The Devil's Larder

15

MY MOTHER’S birthday — and I’ll bake a pie for her. Blind pie. The sort she baked for us when we were small, on our birthdays. The trick’s revealed. I have her recipe. She wrote it down more than forty years ago, in pencil and in capitals, on the last page of her 1961 House Diary. I found it on the kitchen shelf when we were clearing her apartment, the week she died.

This much I always knew. We were allowed to watch her line the deep dish with pastry and prepare a decorated lid. We’d help her roll and paste into place the walls of dough, which divided the pie into six triangular compartments. The birthday child could choose the filling, but only ‘something sensible’. Sliced fruit and dates. Leek and cheese. Chicken and onion. Pigeon and damsons. The pie was fit for almost anything. But she would never let us stay to watch the filling of the spaces. We had to giggle on the far side of the kitchen door while — now we know — she packed five of the compartments with the chosen food and blinded the sixth segment of the pie with flour and dried beans. Then she hid the contents under the lid.

We were allowed to see her slide the pie into the middle of the oven, and wait in the kitchen for the forty minutes that it took to bake. But then, again, we had to leave and guess at what she did behind our backs, what tricks she used to make the pie so generous. But here it’s written down in pencil and in capitals. The lifting of the pastry lid with its exasperated shush of steam. The careful, hot removal of the aggregate, the pebbles and clay of hardened flour and bullet beans. The filling of the blind sixth, with either the necklace or the marbles that my mother had kept hidden in her linen drawer, the ornament she’d ordered through the post, the shell purse from the seaside, the metal animal, the set of dice. And finally the dinner gong, the family gathered at the oblong table, the serving spoon, the violated pastry lid, with — almost — everybody praying for no fruit, no meat, but hoping that something costly and inedible would end up on their plates.

Not me. I used to fear my mother’s pies. I hated my birthdays, too. Still do. While we were exiled from the kitchen, my sisters would torment me, twisting arms and pulling hair, just to turn my birthday sour. ‘You should have been a girl,’ they’d say. ‘Mother only wanted girls. She said you were a curse, when you were born. She told us she could never love a boy like you. You’ll see. You’ll see how much she loves you when she serves the pie. You’re in for a surprise.’

So I’d learned to fear the contents of the sixth, that dark and blind compartment with no edible filling. Inside there’d be, my sisters would say, a little snake for my birthday, hissing hate and steam. There’d be a smooth, black bat — well baked — to break out of the pastry lid and hunt for warrens in my hair. There’d be a nest of cockroaches to mark my anniversary. Or a cake of melted soap, with body hairs, girls’ body hairs. Or else a dry and steaming toad to sing ‘Congratulations’ with its dry and steaming voice. Alone, alone amongst the birthday celebrants, I always prayed my piece of pie would not be a surprise. I know, of course, what it was I always feared the most — not gifts, not bats, not toads, but that my mother’s love would prove as hard and hissing as my sisters said.

And so, too late, I plan to bake a pie for her and for my sisters on our mother’s anniversary, to show I know they meant me harm. I have her pencilled recipe for guidance. I have my grievances to mix in with the pastry. I’ll fill the six compartments, lid the pie, and cook it well, as well as any woman could.

I’ll serve the pie myself. My hand, I know, will shake as I plunge the spoon into the pastry. I know my sisters will expect surprises, gifts. They will be surprised. There’ll be no empty compartment for the birthday dead, no ornament, no snake, no necklace, and no soap. And nothing edible. No steam. They don’t deserve sliced fruit and dates, or leek and cheese, or chicken and onion. Pigeon and damsons are too good for them. The six compartments will be full of flour and dry beans. Blind pie. The sort my mother baked when I was small.