Buns For Lita

"Bring buns," says Lita, chuckling into the phone. "Buns for Lita,"
she trills.

I know that buns for Lita are not ordinary buns, three for a quid at
the corner shop bakery, squidging cream buns. Lita will want something
to remind her. Food for Lita is a culinary trip to the past, edible
nostalgia. No British bun will do.

I settle on drizzling honey, chopped nut, layered filo affairs. I can't
bear them. I ask for four. The woman at the deli eyes me - four?

"Lovely, lovely," Lita says, lifting the bag from my hands. She peeks
inside. "My favourites!" (she always says this).

"And here, Lita." I hand her the bunch of flowers I chose from a black
bucket outside the greengrocer's. Lita loves flowers.

"Gladioli," she sings. She kisses me on one cheek, the other, the first
again. "Come in sweet thing," she says. "I have news of your
brother."

I am watching Lita fussing in the kitchen. She is setting the battered
kettle on the hob, she is fetching china plates and cups and saucers.
She is spooning coffee into the chunky filter top of her jug. I am
crammed in beside the table.
"You know what?" Lita is asking. " Today I shaved my armpits. Isn't it
just Summer?" I nod. It is no use pumping her for information. You must
let information drip like sap from the rubber plant. It forms that
slowly.

I wonder what she's heard about my brother. Why her? I wonder. Why not
me? My heart is pinched together, pleated, sour.
Lita places the buns onto a plate. None of her crockery matches but it
is all 'good'. She has made me take her to charity shops, boot fairs,
flea markets. She laughs when she sees heated curlers, bedpans, cycle
helmets but not when she sees crockery.

"Ooooh such a lovely little jug!" she'll say, inverting it to look at
the bottom for a sign that it is 'good'; ignoring that she has twenty
jugs, at least, already.
Everything is on the tray. Lita asks me to carry it She taps the side
of her nose. "I have something to fetch for you, sweetie love," and she
busies off into her bedroom. Lita's bedroom is something. Like walking
into a floral marshmallow. Her bed, a wrought iron thing "born in it
sweet one, I'll die in it too, when I'm ready" - her bed is a riot of
pillows, cushions, eiderdowns; a rush of fabrics, quilted shininess,
matt linen. There's no room in it for her, I think.

In her room she has a desk with a curving concertina front. I hear this
sliding up with a rattle as I carry the tray into the front room. It is
paper, then, that she has to show me. My heart startles. A
letter?

Lita's two canaries hang in the window viewing the grey flats across
the road. They fluff and quicken as I come into the room with my tray -
the aromatic coffee, the oozing honey buns. They twitter and jump from
perch to perch, they whistle.

"Ssh my babies," Lita calls to the birds as she bustles back in. They
settle back to pecking at millet, lettuce leaves. Whatever she has
fetched must be in her apron pocket. "set the tray there." She points
to the low table by the fireplace. "If I had a balcony, today would be
the day for sitting."

We are settled in our chairs. Lita has poured the coffee into tiny,
unmatched cups. The buns are between us. "I had a time ?" Lita begins.
I can't think where she hasn't lived. " ?. On a greek island. Now, I
can't quite remember which. Before the tourists, you know. These we ate
in afternoons." She takes a bun from the plate, cups a hands under to
catch crumbs, "what do you call them?"

"I don't know," I tell Lita, "I just point and buy."

"I like that," Lita laughs, "point and buy ?. In afternoons we ate
them, in the street cafes. Not the beach. You understand?" I
understand. Lita is a creature of built up areas, of concrete, brick
and asphalt. Like a feral cat.

"Are you still lost?" asks Lita. She has this quick trick of holding a
crippling mirror up to you. There's no warning. She picked me out, she
says, because I was lost.
(I'd said, "All I need Lita, is someone to hold my hand, to help me."
"Pish, pash," Lita had replied, "in this big, old world you've got to
hold your own hand. Think of it. It's the only one you'll ever be sure
of never losing.")

"I'm not so lost any more," I tell Lita. She bites into her bun so I
can't see her mouth pursing but her eyes say it all.

"Have a bun, sweet thing," she says. And we are out of it just as fast.
I decline. To me the e buns are sickly, gritty, made of brittle paper.
They bring water into my mouth.
Lita is reaching into her apron pocket. My heart is on its starting
blocks. But Lita brings out a massive plaid hankie for her fingers.
"They are the stickiest," she says pointing a shining thumb at the
plate of buns. "Won't you have a little bun?"

"No Lita, I'm not exactly hungry."

"You should eat, you'll be turning into a little, thin thing."

I look down at my thighs filling Lita's chair.
"I hardly think so."

I have brought flat, French pastries swirled through with cinnamon.
Lita has lived in Rouen. I have brought stodge slices of stripy German
sponge - a year or so in Hamburg. Fudge thick penda, fragrant, moist
barfi - a period in Bangalore before the partition. I have journeyed
with her. We have globe trotted, prompted by sweet fancies. Like Lita
has for real with her iron bed. I imagine her wrestling it along roads
the world over. Finally bringing it across the Atlantic in a tiny, open
boat. Lita's been here in England longer than she remembers but I can't
tempt her with a chelsea bun, an eccles cake. "Sweetie, I'd have to be
exiled to want them."

"Sweetie heart, darling," Lita is saying. " I must tell you, the
telephone rang?" (be still heart) " ? a man I knew in Moscow ?" (heart
back on its perch) " ? died in the most appalling fashion." (What cakes
do they eat in Moscow, Lita?) " ? he was struck on the temple by a
goat." I wonder? a flying goat stopped in its trajectory by the temple
of a man that Lita knew. "That man survived terrible deprivations,
sieges ? starvation!!!" Lita takes a second bun, slides her teeth in
deep. "To think, all that and then struck by the hoof of a goat.
Kaput!" A hoof then, not the whole goat. "A dreadful tale ?" Lita licks
her lips.

My brother. I think. Where Lita, what?

"Knowing me," says Lita, "is a dangerous occupation. Look up, always
before stepping from the portal of a tall building." Lita licks her
fingers, wipes. "Remember the bucket!"

I remember. A bucket from the sixteenth floor gains such momentum, is
like a horse falling.

"I do look up, Lita." And I do. People see me and wonder. "So far,
Lita, I am unscathed."

"Sweet one, be vigilant."

Lita is on her third bun and no news yet of my brother. My only family
member. Abroad somewhere, knowing Lita. It could be anything, brakes
failing dowhill, a bizarre accident with a window, an exploding
pastry.
Then Lita is unwrapping a tiny, tight folded wad from up her
sleeve.

"This came to me," she says. "It flew." I see the familiar filo thin
blueness of an airmail letter. "It's a thing would make you weep
?"

(My somersaulting heart. My eyes ready.)

"See? Italian stamps are so dull and boring. Just a head. ? Anyway,
anyway ? this daughter of a friend I had in Vienna, well, a terrible
thing - a man goes wild with a sickle. Just about chops her virtually
in half." A neatly divided woman splits and falls, graceful as ham
falling from a slicer. "She never did have a waist," says Lita,
snapping her jaw on the fourth bun.

And then did he scythe down my brother? Was he second in line for the
slaying, Lita? Is he living or dead, Lita? Tell.

"Lita, Lita ?" I have to stop her. "You have to tell me - what news of
my brother? My heart can't take it Lita. It's flying about in my
chest."

Lita carefully licks her fingers, each one slowly, cleans crumbs from
china with a moist finger end. Dries with the enormous hankie, settles
hands in her aproned lap.

"Sweetie heart," she says, "darling, - why didn't you say that?" She
stows the hankie back in the apron pocket, slowly. She stands, picks up
the tray. As she heads for the kitchen I hear her saying, "Your
brother, sweet one, oh darling ?. he's coming home."

(this story first published in QWF magazine)