I wrote this some years back for a competition where the story could be about anything but its main theme had to be food. I didn’t win, but that tuna sandwich is a beautiful thing and you should make it.
Billington sat with his back to the window, preferring the view of the kitchen sink to the view of his overgrown and tangled garden. He drank his tea with satisfaction, slurping the hot liquid and dunking his rich tea biscuit to provide a soft, almost mushed paste to suck on between sips, expertly removing it from the liquid just before it dissolved into its depths. Billington was man of gentle, fixed habits. He was an average man, average height, average looks - nothing about him called attention to him until you looked into his eyes whereupon you might be forgiven for thinking you were seeing into his, or someone’s, soul. They were dark and mournful, deep set, blessed with long lashes and framed at the top by a pair of strong brows which seemed to increase their depth. He kept them downcast most of the time, not because he was particularly shy but because he liked to look where he was going at all times.
Apart from his eyes the only other notable thing about Billington was his name, which he did not like. He felt it sounded like something out a 1930s boy’s own annual story. Brave Billington battles the beast of Batley, perhaps. It did not suit him, whereas his given name, Sidney, did. Billington was his surname and because boys in his school were all referred to by their surnames it simply stuck an he had no idea how to go about changing that.
On finishing the tea and two biscuits he rinsed the mug and put it in the one person dishwasher with his biscuit plate, brushed the crumbs from the table and left for work. He had very little on his mind as he left. He considered his lunch, currently residing in his back pack and consisting of a tuna mayonnaise sandwich. He allowed himself to dwell on the sandwich, it was safe and familiar territory. Food was always safe territory.
Billington had used white bread, but not cheap white sliced. He bought his from a local artisan baker who called it ‘overnight white’, and which was described to him at length by the keen apprentice behind the counter. It was so called because it was left to rise overnight to add to the depth of flavour, the texture and bite of the of the final loaf, made with authentic unbleached, organic British flour, was always baked fresh every morning.
The sandwich was buttered with good salty butter. The filling was a mixture made to his own recipe using fillets of dolphin friendly albacore tuna from a jar, capers, red onion chopped very finely, a dash of tabasco, lots of black pepper, small squeeze of lemon and of course a good amount of mayonnaise. Billington was very fussy about his mayonnaise and used a brand that never failed him. Sometimes he would add dill to the mix, if he had any to hand, or leaf of crispy lettuce - but it was pretty much the perfect sandwich as it was.
The thought involved in the making of the sandwich, and indeed most of the food on his repertoire, he knew was at odds to his love of builder’s tea and rich tea biscuits. He felt the dichotomy might make him interesting but he wasn’t sure, never having had the opportunity to test this idea.
Billington felt he had not succeeded at life up to this point. He had no sense of what he ought to be doing, no burning desire to be an artist, a builder or even an academic which was the direction of travel his teachers saw for him. A thinker of deep thoughts of which to impart to others. No, he did not want that, but he but felt sure he should be doing something more than this.
‘This’ was work in a local garage where he was a petrol pump attendant. Not that he attended the pumps of course, no one did that anymore. He sat behind the counter and pressed buttons to allow customers to pump their own petrol, and if they had chosen to pay inside he took their money, perhaps adding in a newspaper or packet of Maltesers; maybe a bottle of Australian wine or a pack of cigarettes, camouflaged these days with colourless packaging with only a vivid photograph of a diseased lung for relief. He missed the glory days of Malboro’s graphic red design, camels in the desert and the green and gold of the old Golden Virginia packets. Billington didn’t smoke so the missing of these things was from an aesthetic point of view only.
After his seventh customer of the morning Billington allowed himself to think about the garden at home. Just for a moment. It was overgrown but nonetheless he knew what was there, and where. The summer was kicking in and the weather had been hot, with spells of rain which made the perfect growing conditions for weeds among the vegetables, flowers and brambles that rioted within his boundary fence. Just outside the back door was a collection of flower pots which he had no memory of actually collecting, but somehow they were there, conveniently, to host his seedlings and the cuttings that he stole occasionally from neighbour’s front gardens, usually under inadequate cover of the afternoon sun, but he had never been challenged to date.
Beyond the pots was a path, leading to the end of the garden. It had been badly concreted some time back so it was cracked and uneven. This didn’t really matter since it was also overgrown with ivy and brambles. You could however, as Billington had proved, still walk down it if you trod carefully, one foot treading down on the brambles while using the other to clear the way for the next step. It was tricky, especially when carrying something heavy, but it was manageable. At the end of the garden was a small shed, crammed with all the usual gardening paraphernalia in various states of decay, apart from a new, shiny steel spade. Spiders had made their homes in the shed and only begrudgingly made space for this new addition. A rusty rake leaned on the side wall, along with a hoe and a pair of blunt hedge clippers. A weed killer bottle had tipped over and long since emptied its contents, slowly oozing them out through the floor boards and no doubt killing any living flora or fauna below.
Billington stopped his thought train there, moving his mind onto the matter in hand which was re-stocking the fizzy drinks fridge. He loathed these brightly coloured drinks, selling energy to those who thought a sugar rush was exercise. He abhorred the waste of plastic, the chemicals involved, the marketing which had brought these drinks down to the lowest possible taste denominator simply as a money making ploy dressed up as consumer choice. However, he did like to arrange them according to colour, creating a strange, slightly apocalyptic rainbow of bright, acidic hues.
Having created his rainbow Billington’s thoughts went back to his sandwich, because he was getting quite hungry. Two rich tea biscuits for breakfast were not enough to set a man up for the day, he knew this, but at the moment it was all he could stomach first thing. As the day wore on his stomach became stronger and more demanding. After checking with his colleague that it was ok to take a break he took his back pack outside and found a bit of wall to sit on, near the car wash. He enjoyed watching the cars enter dry and dirty and come out wet and clean, it was satisfying.
The sandwich was stored in tupperware, bought at least ten years previously and still going strong. There was place for plastic he felt, as long as it wasn’t single use. He had a drink in a chilli bottle and once again he marvelled at technology that could keep a drink cold, or hot, so efficiently despite only having a thin wall of metal and some sort of technical coating between it and the ambient temperature. Today he was drinking iced tea. He had learned to like iced tea on a holiday he once took to the southern states of America. He preferred it unsweetened, with lemon, remembering with distaste the quantities of sweet ’n low Americans added to theirs under the illusion it might make them thinner. It made him feel slightly superior to think he liked his without sweetener of any kind. Then he felt a kind of shame, knowing himself to be superior to no one.
As Billington bit into his sandwich he felt each layer between his teeth, the first soft bite into the bread with a slight pull as he sank into the the crust, just enough to give his teeth a little work, then entering the salty, creamy tuna mix, his tastebuds singing as the combined ingredients hit his tongue. This, he thought to himself, was his happiness. He took a swig of icy tea from his bottle. A black VW Polo entered the car wash. As it came out Billington admired the work of the mechanised car washer and enjoyed the look on the face of the customer. Somehow everyone was briefly transported as they went through - you just had to sit there and let it wash over you, literally, coming out slightly wide eyed, as though having just visited another dimension.
After lunch he went back to his post at the counter, took more money, asking everyone if they would like a VAT receipt and telling them to enjoy their afternoon. Soon it was time to go home; that is how his days went.
In the garden nature was working hard. Roots pushing down, shoots pushing up, buds bursting in slow motion to reveal their inner worlds of gaudy petals, stamens and fruits. Tendrils from climbers curled around anything that stood firm. The French beans seemed to have grown a foot overnight, but the squash plants seem to be holding back, reluctant to grow bigger after their initial enthusiastic baby shoots. The beans and squash plants were in Billington’s raised bed, and despite the encroaching brambles, ivy and nameless weeds doing their best to choke them they were standing their ground. The squash might not be as speedy as the beans but their colour was good, so perhaps their method was slow and steady like the tortoise, leaving the showy spurt to the beans as the hare. Billington wasn’t sure since he had never planted these things before. These were his only food crops, apart from some perennial herbs in pots and a couple of sad looking tomato plants on his window sill. He was new to this type of gardening and by the looks of the raised bed he wasn’t terribly keen. But looks can be deceiving, and the reasons for gardening many.
Billington did in fact quite like gardening, in a fair weather sort of way. He preferred potting things to digging deep into the soil but this year he had had to dig deep, plant these vegetables and encourage their growth. So the garden had a kind of push-me-pull-you effect on him this summer which was why at the same as encouraging his crops he did not remove the weeds and brambles. He visited the raised bed every day to check on progress, vaguely looking forward to harvesting the vegetables further into the summer, thinking of recipes incorporating this bounty.
Despite carefully making his way over the brambles he often cut himself. It did not seem to occur to him to cut back the vicious thorns that seemed intent on tearing his clothes and skin, almost as though he though he felt he deserved it, while using it as a distraction too. He ring fenced his thoughts. He was only allowed to think about the brambles and his cuts, the digging and the planting and the possible fruits of this labour when he was actually there. At all other times he would blank it out, concentrate on his safe thoughts of food, his visual enjoyment of colour and order.
On the evening of the tuna sandwich lunch Billington returned home at his usual time, emptied his back pack contents onto the kitchen table and proceeded to make order by rinsing his tupperware box and putting it in his one person dishwasher, next to his biscuit plate and mug from the morning. He washed his bottle throughly, using a bottle brush, because you cannot put chilli bottles in the dishwasher. He made sure there were no crumbs in the back pack and hung it up. He put the kettle on to make a cup of tea, with which he would perhaps have a jaffa cake. Jaffa cakes were a big favourite - the series of textures in your mouth as you cracked through the crisp chocolate layer, into the the half-biscuit-half-cake to enter the tangy orange marmalade jelly centre was a delicious and exciting sensation. You couldn’t dunk them of course, but breakfast dunking felt enough for Billington.
Billington relaxed as he sat at his table, looking at the sink with its neat line up of cleaning products, dish rack and an artfully placed vase of flowers, picked from his own garden where they had successfully seeded themselves after he had casually thrown the contents of one of those free wild flower seed packets into and around the brambles and weeds. The effect was quite charming he thought. His tea cooled enough so he could drink it and treating himself to two jaffa cakes he felt as decadent as a man could at tea time, before doing a spot of gardening followed by the making of his dinner.
At about 6pm Billington made his way down the garden path, gingerly stepping to avoid the thorns and mostly failing because he was wearing shorts and sandals. Spots of blood appeared on his ankles but as usual he gave them no mind. He reached the raised bed, noticing that the squash plants seem to have had a growth spurt and massive leaves had appeared, creating umbrellas over the undergrowth, their tendrils circling the poles he had stuck deep into the ground in a tipi shape, reaching upwards, looking so fragile. He reached out to touch the tendrils tenderly, as though stroking a kitten, pulling them gently and then letting go, watching them springing back into their perfect spirals. The bean plants were flowering, blood red flowers offering the promise of deep green, delicious vegetables to follow. Some had even gone past flowering and the little left over pod from within the flower had become a little tiny bean, full of optimism and nutritional value.
The squash plant held Billington’s attention a long while. Under some of the leaves some flowers had appeared - a yellow, fresh and bright that sang from within the deep green of the leaves, and seemingly as he watched they grew in number, some of them sprouting baby squashes, as yet unformed and unidentifiable. As he continued to look it appeared as though the tiny squash were arranged in the shape of a hand, the leaves becoming a coat, the spiralled tendrils beautiful green hair. His head swam and Billington felt the familiar vertigo enveloping him as he sank to his knees, holding the edge of the raised bed. He knew he had to keep breathing and stay still. After a few deep breaths he tried opening his eyes. Through half closed lids the sunlight through the foliage seemed like looking at the world from underwater. He took a few more breaths like this and opened his eyes fully. He breathed in the smell of the rich, minerally soil.
There were the leaves, the baby squashes and flowers, the beans and their curly tendrils, the sun on the weeds and flowers and the blood on his legs. A small sound emerged from Billington as he stood up, carefully to avoid a head rush. He took another breath, gulped the air, choking back what sounded almost like a sob. The black cat from next door eyed him steadily from her perch on the fence post, their eyes meeting briefly. As Billington recovered his balance he wondered why the cat chose to sit on such a small thing when so many large, and comfortable things were lying about just waiting to be sat on.
He turned and went back down the garden path, his breathing settling, ignoring the fresh wounds on his ankles, and began to consider his dinner. Fresh tagliatelle with a walnut and parmesan sauce he thought, with a crisp green salad, perhaps with some mint from his one successful, if slightly meagre, herb pot; a perfect summer supper.
Just to be pedantic, iced tea is best drunk with lots of ice, lemon, and about a pinkie-nails worth of sweet and low (dissolves better). Lovely story--you never know what's buried in the garden.