Toast

by Nigel Slater

  We flicked the peas up in the air, catching them in our gaping mouths. Missing a pea was pathetic. Worse than missing a catch at cricket. We ate just enough. Not to fill our bellies – you cannot fill a child’s tummy with peas – just enough that we wouldn’t get noticed.

  The peas at home were dried Surprise peas, which came in white rectangular boxes so thin and light you might think they were empty. My mother took to Surprise peas like she had been waiting for them all her life. After twenty minutes in boiling water, a Surprise pea was still only the shadow of a pea. Just like my mother’s cooking was always a shadow of what it was meant to be. You had just the outside skin. Like someone had stolen the inside. My father said that was the surprise.

  To my mother, instant dried peas and carrots were everything she had ever hoped vegetables could be. Quick and effortless to cook and light to carry home. According to Mrs Saunders they were ‘ridiculously expensive’. I didn’t understand my mother’s obsession with things being light to carry home from the shops, that didn’t weight her shopping bag down.

  Mrs Saunders, of course, grew her own. She planted them in late winter, she would save sticks to support them, cosset them with home-made compost and protect them from the birds with netting and fat strips of green and silver tinsel on sticks. She picked them herself and podded them, a colander in her lap, then boiled them with sprigs of tender mint from her garden and topped with a fat knob of softly melting butter.

  My mother emptied a cellophane sachet of dried peas into a pan of water. There was never any mint or butter. Sometimes she even forgot to put salt in the water.

  Ice Cream

  ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, Oh I do like to be beside the sea,’ sings my father, somewhat predictably, as we come over the brow of the hill, salt air suddenly gusting through the sunshine roof of the car, seagulls squawking on cue. There before us, just as it was last year and the year before (and the one before that), stretches the long beach with its neat frame of formal flower beds. We pass the tall stucco houses that lead down towards the ‘front’, all sugared almond colours and nodding hydrangeas. ‘No vacancies’ they proclaim with barely concealed smugness.

  My mother starts fussing about a parking place. ‘There’s one, there, there! Oh, now we’ve missed it,’ she flaps. I point out to my father that we have just missed three on the other side of the road, but I am talking to a man who drives a Rover wearing string-and-leather driving gloves. A man who is no more likely to do a dodgy U-turn than to walk stark naked through the resort’s fastidiously preened Winter Gardens.

  At last we wiggle our way into a parking space a hundred yards from the hotel. Its paint is peeling more than ever this year. We unpack the unshakeable paraphernalia of the Slater holiday: the striped windbreak, the inflatable beach ball, the picnic basket we have never yet used, my bucket and spade and assorted flags to poke in the top of my intricate sandcastles. Savlon. Bite-eeze. Plasters. Cotton wool. Dettol – the smell of which can make me fall into a dead faint. Mum’s spare Ventolin. Some anti-diarrhoea pills. The beach towels that will allow the discreet removal of bathing costumes. The only stuff we buy new each year are bottles of Ambre Solaire – which my dad insists on calling Amber Solaire – and the pastel-coloured plastic windmills that whirl round in the wind and with which I am obsessed.

  We have the same rooms as last year. As spotlessly clean as ever, but this year there is an unspoken sadness that hangs over the corridors as surely as if there was a dead seagull strung up over the threshold. We later learn that this is to be the proprietors’ final year. They have been getting a different sort of clientele lately – the sort who order morning coffee instead of tea and who don’t make their own beds – and have decided to give up. My father talks in hushed tones of moving up to one of the hotels just off the front. Noisier, but you get half-board there and they have a bit of entertainment in the evenings. I wince at the thought of watching my parents dance to the strains of the Ray Miller Combo.

  Mother insists on me wearing plastic sandals into the sea. All the other boys on the beach have bare, nut-brown feet. I have red sandals made of plastic so hard they rub blisters into my heels and on the knuckles of my toes. Then my father tries his annual attempt to interest me in ball games. I have to catch the wretched beach ball at the same time as trying to dislodge the sand that has crept inside my sandals and is sticking to the pink skin under my freshly burst blisters. The ball always hits me in the face or brings a shower of sand with it. My father sighs one of those almost imperceptible sighs that only fragile boys who regularly disappoint their father can hear.

  We always take lunch at one of the open-air cafés along the beach, Mother desperate for the shade of a parasol. I can see deep-fried fish and chips, with battered plaice the size of a beach tray being brought to the tables by waitresses in tight, pastel dresses and white aprons. We have ham salad. ‘Could we have some bread and butter please?’ asks Mother, though none of us really wants any.

  The meal cannot move on quick enough. I sit there, urging everyone to eat up so that we can get to the ice cream. Why would anyone take their time over a ham salad when there is ice cream to follow? The rules are vanilla, strawberry or chocolate. But even the most acid-tongued old bag of a waitress will let a sweet, blond-haired boy order a ball of each. There’s the wafer, of course, a thick, smooth fan if we’re lucky, two thin rectangular waffle-wafers if not. I eat them not because they taste good – they are about as flavoursome as a postcard – but because of the way they stick to your bottom lip. My mother likes the wafers more than the ice cream, which to me is a mystery quite beyond comprehension.

  There is a moment, shortly after the waitress puts the battered silver coupe of ice cream down on the table, when life is pretty much perfect. I am not sure it is possible to be happier than I am at this moment. I eat all three flavours separately, trying not to let them merge on the spoon. The vanilla and chocolate are OK together, but the strawberry and chocolate don’t marry well. As the cold, milky balls of ice cream disappear I scrape up every last drop, the edge of the spoon tinkling on the dented silver dish. I try not to scrape too loudly. Catching Daddy’s attention always results in a ‘don’t be silly’ from him. When every last pool of melted ice has gone I use my finger to catch the drips of vanilla ice and the pearls of condensation that have run down the outside of the dish. The cold ice cream in the hot sun is too much for my mother and she turns discreetly away to use her inhaler.

  In the evening we walk along the front. I am not allowed on the beach in my best sandals, so we amble slowly along the path, admiring the floral displays. ‘How do they do it, it must take them for ever?’ marvels Mum, stopping to wonder at a clock made from lobelia and baby begonias. My father is rather taken with a copy of the royal warrant faithfully copied in white alyssum and purple petunias, the words Dieu et mon droit picked out in African marigolds. There is, much to everyone’s incredulity, not a weed in sight. You could hear the admiring crowd’s collective intake of breath as a wayward toddler broke his reins and headed across the grass towards the Queen Mother, so tastefully reproduced in coral-coloured miniature roses and lilac candytuft. His mother got to him in the nick of time. Of course, had he got there first it would have been the highpoint of everyone’s holiday, no doubt talked about for years to come.

  Enough excitement for one evening. We turn round and walk back, my mother pulling her cardigan over her shoulders as a breeze comes in off the sea. A young guy with wet hair is getting changed by the water fountain. He drops his trunks and pulls on his jeans. ‘Excuse ME!’ says my father as we all cop a flash of full-frontal nudity.

  ‘Golly,’ says my mother, reaching quietly for her inhaler. ‘And in Bournemouth.’

  Cold Lamb and Gravy Skin

  My collection of toy cars filled an entire wooden toy box, the three shelves above my bed and my bedroom window sill. That didn’t include the Morris Minor I deliberately crashed into the garden pond or those vehicles sporty enough t
o be permanently on the mini Monte Carlo rally that spread throughout the entire house. Dinky Chevrolets and Corgi MGs lined up bumper to bumper along every skirting board. Occasionally, one was turned over, the scene of a devastating crash. However, the cars weren’t allowed on the stairs. ‘Someone will slip and hurt themselves.’ This was my licence to send the least valued ones careering headlong down the banisters instead.

  My collection was pretty cool. I had the much envied pink Chevrolet Impala, the Corgi Mini Countryman in mint green (the ones where both back doors opened) and even a metallic purple Buick. What I didn’t have was the Royal Rolls-Royce. With its glass roof and waving queen, its plastic flag on the radiator and hand-painted royals, it was out of the realm of pocket money. I just had to have it. Nothing would be a bigger sock in the eye for my best friend Warrel Blubb.

  Nagging, if done regularly enough and with spirited reasoning rather than a spoiled whine, was a tactic that worked with my parents…eventually. It could take weeks, sometimes months, but at some point they would come up with the goods. Usually just after I had lost interest and gone on to the next thing. My mother agreed that she would get the Roller for me and let me pay her back at sixpence a week. I knew she would never really ask for the money, doing that thing that parents do of forgetting on purpose. One Saturday morning we walked Wolverhampton for it, but were told over and over again it was out of stock. Then, in a part of town my mother had never dared to set foot in, we found a shop whose owner, a quiet man with owl eyes and wire-framed glasses, who it turned out knew my uncle Geoff, would order one for us. ‘Anything for such a sweet boy,’ he said.

  Rarely was I forced to eat everything on my plate. With my mother’s cooking it could have been classed as child abuse. My finicky ways were tolerated as if I was an only child. But occasionally I went over the limit. One cold Monday I had left more of my lunch than usual. It was more a case of boredom than bad cooking. I got down from the table and thought nothing more about it.

  That afternoon I got home to find no one in. Sitting in the middle of the dining-room table was my Royal Rolls-Royce, complete with sunroof and lifelike corgis. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hand. I stroked the long maroon bonnet. Yes, I was disappointed it wasn’t the jet black it looked in the photographs but it didn’t matter that much. I could barely wait to show Warrel Blubb.

  I was hungry to break the news of the car’s arrival. I wanted to run round with it then and there. But I could have more fun than that. He had had a telling-off recently – for walking in the house with his wet shoes on. Last time I saw him he was sulking, gazing out of his bedroom window. Vulnerable. I decided to leave the car on the dining-room window sill. That way, he couldn’t miss it when he passed on his way to school. I wouldn’t even mention it. Just leave it there and watch his face through the window.

  But there, perched on the corner of the hearth, about two feet from the electric fire, was a plate. My plate. Exactly as I had left it on the table, except that the gravy had now shrunk to a thin, rubbery brown skin around the remains of the lamb chop. The boiled potato had gone grey at the edges and the peas had sunken and dried.

  So that was to be the deal. Clean my plate and I would get the car. Apparently, Warrel Blubb wasn’t going to be the only one to eat shit.

  Apple Crumble

  Snow has fallen upon deep snow. The sky, lavender, grey and deep scarlet-rose, is heavy with more. Cars, barely one every half-hour, make their way slowly home, their tyres crunching on the freezing snow. The white boulder I rolled yesterday and left on the grass verge shines amber under the street lamp. My mittens are stiff. My face numb. Everything glistens.

  There are shouts from the boys up the road firing snowballs at one another. I am playing alone, about a hundred yards away from them. My mother is watching me through the dining-room window. She looks worried. I am the proprietor of an imaginary cheese shop, carving slices of Cheddar from the huge rock of snow lit by the street lamp. As I ask my next customer what they want, I catch my mother’s eye. I smile and wave at her and she looks down, embarrassed. The front door opens and she calls to me.

  ‘It’s time to come in now.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I stay out just a bit longer? There’s a queue.’

  ‘You must be freezing, you’ve been out there for hours. Anyway, it’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘Were you watching for Daddy?’

  ‘No, I was watching you. What game were you playing?’

  ‘Grocers. I’ve been selling cheese like Percy Salt does in his shop.’

  She comes out and looks anxiously up the road at the boys having fun, yelling and running and sliding in the snow. Five of them, four from my own class. She looks disappointed. A cold little smile. She puts her arm round me, wincing at the frozen hairs on my cold duffel coat.

  ‘Come on in, I’ve made a crumble.’

  Even bad crumble is good. The perfect one is that whose juices have bubbled up through the pale rubble of the crust, staining it deep claret or gold. The ultimate is that which has damsons or greengages underneath and comes with a jug of yellow cream.

  We chip away at the dry, gritty powder that fills the top third of the Pyrex baking dish. Sweet sawdust. The apples below have fallen into a watery mush. They are our own Bramleys from one of the three trees in the garden, which have been stored, wrapped in pages from the Telegraph, in a sack in the garage since September. Mother throws half the apple away when she peels it. She cuts in short thick strokes, as if she was cutting chips instead of paring the delicate skin from a fruit. She cooks the apples first, with a heaped spoon of white sugar and another of water, until they are starting to froth. Then she tips them into the dish. She takes down the yellow drum of Lion brand cloves from the shelf in the pantry, prises off the rusty lid and takes out two little stalks. These she tucks deep into the apple. Then she rubs the butter into the flour until it looks like dry breadcrumbs, and stirs in the sugar. This is tipped on to the apple and then the whole thing is put in the cool oven of the Aga.

  The juice of Mother’s crumble never bubbles up through its crust. The rough, uneven pebbles so vital for a perfect crumble are, in her version, as fine as sand. They are deep beige, almost the colour of a digestive biscuit. The bottom inch of crumble is sodden with apple juice. There is no cream, no custard.

  Even bad crumble is good.

  Sherbet Fountains

  I never bought bags of sweets. They carried an implication that they were to be shared. A Mars bar or Milky Way carried no such baggage, and so that was what I bought with my pocket money.

  A good way round sharing was to buy Sherbet Fountains – those tubes of acidic white powder wrapped in red-and-yellow paper with a stick of liquorice poked down the centre. You dipped the liquorice into the sherbet and sucked it. Not only did its staggeringly acid sweetness make your eyes water, you could have it all to yourself. At least I did. No one ever asked to suck my liquorice.

  For some reason Sherbet Fountains were considered girls’ stuff. Like Refreshers and Love Hearts. Nobody told me this until I had been seen dipping my little black stick into the depths of the fountain every day for a month or more. Real boys didn’t eat Sherbet Fountains.

  The only sweets I offered round were Love Hearts. Love Hearts were real girly sweets. Everyone knew that. But they could be very useful. I am sure I wasn’t the only one to cunningly rearrange the sweeties in their packet so that, when I offered them round, the message – You’re Cute, Kiss Me, Big Boy, etc. – got to the one intended. Invariably, my carefully constructed plan would misfire. There was always someone who would screw it up by taking two.

  Radishes

  Josh is showing me how to grow radishes in a corner of the garden that my father says is mine. Last year I planted cosmos, pink, white and deep-red daisies that danced on fine stems, and Indian Prince marigolds that had simple, single flowers and floppy leaves. Josh has raked away the tangle of their dried stems and seed heads, dumped them on the compost heap and raked t
he soil flat. He opens up the packet of seeds and passes them over to me. I empty them out into my hands and sprinkle them in long lines, but the seeds are so small they are dropping in tiny heaps.

  ‘There’s too many seeds and they’re a bit too close together but we can thin them out when they come up,’ says Josh.

  Two weeks later some of the seeds have germinated, I am lying on my stomach on the grass looking at the baby leaves that have come up, a mixture of gaps and tufty bunches. I hear Josh’s bike in the drive and then the garage doors rattling open. I sit there gazing at the leaves for a minute or two then walk over to the garage. Josh is getting changed. His denim jacket is on the seat of his Triumph, and he is just undoing his belt. Josh’s white-T shirt is out of shape and so short it barely comes down to his belly button. It looks like he’s had it for years. Mum would have thrown mine out before it got like that. He pulls his jeans off and lays them over the bike. He is standing there in nothing but his T-shirt. Josh never seems to wear any underwear. He walks round to the back of his bike and takes a pair of thin, faded shorts out of the shiny black box on the back and pulls them on, then, without putting on any shoes, he picks me up in his arms and we jog out to the garden.

  ‘Come and see my radishes, they’re huge,’ I say, exaggerating slightly.

  Josh pulls a set of leaves gently between his thumb and fingers. At the end of the thin stem is a tiny pink radish, just big enough to be recognisable. ‘Eat it, go on,’ he urges. The little root is crunchy, hot, mustardy, exciting, like my mouth is on fire. I don’t know whether I like it or not. Josh laughs and starts picking out many more of the seedlings. He clasps them in his hand and takes them back to his bike, where he puts them in a little plastic bag and lays them gently in the black box on the back of his bike. ‘They’re for my salad,’ he says. Holding them gently, protectively, as you might a baby bird.