The Proof of the Pudding

“Kylie! Can you spare us two bucks?”

Kylie was preparing roast chicken for Christmas lunch.

“What do you need two bucks for?”

“I want to get an iced coffee. Spare us two bucks, Ky?”

“It’s Christmas day, Matty, the shops are all closed.”

Matthew was Rog Jr.’s youngest by his first wife. Rog and Kylie had been married for three years, during which Kylie had made every unsuccessful attempt to ingratiate herself with Matthew and his brother Shane. Today, however, was not a day for improving familial relations. It was a day for running them through a gauntlet of proximity, gift giving, and alcohol. It was hot as blazes outside and not a great deal cooler in. There was a beef roast in the oven, a ham waiting to go in, and three chooks Kylie still had to stuff. Dough was rising on the table, two dozen potatoes were yet to be peeled for mash and the water for the pudding was just beginning to boil. Add to that the seventeen people currently sitting, standing, or running around the house–not many of them bothering to help with the bloody cooking, Kylie thought–and there wasn’t a whole lot of room left for good will to all men, let alone good will to a stepson begging for change. But Kylie figured she’d give it a try.

“There’s ginger beer in the outside fridge, Matty. Go grab one of those.”

“I told you I want a fucking iced coffee, Ky! Do you have two bucks or not?”

That, thought Kylie, was enough good will for today.

“I’m up to my elbow’s in a chicken’s ass, I’ve got the punch still to make, and a pudding to boil. How about you fuck off with your two bucks, Matty?”
He grumbled and set off for more fertile grounds.

The Christmas pudding was a proud and established tradition in the Shankey home. It wasn’t as if anyone actually liked the thing, of course, it was three kilos of glace cherries and sultanas and not enough sugar and, in the final touches, burning brandy. But buried in that dark, dense mx was a collection of old coins that were the basis for the most beloved Christmas ritual: The Pudding Slicing.

The Pudding Slicing was the grand finale of Christmas Lunch, the coup de grace that pushed everyone from “comfortably full” to “passed out on the couch with a beer and a smile.”

First, Mum doused the pudding in brandy and set it on fire. This may originally have had some symbolic significance, or perhaps was a cautionary measure to kill of any germs on a pudding that might have been stored for months. What began as a protective measure against sanitary threats persisted either as a preventive of culinary ones or because of the simple biological fact that if your eyes are sufficiently entertained, your taste buds will have trouble getting any messages through to your brain.

Once the pudding had burned itself out, the Slicing would begin. Mum would hover the knife, rotating the pudding slowly as she waited to bring it down and slice through the leathery brown exterior.

“STOP!” Natalie would shout, she being the youngest, and Mum would bring the knife down, her sinews straining as she worked the knife through the tough flesh of this strange, festive fruit. Mum would make another cut to slice off an appropriately sized piece.

Natalie, Rog and Kylie’s daughter, was just four and would be taking pole position for the second time this year, three being about the age when a child could be convinced to eat something as horrendous as Christmas pudding on the promise of a cash reward. And that was the economics of the pudding slicing. Baked and boiled into the pudding were a collection of ancient coins. Browned and tarnished by years of pudding abuse, the coins represented a wealth in more modern coinage and could be exchanged with Mum Shankey at an exchange rate determined partly by whether she thought you’d been behaving recently but mostly by how much money she had in her purse at the moment.

The slicing went on in reverse chronological order. After Natalie, it would be Emily, Reg and Michelle’s daughter, then Darren and Debbie’s Georgina and her older brothers David and Dylan, both thirteen. Then Matthew and his brother Shane, Roger Jr.’s eldest, Debbie, Kylie, Darren, Rose, Cliff, Reg, his wife Michelle, Roger Jr., Mum, and Old Man Shankey had the pick of the last piece.

All that was yet to come because the pudding was, for the time being, still a bowl of tar-coloured batter in a large bowl. The historic coins sat next to it in a small and tattered sack.

Mum swept into the kitchen as Matthew made his way out of it

“Nanna,” he ventured, “can you spare us two bucks?”

“I spared you a new bike and a cricket bat this morning, you greedy shit. Plus, it’s Christmas day and the shops are all closed. Now push off and let your Nan cook.”

Matt slouched out of the kitchen as Mum turned her attention on her helpless daughter in law.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing to that chook, Kylie? You’re trying to stuff it, not check it for pyles!”

The sounds of culinary and domestic discord were muted by the time they reached the back lawn, and then they were drowned out by the sounds of good-natured fraternal competition.

“You fucking kicked it, you bastard!”

“I didn’t kick it! I didn’t have to fucking kick it, mine was already closer!”

“It’s fucking closer now because you fucking kicked mine, you cheating bastard!”

Reg and Rog were in each other’s faces at one end of the lawn.

“I had but to bowl the ball

and had but one ball to bowl.

But as I waited for my turn

my stomach did begin to yearn.

I sated it with cereal

that I poured into a bowl.

And when at last it came my turn

I set down my ball

and balled the bowl.”

Rog and Reg turned from where they’d been arguing by the kitty to glare back at their brother.

“What?” Rog asked, nonplussed by this sudden exposition.

Cliff weighed a lawn bowl in one hand and smiled back.

“You like it?” he asked. “Near rhyme, mixed into the middle of  a more traditional rhyming structure,” he explained. “”It’s my signature poetic technique.”

Rog and Reg stared back at him.

“I thought it was brilliant, darling,” offered Rosé from the porch.

“Just throw the fucking bowl already, Cliff,” Old Man Shankey demanded. “And you lot stop arguing and get out of the way.”

Matty had made his way outside by this point.

“Dad,” he asked. “Can you spare us two bucks for an iced coffee?”
“What?” Rog Jr. turned from his brother, who wandered off to find a measuring tape.

“An iced coffee, dad! Can you spare us two bucks for an iced coffee?”
“No bloody way you bludger. I told you to get yourself a bloody job. And anyway, it’s Christmas day and the shops are all clo– ARGH! WHAT THE FUCK, DAD?”

Old Man Shankey’s expertly aimed bowl had cracked Rog Jr. in his ankle.

“I told you to get out of the way, din’ I?” he cackled. “Now shove off, Matty. I’m going to teach your dad how to play lawn bowls.”

“Yeah, but, can I have two bucks, Grandpa?”

Matty ducked an airborne lawn bowl and scurried away, not to be seen again for the next three hours.

* * *

He still hadn’t shown up by the time Christmas lunch was on the table.

“I’m not going to wait for him, I’ll tell you that,” said Old Man Shankey as he menaced the Christmas ham with a carving knife.

“Where’s your brother, Shane?” demanded Rog Jr.

Shane was three sheets to the wind on sneaked glasses of sherry, but he stirred himself enough to belch and suggest that Matthew had taken his bike and gone off for an old fashioned Christmas sook.

“Well I’m eating some fucking ham,” Old Man Shankey decided, and began to carve.

He expressed a similar sentiment with regard to the pot roast, mashed potatoes, bread rolls, and roast chicken which, despite Kylie’s purported inexperience with the stuffing end, had come out quite well.

“He’s going to miss his turn at the pudding,” said Kylie.

“Too bloody bad for him, then,” said Mum. “I’ve already poured the brandy on. Plus, you’ve got those dishes to get to Kylie, and if we let them sit they’ll be a right mess for you to clean off the sticky bits.”
She set the pudding alight and reached for the knife.

“Alright, Natalie, my dear.”

Mum turned the plate and held the knife over what looked, for all the world, like a geolological souvenir from Dante’s travels.

“You just say when!”

“WHEN” Natalie shouted, as the knife passed over a shrivelled cherry and gnarled nut cluster.

“Good one, love. I reckon there’s bound to be some coins hiding in this piece.” Mum said as she sliced off a piece of the pudding and handed it across the table.

There wasn’t, though, and Rog Jr. had to comfort little Natalie with the promise of any coins he found in his piece. Emily was next, and Reg found himself in the same position, trading her pudding futures for present smiles when her piece was unavailing.

Debbie and Darren next had to offer to split their two pieces three ways when first Georgina, then David and Dylan found nothing better in their fruitcake than more fruitcake. There are few things more disappointing.

“Kylie,” Mum turned to her. “Did you put the bloody coins in the pudding?”

“. . .” Kylie paused. “I . . . I went to mix them in before I boiled the thing and the sack was empty. I figured you’d put them in!”

Mum glared at her and stormed out to the kitchen. David and Dylan started reducing the remaining fruitcake to a pile of dark crumbs and sticky pieces of dried fruit. There were no coins hiding within it. Mum returned with the little coin sack which was, just as Kylie had said, quite empty.

“It’s bloody empty.” She said. “Where the bloody hell are the coins?”

The room was silent for a brief second.

“Oi! You lot were wrong!” Said Matthew from the doorway. He had gotten over his sook and smiled broadly, although he was sweaty from the heat. He took a refreshing drink from his iced coffee. “The servo was open.”