Flying Under Bridges (9 page)

Pilgrims
View Holy Tomato

Huddersfield
salad ingredient joins list of

symbolic fruit and veg

By Martin Wainwright

The holy tomato of
Huddersfield yesterday joined religion’s rich tradition of curious edible symbols,
taking its place beside the Jesus tortilla and the aubergine of Allah.

More
than 200 people have so far travelled from London, Birmingham and Manchester to
enjoy brief glimpses of the fruit wrapped in cling film in a terraced house
fridge.

The
excitement centres on fibres and marks in the flesh which appear to spell out
the Koranic messages: ‘There is no God but Allah’ and ‘Mohammed is the
Messenger’.

Although
Arabic’s sinuous lines are well suited to the natural patterns of fruit and
veg, the tomato is a particularly accurate template.

‘God
must have made me buy it,’ said 14-year-old Shasta Aslam, who bought a 60p bag
of tomatoes on her way home from school. She had been astonished to read the
familiar texts as she sliced the fruit in half— the third of three tomatoes in
a salad for her grandparents at their home in Lockwood, two miles from
Huddersfield centre.

The
round red Moneymaker, which is admired in brief door-opening sessions to keep
the fridge cool, follows an aubergine found with a similar message in Bolton,
Lancashire. Linked mysteries include the celebrated milk drinking by Hindu
statues in London last year and a series of tortillas showing Christ’s head in
California.

Mother
cut up another potential symbol and examined the inside thoroughly.

‘Where
did you get these?’ Eve asked.

‘Who
ha, what not, Asda.’

‘I don’t
think it’s likely, Mum.’

Mother
sighed and put the last cut but unhelpful, unholy tomato in the salad bowl.

‘No,
you’re right. Maybe not from Asda.’

‘I mean
at all.’

It was
the wrong thing to say. Mother turned and pointed at her child with the
vegetable knife. ‘Don’t you be so sure. I know it mostly happens in foreign
countries but if it can happen in Huddersfield then…’ Mother and daughter
left unsaid the many possibilities of revelation that existed for fresh produce
in the Home Counties.

‘You
don’t take me seriously,’ muttered Mother, as she wrung water from a spring
onion.

Eve
smiled. ‘Oh, I do, Mum. If anyone should find inspiration in a tomato it ought
to be you. You deserve it.’

Mrs
Cameron eyed her daughter carefully. She was not, on the whole, in favour of
the idea that anybody
deserved
anything. It was God’s will and it simply
had to be borne.

‘You’re
frowning again,’ said Mrs Cameron, and limped back to the sink. Eve and her
frown sat down at the kitchen table. The surface was spread with travel
brochures advertising the wonders of Lourdes and its many dramatic
possibilities. Lourdes was Mrs Cameron’s new ambition. She had originally
wanted to go to Heritage USA — the 21st Century Christian Campground of Jim and
Tammy Faye Bakker in America. It had been rather a splendid offering, which
included a Heavenly Fudge Shoppe, a Noah’s Ark Toy Shoppe and a Walk of Faith
leading to an air-conditioned replica of the ‘top room’ where the Last Supper
was held. Sadly the whole place had gone bankrupt after federal officials had
had the effrontery to disagree with the amount of money God wanted the Bakkers
to have in their private account. Eve leafed through the holy town’s offerings
while her mother shook water off some radishes. Eve knew better than to offer
to help. As a child she had been welcome, but now Eve was an adult and this
kitchen was another woman’s territory.

‘Doesn’t
it look exciting?’ Mrs Cameron said, bringing a cloth to wipe the table where
Eve had leant on it. ‘My salsa class from St Francis’s is thinking of going. We
hope we might be able to help Mrs who ha… Hartnell.’

‘I
thought she only had one leg.’

Mother
nodded. ‘Exactly.’ Eve tried to imagine the monopod Mrs Hartnell taking one
trip to Lourdes, having a miracle and salsaing home. Lobsters can regrow a claw
if it falls off. What was God thinking when he gave that to them and not to us?
Did that make lobsters more important in the scheme of things? Eve shut her
eyes and tried to imagine Mrs Hartnell growing another leg and … A key in the
front door accompanied by some Australian whine stopped the full picture
emerging.

‘Oh,
Willie, darling, for God’s sake, you could have parked much closer. I told you
there would be a space.’

Eve’s
older brother William and his wife Pe Pe had arrived.

‘I don’t
want anyone scratching the car, sweetheart. Do you know what the average cost
of a simple scratch repair is, my pumpkin?’

William
was the family success. He had done very well. After Mr Cameron had retired,
William had taken over the family firm and turned Cameron Builders into a huge
enterprise. The company was involved in all manner of things now, some of which
seemed to Eve to be nothing to do with building at all.

‘Taken
over the whole of the underground sewage routing for the council,’ he had
announced on the phone to her recently. ‘It’s very technical. All the latest
computers.’ He was obviously pleased or he wouldn’t have phoned, but Eve couldn’t
think of anything to say. The subject of sending toilet business away under the
roads day after day seemed to her to have limited conversational appeal.

To look
at, William was something of an odd fellow. Even as a boy he had been given to
wearing a tie on days off. He appeared now in blazer and flannels with his tie
crushing his white shirt firmly shut around the neck. Eve thought perhaps the
ever-present tie was to distract attention from his tragic hair. Why don’t men
who are going bald just let it happen? The back wasn’t too bad, but he had
wisps of fine hair at the front that seemed to cross his forehead as a bit of a
dare.

William
was married to an Australian called Philippa, except the family were all
supposed to call her Pe Pe. Apparently everyone called her Pe Pe as a child
and she still thought this was a good idea. She insisted on calling him Willie.
Pe Pe and Willie. Eve thought it sounded like a child’s introduction to potty
training.

Pe Pe
was William’s third wife. He changed them at about the same rate as Eve and
Adam did the car. This particular wife helped represent William’s move up in
the world. Like him, she was very successful, but in a different field. Pe Pe
wrote self-help books about being happy. The books sold all over the world and
presumably that helped make them both happy. Before she had taken on the good
humour of the globe, Pe Pe had been a champion swimmer. Miss Butterfly Stroke
from the 1989 Melbourne Games or something. Certainly she had the arms for it.
She had been in England for about ten years and Eve wouldn’t have been the
least bit surprised to find she had swum over.

William
had his own key to Mother’s house ‘in case of emergencies’. He had a key to Eve’s
house too and Shirley’s flat. Quite possibly he had keys to the entire
neighbourhood to check their sewage routing.

‘Little
Evie!’ he barked as he saw his sister emerge from the kitchen into the hall. He
gave her a bear hug which enveloped Eve in the musky smell of too much
aftershave. Pe Pe appeared in a sheath of a dress sprayed on as an homage to
the wonders of vacuum sealing. Her perfectly sculpted body and perfectly
sculpted hair shimmered into the house. A three-dimensional ad for vitamin
supplements and the ability to put your toe behind your ear in yoga class. She
beamed and smiled as if they all actually got on. Pe Pe smiled non-stop. She
smiled at her father-in-law’s funeral, she smiled now for the will reading, she
would no doubt die smiling.

‘Eve,
how delightful. You look delightful.’ Eve thought for a minute she was going to
punch her on the arm. She scowled and caught sight of herself in the hall
mirror standing next to her Australian relative. Delightful. A goddess standing
beside what looked like a Teletubbie with a hangover.

‘Where
the hell is Adam? Got a little promotion present for him!’ William winked and
dug his sister in the ribs. What a jolly time everyone was having for a will
reading. Mother appeared with a small plate of canapés, so carefully arranged
that they defied anyone to take the first one.

‘He’s
putting up a picture in the who ha,’ she explained.

William
rushed from the hall. ‘Better lend a hand. Better lend a hand.’

‘Philippa,
my dear.’ Mother and Pe Pe kissed the air. ‘Take these in, would you?’ Mother
handed her the canapés and went back into the kitchen to look for St Paul in
the celery.

Pe Pe
and Eve went to sit in the sitting room where Pe Pe took off on some long story
while disarranging the canapés into her mouth.

‘We’ve
had the result of the sperm tests,’ she announced, smiling broadly as if they
had won an award. Eve tried to imagine what tests you could possibly set sperm.
How could they hold a pencil? Did some of them get nervous beforehand? Did the
tests count against success in later life? Pe Pe didn’t need Eve’s contribution.
She swept forward, her majestic bosom giving the impression of figurehead and
galleon under full sail in one sculpted piece.

‘There’s
a problem with William’s production apparently. There just aren’t enough of
them.’

Eve’s
brain clicked away. It was like a defective but relentless computer. She knew
that men made sperm twenty-four hours a day. That the average man could release
four hundred million sperm at every ejaculation, but it only took one to— ‘The
doctor showed us under a microscope. There should be hundreds, but William’s
are a bit like waiting for a bus to come along. It’s happening to lots of men.
They say it’s stress. Too much pressure to be a modern man. Really, we women
ask too much of them …’ Pe Pe dived headlong into the wonderful world of
William’s sperm and Eve’s part in their downfall.

She
could just see Adam and William in the dining room. Maybe Adam’s injury had
brought out the worst of the man in him. He valiantly defended his wounded
manhood with a lot of laddish acting, which William also excelled at. More like
two workmen faced with some tricky building maintenance than family members.

‘… so
I said to Engleby — you remember Engleby, branch manager at Littleton — “Haven’t
seen old Hopkins around much.” Spilt all the beans.’

William
examined the picture, while Adam made the hammer comfortable in his hand ‘Really?
Hello, Lillian.’ Mother appeared with the starters and a wet cloth. She
carefully wiped the edge of each plate as she put it down on the table.

Adam
carried on. ‘Yes. Dead.’

‘Engleby?’
asked William.

‘No,
Hopkins. Bit of rumpy-pumpy with the secretary. Popped off in the act.’

‘Bad
heart?’

‘Well,
nice in his own way. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. Dicky ticker.’

William
clutched the picture to his chest. ‘Couldn’t she have phoned someone?’

Adam shook
his head. ‘No. Heavy fellow. Lillian, dear, the picture hook?’

‘Oh
yes.’ Mother hurried off.

‘Who
was heavy? Hopkins?’

‘Yes. Took
her two hours to get out from underneath him.’

‘What
was she like?’

‘Oh
nice, you know.’ Adam undulated his hands in the air in the shape of an absurd
hourglass. That was a pretty woman. A woman who existed from the neck down and
was made up entirely of breasts and bottom. Eve remembered when Adam had felt
that way about her. When he had admired her breasts. Stroked them and talked to
them. Then they did what they were supposed to do. They fed the children and
began to embarrass him. They darkened, stretched and withered. Fell victim to
gravity and the daily trap of foam and wire. Adam never felt right about her
breasts again after Eve fed Shirley at the office picnic. She was three months
old.

‘How
could you let me down like that?’ he yelled all the way home in the car.

‘Let
you down? What was I supposed to give her? A chicken leg?’

Now Eve’s
breasts were not sexy. They were a pillow for Adam’s head. He was nice about
them, about her waistline. He said he liked the fact she was ‘motherly’, but
Eve was not at all sure that was what she wanted to be. Motherly. It suggested
sensible shoes, pants with a double gusset and body hair in unexpected places.
She didn’t want to be his mother.

…. We
have to try to capture what little sperm there is to do the job.’ The
Australian fertility lecture continued without any need for Eve’s assistance. ‘The
thing is that sperm can survive outside the body at room temperature for at
least two hours, so the doctor says.

Mother
reappeared with a small hook. Adam took it and held it up to William. ‘Looks
like we arrived in the nick of time. Going to use this hook were you, Lillian?’

‘Well,
I don’t think I’ve got another.’ She looked at the hook closely. ‘I can’t
understand it. That’s the one the ‘Last Supper’ used to hang on. If it was good
enough for our Lord…’