By Antara Mukherjee

A soft, square loaf succumbing to the steely edge of a knife plumped back when Jonny got a call saying that his mother was dying. He kept the phone down and stood staring at the swirl of lemon and orange rinds in the crystal jar that had caught the sun in that upscale London deli. All around him tables were abuzz, with spoons and knives clinking on ceramic plates as waitresses swivelled around pouring coffee with their lipstick smiles. It was Wednesday, a week away from Christmas. He threw his black monogrammed apron and ran his staff through the orders and promotions for the week, asking them to keep an eye on the ratings. The pantry had to be well-stocked, payments had to be cleared and a curated menu for Christmas had to go up on the website. The kitchen smelling of fried bacon and eggs sputtered and clattered as he left, his ears ringing with the table numbers being hurled about with the quick-moving orders.

Boarding the seven o’clock evening train from Paddington, he headed for their countryside home that same night. In the last few years, chasing Michelin stars for his deli, he had travelled so far, that home felt like a distant noise from his troubled past. It must have been late when he arrived, for when he entered his mother’s room, his stomach churning with apprehension, she looked at him as if he had sneaked out of his bed with a teddy, wanting another lullaby. Jonny, however, let a sigh of relief, feeling reassured by that veritable look of disdain. He slipped into his childhood bed, feeling the bed bugs—at home.

The next morning, when she called him by her bedside, she looked indeed small and incapacitated. He dragged a chair next to her and tried telling her how she had been brave, a fighter.

Holding back the quiver in her chin, she confessed, “I feel like a failure now. I have so many regrets.”

He took her hand understandingly and she broke down saying, “I’m so sorry, Jonny. I couldn’t even raise you well.”

Mrs Carlson, their maid of fifty years, cleared her throat and spoke for her saying that his mother hadn’t been feeling her best. That she had refused food for the past two days.

The cold pumpkin stew served with celery sticks left in the tray beside the bed caught the son’s attention and he sprang to his feet at once. He dashed into their dimly lit, old kitchen, leaving behind the pleas of the two old ladies. Spoons and ladles jumped in their places as he paced the wooden floor, drumming his fingertips, before he shoved some butternut squash and apples into the oven. What he needed next was a dash of honey, vinegar and cinnamon. He yanked open the cupboards and shut them tight and toppled an assortment of forks and knives, until a scolding was sent his way to shush him. He could be an owner and the chef of a deli, he could be forty years of age, but he was asked not to forget one of the earliest lessons taught by his mother— Keep your hands to yourself.  

In less than an hour, the delicate thrill of cinnamon and lemon zest lingered in the nose of the ailing woman as he smothered the relish over the mellowed roast. Appearing in his chef’s cap, he served the butternut squash and apple bake with a delectable garnish. And waited.

A quivering fork hovered over the plate but was seemingly halted by a moment of indecision. She shrunk from the sprinkle of feta cheese on the relish and said, “Ah, fancy at its best!” 

After ten minutes of deliberation and some goading, she nibbled on a piece of the feta that tasted rather bitter in her sick mouth. Yet in a display of sheer courage, she went on to scoop a spoonful of the bake, spitting it out at once with a wriggle, screaming, “Oh! Awful… awful… these medicines. They’ve done me more harm than good.”

Taking note of the disappointment on his face, she explained, “Oh Jonny, if you must make something, make me the good old Sunday roast.”

Now that should have been way too simple for a hotshot chef of a top deli and for once he even feared being accused of laxity by the London tabloids. His mind began conjuring how there was always room for a sprig of something, an additional glaze, a stuffing perhaps. An element of surprise that could be added to the traditional Sunday roast.

Just then, his mother added, “Mind you, the good old Sunday roast from my childhood. Like I used to enjoy it best.” 

It took some convincing for him to believe that he had indeed heard it right. And that it was the Sunday roast from his mother’s childhood, thrown up in a jiffy by his Grandma saddled with twelve children, that he was required to prepare. To be absolutely certain, he tried asking if the Sunday roast from her childhood was any different from his own—the one that she cooked for their weekend suppers?

“Oh, don’t you remember what your Grandma fed you straight for thirty-one nights, as you recovered from that debilitating bout of typhoid?”

It just proved how children turned out to be ungrateful, she surmised. That must have been when he was five, he argued. But his mother corrected him saying that he was then a big boy— all of three.

Finding himself at the lonely end of a generational line-up, he retreated into the kitchen. Every little thing looked bigger in the shadows around him— the saltshaker, the pot, the uncut vegetables. He closed his eyes trying to recollect his taste buds from the yesteryears. The chirp of woodpigeons in the falling shadows of the garden, and the squabble of buckets and the pails, had to be hushed in his mind and soon he found his three-year-old self caught in this childhood brine. The thick, velvety sauce swelled from the sides into his mouth and in came the meaty bite of a moist chicken breast, mashed with the tender sweetness of buttery peas. So basic. Banal.

The supper that evening therefore, was no big surprise. But it surged a gleam in the mother’s broody eyes. Looking a shade paler in her lemon nightgown buttoned over with a mothballed cardigan, she sat at the far end of their long teak table where she had once hosted many a meal. A cassette player in the background was unspooling the spirit of the season with her favourite, ‘Deck the hall with bows of holly, fa la la la –la la la la.’ She smiled and strained her neck for a glimpse of the chandelier above glowing with honeydew lights, lit after decades in her home. He poured her a glass of the finest red Bordeaux and fixed her a bib. Soon the Sunday roast was ushered in. Flavours from the pot coalesced with the uplifting notes of ‘12 Days of Christmas,’ flowing into ‘O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,’ that mellowed further with ‘Silent Night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.’ It wound them back in time and even though she was right before him, in many years for the first time, he missed her. He raised his glass, raising a toast to their times together and felt the dry tongue in his mouth, his words rolling out sparse.

Mrs Carlson standing by the table watched the old lady slicing the adamant roast and giving it a generous roll into the brown gravy before guiding it to her mouth. The chicken roast and the Yorkshire pudding along with roast potatoes, baby carrots and beans soaking in the delectable gravy seemed to caramelise the heart of the mother. She chewed on with her eyes closed, scooping the pudding with a few escaping peas. Sitting at the other end of the table, a delighted Jonny’s face was lit by the electronic halo of his phone. Having spent the whole morning fiddling with the old cassette player, with the pot left to simmer on the stove, he felt more like a mechanic than a chef now. How little of his skills had to be expended for that so called special meal.

In fact, he could be more useful back at his deli, especially with Christmas approaching, and thought of taking the evening train to London the following day. By Saturday morning he could resume work—perfect to get back to the heart of matters. An early morning photoshoot, two large party orders, and a promotional raffle had been scheduled for the weekend while two of his staff had already applied for leave. He was distracted by the clang of a knife that fell on the plate.

A corner of the quivering mouth pressed by the bib declared, “Well, that was jolly good. But it’s nothing… nothing close to the good old Sunday roast cooked by your Grandma.”

Jonny looked at her plate and realised that in all that time she had eaten only a single bite.

She was shaking her head in disapproval and said, “For all it shows, how little you really remember.”

There was an unmistaken hurt in her eyes as Jonny squirmed beneath the burden of his poor grades.

She said, “I’m sorry to disappoint. But I’ve always spoken the truth.”

Mrs Carlson wheeled her back into the room as instructed, and patted him on the way, suggesting that the Sunday roast was indeed a recipe that required some practice.

Jonny, a celebrity chef in London, exercising mastery over several dishes and known for his ability to deconstruct recipes, had never experienced such failure in his entire career. And though there had never been a dearth of rude customers at his deli, failing to please his own mother with a simple basic meal of the Sunday roast questioned his ability to boil plain water.

 *

The air in the garden felt familiar as he stepped out of the cottage the next morning to escape his worthlessness. An empty nest had remained in an old oak tree, that had withstood the weather, by their quaint, yellow cottage, hiding many creatures in its deep crevices. Touching its shrivelled bark, he was greeted by a coldness which seeped into his guilty bones. In the past few years, he had worked so hard that he hadn’t found time for his mother. Or even a steady relationship. Visiting her alone for her birthday year after year, had been his deliberate attempt to keep things warm between them. She had never approved his ways or any of his partners whom he brought home in the initial years after moving to London. Nothing had been more devastating since the flood of Noah, she claimed, than his ‘revelation.’ All his efforts and pleas to explain his ways were rubbished under the notion that the city air had polluted his mind, for she was sure that she had birthed a different son. And now standing there, he realised that there wasn’t even anyone to bring home anymore.

His phone beeped with a message saying that his restaurant had received a bad review. Already worried over the supply of meat gone bad, this customer rant about his ‘dismal dining experience’ felt ill-timed. Everything was somehow going downhill. ‘Go pro bono,’ he typed but erased the message and slid the phone back into his pocket, continuing his stroll. He walked on, running his palm along the long-tended fence of thick bushes. In the distance, their kitchen garden was overgrown with ripe tomatoes. As in childhood, he picked up a basket and filled it with warm eggs, tomatoes, peas, tender beans, and collard greens which dug the black earth into his fingernails. Allured by the prospect of a perfect Instagram post, he tried some filters and uploaded a photograph of the fresh produce with the hashtags:

#handpickedingredients,#organicpromiseofdeli, #freshfromthefarm #welovefresh.

At once, it garnered a ‘like,’ healthy-red in its prominence, piled on by many in succession. Giving in to the thrill of such quantified appreciation, he scooped a handful of dirt in his palm and clicked a bunch of selfies. He uploaded them with the text - ‘organic and pure.’ If only he had carried his chef’s cap for that additional touch of drama. Nevertheless, ‘likes’ came flooding in on the post making him feel accomplished for that timely damage control.

When he looked up, he saw Mrs Carlson at the gate letting in the gardeners. She walked up to him and enquired if the vegetables in his basket were for the Sunday roast, which she insisted that he ought to give another try. A vexed expression escaped his lips, filling him instantly with reproach for himself. Through the glass window, he could see his mother sitting on the bed, with her back to them. Most of her life she had raised him independently, filling the void left by his father. And now, whenever his conversations with Mrs Carlson dragged on, leading to a cheerful bonhomie, she began shuffling about, looking around for an object to focus on, and invariably tried reaching for the water on the bedside, far from her reach. Yet, when Jonny fetched her the glass, she rebuked him saying, “Thank you very much. But I’m still capable. More than you think.”

He excused himself and left his garden for the forsaken familiarity of those tiled rooftops, the little antique shops and the market square that still looked enchanting and unspoilt. Every door was decorated with wreaths, bells and cardboard cut-outs of Santa and his reindeers. New galleries and corner cafes had sprung up at the corner where people met for yoga sessions, book clubs and jazz practices. Their old town was morphing into something more open, more welcoming perhaps.

At the bend near the Church, he saw one of his old buddies from the ukulele class, Hick, and suddenly they were speaking after twenty-one years. Together they walked to the old bar to see their go-to-man, Luke-the-fluke, who had never refused them a beer since they were fourteen. He was setting up the Nativity scene in front of his shop and remarked how so many old folks from the town were visiting for Christmas. Chilled bottles clinked for “good old times,” as they chatted like before and even went on to play a hand of rummy each, with Dillon and David, the twins from the department store. When it was time to leave, Jonny invited them all for supper after next Sunday Mass. He had decided to postpone his return.

That afternoon walking home, with the sun on his back, he realised how his mother had always been his connection to the town. She was the one to show him things around— the snow on the windowpane, the magpies, the uncut grass. She bought him candyfloss and took him to the music halls. Within the periphery of their quiet country life, all his friends and acquaintances were friends of the family who gathered for tea-parties and dinners every fortnight. And therefore, years later, when his revelation left his mother embittered, he continued to see the town and its people through her eyes. He had heard what she said.

Over the next two days, he watched his mother, shrinking, refusing to eat anything other than some warm bread and condensed milk— his comfort food from childhood. His whole life felt like a farce and soon he was consumed by the belief that whatever he had built was not deserved at all. His critics were perhaps right, his competitors had left him far behind and he was the last to receive the bad news about himself. He couldn’t even get himself to switch on his phone or bring himself to try his hand at another pot of the Sunday roast. The kindness of the people he met on the streets, his aging neighbours and their unconditional acceptance made him realise he had been fighting a mirage. By Sunday morning, he had made up his mind to leave it all and retire to that quaint countryside. He wanted to spend the rest of his life tending to a pot in the kitchen, grow vegetables in his garden and listen to jazz.

 *

Supplies of meat and grocery were delivered by the department store, fresh flowers filled vases, carpets were dusted and laid, chandeliers, silverware and the wooden stairs were polished, the fireplace was set, and scented candles graced the long teak table. When the invited guests arrived after the Sunday Mass, the house brimmed with lights, music, and chatter. Although it wasn’t Christmas yet, the house sparkled with the spirit of the season. Trays were brought in carrying thick oyster soup, tender lamb cutlets, smoked salmon, treacle tarts, egg custard, suet pudding, apple jellies, salad and of course the Sunday roast. Hick took his seat beside his wife and the twins, Dillon and David shuffled in to find a place by his next door neighbours and friends. When everyone was settled in to dine and the children had been warned, his mother was wheeled in. She sat at the head of the table looking immaculate in her best-tailored clothes. The table flowed with wine and stories as the children tossed peas at each other and were scolded for spilling soup, while Jonny sat by the fireside and played on his ukulele their all-time seasonal favourite, “Deck the hall with bows of holly, fa la, la, la- la, la, la, la.” Voices garbled and rose to join him turning into a hoppity chorus but soon tripped and stopped when a knock was heard at the door. One of Jonny’s regular customers, a painter from across the street to his deli, had appeared unannounced.

“Ah…Table no. 5!” Jonny exclaimed, identifying him as an everyday face who always took the table next to the window cacti.

All heads turned towards him as he rattled on over Jonny being ‘offline’ for the past two days. The whole deli must have been bustling with preparations for Christmas Eve, and he wasn’t even there. Never before had that happened, never before had he missed tending to his customers. Jonny looked around nervously, fearing a storm, another meltdown when his mother gestured for the uninvited guest to be seated by her side.

“Sorry, young man,” she said. “As you can see, my son requires help with his social skills.”

Everyone joined her in welcoming Table no. 5 and they offered him a plate, filling it with a portion of the carved meat and the pudding. And that evening though his mother couldn’t bring herself to sniff at the Sunday roast, she looked around and with a heartfelt smile, declared, “Perfect! This is the best Sunday roast of my life. And the best Christmas ever.”

 *

A week later his mother died. Jonny, who had resumed work had to rush back for the funeral together with his partner, where he was joined by half the town. It was the 25th of December and the whole world was rejoicing while he stood with white lilies in hand sharing his loss. The last resonance of a silent sun crayoned the sky in pink ripples, and it stirred an unbearable fondness within him. The smell of the trampled grass, the sniffling black cloaks, the distant houses in view, all had a connection to him, even with his mother gone. Solemn looking, they were shaking hands with him. His friends from the Sunday Mass dinner recognised Table No. 5 and took turns to invite them both over for dinner.

That Christmas, Jonny could not be at his deli. But from then on, every Sunday, he threw open the doors to his deli, inviting the people of London to a pre-set menu that celebrated the traditional Sunday roast. Music, laughter and chatter filled the entire street as people queued to find themselves a seat at his famous deli. For Jonny had realised how a meal when shared together with family and friends, always tasted the best.

Antara Mukherjee’s short stories and poems have appeared in Kitaab, Sahitya Akademi, Muse India, Usawa Literary Review, The Chakkar, Teesta Review and Verse of Silence, among others. In 2020, her short story was the winner of 'All India Literature Competition’ hosted by Anthelion School of Arts. She has co-written a playscript for a local theatre group in Bangalore which will be staged at Bangalore International Centre in January 2022.

Banner image is by Becky Fantham and downloaded from unsplash.com