Nourishment
Bob Williams is transformed. Six years ago he weighed six stone more than he does now. That’s about 40 kilograms or 85 pounds and Bob has neither been ill nor has he been on a diet.
It’s a Sunday in mid December and he’s reading the paper in the heated conservatory. He sits comfortably in a wicker armchair with floral cushions. Before his transformation he would have sized up the chairs in this room and chosen a more robust looking one to sit on. There are a number of metal chairs which look as though they might be able to hold a man of six feet weighing over a hundred kilos. Of course he wouldn’t have been sure it would hold him until he sat down and gave up his weight fully, which he always did slowly and with dread. The list of humiliating scenarios had grown with his increasing weight. Having a chair buckle underneath him was only one of the more likely, and more public, possibilities he had to bear in mind.
The conservatory is a big room with comfortable furniture and a hint of the colonies about it. A heavy teak table stands against one wall of glass. It holds a tea tray with a white porcelain teapot, milk jug with crocheted doily over it and a silver sugar bowl containing cubes and tongs. There’s a small table next to Bob’s chair with a flower-patterned cup and saucer on it and he has the paper open over his crossed legs. He’s reading a story about the wife of a celebrity tv chef whose husband has abandoned her for another woman. Added to that injury the chef has also gone off to a tropical location where he’s competing in the show ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’. There’s a picture of the wife, her eyes wild with fury, in the doorway of the restaurant she and the tv chef had built and run together in Devon. She’s holding a stuffed black bin liner which she’s about to add to a pile of similarly filled bags outside the door. The caption reads : Abandoned wife of celebrity chef, John Bailey-Foyle, empties the freezers before shutting their successful restaurant just before Christmas, leaving hundreds of disappointed diners.
Bob finishes reading the story, puts down the paper and gazes over the wintry garden. He senses that something about this story relates to the changes that have taken place in his own life.
There we sat once again, he remembers, Julia, my wife and our three kids, in front of the telly eating pizza. Julia and I too tired after work to bother with plates and salad and so on. Just plenty of pizza heated up and a couple of beers.
“Bob, could you put this on the coffee table,” Julia hands me pizza from the oven or microwave as I walk in from work. I carry it through to the sitting room where the kids are watching telly.
“Food’s ready,” I say and the kids grunt without looking up. I put the pizza on the table and they take slices and eat it as they watch the screen. Julia joins us carrying more pizza.
After the pizza she offers ice cream or tubs of chocolate mousse, ready-made and convenient. The kids never refuse and neither do I. We eat the puddings watching tv too. More often than not we’re watching a food program. Celebrity chefs showing us how to prepare so-called nutritionally balanced meals while we stuff ourselves with fat calories scooped out of cellophane or plastic.
“Take a large onion and chop it finely.” Chop, chop, chop, rattatatatat …..
We’re mesmerised by the speed. We expect a finger to go.
“Fry the onion in oil until transparent and then add one clove of garlic.” In a flash of thumb, knife and hand heel the garlic cloves are separated and crunched with the back of the knife.
“Fry the garlic with the onion and then add the lean mince. Allocate about 200 grams per person.” I’m calculating a kilo. Julia’s thinking of how long all these steps would take without much cooking experience.
“Now add tomato puree and mix and fry and then a can of chopped tomatoes. Now remove the mixture from the stove and peel potatoes for the mash which we’ll be putting on top of our cottage pie. Here we have some peeled earlier.” The chef stretches an arm off-screen and it comes back with a colander of peeled potatoes. “You’ll need about two potatoes per adult for the mash.” That’s 10 potatoes, I’m thinking. Julia’s thinking of the time it takes to peel ten potatoes.
Were we aware of any irony as we watched and ate? He shrugs and grimaces as he looks out across the garden. He uncrosses his legs to lean forward resting his chin on his clasped fingers. The newspaper slides to the floor. It’s a large garden for a suburban Victorian detached house. There are four very grand old trees; two oaks, an ash and a chestnut. Dianna says they should remove one, to let more light onto the lawn but he says he likes them, so they’re still there.
It was already too late when I realised we were a fat family. It sort of crept up. I wasn’t a fat child and neither of us was fat when we got married. I knew we weren’t eating well but Julia seemed to accept the food provision role without question. I helped out with other stuff in the house and outside but it seemed natural that she was in charge of the food. I doubt I’d have done it differently, anyway. My own mother wasn’t much of a cook so I didn’t have anything to compare with, except the cooking shows, I suppose. I don’t really understand why we weren’t influenced by them, we watched them constantly. Maybe it’s because we actually craved the rubbish we ate. We liked it. The only time we ever sat at a table together to eat was when we went to a restaurant, which we did quite often. Two salaries meant we could afford to take the kids out fairly regularly as long as we didn’t go anywhere too costly. Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Nandos .. that sort of thing.
I particularly liked the programs with the voluptuous Mariella who prepared the sort of food we would have enjoyed eating. Lots of packets and cans and cream and chocolate. I don’t remember her ever mentioning vegetables or fresh fruit. She was always scooping up spoonfuls of pudding or smearing generous blobs of something or other on toast or bread and eating it with the sort of sensuous enjoyment I was missing. Hers was the sort of food that satisfied more than the stomach. Her big breasts, accentuated by tight t-shirts screamed eat more of this. I wished I could. We all wanted more of what she was offering. I certainly did, anyway.
Bob picks up the newspaper from the floor and studies the photograph of John Bailey-Foyle’s wife, soon to be ex-wife, furiously destroying the food that could have made them both a good profit over Christmas. He wonders about John Bailey-Foyle. In what way has this wife failed him? Bailey-Foyle’s thin, after all.
Of course, we didn’t only eat pizza, ice cream and chocolate pudding. Julia also bought a lot of those ready meals, one for each of us. You can have Sunday roast, including vegetables, for five people any day of the week for the price of the same meal with drinks for two at a pub on Sundays. Julia said you couldn’t possibly provide the same meal for that price if you cooked it all yourself. I’m sure she was right. Anyway, we wouldn’t have known where to start and were too tired to try. So we all got steadily fatter and, I have to say, more and more bored.
If you’d seen me at my heaviest which was about five years ago when I was 48 I don’t think you’d recognise me now. My face had no definition. It was the face of anyone fat. Now it has shape and contours, more lines as well, but at least this face is unmistakably and uniquely me. Julia looked even less identifiable than me because, at only five and a half feet tall there was less space to store her excess 30 kilos. Seeing the kids with wobbling extra chins and bulging bellies was painful although we never talked about it. There was a polite code of silence in the house which we all signed up to. But I noticed and I knew it was too late. I had caused these misshapen progeny and I knew they were disabled for ever.
The garden reminds Bob of Christmas, specially Mariella’s Christmas program. This type of daydreaming’s dangerous, Bob’s aware of that but he can’t resist a lingering flashback to the famously beautiful tv chef dressed in a tight red top and with a sprig of mistletoe in her wild black hair.
It wasn’t only that she was beautiful and sexy and flaunted both. All men are attracted to that combination. I know this sounds deluded but I felt we understood each other, Mariella and me. She encouraged me, yes me, to enjoy my calories unmediated by any pretence to gentility. Everything she did was quick and easy. But I also felt she needed me. I was sure of it then and I’m certain of it now. Our eyes used to meet. We both had needs and she fed mine and I fed hers. The more I loved her the more she clearly loved me. I suppose it was her lips that captured most of my attention as I watched but her eyes told me she needed and wanted me.
At first I simply enjoyed watching but after a few weeks I became anxious about her. I felt protective. If she seemed to miss a cue or lose her timing I’d yell at the kids to keep quiet or snap at Julia.
“I think you’re soft on her Bob,” joked Julia. I barked back which was very unusual for me. I’d always been mild mannered.
“What do you mean, soft on her?” Julia’s eyebrows rose.
“Well, alright, hard on her then.” She laughed.
I tried to ignore her by eating more of whatever she had provided on the coffee table. Chocolate biscuits maybe, or potato crisps or jam doughnuts.
I specially enjoyed anything with cream while watching Mariella. Chocolate éclairs worked best. You can buy them in twos in custom made plastic containers at Tescos. Julia would often put a pile of them on the table and we’d take a pack each, snapping open the lids as we watched the program. I’d open mine and wait for just the right moment. As Mariella lifted her own spoonful of creamy pudding to her mouth I’d lift my éclair and put it near mine. I’d watch until she closed her full lips over the sweet, sticky delicacy, her eyes closing with pleasure. I’d let my own lips go slack and I’d kiss the éclair, sucking at its sweet creaminess, my eyes on hers. She’d moan with pleasure as I hardened, the containers piled on my lap.
I recorded all Mariella’s programs and bought all the videos and cd’s I could find and kept the collection in a suitcase. At first I waited until everyone was out of the house before I put them on but the obvious constraints of home meant that I had to treat her as if we were in public. I needed to find a way of having her to myself, on my own, in private. So under the pretext of business appointments I’d book a room at a Travelodge near my office and take my suitcase there for the afternoon. I’d stop for a supply of beer and éclairs on the way. I could go through at least half a dozen of each in a couple of hours. Our sex got better and better and I got bigger and bigger. In fact I’d never had such good sex. Julia and I were just too big and tired to bother. But with Mariella I felt rejuvenated, attractive, needed. I think I sensed that Mariella would never have enough. Like John Bailey-Foyle, she was insatiable.
When Julia discovered the hotel bookings on my credit card she accused me of having an affair. Me? What a joke. Five stone overweight with a face lost in a thick mask of opaque jelly wobbling and hanging in folds around my neck. After the first flush of guilt and then another of outrage I felt complimented for the first time in our long marriage. Then I denied it and explained the rooms had been hired for a series of business meetings. I don’t know what she thought. She said nothing.
And then she discovered the suitcase with the audiovisuals.
“You’re obsessed with her Bob.” She seemed relieved and she tried not to laugh.
I stared at her. It was true. I was completely besotted with Mariella. She was my life.
“You need help,” Julia suggested kindly. “Why don’t you contact a councillor? I could look into it for you. I don’t think you should let this get out of hand, Bob. It’s a bit sick you know.”
But I couldn’t let Mariella go. She couldn’t let me go either. There was too much to lose. We simply couldn’t do it.
Bob’s face contorts as he gets up and walks across the conservatory to the opposite window. He puts his hands in the pockets of his slim line cords. It’s almost four o’ clock and the winter sun’s going. It’ll be dark soon. He can hear Dianna starting to prepare the fire in the sitting room. She always lights a fire at 4.30 in winter. He turns and puts his cup on the tea tray and carries it through to the kitchen. On the way he passes through the hallway where a young couple are studying a map of the city which Dianna has framed on the wall.
“Afternoon,” says Bob as he passes. They respond cheerfully. On the way back from the kitchen Bob puts his head around the sitting room door where Dianna is kneeling in front of the fireplace.
“I’m just going out for a short walk in the garden.”
“Oh fine,” she replies. I’ll be in the kitchen doing dinner.” Dianna’s older than Bob by about five years. She’s a small woman with the wiry physique of someone used to constant activity and regular habits. She’s wearing a brown tweed skirt and smokey blue pullover. Her hair is short and going grey. A spaniel drops off the sofa and positions itself at Bob’s feet, looking up. They leave the house together through the conservatory where Bob first collects his jacket which is hanging on a hook near the door.
When Julia discovered the suitcase in his car she announced she’d had enough and asked him to leave.
“I can’t compete with a food goddess, Bob.” He looked at her objectively. Her cheeks were flushed and her chins shook. He could see how painful it was for her. He expected she was hoping he’d offer up Mariella under threat of homelessness but he couldn’t. He packed his clothes and drove to the other side of town where he booked into a bed and breakfast. This one, where he now lives. Owned and run by Dianna who provides dinner as well, given enough notice.
When he walked into the hall to enquire about a room Dianna was alarmed. He seemed to take up the entire space. He blocked out the light which shone through the windows in the old front door. He smelled of anxiety. He had two suitcases with him but claimed he was single. He would slip Mariella in unnoticed. Dianna decided to take a risk. How long would he be staying, she asked. He replied he wasn’t sure. She said she could offer him a single room for a night or two.
“Will you be needing dinner?” she asked as she stood back to show him his bathroom en suite.” She thought it felt like an obscene question. Would this grotesquely overweight man be needing dinner?
“Yes, thank you,” said Bob quickly knowing exactly what this neat, slender woman was thinking.
“It’ll be ready at 7. I try to have everything cleared away by 8.”
He quickly calculated that if he reached the dining room by 7 sharp he could be back in his room to watch Mariella at 7.30.
“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you.”
Dianna watched as Bob sat down for dinner that first night at 7 pm, sharp. She approved of his punctuality and she noticed that he’d taken the trouble to shower and change. He was the only guest for dinner and this had allowed her to plan and cook the meal especially for him. It was a Tuesday which meant an ordinary weekday meal. She treated Fridays and Saturdays as special in different ways and on Sundays she always served what was left from Sunday lunch. Dianna was divorced and had no children but she still set aside Sunday lunch to entertain family and friends whenever they cared to come, which was regularly.
“Consomme to start with,” she said. “I hope you like soup, Mr Williams?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Please, call me Bob.”
“I’m Dianna.”
Bob couldn’t recall the last time he’d had soup. He doubted he’d had it since he was a child. He didn’t recall it with any enthusiasm but he enjoyed the small portion which Dianna served him along with a slice of warm bread. He poured himself water from a jug. Dianna didn’t stay to watch him eat. She would give her full attention to his three courses before sitting down herself, on her own.
“I was going to serve fish tonight, Bob, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it?”
“Oh, anything’s fine with me,” he smiled feeling relieved that he wouldn’t have to face fish tonight, his first night away from home.
“I decided chicken would be safe. Everyone enjoys chicken.” She smiled putting a plate down in front of him. It held four small, lean slices of chicken breast with a thin mushroom sauce, four peeled new potatoes, pureed spinach and carrots.
“Thank you,” he said, “it looks delicious.”
Bob had never seen such a small plate of food. He looked at his watch, 7.10. He thought it would be impolite to eat it too quickly. Dianna had left the dining room but he was sure she was watching him. He ate slowly and carefully. She wasn’t watching him. She was in the kitchen taking a home baked custard tart out of the oven. It had a base of vanilla sponge with an egg yolk custard which was flavoured with cinnamon. It was perfectly cooked and she smiled with pleasure.
“Custard tart, my own recipe, Bob,” she said, putting a plate in front of him with a hot portion of the scented delicacy. “I hope you enjoy it.”
A shiver of excitement travelled through him from his nostrils down. The pudding smelled and looked delicious. Somewhere between the soup and the pudding Bob formed a firm bond of trust with Dianna. He scraped the bowl clean, swallowed the last of the water in his glass and looked at his watch. 7.27. Dianna walked in from the kitchen.
“Did you enjoy the pudding?”
He enjoyed the pudding so much he could have easily eaten it all but Dianna didn’t offer a second helping.
“Thank you Dianna, the whole meal was delicious. Would it be convenient for you if I came in for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Of course, all I ask is plenty of notice.”
He rushed to his room and switched on the tv. Mariella’s program was about to start.
He lay on the bed watching her tearing, pouring and stirring. She talked about how busy everyone was. His sudden departure from home that day meant Bob hadn’t thought about picking up beers and éclairs. Instead he lay there thinking vaguely of Dianna busy in the kitchen downstairs. He thought about the cinnamon pudding which she must have taken quite some trouble over during the afternoon.
On Wednesday she served him avocado mousse with salad and melba toast. She smiled as she calmly put the small plate in front of him with its careful arrangement of colours, shapes and textures. He poured himself some water. Again, he felt her watching him. Again, he was the only guest. The dish demanded homage of some sort. His big hands and spreading flesh didn’t deserve such care. He ate slowly, bit by bit.
“Delicious, Dianna, thank you so much.” She beamed and took away the plate returning with baked cod, buttery and lemony with home-made chipped potatoes and a mixed salad in a separate bowl. At 7.28 she brought a slice of apple pie with a golden cheddar cheese crust and a small jug of creamy, runny pale yellow custard. He ate slowly, carefully collecting on his spoon chunks of firm apple with crispy cheese crust and custard for each mouthful.
“The apples are from the garden,” she said when he thanked her. “Bramleys, she smiled. I pick them in October and freeze them. The tree’s been there forever. Will you be in tomorrow night?” He nodded. That was five years ago and he’s still there.
Every morning Bob receives a plate of scrambled eggs on toast with fried tomato and coffee. He’s usually the only guest in Dianna’s bed and breakfast. The first morning, after the first dinner, he’d asked her to bring him whatever was convenient for her and she’d decided on this simple breakfast. Each day as he sits down to breakfast he knows exactly what to expect and he knows she’s thought about his needs, his nutrition.
“What will you be having for lunch, Bob,” she asked after a week.
“I usually pick up a sandwich,” he lied. Lunch was more often than not fish and chips. His tase for fat asserted itself almost as soon as he was in the car.
“I would be very happy to give you a sandwich to take with you, you know, something hand made, good for you. Proper nutrition, not the salty, fatty stuff you buy in shops.” Her eyes said ‘refuse and your game’s up’.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“No, no trouble at all. I’ll have to charge you, of course, but it’ll be less than you’ve been paying.”
Every lunchtime he unwraps a sandwich lovingly put together with his particular needs in mind. Loyally he eats it and only it. It would be unfaithful to eat outside this new relationship, he knows that.
The first hint of change came when his trousers zipped and buttoned with ease. From that moment he no longer feared them. They ceased to be a symbol of retribution to be faced each morning after the binge the night before. When he needed a belt to keep them up Dianna suggested he treat himself to some new ones. This became a more or less annual cycle, first the belt and then the new trousers until finally he settled into a comely size 36. For a while he carried on watching Mariella on tv in his room but the suitcase stayed under the bed until he slipped out the front door with it and dropped it beside an Oxfam bin.
Now they watch tv together and Dianna especially likes John Bailey-Foyle’s cooking show.
“I like his food, don’t you?” she says, as they sit near the fire watching the lean middle aged man produce food for the wealthy masses.
“He’s not as good as you,” says Bob pretending not to be interested. Anxiously he watches Dianna watching the chef.
“Have you ever wondered why they do it?” she asks.
“You mean why they cook?”
“No, why they do it on tv, constantly, the same few and the same food over and over? The naked chef for example, and Mariella ….?”
“What is it about Bailey-Foyle that you like?”
Dianna looks at him, surprised.
“I don’t like him, I like his food.”
“Well,” he grins at her, “I like your food and I like you. So let’s watch something else.”
By Sheila Linder.