Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,80
in that case, thanks very much.” She took the package and pressed it to her chest. I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps things would go better than I’d thought. “It’s been quite a while since anyone’s been so thoughtful as to get me a present,” she said, giving me a sideways but nevertheless pointed look.
“Open it then,” I urged her. I imagined a pretty pearl necklace, a pair of gold earrings, a flowing silk scarf—the kinds of things I might buy my mother if it occurred to me to get her anything besides the talcum powder and bath crystals I always ordered for her out of Mabel’s Avon catalog for Christmas and birthdays.
“All right, all right,” my mother said. “Ooh, I wonder what it could be.” She didn’t have to wonder long, however, for having deftly torn back the paper in only a matter of seconds, she found herself holding a large mound of mottled pink sausages.
“Best pork sausages you’ll find in the whole of Yorkshire,” Frank announced. He had a deep, throaty voice—the kind men get from smoking too many cigarettes, the kind that makes them sound careworn and wrung out by life. “And probably the best you’ll find in the whole country, if I’m not mistaken. There’s three pounds there. That should last you a while.”
My mother regarded the sausages with the expression of a person who had just been handed a package of someone else’s vomit. When she looked up at Frank and Mabel, her expression remained unchanged.
“Frank’s right,” said Mabel, an unlit cigarette now dangling from her lips as she scrambled about in her bag again, presumably to locate her lighter. “Best sausages you’ll find anywhere in the world. And Frank should know. That’s where he works—Tuggles Sausage Factory. Been there for seventeen years now, haven’t you, Frank?”
Frank nodded, his face a picture of saddened confusion as he met my mother’s disdainful expression.
“I see,” my mother said flatly, lowering her eyes toward the sausages again. “So, this is how you spend your days, then, Frank? Making sausages?”
“Aye, like Mabel says, I’ve been there seventeen years.”
“Yes, well, I’ve never been much of a pork person myself,” my mother said, folding the paper back around the package as if she could no longer bear the sight of all that raw, pink meat. “Beef is much more my cup of tea. You could have asked Mabel and she would have told you that. I’ve always had a preference for beef.” She shook her head slowly, as if to say that had Frank only had the sense to bring along a package of beef sausages, this whole sorry interaction would have gone perfectly.
“I like pork sausages,” I said, desperate to rescue the only visit we’d had at our new home from complete disaster. “And so does my dad. We’ll eat them, won’t we, Dad?” I looked over at my father, who was lurking behind my mother and me in the hallway. He gave a noncommittal shrug.
My mother handed the package to me. “Yes, well, you’d better put them in the fridge then, hadn’t you? If it’s not stored properly, you can get all kinds of diseases from pork. That’s why them Muslims and Jews won’t touch it. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to end up with tapeworm.”
“Oh, there’s no chance of you getting anything like that,” Frank said solemnly. “Use the best sanitary practices, we do.”
“I’m not taking any chances, thank you very much,” my mother said. “Jesse and Mike can eat pork, but I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“You’ve eaten it plenty of times before,” I chimed. Indeed, next to Mr. Kipling cream cakes, pork pies were one of my mother’s favorite foods. She loved to eat them in thin slices, buried under shiny mounds of Branston Pickle and mustard, leaving brown and yellow stains around her mouth. It didn’t surprise me, however, that she conveniently seemed to have forgotten this particular passion. I felt sorry for Frank. Though he might keep us in meat products for the rest of our lives, he would never be forgiven his faux pas in Mabel’s bathroom. If Mabel had any compassion, she’d never have raised his hopes in the first place.
“Well,” my mother said, turning away from the doorway, “I suppose you want something to eat. I’m sorry, but I just haven’t had a chance to make it to the shops this week.” She sighed as if she’d had one of those excessively busy