Auntie. I see you, with your shopping trolley bag and your bright dyed hair. You breeze past the restaurant from across the road, not glancing in our direction whilst you storm with tunnel vision as you race it home for dinner. You’re comfortably in your 70’s but have the energy of a teenager, looking after your grandkids and great-grandkids whilst the parents work their 9-5s. A constant source of reliability for your family; a rock; its very foundation.
You’ve been in Dalston for over 50 years – I know, because you told me. You said you bought your 3-story house back then for £6000 and paid your monthly mortgage cost £20. The numbers made my head spin. £6000 for a house worth over £1million today? Fair play, Queen. You told me a lot, do you remember? We used to speak every night, as you’d pop into Mangal 2 and grab your takeaway. You had a special deal, one which you charmed your way into coercing, slowly, bit by bit, with your friendly demeanour and warm spirit. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The final version of which, as you pushed the envelope further and further with a new free addition every now and then to your nightly order was the following:
- A total outlay of £3 for half a Lamb Shish in the thicker pide bread (which cost us more from the bakery) with onions, green peppers and 3 slices of tomatoes
- Free lemon wedges in a separate container
- A tea whilst you waited for it to cook
- 2 free packaged wet wipes;
- And wait for it, this was the killer blow, one slice of Baklava.
If there was any mishap, any deviation, any drop in quality you’d storm in the next day and shout at the chef and I’d give you a refund. But anyway, this final deal with the added dessert drove a wedge between us. I was too polite to say “No”, and you were too opportunistic to stop testing my kindness. So, rather than deal with the problem like a grown up, I became rude and non-communicative as you returned every evening to place your bets. To my deep shame. This only lasted a week, where you’d try and strike a conversation and I pretended I was busy. I started “forgetting” your tea. I wouldn’t ask if you wanted the Baklava (though you would remind me to put it in; you never failed to remind me). I ended up feeling shit, so eventually, after a couple of weeks, I said “Auntie, this £3 deal is killing us. We need to raise it to £4.” I’ve felt less tense saying this than breaking up with someone. Who would flinch first? You silently understood the gig was up. Accept my terms, pay an extra £1 every evening or lose my friendship. Thankfully, in this wild game of Russian Roulette, you caved. £4 a night it was, then. Sure, my business was losing money every time you walked in and placed an order, but I enacted some form of damage limitation.
We were back on, you and I. As close as ever before now the payment situation had been resolved. I tried to make up for lost time by overcompensating – every time you brought in your grandson with you, and look, I’m a dad, I feel like I can get along with almost all kids, I pretended to like the little fella and say things like “What a wonderful boy he is!” about this 6-year-old who I found infuriatingly annoying. He wasn’t a bad kid, but just didn’t sit still in our busy restaurant and always asked for free sweets (much like his nanna, I say). Couldn’t stand the little runt, but I just overegged how lovely and welcome he was just to get back on auntie’s good side.
Why this relationship became so important to me, I can’t say. I’ve never had a grandmother as both my parents lost their respective parent at a young age, and in a way I found your daily presence in my life comforting and sort of maternal. I was happy that you took an interest in my well-being. You’d ask questions about my then wife, and my son and family life, and it made me feel loved. You were close to my cousin who had worked in the restaurant many years ago, the same cousin I was close to when I was growing up, the very cousin who died aged 30 of lymphoma cancer and shocked both you and I to our very core. Your past, my past, our pain entwined. We spoke about him often. It was healing.
Then, you stopped coming in. It lasted about 10 days and I became incredibly worried. Did something happen? Did I upset you? Did we fuck up your order one too many times? Did the worst happen and… you know? Surely not? You’re so healthy and active. Surely, surely not?
In a way, when you eventually came in after a leave of absence, broken, frail, with the life of you exhausted out of every pore, the news you shared was far worse: Your daughter had died, suddenly. The mother to the little boy you’d come in with. After telling me the tragic news, a few days later you came in with your grandson and I broke down. I hugged him, tears streaming down my face as I offered him any sweet, any can of drink he desired, on us. The boy was dealing with the shock and trauma his own way. 6-years-old, not able to articulate his loss in an adult form, jumping around as much as ever, not sitting still, naughty and appearing oblivious to this most painful of losses. My son at the time was 3 years younger, my ex-wife was pregnant with our second, it hit me hard as I tried to imagine how he would feel in that situation. I was staring at this poor boy with intense feelings of sadness and guilt for not warming to him from the get-go.
But seeing you every day, and seeing the young lad once/twice a week when he’d stay with you as his father worked and tried to retain some sort of order in his broken life, I saw, slowly, very gradually, the colour return to your eyes, the light of your spirit slowly, very deliberately emerging. You were returning back to yourself, week by week, shouting at chefs and drinking your Turkish tea with 2 and a half sugars, and picking the best looking piece of baklava from the glass display. Auntie was back. We were back on. Me and my surrogate nan, chatting away for 10 minutes every night as the Shish cooked and the hordes of produce bungled its way into your plastic carrier bag. £4 to feast like royalty, and in exchange I had my missing family jigsaw back.
Then we changed the whole restaurant up. The pandemic hit and the Mangal 2 you knew disintegrated bit by bit. You couldn’t shout at the chefs anymore because they were all young and English, not the old Bulgarian-Turks you felt comfortable belittling. The salad was not the usual you’d find here before, and team became frustrated as they had to custom make your order, and only yours. The outsourced Baklava was gone. No more wet wipes. There were no lemons on display for you to pinch. The wrap was the only common denominator from the past, and eventually we got rid of that, too. We got rid of the Shish, and by proxy, you. You and the Shish were the last remnants of the past, the last reminders of days of generosity galore, of loss-making, of fizzy cans sold here, of tea being brewed and takeaways being sold. We got rid of the lot.
And yeah, sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I remember us sitting down and talking, and sometimes crying, and sometimes laughing, and sometimes sharing an icy silence as you drove me to the point of insanity with your frugal ways. And maybe that’s what having a grandmother is like? I don’t know. I assume it’s comforting, but also annoying and a little bit exhausting, but also unconditionally loving. Either way, I love you, Auntie. And though you probably hate us for what we’ve done (saved our business and our futures and taken pride in our work and grown), I will always admire you from afar. And when I’m old, I want to be half the unrelenting bastard you are and scare the living shit out of grown men with big bellies. You rock, Auntie. And I’m proud you adopted me for a brief moment in my life x