wait and see. But it will be wonky and homemade. It may be naked. Or saucy.’
My mother had fed us well; we ate it all up, with thankful mouths and hands ready to do the dishes. She had grown up in the hills near Negril, where food had winked and dangled from every last tree and nigh on every day had ended in satiety, but for us she worked hard at all those meals that aspired to Englishness, the cabbage-and-potato dinners you could make from ingredients bought from up the road, boiled hard. Just like her cousin, Ionie, who had come over a few years before; just like any other 1970s housewife round their way. One generation on, I stirred up flavours from our blended world in a reduced-to-clear cast aluminium pot from a department store off the M40; a Dutchie by any other name.
She had never sat me down and told me a recipe from back Home – I doubted she even thought of such recipes as formalised processes, never mind written-down documents – and I am sure I never asked. Although a certain amount of osmosis had let the right knowledge flow from her generation to my own, I did not wear the wisdoms of ‘our’ food around me in the way she did, easy as a shawl on a cool Home Counties evening.
And so, two nights before I first cooked for Thomas, I ordered a small cookbook, Jamaican Home Cooking Secrets, for next-day delivery. When the driver, a young West African guy, rocked up with my parcel, my eyes dropped to his trainers, though he had no obvious ability to see my shame through cardboard. I don’t know why I felt so bad; I was born in Basingstoke.
I read, and chilled. Nothing tricky or unfamiliar here; not a single ‘Secret’ worth the name. Just enough prompts to turn the pages of memory: my mother’s island childhood at the kitchen ‘fire’, written down and bound. A right result.
The simplicity itself made me a touch cocky. For my dearest English Thomas, I might start slow: Brown Stew Chicken. I would perform the optional washing of the supermarket chicken with lime even though there was no need: no germs, no heat, and competent fridges. But some traditions existed for good reason; the lime also sharpened the dish. Still, only two-thirds of the Scotch bonnet, without seeds, for my man. The stew would get hotter each time until he became accustomed to ‘our’ levels. I was sure he would like all the teasing, the special treatment.
I tasted the stew.
As sauce hit tongue my mind was shaken by something more surprising than savoury, a memory so strong that it might have come from behind me, or just beyond the door.
I lifted the spoon and turned it in my hand, a dripping totem.
Wah yuh ah duh? Mo salt, yuh si mi?
I turned to face the empty kitchen, then back to my chopping board. I choked on a laugh, silent but fierce, almost a shudder. The black tear fell into the stew.
Dat better, gyal.
The chilli caught the back of my throat.
‘OK,’ I coughed. ‘I hear you.’
A quarter-pinch of allspice and the flavours dropped, settled. This was the right stuff for Thomas. This food sang of bright afternoons to be devoured before they darkened, of passion plated high, of a belief that hungers had to be sated. These dishes stirred you right back.
Not enough though, yet.
I had never once bought callaloo; spinach or kale were more readily available in High Desford. However, I had tracked down a supplier in Brockton – forty-minute drive, plus a full five minutes of speed bumps, mind you – where I bought an astonished boxful of the leafy veg, common to even the most spit-poor yards in Jamaica. Including the petrol, it cost more than Stevie’s shoes. But that green haul of social climbers deserved a Thomas to appreciate them. At the same time, I did wonder whether preparing this authentic Jamaican meal for him was in itself inauthentic, from a woman mostly reared on plain grey mince and plastic butterscotch desserts, just like him. Still, I knew it was a dinner that told more truth about me than lies. Each mouthful would seduce. A sweet smack of plantain and it was done: our hot lovers’ spread.
Thomas, as it happened, would never forget it. Nor would I.
Halfway through, the door went bamm-bam-bam. I knew it was Demarcus, still too much man for doorbells. Thomas shot up, rice falling to the table from his brandished fork.
I opened the door to Demmie, coiled tight as ever and dressed sharp, holding my sleeping son.
‘Y’alright?’ he nodded darkly at Thomas, who sank back down and started piling up my killer crisp-soft plantain on to his plate. ‘Got to go, Darling. I’m going out.’
I kissed Stevie, took him. ‘Where though?’
‘Just out, innit, change of plan. One-off, promise.’
‘Is it a woman?’ I did not smile but I felt no anger either. The spices and simmering had soothed me, and I had missed my baby.
‘What women? Don’t know no women.’
I smiled then, an easy reflex; this was our usual banter, our stock exchange. We were cool with each other, Demarcus and I. He was always a good dad, at least for a dad who couldn’t keep it anything like in his pants. His pants flew off weekly and landed in a different time zone without ever fulfilling their cotton destiny of keeping anything in them. However, when I got pregnant he stuck around, unlike some – unlike many – and we had talked about a flat-pack future, living together, even a wedding at the town hall where his brother could DJ, crack out the old-school ragga. I had been serious and so had he; we were not tripping off down any bumpy babyfather route, I did not want some cartoon of a bruvva cliché. I wanted a real husband, to be a father and son and mum, an all-together family like the one I grew up in.
Our truest story, to be fair: he was no stereotype spat out by potty-mouthed politicians – those whom Mum had christened battymouts – and nor was I. We were just not ready for each other. He liked having a boy but did not rate the stink of nappies. He had liked my milk-heavy breasts but had not wanted to miss Amsterdam to watch me push our son out of that same swollen body. He liked to stroke his son’s cheek goodnight but never woke for him. Or he would already be out. Then my Stevie was diagnosed and Dem, still my anti-husband, would stay out longer, later and longer, until I noticed that I had not seen him for three days and he hadn’t left his best jeans for me to wash and soon he wasn’t even calling me any more to tell me, ‘Don’t know no women.’
Game over, then. But only because I had been ready anyway.
So that night Dem stood there breathing in the peppery tang of another man’s dinner for two and I closed him out with a calm click, and brought Stevie in to meet my new friend, Thomas, and my boy was too drowsy to ask questions, and Thomas was fantastically uncool and kind – with a proper sleep-tight voice, that very first night – and it was enough.
Dem deh two gwan be like bench an’ batty.
As I turned to take Stevie to his bed, my phone went. I stooped to answer it, arms full of son.
‘Oh, I really can’t be arsed to—’
‘Easy, turn it off,’ said Thomas, rising to make us coffee.
I turned it off.
My man, his back to me, waved a silver pouch high. He had sought out some Jamaica Blue Mountain to make for us in my home, perhaps his way of telling me something about how he
