Like a peregrine.
Which he had done. She’d taken thirty-nine bites tonight. Thirty-nine spoonfuls of a gruel that would have made Oliver Twist lead an armed rebellion. No milk, no raisins, no cinnamon, no sugar. Just watery porridge and a glass of water. Not even tempted by her grandfather’s meal of chops and veg, she was.
“…for Your will is what we seek. Amen,” Tammy said, and he opened his eyes to find hers on him. Her expression was fond. He dropped her fingers in a rush.
He said roughly, “Bloody stupid. You know that, eh?”
She smiled. “So you’ve told me.” But she settled in so that he could tell her again, and she balanced her cheek on her palm.
“We pray before the bloody meal,” he groused. “Why d’we got to bloody pray at the bloody end as well?”
She answered by rote, but with no indication that she was tiring of a discussion they’d had at least twice a week since she’d come to Cornwall. “We say a prayer of thanks at the beginning. We thank God for the food we have. Then at the end we pray for those who don’t have enough food to sustain them.”
“If they’re bloody alive, they have enough bloody food to bloody sustain them, don’t they?” he countered.
“Grandie, you know what I mean. There’s a difference between just being alive and having enough to be sustained. Sustained means more than just living. It means having enough sustenance to engage. Take the Sudan, for example?”
“Now you hang on right there, missy-miss. And don’t move either.” He slid out from the banquette. He carried his plate the short distance to the caravan’s sink as a means of feigning other employment, but instead of beginning the washing up, he snatched her rucksack from the hook on the back of the door and said, “Let’s just have a look.”
She said, “Grandie,” in a patient voice. “You can’t stop me, you know.”
He said, “I know my duty to your parents is what I know, my girl.”
He brought the sack to the table and emptied its contents and there it was: on the cover a young black mother in tribal dress holding her child, one of them sorrowful and both of them hungry. Blurred in the background were countless others, waiting in a mixture of hope and confusion. The magazine was called Crossroads, and he scooped it up, rolled it up, and slapped it against his palm.
“Right,” he said. “Another bowl of that mush for you, then. Either that or a chop. You can take your choice.” He shoved the magazine into the back pocket of his drooping trousers. He would dispose of it later, when she’d gone to bed.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “Truly. Grandie, I eat enough to stay alive and well, and that’s what God intended. We’re not meant to carry round excess flesh. Aside from being not good for us, it’s also not right.”
“Oh, a sin, is it?”
“Well…it can be, yes.”
“So your grandie’s a sinner? Going straight to hell on a plate of beans while you’re playing harps with the angels, eh?”
She laughed outright. “You know that’s not what I think.”
“What you think is a cartload of bollocks. What I know is that this stage you’re in?”
“A stage? And how do you know that when you and I have been together…what? Two months? Before that you didn’t even know me, Grandie. Not really.”
“Makes no difference, that. I know women. And you’re a woman despite what you’re doing to make yourself look like a twelve-year-old girl.”