The Hungry Ghosts. Anne Berry
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and heir,had been taken care of first. Now he looked perturbed by the delay. Catching his mother’s eye, he was given the go-ahead to start his meal. So while hostilities were breaking out, Harry was slowly masticating a mouthful, like a cud-chewing cow. All the while, his eyes focused hypnotically on two black and silver angelfish, gliding about in a tank, set up on the dresser behind the dining-room table. Then Alice made matters much worse by offering Jillian her meat.Typical.Why couldn’t she just shut up?
‘Here Jillian,we can swap plates if you like,’Alice suggested,lifting her plate and offering it to her sister.
‘I don’t want it now you’ve touched it,’ Jillian cried, shoving the plate back towards Alice, so hard that the piece of crispy outside meat was launched off it, orbited briefly in the air, before landing with a ‘plop’, quite fortuitously as it happened, on Harry’s plate. Harry’s eyes rolled from living fish to dead meat, and stayed glued to the unexpected arrival, his jaws temporarily locked.
‘That was uncalled for,’ Father said angrily, hurriedly flipping over the joint, carving a slice from the other end, and delivering it to Alice’s plate.
‘No,’ pleaded Alice. ‘I don’t mind really. Jillian can have it.’
‘Didn’t you hear me the first time?’ Jillian shrieked, shooting a slaughterous look in Alice’s direction. ‘I don’t want anything of yours.’
Alice began protesting that she hadn’t touched it, so it couldn’t be called hers yet.Then Mother, who kept running a thumb up and down along the blade of her own knife, where it lay at the side of her plate, told Alice to be quiet and to get on with her dinner.The colour was draining from Alice’s face now, and she began clearing her throat as if she had something stuck there. Father wanted to know if she was okay and would she like some water.
‘Oh for goodness sake, if you’re feeling sick,Alice, leave the table,’ Mother snapped.‘You’re ruining everyone’s dinner.You are making us all lose our appetites.’
As Mother spoke, I saw she had taken up her own knife and fork. She was grasping them about their middles as if they were weapons, and then suddenly she threw them tetchily a little way from her, across the table. Her fork struck a serving dish full of vegetables, and her knife clanged against the metal gravy boat.Alice rose slowly from her chair. She looked bewildered, unsure if she should go or stay. Father smiled kindly at her and told her to stay put. Mother looked livid. Jillian slid malevolent eyes towards her sister, but her head remained motionless. Staying calm amidst the storm, Harry was moving his fork imperceptibly to snag Alice’s slice of meat, all his concentration focused then on edging it towards the centre of his plate. At last Alice moved away from her chair and backed out of the room, bumping into the dining-room door once, before turning, opening it and disappearing through it.
‘Come back as soon as you feel better,’ Father called after her.
Alice closed the door with infinite care, as if terrified she would disturb a sleeping baby. After Alice’s departure, I had thought things would improve, and was just tucking into a succulent morsel of red meat when father placed two fat roast onions on Jillian’s plate. Now, if it was a fact known to one and all in our family that Jillian and Alice preferred outside cuts of meat, it was also virtually printed on Jillian’s birth certificate that she hated onions, that no earthly force could induce her to swallow what she described as a single slimy mouthful of them, that even God would have his work cut out if he wished Jillian to polish one off, let alone two. Jillian eyes were riveted on the onions.Mother made a squeaking noise.Harry jumped, and then started mashing up a roast potato with admirable intensity. Father sat back in his chair, and with immense care loaded tiny portions of meat, potato, vegetables and onion onto his fork, patting the whole into a small, sausage shape with his knife, inspecting it for a second, popping it into his mouth, and chewing energetically before washing it down with a glug of red wine. Mother had more than a glug, polishing off nearly her entire glassful. The appearance and following inquiry from one of the amahs as to whether she should clear away, and were we ready for dessert, was met with sour faces, and she quickly scurried off again.
‘I will not eat an onion,’ announced Jillian in a voice of reinforced steel.
This was ignored by Father who made a great drama of having forgotten to say grace, something he hardly ever remembered anyway. He bowed his head piously.
‘Dear God, we thank you for your bounty, for the food on our plates, for the meat, the roast potatoes, the gravy, the vegetables and the onions—’ Father broke off.
He opened one eye. It rotated, taking in Jillian’s raised head, her own eyes held wide open, flashing with defiance, and her folded arms. I ensured Father observed my willing participation in the rare ritual by making quite a drama of unclasping and re-clasping my hands. The fingers of Harry’s hands were plaited together as well. His eyelids fluttered as he snatched sneaky peeks at his food, clearly distressed that the serious business of eating was being held in abeyance for the present. Mother’s head drooped, but I had my doubts that she was lost in prayer.
‘Why were you not praying, Jillian?’ Father demanded, when at last grace was over.
‘I am not thankful,’ Jillian retorted.‘I don’t want to be a hypocrite.’
Mother refilled her glass, and took several gulps in quick succession.
‘I am just going to have a quick word with them in the kitchen,’ she said gaily, her eyes a little too bright, her cheeks inflamed. She rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘These servants need their hands held if they are going to produce a meal that is half decent you know.’ She gave a shout of raucous laughter. No one seemed to share her hilarity. ‘You will sit there until you eat those onions,’ Father decreed to Jillian.
Mother scratched the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, a nervous habit of hers I’d observed countless times, then made a dive for the kitchen door and was gone.To her credit Jillian slowly ate up everything on her plate…except the onions. Mother reappeared carrying another bottle of wine, hugging it to her under one arm. The remainder of the meal played out in silence, but for the ‘pop’ of the cork. One by one we were excused from the table, all but Jillian. At four o’ clock Jillian was still sitting at the dining-room table, together with her two onions. By now I thought they looked a little dried out. Hovering in the hall, I shot her a sympathetic look through the open dining-room door, which she acknowledged with a flicker of her eyes. Father strode up and down the long corridor seething.Why, he demanded, couldn’t Jillian just eat her onions? They were good onions. They had cost money, money that he worked very hard to make. Perhaps Jillian would like to go out, work hard and make money, so that other people could waste the onions she had bought, he thundered.
Alice was nowhere to be seen. Harry was out on his bike. Mother had passed out on her bed, snoring intermittently. And I was watching the Flintstones in the lounge, and feeling levels of anxiety uncommon to me, occasionally dashing out to check on Jillian. I would have scoffed the onions up myself if I could have reached them, but sadly Father was still patrolling the No Man’s Land of the corridor, beady eyes scanning the hall. Finally, when the tension had reached a pitch that was unbearable, Father marched Jillian and her plate of onions to her bedroom, and said she was to stay there until she had eaten them. He slammed the door and stood vigil outside. At this point something must have exploded in Jillian, because she chose to take the two onions and fling them out of her window. Although I didn’t actually see her do it, I certainly witnessed the aftermath.The onions must have gathered momentum as they fell. Beneath Jillian’s bedroom window was the much-prized garden of the Everard family, attached to their ground-floor flat. Mr Everard was gardening that afternoon when the onions came hurtling down from above, he told Father later, decapitating several of his prize orchids in the process. He stood on our doorstep, the crushed pink flowers in one hand, the beige mess of onion pulp in the other. I had heard the front door and was peeping out of the lounge.
‘Really, Ralph, this is too bad.’ Mr Everard looked deeply offended. ‘This is not what you expect from your neighbours when you settle down for a pleasant afternoon of gardening.’ Mr Everard very nearly wiped his perspiring brow,