Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

‘That’s because the doctor has been giving you iron. You need iron because you’re anæmic.’

‘Is it just iron that makes a tuppenny black?’

‘No, charcoal does it too. I expect a piece of burnt toast would be enough …’

‘Next time I have my half of boiled egg, can you burn the toast? I want to see if it makes my tuppenny go black.’

‘Yes, but you must finish the iron tablets first.’

‘Do tuppennies come in other colours?’

‘Oh yes, many! Ever so many.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I saw many different colours of tuppenny when I was a nurse.’

‘What colours did you see?’

‘Babies do tuppennies that are yellow. Yours looked just like scrambled egg. And I’ve seen tuppennies that were red.’

‘I bet you never saw a white tuppenny!’

‘Oh but I did!’

‘When?’

‘I told you. When I was a nurse.’

‘Was it a man’s tuppenny or a lady’s tuppenny?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I just can’t.’

‘Why was the tuppenny white?’

‘Because he’d had a barium meal.’

‘What’s a barium meal?’

‘It’s like porridge. You eat it and the next day they X-Ray your tummy and your botty so they can see if it’s all right.’

‘Have you had a barium meal?’

‘No. But your granny has.’

‘What did they see in Granny’s tummy and botty?’

‘Oh they were both fine.’

‘Remember when you saw the white tuppenny?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said you didn’t know whether it was a man’s tuppenny or a lady’s tuppenny.’

‘No, and I don’t.’

‘But then you said, “Because he’d had a barium meal.” So it must have been a man’s tuppenny!’

‘Then I expect that’s what it was …’

‘What do you mean, “ expect ”? You should know . You’re supposed to know nearly everything. Well, I don’t expect you to know everything , but if you remember the white tuppenny, you should certainly remember whether a man or a lady made it!’

‘Yes, I should, shouldn’t I? I would certainly have made the effort to remember if I’d known you were going to be so interested.’

‘So was that the only white tuppenny you saw, or was there another one?’

‘I can’t remember …’

‘Why ever not? When you saw a man’s white tuppenny didn’t you want to see a lady’s white tuppenny as well?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Why?’

‘Well I don’t expect there’d be much difference really.’

I was learning to make a little conversation go a long way. Mum, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly resourceful in manipulating my appetite. If she could turn a conversation about black excreta into a piece of salesmanship for burnt toast she was well and truly getting the knack.

She knew when to give way about food, strategically. I started to insist that all I would eat was a teaspoonful of raw cake mix. She said she couldn’t make such a small amount. I said why not? I might even eat two. I think she was beginning to be alarmed by my will-power. Immobility was the hallmark of my days, and now it seemed to be invading my character. So the next day she came in with half a dessertspoonful of raw cake mix. I wolfed it down.

Half-heartedly she warned me about the danger of worms but I wasn’t put off. Why not feed them too? I couldn’t believe that worms were nasty. The ones I could remember from the garden had seemed perfectly nice. She said they would tickle my botty from inside and make me want to scratch it. I quite liked this idea of having an itchy botty, but only if the reason was worms. I would want to be very sure that it was due to the presence of worms. Then I would want to see one, and keep it in a little dish for a while and then I would ask if I could feed it something else, or should I put it back into my botty to make it happy. Having something that enjoyed living in me seemed rather an honour. I would only take a worm-killer tablet if the worms got too itchy or bred too fast. First I would give them a good talking-to about how we should get along together, a worms’ rule-book or Highway Code. If they were sensible and behaved themselves I saw no reason why we couldn’t get along perfectly well together. I didn’t tell these secret thoughts to Mum, but hoped that eating cake mix might give the opportunity of putting my theory into practice. I never even caught one worm. It was a great disappointment.

Tomato flotilla

Mum also knew when to go to town with the catering. Bomfire Night was a treat I could no longer attend. The family did without fireworks for the duration, though Gipsy and I could hear the whoosh of joy, the crackle of exhilaration, from other gardens than ours. Gipsy whined miserably and I did my best not to join in.

Still, Mum was shrewd enough to exploit my love of the fire festival to boost my intake of food. She had always made ‘Scrambled Egg Boats’ for Firework Night, and there was no reason to change the menu just because we weren’t having any fireworks. Like many of her best and worst ideas, the recipe came from a magazine.

Mum hoarded the recipes from magazines, but was afraid to try them until she had scanned subsequent issues in search of corrections of misprints. She had once been tempted by a recipe for home-salted beef, only to read in a later issue that the amount of saltpetre required had been over-stated by a factor of ten, making it potentially toxic. We might all have been killed by a typographical error — except that I wouldn’t have touched it. I alone would have been left alive, to charge Woman’s Own with manslaughter by misprint.

Mum would make the scrambled egg in advance. Nearer to the time of serving she made toast, then buttered and trimmed the slices into a graceful curving point at one end. While the toast was under the grill she took fresh tomatoes (neither too firm nor too soft), quartered them and scooped out the innards. Taking each tomato quarter she cut them into narrower, more graceful wedges. These were the ‘sails’ of the Boats.

She spooned a dollop of scrambled egg, to which she’d added a few chopped chives and a dash of pepper, onto each shaped piece of toast, and then put an eviscerated tomato wedge on top of that, neatly attaching the sail to the buttery, scramble-freighted hull with the mast of a cocktail stick.

She came into my room with a whole flotilla of them, arranged in naval formation on a large plate balanced proudly on the upraised fingers of one hand. I didn’t say no. The creamy egg and fresh tomato played such a lovely fanfare of aromas. Reluctantly I dismasted the savoury boat and wolfed down the ambrosial snack. The flavours danced and blended on the taste buds. Somehow the toast kept its crunch despite the moistness of the scramble.

The only shadow on the feast was my knowledge of the next day’s menu. The innards scraped from the tomatoes in the process of sculpting the sails had to go somewhere, in those thrifty ’fifties. In the wake of those delicious boats the abomination that was stuffed marrow, that dismal barge, would be slowly surging towards me.

Stuffed marrow was as disgusting as the Scrambled Egg Boats had been delightful. It wasn’t the tomato innards that I minded but the mince part of the stuffing. That I wouldn’t eat. Fasting was a doddle when you knew in advance it was going to be marrow for lunch, and could prepare yourself. The treat was balanced by the going without. I didn’t consciously thwart Mum’s plans to feed me up, but something in my forming character applauded the symmetry of this arrangement.

At some stage Mum realised that there were such things as indoor fireworks. It would have been poor tactics to lay on a display inside the house, necessarily very muted, on the same night that everyone else was letting off rockets galore just outside. Indoor fireworks are to outdoor what tiddlywinks is to the pole vault. Mum waited for my birthday instead.