Granny's Doggy Bag by Hayley Harland

Resting upon an antiqued chair in a ground floor flat in a chocolate box village, lives the smelliest bag in the world. The suede is golden, Christian Dior don’t you know, what can these fine aromas be? Surely, dipping your hand into it should resemble thumbing through the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair, revealing a posh perfumery donned by Kate Moss and the like. I wish this were the case. Among hearing aides and hairbrush, under wallet and keys, wrapped up in a napkin is the source of this sleaze.

A family in Crouch End has a similar problem emanating from somewhere unidentified within their Passat. Samantha unpacks using the kids’ fishing net, not yet dry from rock pooling to avoid any contamination of her fair, city-girl skin. With shallow breathing and clenched teeth, she makes very clear her regret for ever having agreed to go on this soggy holiday as she uses a bucket and spade to barbecue-tong over the larger items to her husband John, who then sniffs each one to check for the stench. Has one of the kids had an accident in their sleeping bag? Did packing up the tent in the rain galvanize it to an early death by virulent mould? John begins to curse the state-of-the-art grip on the soles of his wellington boot; one groove could easily be hiding a tiny yet pungent nugget of sheep’s poo on the sly. He simply can’t tell, the seven hours spent in this traveling cesspit was enough to melt anyone’s nostrils rendering them inaccurate.

Two weeks earlier, Edna is putting on the finishing touches to her outfit, a seed pearl necklace purchased by her then fiancé in Singapore, 1946. Her favourite way to spend an afternoon is in a restaurant, frittering away the remains of her pension on her grandchildren and excellent food. Today, the next generation are also coming for lunch, Maisy and the toddler, “Oh what is its name?”, she shrugs and won’t remember. She applies her lipstick so she can knowingly leave pink kisses on their little cheeks and pops it into the soft suede tote her neighbours so cruelly tutted when first acquired. “I’m 93,” She thinks out loud, “I’ve lived long enough, if I want a designer handbag, I’m jolly well allowed one.”

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“I’ll have the moules marinière please,” Edna requests with perfect pronunciation. She orders this only when she is feeling forgetful, as it is the one thing that can transport her back to the start of her life in Paris, the 1920s. She will see her mother’s soft fox stole draped across boney shoulders and smell the sweet Crème de Menthe breath of her mother’s intimidating lover, the artist Léger. She knows that if it is possible to go back to the beginning in her mind, she can compartmentalize these memories into the tubes and cubes of his paintings, like a museum, with the slippery linseed oil from his studio helping to lubricate her brain.

“I want mules mermaidair too!” Maisy pleads.

“I don’t think that’s really appropriate for a little girl, I mean, she could be allergic.” says her mother, the mousy in-law whose name Edna cannot remember. “How about bangers and mash instead, eh?”

“Nonsense! The girl must try!”, cries Edna, thwacking her walking stick to the ground so fiercely that Maisy felt the ground shake beneath her. The in-law recoils in shock. The restaurant chatter retreats under a hush. That settles that.

The mussels arrive for Edna and her favourite great-grandchild, marmite on toast for the toddler. John tucks into his bangers and mash straight away with no sign of grace whilst the in-law woman begins to pick at her fillet steak, tweezering out every synapse of fat.

Maisy picks up a hard dark shell with her little fingers, examining this strange creature close to the eye. Much to her surprise, it is orange on the inside and seems to have furry brownish-green lips running from corner to corner of its mouth. If it could talk to her, its head would probably flap open like someone from Sesame Street. It reminds her of Elmo wearing a shiny purple bonnet.

Maisy’s mother subversively slaps her on the wrist and in a harsh whisper says, “Only common people eat with their fingers.” Maisy picks up her knife and fork and within moments the molluscs are clack-clacking together and garlicky jus is splicking all over the tablecloth. Every time she attempts to plunge the fork into one of them, it just sinks below the others, pushing the rest over to the other side of the bowl as if they are seasick sailors following gravity when a wave rocks the boat. Then, in slow motion, a droplet of liquid rebounds from one mussel to the next – everyone can see where this is heading, half willing it to stop and half wanting it to carry on, just to see what might happen…

Maisy’s mother shrieks, “MY EYE!” and hyperventilates for a moment or two before she realises the sauce is only on her upper-cheek. As John leans forward with a napkin to wipe it away, her head darts back with a look of disapproving shock. No one is to ever touch her face, how unhygienic that would be, she wouldn’t even do that with her bare hands. So she heads to the bathroom to get cleaned up and Edna smiles, rather amused by it all.

With a nod Edna reassures, “It’s alright to use your hands now dear,” and Maisy is relieved she can finally start eating. She thinks that Granny Edna is kind and that she would rather live with her, even though she smells a bit like mothballs and stale bread. Maisy plucks the shellfish’s orange head from its bonnet and pops it straight into her mouth. She is delighted by how sweet it is and decides to see how many she can fit in her mouth before Mother comes back. She poises herself above the bowl, taking in all three of her favourite smells: the sea, then the starchy garlic and butter smell you get when you bake garlic bread in the oven and a new, unfamiliar sugary, metallic smell, a bit like when tinned crab meat has just been opened for sandwiches.

It does no good for Granny Edna to sniff at her food, she lost her sense of smell in 1958 when the first batch of avian flu hit England. She’s a tough old bird and puts her survival into very old age down to that deadly virus. She lives by the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. Of course, her daily hobble to Costcutter isn’t exactly rife with peril, but when death comes knocking, she swears she’s not going without a fight.

A lack of smell is not without its problems. For instance, she often doesn’t recognise when food goes off and because taste and smell are so intrinsically linked she never finds out. She sometimes gets a slightly dicky tummy but apart from that, no sign of food poisoning. Her immunity must be pretty built up by now but it’s not pleasant for anyone who delves into her Frigidaire.

There is one thing however that can excite Edna’s senses and that is black pepper. She risks irritating her arthritic wrists by grinding it tenfold and smothering her plate in grainy powder. John near has a sneezing fit as the pepper cloud reaches him and has to go out to get some fresh air for a minute because the in-law woman – “Samantha, that’s it!” – is worried he might frighten the toddler.

Edna may not be able to taste or smell but she enjoys the mushroomy texture of the moule, biting through each layer to the organic middle. As the hotness of the pepper buzzes and tingles on her tongue, memories start to flick behind her eyes like a picture book. She tells everyone around the table of the first time her mother took her to her favourite restaurant in Paris and how she accidentally drank the lemon water meant for cleaning your hands, a story her grandson John has heard a thousand times.

With every bite she closely clings to the memory of what it is like to smell sea air. She sees her husband’s kind face and the windswept day in the early ’50s when they picked mussels at low tide, escaping the confines of post war rationing. They were both so fed up of offal and rhubarb and always having to be so careful, never letting anything go to waste. They would have to reuse dish upon dish until the original ingredient was at least a week old. But with an unlimited supply of mussels from nature, that day they dined like kings. They were the lucky ones, the alive ones who survived the war, they had each other and they had a perfect beach in Devon from which they could pick these gems.

As the conversation drifts from the shores of Devon to the state of the toddler’s nappy, Maisy spots something. Granny Edna checks that no one is looking, then, with a deft and very deliberate flick, she slides a mussel out of her bowl and onto her lap. She repeats this until her bowl is empty and then wraps them all up in her napkin. As she places the parcel into a fine suede bag, her eyes meet Maisy’s under the table. Edna puts a wrinkled and knobbly finger to her lips. Maisy knows this means she will have to keep a secret. Maisy remembers that when Granny’s canary called Mr Trimble died recently, she had been really sad, and she has the curious idea that perhaps Granny was taking the moule home as a pet.

They each say their goodbyes, Samantha enjoyed her fillet steak but wasn’t too keen on the lemon posset, John thought the service was excellent and the toddler was pleased with his marmite toast. As Maisy puts her arms around her boney little granny squeezing her tight, she realises that they are just about as small as each other and she wonders whether granny has some ‘growing up to do’ also.

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The family had stopped off to see Granny Edna on their way to Cornwall. Now, a few days into their seaside summer holiday, Maisy spots a rock with the same glistening dark amethyst shells clinging to its face, hundreds of them! She picks them with her father, so excited about being able to find and cook her own food.

The clouds turn grey and eventually it is too cold to stay at the beach. Maisy is not quite tall enough to step into the car with ease so as she jumps up, the bucket tips and one of the mussels falls out and into a crevice between the seats. All the way back to the campsite she really tries to get at it but her little fingers just can’t reach. She wonders what will happen to this mussel in the back of the Passat. Knowing that she isn’t allowed a pet and doesn’t want to get into trouble, she will have to keep this a secret too. She is gladdened by the thought that every time she gets into the car in future, her shellfish friend will be there to greet her and happy and that she has saved one, before cooking and eating the rest.

And so the story boils down to a lonely mussel, now inhabiting Crouch End … and its relative in Granny’s handbag. Which one would I rather be? I’m not so sure. But at least, in the luxury of a designer pouch, mussel number two will occasionally be able to rub cheeks with golden suede as well as a ditsy fruitcake from last week’s coffee morning and an orange, blackened with age and growing a green beard. Rather an avante-garde crowd, you could say.


Hayley Harland started the PPP and has a food blog called The Delectable Diary where you can find plenty of recipes, reviews and culinary adventures.