The Devil's Larder

38

ONE SUMMER HOLIDAY, when I was nine or thereabouts, living in the blocks behind the port, my mother got me out from underneath her feet by setting up a game of pass the cake. It was, she promised me, a way of finding out what kind of neighbour, wife and cook I’d be when I grew up, and also a lesson in the Expansion of Good Deeds.

The proper way to pass the cake, she said (making me write down her instructions) was this: on Friday, I should pour a single cup containing sugar, milk and flour into a covered bowl, take it down with me into the yard and whistle for my gang of girls. We’d have to find a secret place, away from cats and rats and boys, to hide the bowl. On Saturday, all the girls should gather round and take their turn at stirring the mixture and making a wish.

Sunday was the day of rest, so we’d do nothing to the bowl all day, except to say a prayer for it: ‘Dear God, don’t let the boys sniff out our cake.’ On Monday, I would have to add another cup of sugar, milk and flour; on Tuesday, everybody should stir the mixture, make a wish again; on Wednesday, yet another cup from me; on Thursday, stir and wish a final time.

When the second Friday came around, it would be my honour to remove two cups of mixture from my bowl and give them to two friends to start their own cakes, to add and stir and mix with help from all of us throughout the following week. ‘One cake, you see, produces two.’

Once my cake had given birth to twins, my mother said, I could take what I had left inside my bowl, and come upstairs to see what she had to spare, an egg, some oil, some apple and sultanas, perhaps, or the last jam in the jar. And once I’d mixed these extras in — so long as I did not clutter up the kitchen for too long — I could bake my cake in the family oven. Then all I had to do was eat it up on Saturday, outside, sharing it with the girls and looking forward to sharing theirs in all the weeks ahead.

If everybody played their part and kept their faith, then my cake would have produced four unbaked grandchildren by the following Friday, mother explained, jotting down the figures underneath the recipe, eight unbaked great-grandchildren within the fortnight, and 1,024 fully cooked descendants within twelve weeks of the game starting. ‘Before the year is up that little cup of sugar, milk and flour will have fed the world,’ she said, pushing me towards the door. I was content to let her rest while I ran down to the gang with my astounding bowl.

That was the proper way to pass the cake. But, when you’re nine or thereabouts, a week is an eternity. We could not wait. We sat, the dozen in our gang, out in the stairwell with our bowls and her instructions, and bred our future generations in an afternoon. At one o’clock we put my starting cup of sugar, milk and flour in my bowl. At five past one we stirred and wished. By one thirty-five, we’d filled two more bowls, our eldest twins, and were already cooking the first cake. In less than six hours, by our reckoning, we would have made 10,000 wishes, offered up a multitude of prayers, and passed the cake into every household in the Blocks. We would, indeed, have fed the world within the two weeks of our holidays, we would have made the generations hunger-free, if there had been (there never are) sufficient girls and bowls.