her a mere makeweight in their baker's dozen. ‘
We must invest our way out of this recession'
and ‘
outsourced services will be beyond our control'
she'd protested. But they'd dismissed her. ‘
Give a woman a…'
someone had started to say, and she'd snapped back ‘
Cocks may crow, but it's hens that deliver eggs!'
Then James Black, heir to the Chair, had spoken, “
My father's decision is based on many years of experience, and he knows…
Sally cringed as she recalled his final words, ‘
Oh yes, and I believe birthday congratulations are in order'
. The tactless and inappropriate words had brought muttered greetings from around the table that had in effect, dismissed her. And so, despite growing evidence that Maggie Thatcher's free markets and new entrepreneurs would soon be leading the county to prosperity, Lawrence Black's decision to ‘prune' Black and Emery had been made.

*

Back on the platform Sally tugged her scarf tighter and shrank inside her coat. She longed for a chat with Diane who, as head of The Kitchen, had been her good friend since they'd both joined Black and Emery seven years ago. But Diane had received her redundancy news by clearing her desk and declaring their friendship equally redundant.

In the icy wind and darkness the January afternoon enveloped and filled her and it took the lights of a train emerging from the gloom to chase away tears that threatened to spill.

Inhaling the heated air gratefully, she placed her bag on the adjoining seat, lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the non-smoking sign. What did a cigarette matter, she thought, when so many people, many of them women who'd traded poor pay for stale Friday cakes and misplaced loyalty, were losing their jobs. Unfolding her newspaper she read of Rupert Murdoch's attempts to buy The Times and then read with more interest an editorial about Tory Wets being left out of the Cabinet. Maggie, it seemed, was surrounding herself with men willing to do things her way, a tactic she admired ruefully.

*

When, still grinning from an encounter with an enormously obese cat that lived in the Paddington Ladies, Sally heard her name being called she turned towards the tall slim figure striding towards her with a fixed smile belying a sinking heart.

“James. What a nice surprise.” She'd expected to see him or his father at the AGM but had hoped to avoid their presence before then. “We must have travelled on the same train. I didn't see you. Where were you sitting? I thought you were driving up.” She was talking too much and too quickly and wishing very much that he hadn't spotted her.

“No. I decided the train was more comfortable. I'm taking a taxi to the hotel – I assume you're going to the Charing Cross. Join me?”

“Lovely,” she lied.

By the time she'd reached her room Sally had reluctantly agreed to meet James for dinner. But an early meal, she'd insisted, as she had a call to make. She wanted very much to not sleep on the argument.

*

From the middle of the huge bed in the cavernous room Sally sought refuge in Anita Desai's world of bougainvillea and cane-chaired verandas until overwhelmed by the heat, she tossed the book aside and opened the window. The room cooled quickly, but preferring freshness to stuffy heat she snuggled under a blanket thinking wistfully of the blankets at home, now neglected in storage bags along with the patchwork Kantha quilt her father's family had sent from Pakistan many years before. She disliked the new continental quilt – or duvet as it was apparently now called – with its giant pillowcases. But, like the built-in wardrobes and John's paintings, they were what Diane would say were, ‘so today'. As was living together, or living in sin as her mother called it, often adding that her father would spin in his grave if he knew. She escaped into her book.

*

An hour later, with pale colour applied to her lips and the marquisate butterfly pendant John had given her for her birthday fluttering at her throat, Sally found James in the bar with his fluorescent green cocktail almost finished. Ordering a wine-cooler for herself she suggested taking their drinks straight to the dining room.

“Ah. Actually, I've reserved a table in a little place in Covent Garden. I'm sure you'll like it.”

The conceit! “Oh, really! I was planning a simple meal and early night.”

“Yes, I'd like that too and I think you'll find L'Hirondelle fits the bill.”

“Really.” She sipped her drink silently, awaiting acknowledgment of her disapproval which when it came, sounded surprisingly gentle.

“I have the feeling I've upset you though I've no idea how or when. I apologise. Unreservedly. I'd hoped we might have a pleasant evening together. After all, we do have quite a lot in common.”

“We do?”

“Well, yes. We're both challenged by working for my father for a start.”

The comment was so startling she couldn't help laughing. “I'm sorry; I don't mean to be rude. Yes, working for your father can be challenging, and er, no, you haven't said or done anything wrong.” Other than, she told herself, replicated your father!

“Well that's good news.” James drained his glass. “So drink up and let's go and eat.”

*

Seated at a red leather studded booth with matching menus, Sally forced James to shorten his own deliberations by choosing quickly and ordering for them both, he requested a bottle of Orvietto.

“My favourite.” Her acerbic tone was either not perceived or ignored as James handed his menu to the waiter.

“That was all very decisive. Are you always so quick to choose?”

“Well, no, not always. John's a chef and knows about food and wine. We often spend ages choosing because he's so interested. But I usually know what I want as soon as I see the menu.”

This new James was unsettling but maintaining her cool demeanour would have been churlish. He looked different too. Quite handsome, in the diffused glow of the Victorian wall light. Had she given him a fair chance, she wondered?

“It must be nice having a chef in the house. I suppose he does all the cooking and you eat wonderful food all the time.”

“Well no, as it happens; he works awful hours. I do the everyday stuff, and, though I say it myself, my curries are better than his because my father taught me how to mix the spices.”

James grinned. “We eat Vesta curries! Your father's a chef too?”

“No. He did work in a restaurant, but as a waiter. Sadly, he's … no longer alive.” Even after ten years Sally still struggled to say the word dead in relation to her father. “He was Anglo Indian, and came to England in 1948 after Partition.”

“Ah. I'm sorry.” James lifted his wine glass. “That's after India and Pakistan separated?”

“Yes.”

“Your father was caught up in it?”

James, it appeared, was adept at polite conversation and Sally found herself telling her father's story. “When the British – Mountbatten it was – rushed through the Partition boundaries based on out-of-date maps, ten million people suddenly found themselves to be in the wrong place.” She paused, judged if he wanted this history lesson and encouraged by his apparent interest, told him how the people of the The Punjab didn't know until the last minute if they were to be Pakistani or Indian. “With the new borders slicing through the middle, families and communities; Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, were forced to move. People were confused, and angry. By the time it was all over more than a million people had died.”

“Your father's family ended up on the Pakistan side?”

Sally nodded.

“They're Muslims?”

“No, Christians. There're a lot of Christians living in Pakistan.” Her father's stories had been shocking. “I'd cover my ears when he told us what happened.” She sipped wine, remembering. “My grandfather didn't get home one night. They found his body in Heera Mandi, the red light district in the old city, where he would never have gone. There were so many deaths and his was just another. So suddenly, as the eldest son, my father was the breadwinner and decision maker for the family. It's hard to believe that people who'd lived together for generations suddenly hated each other in the name of religion, isn't it?”

“It is.” The waiter refilled their glasses. “And your father came to Britain to start a new life?”

“Yes. And lost his college education. That's why he was strict about ours. He made sure we – my brother and I – didn't take our free British school for granted. Before he left for work in the evening he'd check our homework. If it wasn't good enough we'd suffer the indignity of him crossing it through and making us repeat it. We hated it, but he wanted us to have what he hadn't. He was very proud when we both went to university.”

“Yes, I can imagine. So your grandfather was Indian?”

She shook her head. “He was in the English army and met my grandmother in India.” Sally thought of her wedding photograph of the stunningly beautiful bride and her upright soldier. “She was the daughter of an officer in the Indian army and traditionally would have had an arranged marriage, but my grandfather convinced her parents that he was a suitable boy. Most of the family still live in Lahore. I have my grandmother, uncles and an aunt, and cousins I've never met.”

James raised his glass. “So that's where you get your beauty,” he toasted, “I wondered about your heritage.”

The compliment was unexpected and she looked away, flustered.

“I'm sorry, I spoke without thinking.” James touched her hand lightly. “Please. Tell me more. Is your mother Pakistani too?”

Encouraged, she continured. “No, she's English. She lives in the East End, in Bethnal Green. It's where she came from and where my parents lived all their married life, and where I grew up too. I'm going there tomorrow after the meeting.” The wine was loosening her tongue, and she found herself relating her favourite childhood story. “My parents met here in London. My father was young, only twenty, when he arrived here, and he missed his family very much. The cold wet streets in London were full of closed doors and curtained windows and he didn't like the strange food. One day he was travelling home from work on a bus when he saw, through a window, people dancing. The next day he looked for the window again and saw a sign above a door, but the bus passed before he was able to read it. When he passed the next day he read
Thames School of Dancing
. The next day, he saw the next line,
Instruction in All Forms of Dance
. This was a way to make friends, he thought. He'd learn to dance. The following day, he got off the bus, crossed the road, went up the stairs, and enrolled. And that's where he met my mother who, every Tuesday and Friday, went with her friend Lillian to dance. According to my father, his light-footed and elegant movements impressed my mother and she was overwhelmed by his handsome face, jet black hair, blue eyes, and creamy complexion. They married within eight months, and I was born just six months later. Not that I knew that until I got my birth certificate when I was twenty-one. Mum was reluctant to hand it over. It came as something of a shock to realise that my birthday was actually in December, not March! When I was a child my birthday parties had always been in March. Even now I still have a little extra celebration on 7
^th
March, and occasionally give the wrong date when filling in forms! And if that's not enough, the name on my birth certificate is Sarah, not Sally. I insisted on being called Sally when I was about five and it stuck.”

The waiter set and adjusted plates and tilted an eyebrow in silent question towards the empty wine bottle. Laughing, James nodded and asked for water too. “Perrier please.” He turned back to Sally. “Your father sounds like he was a character. He must have been quite young when he died.”