Mum’s birthday was approaching so I suggested taking her out for lunch. Somewhere special.
I knew she’d order fish and chips. She always does. She’ll peruse the menu as though she’s giving every item its due consideration, but it’ll be cod and chips regardless. But what she really wants, she’ll say, is a mushroom omelette.
It’s part of family lore now: Mum’s as-yet unfulfilled quest for the perfect mushroom omelette. An omelette she refuses to make and refuses to seek out. An omelette she likes the idea of. The amount of times I’ve heard her say “I could murder a mushroom omelette”. Not just any kind, mind – “a nice one”.
I Google diligently. Maybe they do omelettes at Bill’s Food. Or Côte Brasserie. An image of an omelette pops up on TripAdvisor under The Delauney in Covent Garden. A close-up. Lurid yellow (shouldn’t have turned the flash on). A bit too unctuous for Mum’s taste (and mine to be honest). Some chef-y snips of chive sprinkled on top. I don’t detect any mushrooms but surely they can knock one up.
- Mum, they do omelettes at The Delaunay.
- Who?!
Mum always says “Who?!” instead of “What?” or “Where?”. With an exclamation mark as well as a question mark. Always.
- The Delaunay. It’s a posh restaurant on the Aldwych.
- Well that’s just silly. You don’t go to a restaurant for an omelette, do you
- No, not really.
We’re agreed. ‘Nice’ does not mean ‘gentrified’. Gentrified omelettes are an appalling concept. I mean, look at them. They’re bashed up eggs, for God’s sake.
- Do you want me to make you one instead, Mum?
- No, you’re OK, love.
- Do you ever make yourself one at home?
- Not really. Sometimes I’ll make a cheese omelette.
It takes me back to the Beefeater we used to go to when I was small. It’s where, as kids, we learned How To Behave In A Restaurant, which my parents thought was a critical component of bringing up children. It’s where my sister would order a ‘Philip steak’ because that was Dad’s favourite, and I’d order rump because it was cheaper. It’s where I saw Mum standing up from the table to go to the loo, flushed and upset, a large smudge of deep red on the back of her long, white, linen dress, and I realised what it can mean to get your period. It’s where Dad would borrow the waitress’s glasses flirtatiously in order to read the menu, and Mum would go quiet, and they’d row loudly about it later when I was in bed pretending to sleep.
Mum last took me there about ten years ago. Fish and chips for her, rump steak for me. She ate her last chip and wiped her mouth with a serviette.
- Right then, I’ll get the bill.
- Don’t you want a coffee, Mum?
- No, it’s OK, I’ve had enough.
- OK. Shall we just stay a bit and chat?
- OK… Why?
Because that’s what people do. Because I want you to ask what I’ve been up to and how that job interview went and how things are going with M. Because I want to tell you that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up even though I’m all grown up. Because I want to talk about how I saw someone on the 37 bus the other day that reminded me of Dad and it made me cry. Because I want to know if you’re happy and tell you that I’m happy, despite it all.
I said nothing.
The Beefeater’s not there anymore. It’s been turned it into flats. They didn’t do omelettes anyway, not that Mum would have ordered one if they did. She’s right – you don’t go to a restaurant for an omelette.
Last week I offered to make her lunch, but she wasn’t hungry. I don’t know which it is – the chemo or the radiotherapy – but she can’t face eating much at all just now. I prepare meals for her in little plastic Tupperwares that I’ve saved from my takeaways. Single portions ready for the freezer. Four lots of Nigella’s cauliflower soup. I found the recipe in the Royal Marsden’s Cancer Cookbook while I was waiting for her to finish her first radiotherapy session. She loves cauliflower, but I’m not sure she can manage that either yet. It made me think of the red lentil soup she’d always make for me when I was ill as a child. Red lentil soup and Lucozade.
When Mum feels better I’m going to get some free-range eggs and some closed-cup white mushrooms, and make her the most perfect, straightforward omelette. No parsley, because she can’t stand it. Says it tastes like grass.
In the meantime, we sit together in the living room, in the kitchen, in the car on the way to and from the hospital, day after day after day. I don’t need her to talk now. I don’t need her to ask questions or answer them; to laugh with me or to hear about the bad dream I had last night. I don’t want to know if she’s happy or why she never makes herself a mushroom omelette. I’m there and she’s there and it’s enough.
I call her more often now, too. Just to check how she’s feeling. I can tell it means a lot, even though she always initiates the end of the conversation within a few minutes with the same prompt:
- I’ll let you go then.
- OK!, I say brightly, warmly.
When all I want to say is, “Don’t let me go, Mum.”
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