Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,19
have to crave the approval of Julie Fraser or any of her stupid friends ever again.
THE BAD PATCH after the bingo had lasted several months but finally came to an end when my mother began watching The Galloping Gourmet and discovered a sudden passion for cordon-bleu cooking. She spent entire mornings scouring the shops for the appropriate ingredients (veal was something there had never been much demand for at our local butcher’s, and the grocer hadn’t even heard of some of the things the recipes called for) and entire afternoons in a flurry of flour and steam preparing the evening’s meal. At night, in bed, she sat propped against her pillow reading recipe books. The Galloping Gourmet program itself was a period during which absolute silence was demanded in our household, as my mother pulled her chair to within four feet of the television, scribbling notes and sighing at the Galloping Gourmet’s momentous culinary achievements.
For a few weeks, my father and I were treated almost every evening to meals like Coq au Vin, Rôti de Porc Boulangère, and Boeuf à la Mode. I quite enjoyed it, especially since my mother also insisted on “creating the appropriate atmosphere,” with a red gingham tablecloth, candles, and French accordion music playing on the record player in the other room. She even made me teach her a few phrases that I had recently learned in my first year of French at school, like merci beaucoup, c’est très bien, and ça c’est bon, which she insisted on repeating throughout the meals, regardless of whether they actually made any sense at the time, and with a French accent even worse than that of any of my fellow students. Mabel, when she came over one night, was delighted at the whole scene, oohing and aahing at the paper serviettes, the white chef’s hat my mother wore as she cooked, the packet of French cigarettes my mother had bought her as a treat, and the bottle of white wine she placed on the table before we began.
“I love a bit of good plonk with my food, I really do,” Mabel said, gulping back half her glass of wine before lifting it into the air and declaring, “Ooh là là, here’s to a little bit of France right here in Hull.”
My father, on the other hand, was rather irritated by the whole thing and seemed to have little desire to consume meals whose names he could not pronounce, never mind understand.
“Jesus Christ, Evelyn. Whatever happened to good, plain English food?” he complained one night at the sight of a whole small bird and a pile of haricots verts in cream sauce on his plate. “I mean, what on earth is this, anyway, underage chicken? What’s wrong with a nice steak and kidney pudding, a few Brussels sprouts and some chips?”
My mother’s response was swift and to the point. She picked up the plate she had just placed in front of my father, screamed, “Nobody ever appreciates me! Nobody!” and hurled it at the wall. The plate shattered, the bird thumped to the floor, and the haricots verts in their cream sauce stuck to the wall for a moment before oozing slowly downward, eventually forming a puddle on the linoleum. “You’ll send me to Delapole, you two!” she yelled, giving me a furious look that seemed to indicate that she regarded me as the instigator of my father’s complaint.
“I like your French food, Mum,” I said, lifting my knife and fork, as if I were desperate to sink my teeth into the small bird, which I, like my father, speculated was a prematurely butchered chicken. But it was too late. She leaned over me, grabbed my plate, and spun round to throw that, too, at the wall.
After that, another bad patch. That was followed, several months later, by a brief but very intense interest in dressmaking (I got a whole new, ill-fitting, and rather bizarre wardrobe), then macramé (until every available space in the house was covered in multicolored throws, blankets, tablecloths, and antimacassars), candle making, quilting, upholstery, rug making, amateur dramatics, and, finally, a stint organizing jumble sales for the Young Wives Club until, for some reason that she never revealed to my father and me, she was asked to step down. And, in between all these things, there were, of course, the bad patches.
“I THINK I’LL TRY and fix that roof tomorrow,” my father said, scraping the last baked beans from the tin and spooning them into his