Mint Sauce in the Beans

“How long will tea be, dad?” My brother pops his head round the door into the kitchen, his hair still wet from the shower.
Dad is standing in front of the sink squeezing washing up liquid onto his oil covered hands. Black water drips over the pots in the bowl. It doesn’t look like he’s thought about tea yet.
“Crisps on toast?” he says. This is dad’s idea of a joke, but it’s not an absurd kind of joke because there’s a lot of truth in it. There’s never much food in the pantry, but there’s nearly always the ingredients for crisps on toast. With beans.
“I’ll make tea,” I say, because Liam’s still standing there and dad’s not answering. How hard can it be? I think to myself. Liam closes the door and goes upstairs and I take that as a sign that he respects me as the tea maker.
I stare at the almost empty pantry while dad finishes washing his hands. Beans, bread, crisps and lots of tins. Dad buys tins even when we’ve already got tins: rice pudding, mushy peas, sweetcorn, plum tomatoes, beans. We are never short of these things.
I’m not sure what I want to make but I know it isn’t beans on toast.
Recently me and Liam have started stirring mint sauce into beans to bring some variation.

“I’ll leave you to it then, Chelbo.” Dad goes upstairs to change.

I get the biggest saucepan dad owns out the cupboard and pour a tin of chicken soup into it. Even I can tell that isn’t enough for three but there isn’t any more chicken soup. There is mushroom soup though, which is similar, so I sluice that in too. I use the tea pot on the back of the aga to get the remains out of the tins like dad does.
“Just add a bit of colour,” he says, like a TV chef stirring stewed tea into bolognese.
Next I put a pack of spaghetti into the mix. We like to eat so I put the lot in.

Nothing is happening in the pot, which makes me hope Paddy remembered to stoke the aga this morning.
Paddy is my dad’s brother. He lives with us. He’s meant to be my dad’s partner, one half of P.J. and G.L. Flood Landscape Gardeners and Tree Fellers, but instead of going to work with my dad he stays at home by himself and drinks red wine all day. To prevent us from noticing this, or to prove that he is essential to the working of the house, he gets up early every morning and stokes the aga. Except for when he doesn’t. I flick some water on the hot plate and it hisses like normal.

I watch it, thinking a watched pot never boils, a watched pot never boils, the whole time until bubbles appear and then I think Aaargh! like the pot is a kid at school that just got something very wrong.
Liam sticks his head round the door again.
“Is it nearly ready, Smell?”
“Yes,” I say, stirring the brittle spaghetti violently so some of it snaps. “I think it is.”
Liam shuts the door and I hear him go into the living room. Dad walks downstairs and does the same.

I hear a wildlife programme come on. Dad only watches wildlife programmes and the Simpsons. Liam only watches Big Trouble in Little China. The bubbles speed up, which means I’m doing very well, cooking on gas, or on an aga even, and deserve a rest.

I go and sit down in the chair that’s left, the worst chair. My dad and brother both look at me, my dad kindly, my brother viciously.
“What you doing? You said it was nearly ready.”
“Oh it is,” I smile serenely. “Just needs a few minutes more to...” Damn it, I can’t think of any cookery terms. “you know, to cook through.”
“Dick head.” He says in response.
Dad looks at him.

On telly a lion is stalking a gazelle. It’s a little one and I can’t keep my thoughts to myself.
“Oh no,” I wail, “it’s got separated from the family!”
“From the herd, dickhead.” My brother says.
“Liam,” dad says in a not very warning tone.
I am wincing in my chair and can feel my brother looking at me again, so I feel like I have to say something.
“I just want to see what happens...”
My brother is looking at me the way he is because I am sitting through a hunting scene, which, having known me unwillingly for eleven years he knows that I hate. The look he’s giving me seems to say, Why do you do it to yourself?
It makes me remember a time when he tricked me into looking at a picture of a microwaved guneapig in the Sun. THAT he can understand, that's just your average bullying, but what this is that I'm engaged in right now, that's what confuses him.

Finally the lion hurtles in for the kill. I do a miniature shriek. Liam growls.
The gazelle’s big eyes continue to look straight ahead, its bow legs trying to run away even as the lion's teeth sink into its throat.
My brother is looking at me again, furious at my sentimentality.
“You live on a farm,” he says, incredulous as ever at my existence.
“That is correct,” I say with dignity, “and dinner will be served in five minutes.”
“Pffff.” My brother answers.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, things are going well. The spaghetti is softening, and if it isn’t tender yet it is at least chewy, which is half the battle. Everything is as it should be except for the fact that, visually, the meal is very unattractive. I have created a meal that is grey like the inside of a toilet roll. Stirring, I try to think of other foods that are grey like the inside of a toilet roll and I come up with pork. Pork is grey, this is fine. Roast pork, which both my dad and brother like, is a grey meal.

“How’s it going, Chelbo?” dad says, looking over my shoulder.
“Pork’s a grey meal,” I say in response.
“Does it taste alright?”
“Of course,” I say, getting a teaspoon and tasting it for the first time. “It tastes like chicken and mushroom soup.”
“What’ve you put in there?”
“Chicken and mushroom soup. And spaghetti.”
He holds his hand out for the teaspoon.
“Mmm,” he says, “soupy!”

Liam comes in, still looking angry.
“I’m meant to be meeting Craig in a minute.”
“It’s ready,” dad says and I want to woop. This is the closest he’s ever come to favouritism.
“Five minutes,” I promise and my brother asks me if that’s all I can say, and I tell him, no, that isn’t all I can say, I can say dickhead as well. Dickhead.
“Chelsey.” Dad says in a not very warning tone.

Liam goes back into the living room and I realise what the dish needs.
“Sweetcorn.”
Dad nods and I realise we have become a team.
“Maybe a bit of chilli too?”
I nod, like I like the cut of his jib and sprinkle chilli powder on top of the sweetcorn. I am delighted with the effect of this.
“It is no longer a grey meal,” I say. I say it once outloud but I think it twice, the second time much more victoriously, going up into a squeal at the end and with many many more exclamations, like this: “It is no longer a grey meal!!!!!”

I stir the dish a final time, select a strand of spaghetti for us to try.
“It’s ready!” I say, excited.
Dad nods.
“It’s really really ready!”
“Maybe I should add a bit of marmite?” he says, but he is talking to himself, he is on his own now, because I’m in the living room telling Liam that it is ready, right now. There's no need to worry about a thing for I have made the tea.