Free Anita and Me by Meera Syal Page A

aren’t you?’
    I reeled back, horrified, and vowed if I ended up with someone who made me go through all that, I would poison the bastard immediately. My mother must have cottoned on; she would not mention marriage again for another fifteen years.
    ‘Shut the door then,’ said Mrs Worrall, who swayed over to the only bit of work surface that was occupied, where a lump of pastry dough sat in a small well of white flour. Otherwise, all was bare and neat, no visible evidence of food activity here save a half-packet of lemon puffs sitting on the window sill.
    ‘What you making?’ I asked, peering under her massive arm.
    ‘Jam tarts. Mr Worrall loves a good tart. Mind out.’
    She bent down with difficulty and opened the oven door, a blast of warm air hit my legs and I jumped back.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘What yow on about? It’s the oven.’
    I’d never seen my mother use our oven, I thought it was a storage space for pans and her griddle on which she made chapatti. Punjabis and baking don’t go together, I’ve since discovered. It’s too easy, I suppose, not enough angst and sweat in putting a cake in the oven and taking it out half an hour later.
    ‘Yow ever made pastry?’ I shook my head. I’d always wondered what the crispy stuff on the bottom of jam tarts was, and here was Mrs Worrall making it in her own home. I was well impressed. ‘Hee-y’aar,’ said Mrs Worrall, putting a small bowl in front of me in which she poured a little flour and placed a knob of lemony butter. ‘Always keep your fingers cold. That’s the secret. Now rub your fingers together…slowly. You wanna end up with breadcrumbs …’ I squeezedthe butter, feeling it squash then break against my fingers, and started to press and pummel it into the flour like I’d seen mama do with the chapatti dough.
    ‘No! Too hard! It’ll stick! Gently, dead gentle …’ I slowed down, tried to concentrate on feeling each grain of flour, made my fingers move like clouds, and saw a tiny pile of breadcrumbs begin forming at the bottom of the bowl.
    ‘I’m doing it! Look! Pastry!’
    Mrs Worrall grunted. ‘Not yet, it ain’t …’
    She left me to it whilst she quickly rolled out the large lump of pastry into an oval and pressed a cutter over its surface, slipping the tart cases into a large tin tray. Her fingers moved swiftly and lightly, as if they did not belong to those flapping meaty arms. She then took my bowl off me and stared at the contents critically. ‘Not bad. Now binding. Use warm water, not cold. But the fork has to be like ice, see …’
    She poured in a little liquid from a steel, flame-blackened kettle and handed me a fork from a pan of cold water in the sink. I pressed the crumbs together, watching them swell and cling to each other, until they gradually became a doughy mass.
    ‘It’s like magic, innit?’
    ‘No. Your mum does that,’ she said. ‘This is your one. Alright?’
    I nodded, and she quickly rolled out my dough, which I noticed stuck to the rolling pin much more than hers, cut out a small shape and placed it onto the tray before shoving the whole thing in the oven.
    As Mrs Worrall began washing her hands, a low uneven moaning drifted in from the room at the other side of the closed kitchen door. It sounded like an animal, wounded, like the time a juggernaut lorry had swerved right across the crossroads outside our house, and missing our gate by inches, had ploughed instead into the fields opposite, mortally wounding a chestnut bay called Misty. One of my earliest memories is of feeding old bits of chapatti to Misty, I musthave been tiny as papa had to hold me up whilst I held out my hand, palm flat as he instructed me, and felt Misty’s soft whiskery muzzle lightly nibble and suck the bits off my hand. ‘Now she’s a real Punjabi horse, eh?’ nodded papa with satisfaction, patting her lightly on the neck before letting me down. He talked to her softly, in Punjabi, I presume, though I could not tell