Matt Whyman - The Savages

‘I can take that down for you,’ said Sasha, who had noticed the bowl.

‘It can wait,’ Grandpa told her. ‘You’re welcome to stay here for a while. I heard all the shouting downstairs just now.’

Grandpa occupied the loft space in the family home. It had been converted into simple, clean and bright quarters by Titus when he came to live with them following the passing of his wife. Both Sasha and Ivan had grown up sharing the house with him. Not that he left his room very often. Still, his door was always open for anyone who wished to spend time with him. Sasha considered herself lucky. Oleg wasn’t the kind of grandfather who would sit there with one hand cupped to his ear and mumble incomprehensibly. Above all, he liked to listen as much as talk, which is why Sasha had headed upstairs having fallen out with her father.

‘Why does he have to be so controlling?’ she asked, taking the chair where Grandpa had just finished his stir fry smoothie. ‘Sometimes it feels as if he’d like me to be fitted with an off switch when I don’t live up to his expectations.’

‘Is this about Jack?’ he asked, and placed the tub beside the fish bowl. ‘I’ve heard all about him from Ivan.’

Sasha rolled her eyes.

‘So, you know he’s a vegetarian.’

Grandpa shuffled across the room. He peered through the skylight. There were no windows in his attic space. Just several points that offered him a clear view of the heavens above, as well as pictures on the wall of family and places from his past.

‘There are worse things in this world,’ he said. ‘And your father is only being protective.’

‘Has he always been like this?’ asked Sasha, as Grandpa took a seat opposite her. He nodded and regarded his granddaughter.

‘Since he was a little boy. But you have to understand why family is so important to him. He knows his roots, Sasha. I come from nothing. Nechevo . When I arrived in this country with your grandmother, we had only the rags on our backs. We’d been through hell to get here. The experience changed us both as human beings, and left him with a very strong sense that to survive this life no matter what, you stick together. It’s what we did,’ he said to finish, and looked at the table. ‘During the Siege.’

Sasha had no need to press her grandfather for an explanation. It wasn’t because she feared it would lead to an hour-long look back through several chapters of history. The first time he had accounted for his experience during World War Two, she and Ivan had sat throughout and barely breathed. Once he’d finished, it became clear to both grandchildren that what he had just shared could never be repeated outside the house. It was only later, during the course of the investigation, that Oleg’s background became central to the Savage saga.

Without doubt, Grandpa’s wartime experience went some way towards understanding what shaped them as a family. For Oleg Fedor Savadski endured unimaginable hardship and misery, alongside the citizens in Leningrad, when the city was surrounded and cut off from the world by enemy forces. For more than two years, including cruel, harsh and bitter winters, nobody could get out and nearly all supply routes were blocked. With no food available, the people suffered terribly. Up to one and a half million starved to death. Those who lived through it were forced to test the limits of resourcefulness. As the famine grew, people foraged for berries in parkland before going on to hunt birds and rats. Then, with the wildlife consumed, the desperate turned to boiling down belt straps into soup and licking the paste from the back of wallpaper. Oleg was among that number. Stationed in his home city, with a new bride to protect, he pledged to do whatever it took to endure the growing horror.

The city had come under an onslaught. Buildings lay in ruins and bodies sprawled in the streets. As the weeks turned to months, people grew familiar with death. It became a part of everyday life, and for some a means of survival.

At first, the surviving citizens of Leningrad believed that street dogs must be coming out at night to strip some corpses of organs and flesh. An alternative explanation was unthinkable, despite the fact that such dogs had already become food for the table. When word began to spread that gangs were roaming the city, picking off victims to ease their appalling hunger, fear and panic set in. At such an inhumane time, could some desperate souls really be driven to turn on each other? Towards the end of the Siege, the police even set up a special unit to investigate the claims. Oleg was among a small band of soldiers appointed as an army escort to accompany the unit. Unlike so many others, he was in relatively good shape and strong enough to help ensure their safety across the more forbidding quarters of the stricken city. According to reports, just as the investigation began to find substance to the awful rumours, so news filtered through that most had lost all hope of hearing. Thanks to advances by the Allies, the enemy had been forced to pull back from their positions. At last, a blockade that had lasted almost nine hundred days, and turned the city into a living hell, was over. Exhausted but overjoyed, the citizens were free to leave. Oleg and his wife were among that number. In fact, they chose to get out at the earliest opportunity, before the police unit’s investigation was complete, and even departed the country just as soon as the war came to an end.

Some years after they arrived in England, with Oleg working quietly as a porter at Smithfield Meat Market, a son was born to the couple. By then, Oleg had changed the family surname to Savage. It sounded more comfortable to an English-speaking ear, and created some distance from their former life. Still, Oleg never forgot his origins. In particular, he and his wife continued to pursue the taste they had acquired during the Siege, and even passed it on to their young son. The food was carefully sourced, of course, and then effectively spirited away to be prepared for the table. With access to herbs, spices and other ingredients, and in the privacy of their kitchen, the couple embarked upon a culinary adventure like no other. They were careful not to overindulge, of course, by turning it into a rare and occasional treat. As a growing boy, it was something Titus came to relish. No other meal came close to stirring such a deep-seated craving in him. Like his parents, the lad found that every mouthful left him feeling blissfully alive. By the time Oleg decided to reveal the main ingredient, there was no going back for his son.

‘It feeds the heart and soul,’ was how Titus would go on to sell it to Angelica. This was two decades later, shortly before their engagement, after the couple had spent many date nights at his flat simply eating in. ‘You feel it in your bones and in your blood,’ he went on, before tapping the side of his head. ‘Most of all, you feel it in your mind. Am I right?’

Angelica had also reacted with some questions, of course, once she’d come round from her faint and stopped screaming. Yes, it was a shock for her to learn what he had been serving her all this time. It was only human nature, after all. By then, however, Angelica had come to crave the sense of sheer satisfaction delivered by such a feast. Bonded by a shared secret, and deeply in love with this food pioneer, it seemed there was only one thing she could say when Titus dropped down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. From that moment on, as the couple set out to build a family, it was clear to Titus that the Savages were a breed apart when it came to good taste. No matter what challenges they faced, he swore to his new bride and then later to Sasha and Ivan, that’s exactly how it would stay.

‘But Daddy, eating people is wrong.’