‘Work stations, everyone.’ Betty clapped her hands.
As we were about to start, Dr Billings came and crooked a finger at Eamonn, who stood gleaming acquisitively at a bag of raisins, and took him away.
‘Where’s he going?’ I asked Mike.
‘Oh, he’s not allowed to bake,’ said Mike, ‘because he went berserk last week and ate a whole bowl of pastry.
‘Before it was cooked,’ he added.
He looked pained at the memory. ‘It would turn your stomach to see it,’ he said, ‘so it would. And he had the tightest hoult a that bowl…’
‘Jayzus, it was desperate,’ said Stalin, with a shudder. ‘Like feeding time at the azoo. It took the night’s sleep offa me.’
‘So where is he now?’ I asked. I didn’t like the peremptory manner in which Eamonn had been led away.
‘Don’t know,’ shrugged Mike. ‘Doing some other hobby.’
‘Maybe he’s learning to make homebrew,’ suggested Barry the child.
That caused uproarious laughter. They slapped their thighs and snorted ‘Making homebrew, that’s a good one.’
‘Or doing… or doing…’ Clarence was laughing so hard he could barely speak. ‘… or doing some wine appreciation,’ he finally managed. The brown jumpers exploded into convulsions. They wheezed with mirth, laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other.
‘I’ll eat a bowl of raw pastry if they’ll let me do wine appreciation,’ Mike guffawed.
More hysterics.
I didn’t laugh. I wanted to lie down and sleep for a very, very long time. The last thing I wanted to do was bake something.
The rest of them bantered happily with each other while I prayed to die. I could hear what they were saying, but their voices sounded a long way off.
‘I’m making this great kind of… like… bread stuff that I had in Islamabad,’ mumbled Fergus the acid casualty.
‘Have you any wacky baccy to put into it?’ Vincent enquired.
‘No,’ Fergus admitted.
‘Then it’s not like the bread you had in Timbuctoo, is it?’
Fergus turned away, his dead wasteland eyes emptied further.
‘If me wife could see me now, wha’? Harharhar!’ said Stalin, as he weighed out some caster sugar. ‘She’s never even seen me boil a kettle.’
‘No wonder she’s got a barring order out against you,’ said Misty O’Malley.
And everyone tutted and said ‘Oh, Misty,’ but in a good-natured way.
But then aggressive Vincent said ‘It’s not because he can’t cook, it’s because he keeps breaking her ribs.’
There was a roaring in my ears and I thought I was going to faint.
That couldn’t be true, could it? I thought in horror. Stalin was a nice, friendly man, he wouldn’t do that, Vincent must be joking. But nobody laughed. Nobody said anything at all.
A long time passed before people began to speak and joke again. And Stalin didn’t utter another word.
I continued to feel mighty pukey. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn I’d been out on the rip the night before.
Luckily Betty was nice. She asked me if there was anything in particular I’d like to make. I mumbled ‘Something easy.’
And she said, ‘What about coconut buns? You could make them in your sleep.’ Feeling like that was exactly what I was doing, I did.
‘I’ve been planning this all week,’ Mike announced with glee, as he pointed at a picture in a book. ‘It’s a tart tatin.’
‘What’s that?’ demanded Peter.
Some class of a French upsidedown apple ‘tart.’
‘And what’s wrong with having it the right way up?’ Peter wanted to know. ‘’ Twas far from French upside-down yokes you were reared. AHAHAHAHAHAH AHAAAAAARGHg!’
Betty moved around the room, helping here, making suggestions there. (‘That’s enough butter, Mike, you don’t want to give yourself a heart attack.’ ‘No, Fergus, I’m sorry. You’ll have to use a normal oven, fire regulations don’t cover us for two bricks on a hillside. I’m sorry if it won’t be authentic.’ ‘No, Fergus, I am sorry.’ ‘No, Fergus, I’m not patronizing you.’ ‘No, Fergus, I have nothing against drugs.’ ‘I’ll have you know, Fergus, that I smoked pot once.’ ‘Do you mind? I did inhale.’) Awful as I felt, there was something comforting about measuring and sieving the flour and sugar and desecrated coconut (as Mum called it), breaking in the eggs (pausing momentarily for a brief gag), stirring it all around in a bowl and putting the sticky mixture into little paper cases that had sprigs of holly on them. It make me think of when I was a little girl and I used to help my mother, in the days before she gave up baking for ever.
I stayed away from Chris because I knew he’d go right off me if he got too close a look at my cadaver’s face and red blotches. But it was hard because the attention he’d paid to me the evening before had made me feel infini-tesimally better about Luke. If another man wanted to talk to me, surely I wasn’t as worthless as Luke made out I was? Surreptitiously, I watched Chris as he kneaded brown bread. I sighed, wishing it was my nipples he had on the floured board.
At one stage I saw him talking to Misty O’Malley and she must have said something funny, because he laughed. The sound of his laughter and the flash of blue of his eyes cut me to the quick. I wanted to be the one to make him laugh.
As soon as I felt jealous and excluded by Chris, it was only a moment before I remembered how excluded I felt by Luke. Then depression dragged me down.
After the cookery class, there was lunch, a film about drunk people, followed by more tea-drinking. I moved through it all as though in a bad dream.
What am I doing here ? flashed through my brain regularly. And then I’d take my brain aside and give it a good talking to, reminding it about pop stars and detoxifying and the general wonderfulness of the Cloisters. Deeply relieved, it would all come back to me and I’d realize how lucky I was. But a short time later I’d find myself staring in astonishment at the middle-aged men, the yellow walls, the thick fog of cigarette smoke, the terrible dinginess of it all, and again I’d wonder What am I doing here ?
It was like wearing shoes with slippery soles. I kept thinking that as soon as I finished whatever I was doing, I’d get a grip on the day and do something nice. But I didn’t. The minute one thing ended, the next thing started. And I hadn’t the energy to fight it, it was easier to just follow the herd.