Текст книги "A Blessing From The Obeah Man"

Автор книги: Celina Grace

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Strapping Lass

It was about six months after Moira had left him that he saw the girl. It was funny because only that morning as he’d got ready for work, he’d been thinking whether it was time to try again, move on, make a fresh start He’d come to the conclusion that perhaps it was a little premature. He was still vulnerable, after all. But then he saw her, and all his doubts fled in an instant. She was perfect.

It was in the canteen at work that she’d caught his eye. He wondered that he’d not noticed her before. He’d found his usual table was taken up with a gaggle of nurses and so he’d moved to another, further away from the door. Thus he’d seen her, sitting alone, and looking out of the window at the hospital grounds.

It was her manner with food that attracted his attention. Unlike most chubby girls, she was unapologetic. She ate proudly, head high, obviously relishing what was on her plate. Like most chubby girls, she had a lovely mouth; the lips full and curvaceous, and at this moment, glistening with the oil from her chips. She didn’t have that furtive, almost sly method of eating, tucking the food away as quickly as possible, hunching her shoulders as if to keep people from seeing what she was doing. She chewed and swallowed and wiped her mouth with every sign of complete enjoyment.

He made up his mind in the decisive way that he had.

“Hello, I’m Barry,” he said, standing by her table. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

For all her confidence with food, she was shy; he could see that by the faint start that she gave, the slight rise of colour in her cushiony cheeks. But she didn’t say no, just nodded and gestured at the seat opposite her. He smiled into her beautiful blue eyes.

Her name was Daphne. She wasn’t a nurse – he’d assumed that by the lack of uniform – but worked in the administration department, dealing with patient files. Up close, he could see the pillowy swell of her bosom, the slight double chin. She wasn’t yet fat, not as such, but oh, such potential she had!

By the end of the meal, he’d obtained her telephone number and a date for dinner for Friday. As he said goodbye, and walked towards the kitchens to start his shift, he felt as if he were floating on air. What a project, what a thing to look forward to…he could scarcely wait to begin. Take it slowly, he warned himself. He’d rushed things with Moira and look where that had got him. Slow and steady wins the race.

After a month, Daphne and Barry were officially a couple. He’d asked her not to say anything to people at work but she didn’t have many friends there anyway, and no close ones. Dazzled by his generosity, the four course meals that he took her for, the presents he bought her, she would do anything for him.

“Here you are,” he said, presenting her with a set of satin lingerie.

She blushed with pleasure, took it and stroked it.

“You’re too good to me Barry, you really are.”

“Try it on.”

She did, giggling. He made her pose for him.

“It’s a bit big,” she said, twisting around to look at her rear view.

“Never mind,” he said. You’ll grow into it, he added mentally.

After three months, he asked her to move in with him. She gave up her little studio flat gladly and gave up her job, too, at his request.

“I’ll look after you,” he said, kissing her.

They still went out for dinner, but less often. Now, Barry liked to cook large, sumptuous meals at home and they ate them at the big oak dining room table. Barry gave Daphne second helpings, even if she didn’t ask for them. He fixed her large, sweet, sticky cocktails and bought her boxes of chocolates.

He came home one day to find her regarding herself disconsolately in the bedroom mirror.

“What’s wrong, sweet?” he said.

“Look at me,” said Daphne. She pinched at the soft rolls that cascaded down her front. “I’m enormous. I’ll have to go on a diet.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Barry, feeling a jab of alarm in the pit of his stomach. He put his arm round her. “You’re beautiful. Anyway, you’re not fat. You’re just a strapping lass.”

Daphne shook her head miserably.

“I’ll have to do something,” she said. “I thought I could do the cooking for a change, make some light meals. You don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to. I’ll cook your meals too. I can freeze them if it’s too much. There’s that big freezer in the garage we never use…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Barry, hastily. He must remember to check the padlock on the freezer – it had slipped his mind, lately. He didn’t think there was anything still … there, but you never knew. “Anyway, you’re beautiful to me. Let me make you a drink and let’s watch a bit of television.”

A couple of days after that, Daphne came down with a bad cold. She sat on the sofa in the living room, watching daytime soaps and sipping a hot lemon and honey drink, which Barry had prepared for her. He’d added five sugars to the steaming liquid and had stirred it in well. Daphne said no more about cooking meals or dieting, and Barry inwardly rejoiced. He waited on her hand and foot and took time off work to cook her special, tempting dishes. In the kitchen, he grated a block of extra cheese into the lasagne. He emptied two cans of coconut cream into the curry dish he was making for tomorrow.

A month later, Daphne hadn’t yet risen from the couch. Barry brought her giant boxes of popcorn, huge torpedo-shaped bottles of fizzy pop, endless boxes of greasy fried chicken, nachos, burgers. He washed her and cleaned her and told her how beautiful she was, as she swelled like dough before him. She looked at him with love, a warm glance from her blue eyes; sunk like tiny, twinkling sapphires in the vast moonlike expanse of her face.

Two months later, Barry was in the kitchen making preparations, when he heard Daphne calling him. Her voice was barely a wheeze but he was so attuned to it, he responded immediately. He picked up the bag of doughnuts he’d bought that morning and took them in to her. He looked at her proudly. What a beautiful sight she was, filling the sofa from one straining arm to the other, a marquee of a cotton dress falling in soft folds over the mounds of her body. Her arms rested at shoulder height on the gigantic swell of flesh that extended from her chin to her thighs.

“Hello darling,” he said. “I’ve brought you something to eat.”

Daphne smiled at him, or tried to.

“Thank you darling,” she said breathlessly. He thought of her lungs, tiny grey pockets inside her, pressed relentlessly on either side by a tsunami of fat. “You’re so good to me, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’m such a useless fat lump.”

He sat down on the one of the arms and put his arm around her, as far as he could stretch.

“How many times?” he said. “You’re not fat. You’re just a strapping lass.” He smiled and thought of the knives in the kitchen, laid out in shining, expectant rows; the cleaver, the boning knife, the carver. He shivered with delicious anticipation. “Silly girl, you’re not fat. You look good enough to eat.”

~~~

The Mourning After

I can’t remember exactly what happened. All I know is that we’d done it and it was done and that we were there, waiting for the outcome. It was cold, I remember and there was this sort of mist surrounding everything. But at the time I didn’t care, ‘cos I had Mark to keep me warm.

It’s difficult to know where to start. I mean, I know what happened, and what I meant to happen and sometimes the two things fit and sometimes they don’t. But hey, nothing ever works out exactly how you want it, does it? I mean, that’s what Mark says. And he should know, I mean, he’s had about the worst life you can imagine and I for one believe him when he tell me why everything gets as bad as it does. I wouldn’t know, personally, ‘cos I have had quite a sheltered life but at least I can imagine what it must be like to be abused. You know. He looked at me when he told me, with these big haunted eyes and I just felt this kind of rage against his parents and the teachers and all the other people who had fucked –  yeah, fucked him over from day one. It’s why he wore black. I did too, after I met him. It drove Mum and Dad up the wall. I looked like a ghost, they said. I liked it; it was the first time I’d ever felt different. My friends thought so too, the few I had left after Mark plunged into my life. I hid my skin behind white pan-stick and my burgeoning curves behind drapes of black velvet and only Mark was allowed past.

And he really went past. He went deeper than anyone had before. I mean, losing your virginity shouldn’t be a huge big deal in this day and age but for me, it was. I mean, I really wanted the flowers and fireworks. That was before Mark made me realise that something has to be painful before it’s worthwhile. I remember the first time; the real, white-hot pain of it and how I had to grit my teeth to get through it, but just remembering his gasps and the way he looked at me when he was on top, well, I’d do it all again in a second.

It’s still cold and grey here. I’m holding Mark’s hand while I remember the first date we ever had. My parents didn’t actually know I was going out with a boy. I mean, they would’ve freaked, I’m only fourteen. I think I’m still only fourteen. It’s a bit difficult to tell here. There’s a few others that look like my age but everyone looks so wasted, I can’t tell. And I feel awkward about asking, everyone’s so sad. I’m glad I’ve got Mark, even though he frowns most of the time. At least I’m not on my own.

But our first date…we went to the cinema. We saw an ‘18’ film; I was so nervous, ‘cos obviously, I’m so underage. But Mark said I could do anything, if I had the courage, and I didn’t want to look like I didn’t, so I just held my head up and we passed, no problem. In the back seat, he pushed his hand up my skirt and moved his hand skillfully and I thought that was it, that the whole building was going to come crashing down around me as I came. It was then I knew I loved him.

Mum and Dad didn’t. They hated him. They hated his looks, his background and jeez, when they found out he’d been on a course of anti-depressants and had therapy, well, goodbye! But they couldn’t sway me. Courage was something I’d learnt going out with Mark and I wasn’t about to give it up now.

Real Romeo and Juliet stuff. I’d sneak out to see him, saying I was going to see Tammy. I hadn’t actually seen her for over a month, since she said Mark was a weirdo and a psycho.  I didn’t mind too much – I mean, you grow out of people, don’t you? I mean, Tammy and I had been friends since nursery. And I knew for a fact she was a virgin, so how could she even begin to understand how special Mark and I were?

I can’t remember when he asked me to do it. We’d just finished and I was mopping up with some tissues. He looked at me with those big dark eyes and asked me if I’ve ever considered suicide. Of course, I said no. But it started me thinking. Mum and Dad were being really shitty. I had no money, I was failing my classes at school. Plus, I had no friends. My life really wasn’t so great.

Mark asked me and then stuck his head between my legs. I felt him lapping away and realised this was another challenge he was issuing. I couldn’t quite push him away but I tried not to feel anything as I tossed his question around in my mind. Too late. I felt my orgasm welling up at the same time as I felt the answer rising in my brain. I didn’t want to kill myself. But I couldn’t bear the thought of Mark doing it without me.

We discussed how to do it. It was a new game, like the one where we’d got hold a copy of the Karma Sutra and had gone through all the new positions. How would we do it? Rope? Too lengthy and painful. Gun? Who did we know who’d got one? Pills? We didn’t know how many to take and who would tell us? After each discussion we’d make love, frantically, as if for the last time. Then he’d drop me a street away from my house and I’d walk back to Mum and Dad, rehearsing my story. I was at Tammy’s house – we went to the cinema.

It’s really cold here. I’m looking at Mark, wanting a little comfort, but he’s just turning away, frowning. It’s funny but from this angle I’ve noticed how weird his nose is – like it’s been broken and not properly set. It’s a bit ugly, actually. He sees me staring and tries to smile but his teeth are all crooked. I’ve never really noticed that before.

I’m not sure when I decided irrevocably to do it (jeez, big word! My English teacher would be proud. Although, I can’t quite remember what she looks like. Not anymore). But I know it was after a bad week, when Mum had shouted at me and Dad was away somewhere and Mark was the only stable thing in my shifting life. We’d decided on razor blades. Cheap and reasonably painless. I’d tried them out on my forearm the week before, fascinated by the slow welling of blood from each cut. I showed Mark, who’d lifted my arm and licked away the blood, dabbing his forefinger in it and putting it to my lips. There was something sexual in that and we both knew it. We both knew we were binding ourselves together in a web of pain and soon, we’d be bound together forever in death.

It’s getting so cold here. I’m trying to hold Mark’s hand, ‘cos I need to feel that someone’s here for me. I mean, that’s why I took the plunge, to be with him forever. I need to feel him here, solidly, not like some twisting grey wraith that’s floating out of reach. He felt so solid when we did it. We lay on my bed with candles and everything. I’d even got some red roses to put around us, so that people would understand when they found us that it was a beautiful thing that we’d done, not a sacrilege. Mark made the first cut and I watched as the blood fluttered out, staining the bedcovers. Soon mine had flowed out to join his, mingling with the dark red petals of the roses. It took a long time, much longer than I’d thought. We lay there and held each other, watching as things became faint and fuzzy. I could feel his heartbeat falter and slow next to mine. I watched the stained, patchy ceiling split open and there was white light beyond and I felt Mark next to me as we fell towards the light. It felt like the best decision I’d ever made.

Now I’m here though, I’m not so sure. Everything’s so grey. It feels like an old people’s home, even though most of us are young. No one seems to know what’s going on. And Mark, he just spends his time moaning, saying it’s not what he expected. There’s a small part of me – well, sort of more than a small part of me – that feels a little bit of panic that I made the wrong decision. But I can’t have done. I mean, Mark and me, we’re like Romeo and Juliet, we’re meant to be together. We’re meant to have died for each other.

I mean, I’m not sure how bad my life actually was, back there. There are people here, well, you wouldn’t want to know what they went through. I mean, it seemed really bad when I was going through it but – shit. Things weren’t so grey, I remember that. And Mark? I know we wanted to be together forever. So, I’m glad we will be. I mean, I have to be, don’t I? I am though. Really glad. No, really I am.

I just wish everything wasn’t so grey. Grey and thin, like a cold mist. I can see it stretching into the distance, forever.

The Club

It was a warm April night the first time I met Kurt Fleischer. A hint of summer in the warmth of the evening breeze – a sunset gently bleeding into the sky behind us as we stood on the terrace. I was at the launch of a new restaurant. Crashingly dull, as it happens – I was debating on whether I could bear to hang around until dessert. I shifted from foot to foot, easing the ache in the small of my back. And then I saw Kurt. With all that’s happened since, it’s amazing that it wasn’t the demands of my stomach that got me into all this. No, it was the insistence of another organ altogether.

He’s tall, you know; blonde, high cheek-boned; the very prototype of Aryan perfection. But you would know, of course, as he’s joined the ever-swelling ranks of celebrity chefs that clog up our televisions, exhorting us to watch our waistlines and titillate our tastebuds. You can peruse Kurt’s book in Waterstones; dine at his – our – restaurant (if you book a month in advance, three if you want a table on Saturday night). You can buy his range of gleaming knives and cleavers in John Lewis. And yet, only he and I and a few select others know the secret of his – our – success. Only The Club knows how delicious a game it all is.

He was the one who approached me, you know. I saw the gleam of his blonde hair as he moved through the crowd on that warm spring night, watched as he moved towards me. Could it be possible…? I flicked my gaze away from his face, back towards the eager grimace of my companion – Harry Capless, one half of this new gastronomic venture. He could tell I was bored, obviously, but as he was hoping for a blazingly positive review from me, he had little choice but to ignore my bad manners. I kept my eyes on him, aware of the blonde young man standing just in the periphery of my vision. He wasn’t hovering – he just stood there silently, waiting for me to notice him. I caught a faint whiff of his aftershave, a tang of clean sweat beneath it. He smelled good enough to eat.

Eventually Harry ground to a halt. I smiled dismissively and turned towards the blonde – Kurt, as I was soon to learn.

“Good evening, “ I said.

He nodded, unsmiling.

“Good evening. You are Geoffrey Lamb-Scott?”

I inclined my head graciously. He went on.

“You are writing for the Daily Telegraph, their restaurant reviews?”

“I am, dear boy. The Sunday Telegraph, to be quite accurate. But I’m afraid you have the advantage of me. Your name is…?”

“Kurt Fleischer. I am a chef.”

Oh Lord. I manage not to wince outwardly. Another young hopeful, another one desperate for a good review. For any review.

How desperate? I wondered thoughtfully.

“I wanted very much to talk to you about the article you wrote for Gastronome,” said Kurt. His smooth golden face was taut with earnestness. I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

“The article…?”

“In the last month, the last issue.” He stumbled over his words for a moment. “It was most – most enlightening. What you wrote – it is so true, it is the truth. You spoke the truth.”

My word. If he were as passionate as this about an article, what would he be like… well… I smiled at him, encouragingly. He didn’t smile back. I could see tiny pearls of sweat beading his hairline.

I had written an article for the aforementioned magazine some months before. In it, I bemoaned the fact that, to the true gourmet, the real epicure, there was literally nothing left to eat. There was no taste sensation that hadn’t been documented a thousand times; no dish that hadn’t graced the palates of a thousand restaurant reviewers before. Porcini, pasta, olive oil, truffle, saffron, sushi, jus, mash, noisettes, julienne, shitake, salmon, frites…it was all there, all laid bare; masticated, pontificated, gorged, forged and puked. There was nothing left; no taste sensation remaining that hadn’t already been plundered, lauded, laid out for the masses.

“So you think,” said Kurt. For the first time he had a smile on his face, his cheekbones showing faintly blue-white though his golden skin. Again, I felt the tug of lust and something else, something beneath it. Intrigue? Curiosity? Fear?

“My dear boy…”

He smiled again. “Wait. I will show you.”

That was how I found myself in some godforsaken hole in Smithfield’s Market, the butcher stalls braced with cages of iron, newspapers plastered up against the walls, the smell of old blood ground into the ancient bricks. Kurt looked at me, grinning slightly as I stood hunched in the street, like a well-dressed, priapic tramp.

“In here,” he whispered and ushered me forward. It was a dank little hole, ill lit and odd smelling. Surely not a restaurant? He took my hand and led me along a long, dark corridor which opened out into a large room, wood-panelled, lit only by the embers of a dying fire.

“What is this?”

I wanted my voice to come out strongly but the dark robbed it of any firmness. There were others in the room, I saw dimly; just glinting eyes in the darkness and the shuffle of quiet breath in the corners of the room.

“What is this?”

I could feel my voice becoming higher. Kurt looked back, and smiled again, that heartless, Teutonic grimace.

“Stay here, Geoffrey, and I will cook you a feast.”

I was slightly reassured by the sound of my name. I sat on a hard wooden bench, slotting my legs beneath a roughly hewn table, the shadows folding themselves around me. I listened to the barely perceptible sound of breathing. My scalp was tingling, my bowels were loose and trembling within me. The shadows lengthened.  There was a murmuring, in the darkness, a soft undertone in the shadows. I felt the softest touch on my neck, a finger sliding down the tendon of my throat. I jerked and nearly screamed.

Looking back into the black cavern of the room, I saw nothing, nothing in the darkness. The mere tickle of a cobweb… I brushed at my neck, shivering. What in God’s name was I doing? Where was I? I sat, clenching my fists… surely, time to go…but there at the end of the room, moving like a blonde angel soaring wingless through the darkness was Kurt, a white china plate gripped in his big, capable hand. He came up to me and I breathed out, more relieved than I could say to see him. He held the plate out to me, smiling and I looked at it, mesmerised. Steam rose from the slab of meat laid upon it.

“What is this?” I said softly, as he laid it in front of me.

He smiled.

“It is good.”

From nowhere a knife and fork had appeared on the table before me. I reached out as if in a dream. The steam rose from the meat, writhing in the darkness. I looked, pressed, cut. I lifted the fork to my mouth.

Oh… like nothing I’d tasted before, like nothing I’d felt before. Too many times (I fear) in my journalism I’d use the phrase ‘orgasmic’. But that was what this was, it was, it was. I chewed, gasped, writhed in my seat; my whole being concentrated in the hundred effervescing nerve endings in the moist cave of my mouth. I was lost, abandoned, helpless. And when I came to, when the dark room had stopped sparkling and spinning, there was Kurt’s face and his warm hand and his voice saying… oh, so warm and intimate…you spoke the truth but it was not the whole truth, ja…..

“What is it?” I said, when I was once again capable of speech.

Kurt dropped his eyes to the floor.

“I am thinking…I am thinking…”

“Thinking what?” I clutched at him, shameless.

He looked at me, solemnly. I nearly gasped again at his beauty, that golden skin, his crisp hair, the tender play of muscles in his neck.

“Can you keep a secret?” he said.

The freezer door thunked shut behind us. I shivered and my breath formed a steaming cloud in the air.

“What is it?” I said. “Why have you brought me here?”

Kurt moved closer to me and put a hand on my upper arm, just above the elbow joint. The warmth of his hand made me, paradoxically, shiver.

“This is the secret,” he said to me. He was almost whispering. “This is the – the – I do not know the word…”

“The…”

“Cure!” He said it triumphantly. “ The cure, for the illness that you said, that you wrote. This is the only thing left to us, to those of us who love food, who worship that which makes us, that …I cannot think of the words.. that….”

“Nourishes us?” I said tentatively.

“Yes!” His grip on my arm tightened and involuntarily my eyes dropped to his own bicep, the bluish sheen of the muscle pushing against the skin of his arm.

He dragged me forward.

“Here,” he said, hushed again. “This is the only thing that is left to us.”

I looked down at the steel table whose frost-rimmed edge was nudging my thighs. There was a white plastic tray laid upon it, in which where several cuts of meat. I looked at them. A brisket, a loin, a chop – and an unidentifiable cut, a little ragged about the edges. I looked closer. The topside still had the skin attached, pale, freckled, dusted with fine hairs. And something else, a mark, a flaw. I bent closer. A mark, a flaw – I recoiled suddenly, bile rising in my throat. A mark, a flaw… no – the intricate edges of a tattoo, the unfurling petals of a rose and the first two letters of a name ‘M’ and ‘O’…

“It is natural.”

I looked up at Kurt from my kneeling position from the gutter, in the alleyway outside. My latest, guiltiest, most perfect meal steamed before me, regurgitated.

“Natural?”

“Yes,” he said, serenely. “It is natural to react like that. After all, it is not what is –what is the word – intended, is it not? It is not intended…”

“God, no…” I whispered.

Then I looked at him. I looked at his beauty, that molten skin stretched taut over muscle. The muscle laid over creamy fat, the whole of him beautiful and wholesome and healthy. And I thought again of the feel of that slab of meat against my teeth, the way the juices had burst from the crisp edge; how it was the last, the best, the only thing left to taste…

And that’s how it started – the Club. There are more of us out there than you’d imagine. When you hear of a new restaurant opening, of a new celebrity chef touting his latest book, I wonder if it ever gives you pause. Does it ever make you wonder? Because there’s a surprising number of us gourmets out there, you know. And is it really so disgusting? I am the Body of Christ…all flesh is grass… the justification is there, is it not?

And Kurt and I? We opened our first restaurant in Smithfields two years ago. Our second in Mayfair a year later. We appear in the latest Michelin. It’s been a wild, heady ride, no doubt about it. Kurt was happy to take on the public relations part of our partnership and he fulfilled his role so well.

It’s just that, lately, I’ve had to put off his media appearances – it’s too much for one person, sometimes. He’d come home so tired and drawn…he’d lost so much weight and that’s bad for our kind of business, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. And besides, we haven’t spent much time together lately and that’s bad for any relationship, isn’t it?

It’s still good though – he’s such a sweet boy. When I look at him now, I’m reminded of why I fell in love with him in the first place. Tenderness. That’s what everyone looks for in a lover, isn’t it?