Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [21]
Mum must have thought she was being clever by not letting Granny discover our lack of power supply when she brought the record player over. It turned out that Granny wasn’t fooled for a minute. The next day there was a knock on the door and, before I could panic, I heard her voice. When I opened the door she was holding two foil parcels.
‘I’ve brought your lunch, dear.’
Wow!
I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I smelled the warm pie cooked that morning in Saltdean and transported so lovingly the six miles to our house. Mum thanked her, but she didn’t eat hers, despite Granny’s best efforts.
‘Well, I’ll wrap it up and you can have it later,’ she said.
In the end, I think I had it for tea.
Granny popping round with meals wrapped in foil or cling film became a regular occurrence. She never stayed long, just dropped them off and vanished. It was really lovely of her, especially going to such an effort to keep the food as warm as possible. I couldn’t even remember eating a hot meal at home before that. Not that it bothered me. It was just another one of those things.
Granny didn’t come every day. I think Mum told her not to. She’d say she could cope. She couldn’t though. If Granny didn’t appear I’d go out on my bike and see what I could forage or scrounge from the other kids. When that didn’t work I turned my attention to the sweet shops. It’s amazing how many sweets you can stuff in your pockets while the shopkeeper’s turned the other way. It was totally wrong, I knew that. But if I didn’t have those sweets I wouldn’t be eating that day.
Soon the local shops became wise to my tricks. As is so often the case, it was getting greedy that proved my downfall. I remember at Easter really craving these little chicks made out of pipe cleaners at the sweet shop. Even though it was the chocolate I really needed to fill my rumbling tummy, I couldn’t leave without making a grab for one of the wire toys – which is when the shopkeeper’s hand landed on mine.
He shouted at me, but I’d seen him do it a dozen times to other kids. I wasn’t the only one with sticky fingers, although I might have been the only one who needed to steal to eat.
I was never banned from any of the shops that caught me – I think they expected all children to have a go at shoplifting – but I quickly realized I needed to think of something else. So, with Granny’s help, I went shopping for groceries.
‘Mum’s going to make a roast,’ I told her.
That made Granny so happy I didn’t dare tell her the truth: that there would be a roast – but I would be the one cooking it.
That afternoon, while Mum slept, I disappeared into the tiny kitchen and began peeling vegetables, the way I’d seen Granny do it. I took out this large piece of pork and laid it all neatly on a baking tray. I covered it with some grimy oil that looked like it hadn’t been touched for years, then shoved it all in the oven. I didn’t know what number to turn the dial to, so I span it all the way round. Granny’s roasts normally took a couple of hours, so I decided to come back and check then.
I really thought it was that simple. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing really. I didn’t know if the vegetables needed the same time as the meat or if they went together or even how long the meat required in the first place. It was all guesswork, based on meals Granny had cooked for me down the years – so it was obviously never going to end well.
My biggest mistake, I realized some time later, was not appreciating that the cooker ran on electricity. It didn’t matter what number I set the temperature to; with no power, that oven wasn’t going to do anything. But I didn’t know that. I’d never seen Mum use it, so I didn’t know lights should have come on. It didn’t even occur to me that it should have been getting hot.
Two hours after I’d put it in, I called Mum to the little table and proudly served her uncooked meat