Tongues and Bellies

MEG KOWALSKI’S BIRTHDAY CAKE

Reshma Ruia

‘A Marriage made in heaven’ is what my friends called it. I was in the final year of my Ph.D., researching Machiavelli’s The Art of War, when my supervisor, Dr. Elish suddenly slipped on the pavement outside his house, cracked his ribs and was out of action for the rest of the academic year. Bill was his replacement. He was a few years older than I was, with large, expressive hands and eyes that slanted down at the sides giving him a slightly needy air. He also wore corduroy trousers and a tweed waistcoat that carried the whiff of charity shops and mothballs. Bill was only a Graduate Teaching Assistant so he was nervous about moving into Dr. Elish’s office with its single aspidistra plant and framed prints of Florentine flora and fauna. He preferred our seminars to take place in a quiet corner of the college cafeteria. He always ordered a mug of tea and a slice of carrot cake. ‘Cakes are my weakness,’ he’d admitted on our first meeting. The tips of his ears went pink at this confession. ‘Will you give me your undivided attention, Meg? Together we will make it work,’ he said, skimming through my thesis proposal, his hands sleeping like two puppies on the table where ring marks from various coffee cups had created a kind of psychedelic pattern.

I was flattered that such a knowledgeable man, clearly on the fast track to academic glory would notice a red haired, freckled girl. At thirty, I had just about given up on the dating game and still lived with my mother in one of the pebble dashed cream townhouses in an estate just outside the university. My mother worked part-time as a librarian in the Science faculty and we often drove in together. I introduced her to Bill at one of the interdepartmental pre-Christmas social dos and later that night she told me, he had ‘kind eyes. They’re kind of droopy,’ she said, nodding in approval. ‘Meg, let’s invite him home for tea. I’ll bake him one of my cakes.’

My mother came from a long line of bakers. Her father had opened the first bakery in town after emigrating from Poland. His yeast poppy seed roll spun like a strudel was still talked about twenty years later. Victoria sponge, red velvet, Bundt marble and coffee cakes, my mother knew them all to her fingertips.

‘Do you think it’s appropriate to invite Bill home? I mean he’s not exactly a friend. He’s my supervisor. We aren’t supposed to socialise?’ I said to her.

‘Of course, why wouldn’t it be? He’s similar in age and you are both involved in similar research. ’

I invited Bill home the following weekend. ‘I kind of wanted to see your set up,’ he said. ‘To see where those grey cells bloom at night.’ He watched me intently as he said this and I felt a strange fuzzy kind of heat travel from the base of my spine to the top of my neck.

We sat in the kitchen and my mother smiled broadly as Bill ate his way through almost half of the walnut cake. ‘It’s exceedingly delicious. You must give me the recipe,’ he kept saying, dabbing the side of his mouth with the blue linen napkin that my mother reserved for special occasions.

‘Wait till you see her birthday cakes,’ I said. My mother beamed with pride as I pulled out her baking album from one of the kitchen drawers. The album was covered in cellophane paper and each page had a picture of me standing next to a birthday cake. There I stood – aged two beside a pink teddy bear shaped birthday cake.

‘Wow, just wow,’ Bill kept saying, turning the pages where every milestone birthday was captured beside a suitably age-appropriate cake.

‘Look at you, Meg at eighteen. Already quite a stunner,’ Bill observed, his large thumb resting on my eighteen year old mouth. He lifted the album, bringing it closer to his face.

‘Which rock band is it on the cake?’ He turned to my mother who was looking over his shoulder, her steel-rimmed glasses pushed right up her nose.

‘Oh, I was really into Duran Duran, those days, don’t ask.’ I giggled and closed the album.

‘Yes, Duran Duran,’ my mother said, her voice turning dreamy.

‘It took me almost half a day to make those marzipan figurines and the guitar broke just as I was mounting it on the cake.’

‘It’s amazing how you managed to stay so slim, eating all that cake,’ Bill said, grinning.

‘Oh, we always gave it away,’ I said. ‘I was only ever allowed one slice.’

My mother nodded. ‘It’s an old Polish superstition. On birthdays, you should never finish your own cake. We always gave it away.’

‘Well, I can just imagine how fabulous Meg’s wedding cake is going to be when she gets married,’ Bill commented.

‘Let’s have some coffee,’ I said putting away the album. ‘We have herbal tea too if you want. Mint or verbena?’

‘Why don’t you show him the pergola in the garden,’ my mother suggested after the coffee was finished and the plates cleared up and stored away.

‘It’s getting dark, Mum.’ I looked out the window where the dark indigo night pressed itself against the glass panes.

‘I’d love to take a look,’ Bill said, springing up from his chair. Outside, the grass felt damp beneath our feet as we walked towards the wooden pergola.

‘It’s nothing special,’ I told him. ‘My father built it from scratch and he sculpted two Japanese cranes out of chicken wire and fixed them onto the trellis work. There they are.’ I pointed out the two birds who were entwined in an awkward kind of embrace, their beaks pushed against each other and their thin, spindly legs tangled together.

‘My father was very proud of his handiwork,’ I finished rather lamely and shrugged. The birds looked plain and pathetic and I didn’t know why I had brought Bill to see them.

‘Well, aren’t they beautiful! Such grace.’ He pointed his mobile at them, lighting them up with the flash. ‘Where’s your father now?’

‘Father died a couple of years back. He was a salesman for a carpet manufacturer, always on the road. I don’t think he was ever there for a single birthday. He had a heart attack on one of those trips. Never came back.’

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry,’ Bill lowered his voice and came closer. I felt his arm slowly go round my shoulder. He pulled me gently towards him. I felt his warm breath on the top of my head.

‘My poor darling Meg. I’m going to make sure we celebrate your birthday every single year.’ He turned me round and, lifting my chin with his index finger, he kissed me.

And I didn’t push him away. I kissed him right back, pressing my fingernails into my palm, to steady the thumping of my heart.

We walked back to the house, our fingers lightly brushing each other’s and my mother clapped her hands when she saw us.

‘My instinct was right,’ she told our friends a year later when we announced that we were getting married. ‘I said to Meg, here’s a man with a gooey soft marshmallow of a heart. He’ll take proper care of you.’

*

My mother stayed up four nights putting the final touches to my three-tiered wedding cake topped with a pair of mint green doves made of champagne fondant holding a red strawberry heart. We took the cake with us on our honeymoon and Bill fed me a slice every night, just before we made love.

The years roll by. I give up on my PhD and we move towns. Three miscarriages and we give up on the idea of a family. I find a job at an actuarial company specialising in insolvency and Bill gets a fixed term tenure at the University. My mother visits us on my birthday and at Christmas. Her baking album slowly fills. There’s Bill on his fortieth, posing next to a cake designed to look like a medieval tower. My mother stands next to him, sparrow small, offering him a slice.

And just like that one Sunday in October, it’s my turn. I became forty.

Bill is snoring gently when I nudge him. He turns, grunting, his morning breath sour and smelling of last night’s dinner.

‘Remember the date?’ I say, shifting closer.

He yawns and rolls away, when all I want is for him to open wide the cave of his arms and for me to tiptoe in, his grizzly chin tickling the top of my head.

A little later, Bill is up, showered and ready in his Marks and Spencer blue checked shirt, the one with buttons on the collars and his green corduroy trousers with the crease in the centre. The steel buckle on his belt glints in the buttery autumn sunshine.

‘I forgot to mention, but I’ll be working late today.’ Bill stands near the door, one hand gripping the handle, squinting towards me. His naked eyes look rabbit pink without his glasses.

‘You don’t teach on Sundays.’ I keep my voice friendly.

‘There are some extra classes I offered to teach. You know …what with exams next semester….the university wants us to step up. All this league table stuff…’ His voice peters out. He swallows and his Adam’s apple dances up and down.

Bill is still lecturing in medieval philosophy. He spends his days pontificating about the thinking of dead Greek and Italian men to bored students who would rather be in the cafeteria updating their Insta profiles while snacking on goji berries.

He sounds clever on his CV but his fixed term contract does not do much to our bank account or his ego. He has to find ways to compensate.

‘Well don’t be late, honey.’ My voice is candy floss. ‘We’re celebrating my birthday.’ I try one more time.

‘Of course it’s your birthday…I’ve planned a little…’ He hesitates and lets it pass, comes over and squeezes my arm. ‘We’ll go out for a special drink next week.’ He throws me a crumb of a smile and shuts the door behind him.

I picture him in the kitchen opening the fridge, the cold blue light bathing his face as he grabs a slice of pepperoni pizza. He will eat it standing up, one large hand clumsily tapping love letters into his mobile. He will leave the coffee percolating for me. He is considerate like that but he will be gone on my fortieth birthday.

Gone to the Holiday Inn near the airport. The one with the faded flowery-carpeted corridors and plastic ferns pretending to be real. He’ll occupy one of the rooms that sigh to the sound of lonely salesmen jerking off. There’ll be a girl waiting inside a room. A slip of a girl probably from his first-year intake. She might be doing research in Machiavelli’s war strategy. I could give her a tip or two. He will feed her chocolates and fairy tales about his unhappy marriage. She will look at him with wide, puppy soft eyes and let him unhook her lacy bra.

The only reason I know about the girl is that my best friend, Marge phoned me at work, her voice breathless with the juice of gossip she was about to spill.

‘I don’t want to upset you or anything…’ she began. ‘But I saw Bill at that fancy French restaurant, Chezz Pear. ’

‘Chay Pierre. The Z is silent,’ I correct her. I have a B + in GCSE French. My eyes stay fixed on the sea-blue computer screen where statistics tables of failing businesses roll down like ticker tape.

She continues. ‘Bill was with a girl. I did wave to him, but he only had eyes for her. Cute little thing with a head of bouncy curls. There was a bottle of wine on the table and …’ Her voice purrs with pleasure. ‘They were holding hands. ’

‘Oh that girl?’ I speed up. ‘Yes, that must be Mabel. She’s Special Needs. Needs one to one.’

‘Are you sure? Does she need hand stroking too?’

‘You’re talking bullshit like always.’ I hang up before she can destroy me more.

*

The first time Bill left the house on a weekend I followed him. He drove slowly, his grey Ford Mondeo waited patiently at the traffic lights. He drove towards the retail park and pulled up just outside the MacDonald’s drive-through. A young girl came bounding out; she had blonde hair and a pile of books in her arms as alibi. Bill got out of the car and gave her a smacker on the mouth before opening the passenger door for her to slide in. I lost them at the second intersection but I knew where they were headed.

That evening I baked some gingerbread with cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cardamom, Bill’s favourite.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Bill said when he came back home. He made a great show of placing his files and laptop on the kitchen table, flicking through the pages, his mouth pursed in concentration. ‘I’ve had such a long day,’ he added.

‘But you’re always hungry for my cake,’ I said, pressing myself against him so he could feel the excited hoofbeat of my heart. I pretend we are newlyweds again and unbuttoning my blouse, I guided his hand towards my breast.

‘Meg, I’m not in the mood.’ He pulled away.

*

My father had always been absent on my birthday, busy selling rolls of carpet to suburban housewives but my mum made sure the day was special. Bill knew that. He had also seen her baking album. Every birthday until I left home, she baked me a sponge cake, chocolatey and slushy, with a soft ganache centre that melted in my mouth. There was pink and blue icing and a silver flag shouting my name and candles brighter than Blackpool lights. The Queen would have envied such a cake. My mother would only let me eat one slice. ‘One’s enough. Don’t be a greedy girl,’ she said before