by Jane Green
‘How’s the manuscript?’ she calls, hearing Ted’s foosteps on the stairs. ‘Is it still the one you were reading? The writer being hailed as the next Ted Chapman?’ Ellen is the one who usually sifts through the manuscripts and advance reading copies that arrive, but these last few weeks it has been Grace, and she is interested in what he thought.
‘It’s good,’ Ted says. ‘But not great. A compelling story and moving characters, but overwritten. A little too much. Still. I’m blurbing it. It’s from my editor and I think it’s good blurb karma. Will you send it back to the publisher today?’
‘Which publisher? Did you keep the cover letter?’ Grace’s heart sinks, knowing how Ted always loses the letter of introduction, the letter that names the editor.
‘No. No idea where it went. You’ll track it down. It’s someone at Penguin.’
Grace will track it down, by first going through the ever-growing piles of papers in Ted’s office, then, when that fails, by ringing Penguin and speaking to editorial assistant after editorial assistant until someone discovers the editor. It will take at least an hour, and it is an hour that needs to be spent testing new recipes for Harmont House and preparing the shopping lists for next week.
‘Of course,’ she says, staring past the mirror on the makeup table and looking out the window.
The garden is starting to bloom and nothing was cut back last year. She could employ teams of landscapers, but nothing gives her more pleasure than getting out there herself. Even when the work is backbreaking, it grounds her, in the truest sense of the word. She isn’t a style icon, or a writer’s muse, or the wife of an important man when she’s on her knees in the garden, hair scraped back under an old hat, clippers in hand; she just is.
She doesn’t think, doesn’t worry, has no anxiety She feels no pressure when she is in her garden. She can weed for hours, losing all sense of time until her back starts to hurt and she remembers all the other things she has to do.
Today was the day she planned to do the garden before a market run for ingredients for the week’s cooking at Harmont House.
Perhaps, she thinks with a sigh, she will postpone the gardening. The only thing she won’t skip is Harmont House.
TOAD IN THE HOLE
(Serves 4 to 6)
INGREDIENTS
250g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Black pepper for seasoning
3 eggs, beaten
350ml milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 sausages, preferably pork
Preheat oven to 220°C/gas mark 7.
In a bowl whisk flour, salt, and pepper.
Make a well in centre of flour, pour in eggs, milk and melted butter. Whisk in with flour until smooth. Cover and let stand for 1 hour.
Add oil to a frying pan, add sausages and brown on all sides.
Coat bottom and sides of a heavy dish with oil – never extra virgin, which has an extremely low flash point and should not be used in frying/hot cooking.
The oil in the dish has to be sizzling before adding the sausages and batter. You can put the dish in a hot oven and wait for the oil to heat, but I use a heavy Le Creuset pan, and heat the oil on the hob. As soon as the oil sizzles, add the sausages, then pour the batter over.
Cook for about 25–30 minutes, or until the batter is golden and puffy.
Seven
Jennifer grins at her from the other side of the room, watching as Grace pulls the knife honer out of the drawer and starts to sharpen the knives.
‘What?’ Grace looks up, surprised to see Jennifer still in the doorway.
Jennifer shakes her head. ‘You and I go back years, and to me you’re always just Grace, but every now and then I’ll open a magazine, or watch a TV show, and there you are, wife of the famous Ted Chapman! I just can’t ever compute the glamorous woman in the magazine with the woman who shows up here and cooks her arse off five times a week.’
‘You mean, the woman who shows up here looking like crap?’
‘You could never look like crap, sweetie,’ Jennifer says. ‘Your beauty shines through, whatever the exterior. I mean it, though. I constantly forget who you are.’
Grace straightens up. ‘I’m no one, Jennifer.’ Her voice is soft. ‘I’m no one. Just a girl who loves to cook. The only reason anyone has ever taken notice of me is because of what my husband does. And even that doesn’t make him better than anyone else. He just happens to be incredibly talented. We’re shockingly ordinary.’ Even as she says it, she knows it’s not true. In many ways she is still unchanged, but how could Ted not have been affected by all the years of everyone telling him he was wonderful?
How could Ted think he is no better than anyone else when all he has heard, for years and years, is that he is superior in every way?
She still loves him, of course. But she loves him partly because she sees beyond the veneer, because although his persona is firmly in place, she sees the insecure little boy hiding behind that, and it is him that she loves.
She loves him even when he drives her mad and she tolerates his ego that has, despite what she has just said, grown exponentially over the years.
Harmont House has been her refuge, the place where she finds a sense of peace; she honestly doesn’t know how she would have survived without it.
When Grace was twenty-three, her mother died. The last time Grace saw her, six months earlier, her mother had been living in a refuge behind Oxford Street, a place Grace thinks of every time she steps over the threshold of Harmont House.
They took in homeless women, provided them with a roof over their heads, fed and cleaned them before attempting to put them on the path to rehabilitation. Unlike Harmont House, however, it was a state-run facility – Harmont House without the love.
Which is what brings Grace to Harmont House five days a week. Why she bonds so closely with the women who live there, with Jennifer, who runs the home. This isn’t about Grace doing a good deed for those less fortunate than herself; this is about Grace assuaging the guilt of not being able to do anything for her mother; this is about Grace having the ability to love these women, these women being able to receive her love, in a way her mother never could.
Ted’s refuge may be his barn. Grace’s? Surrounded by women who have come to feel like her family; there’s no question that hers is Harmont House.
Jennifer looks after Harmont House and is the driving force behind the organization. It was her brainchild, fresh out of recovery all those years ago, wanting to give something back. It was Jennifer who raised the funds to buy the big old Queen Anne-style house in Nyack and reworked it so there were five small studios, each with a small kitchenette. There was a large playroom and a kitchen, the dining room table seating twenty at a push. There was a communal living room, and a smaller room set aside for support meetings, for many of the women arriving had their own issues with alcohol and drugs.
Jennifer is strict and tough as old boots, with a heart as big as the ocean. As head of Harmont House, she takes in families broken down by fear and abuse, gives them jobs in the house to build their self-worth before helping them get jobs of their own in the real world.
Her mission in life is to rehabilitate these women enough for them to have their own lives, away from the men who have abused them. They need to show they are clean and sober before going on to support their families, before they can think about moving out of the house.
Families come and go, but the one constant, who stays in touch with all her ‘girls’, is Jennifer. Grace, full-time chef and current chair of the board, is at the forefront of all decision-making, but it is her kitchen prep work there five days a week that is the most fulfilling.
She isn’t the great Grace Chapman when she’s there, isn’t a style icon in her jeans and clogs, her hair scraped back in a bun, not a scrap of makeup or jewellery.
She shows up for shifts, either six or eight hours, giving Jennifer a break. She is
there as the fill-in director, assigning jobs, organizing the house, leading meetings, giving out many hugs and teaching the women how to cook as she cooks for them herself.
The children in the house at any given time all fall in love with her, as do many of the women. The hardest part of the work is the turnover. After all these years, despite knowing she must not attach, it is impossible not to, particularly when you see the women come in scared, beaten, tight, then watch them unfurl over the months, watch their faces fill with pride as they get jobs, find self-worth, become peaceful in a way they never dreamed possible before now.
‘“Ordinary” is not a word I would ever use to describe you,’ Jennifer says. ‘It’s your kindness, Grace. And your cooking. We’d be living on macaroni cheese ready meals if it weren’t for you, and I’d probably manage to mess that up. So what’s on the menu today?’
Grace grins. ‘Your favourite. Cottage pie and apple crumble.’ She turns to the bag, rooting through the ingredients.
Jennifer swoons. ‘I’m going to put on even more weight!’ she grumbles, delighted. ‘Your mother must have been an amazing cook. I wish someone had taught me to cook like this.’
Grace pauses. ‘Oh damn. I can’t believe this. I forgot to buy the beef. How could I have forgotten that? It was first on the list.’
‘I can go and get it,’ says Jennifer. ‘I’ll run out.’
‘I’m so sorry. I seem to be forgetting everything these days.’
Jennifer pats her reassuringly on the back as Grace leans her head briefly on her shoulder. Jennifer is the sort of woman you confide in.
If there were anyone to whom she could tell the true story of her mother, anyone she could trust, Jennifer would be the likeliest candidate.
The only people in the world who know are Lydia and Patrick. Ted knows only that her mother died young, that Grace and she hadn’t been close, that Grace longed for a secure family because her own was so fragile. He doesn’t know the true story, only Lydia and Patrick know the true story. She hasn’t spoken to Patrick in years, and although she phones Lydia at least once a month, it is hard to jump right in to the big stuff when you are so far away.
Sometimes she thinks about sharing her story with someone here, wondering if it would release some of the shame she still carries today, some of the fear.
But the words won’t come. Even when she knows she is safe, even when she wants to not feel quite so alone, the words are never there.
When Grace’s father, Albert, met her mother, Sally, Sally seemed like the most glamorous, exciting woman in the world. She had more energy than anyone he had ever come across before, met every day with a new adventure, was filled with ideas that made him feel alive in a way he never had before.
Their courtship was a whirlwind. Sally brought up marriage after three weeks; instead of thinking it was a terrible idea, Albert, who had never fallen so hard or so fast, immediately proposed.
They eloped, took the train to Gretna Green and were married. Everyone presumed Sally was pregnant, but she didn’t become pregnant until six months later, and everything changed once Grace was born.
The doctors said it was postpartum depression. Sally stayed in bed for the best part of a year. She would barely speak, cried every day, and Albert, desperate for his wife to come back, took care of her and the baby as best he could, terrified this depression wouldn’t pass.
One day, Sally bounced out of bed, fully made up, bright, shining. Back. There was a buzzing edge to her as she left the house that morning, returning later that night with armfuls of bags stuffed with baby clothes and toys.
There was nothing that the baby Grace needed, but Albert understood Sally would want to buy her things, given that she had lost the best part of the last year. The shopping would pass, he thought, along with other behaviour he hadn’t noticed before. She would drink every day, often staggering up to bed, entirely drunk. When sober, she was distracted to the point where she could barely focus.
It didn’t seem to pass.
Out of nowhere, a temper appeared. If he did something ‘wrong’, not as she wanted, or if the baby cried, Sally would whirl into the room, screaming in fury. After a while, she would go back to some semblance of normal, but normal never lasted long. At any point she could either return to being wired or go back to bed. Flat. Tired. Teary.
In those days, in England, people didn’t believe in doctors unless you were truly at death’s door, and certainly not in psychiatrists. If something didn’t seem quite right, you would generally try to sweep it under the table, pretending that nothing was wrong until it passed.
Manic depression was something that happened to other people. No one knew much about it; certainly no one talked about it in anything other than a shocked whisper.
Grace grew up with the knowledge that her father was the only one on whom she could rely. There were times when her mother was normal, but it could change at any time. She learned to walk on eggshells in her house, to relinquish her childhood, to try and take care of herself, and her parents, as best she could.
She tried to cook by watching The Galloping Gourmet on television, and Delia Smith on Swap Shop. For Christmas her father bought her cookbooks, which were quickly decorated with grease and gravy as Grace attempted to re-create Smith’s recipes, many of which – including the cottage pie and apple crumble – she still uses today. Cooking was all a bit hit or miss until she met Lydia, her university roommate’s mother, who really taught her how to cook.
Lydia became Grace’s substitute mother, her roommate, Catherine, her sister, and the two noisy twin brothers, Patrick and Robert, not so much her brothers as the most important male figures in her life.
Robert was her secret love and Patrick her confidant. They provided her with a stability and a consistency that had been entirely missing from her own family.
At Lydia’s house, Grace was not only allowed to be a child, she was celebrated, even when she did something wrong. Not that Grace was a child who often misbehaved, but Patrick, two years older than her, led her into all kinds of trouble. When Patrick ‘borrowed’ his father’s car without permission to take Grace to Sherborne for the day, then drove into the back of a truck, no one screamed at Grace or told her they wished she had never been born.
Grace cooked all the time with Lydia, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. It was a world away from her own home, where cooking, cleaning and self-parenting were expected from Grace because there was no one else to do it; where she shouldered the entire responsibility of running a household she wasn’t old enough to run.
Today, her mother would, should, could be given medications to stabilize her, manage her condition, enable her to live a normal life. Had Grace’s mother been alive today, it is entirely possible her life would be manageable. It is entirely possible she and Grace would have discovered how to love each other.
As it is, shortly after Grace left home to go to university, her parents divorced. Her father, by then a shadow of the man he once was, left the house and cut off contact with everyone.
Grace would come home on weekends, attempt to look after her mother, but half the time her mother had disappeared, the house would be filthy, and chaos awaited her in every room.
Grace learned more about manic depression and alcoholism than she would ever have dreamed possible. Back then, however much she recognized that it was the disease talking and not her mother, Sally never lost the ability to hurt, to poison, to wound.
The last time she saw her was six months before she died. Grace was staying at Lydia’s when she got a phone call. It was a cousin she hadn’t spoken to in years, who had somehow tracked her down. He had seen her mother, knew where she was, and thought Grace ought to know.
Lydia had offered to drive her in to London the next day, but in the end it was Patrick who drove her. Patrick to whom she told the whole, sorry story, sharing the hell of her childhood, her fear of anger and volatility, her sense of never having a safe place to call home.
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br /> ‘You do now,’ he had said quietly, expertly steering the car along the M4, then through the winding London streets, saying little, glancing over at Grace from time to time to check that she was okay.
They had the radio on, Grace grateful that today Patrick wasn’t his irreverent, amusing self, but in a nod to the seriousness of the situation was quiet, reflective; a wonderful listener.
‘Are you sure you want to go in on your own?’ He pulled up outside a dark brick building, bars on the window, weeds sprouting from the base of the walls. It was depressing, even from the outside, and Grace suppressed a flutter of fear.
‘I have to,’ she said, grateful he took her hand and squeezed it before she opened the car door. ‘Will you stay here in the car, though? In case I need to . . . I don’t know. In case.’
‘Of course. Good luck!’ he called as she walked to the front door and rang the bell.
A woman appeared at the door. Middle-aged, although it was hard to determine. She had long white hair pulled tightly back from her face in a bun, a face that was lived-in, sad.
‘Hello,’ said Grace. ‘I’m looking for Sally Patterson.’
‘Yes,’ said the woman whose name tag announced her as ‘Margaret’, appraising Grace coolly. ‘We were wondering if we’d see you.’
‘I’m Grace. Her daughter.’
‘I know.’ Margaret stepped aside, finally, to let her in. ‘Your mother has been wondering where you’ve been.’ She started walking into a large hallway, Grace presuming she was expected to follow.
‘I’ve been trying to find her,’ Grace said, flustered, not expecting to have to explain herself here. ‘Much of what my mum says is . . . fabricated.’
Margaret seemed to consider this for a while, then nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have judged. It’s just that it’s so hard on these women when their families desert them.’