by Sue Watson
‘You want some music? Beatrice asked.
‘Oh darling that would be magical… do you play?’ Tim asked.
‘No but my man over there sings,’ she smiled, and called Stanley over to give us a song. Then Maisie talked to the camera about what it was like to be homeless at Christmas and in the corner of my eye I saw Bella put her arm around Crimson.
That night when Bella and the crew went to a hotel, I went home to my own bed. I arrived back and it was late and cold but I felt the warmth of my home as I walked in and despite it being so small and my kitchen being a quarter the size of Bella’s – it felt good to be home for Christmas.
The following day – Christmas Day – I woke early and went downstairs to find a card posted through my door and when I opened it I was delighted to see a beautiful, sparkly snow scene. I opened it and tears sprung to my eyes. ‘To my oldest and dearest friend, Happy Christmas, love from Bella xxx’
Arriving at the shelter was pure Christmas, the turkeys were cooking, potatoes almost peeled, so I started on the carrots and found peeling them to be quite therapeutic. It reminded me of being with Mum in the kitchen at Christmas. From the moment Mum died I’d had to take all the memories, all the knowledge and advice she’d passed down to me and whenever I was unsure or worried and needed advice I’d think ‘what would Mum do?’ It was like having a big box of ideas, random thoughts and wise words – and thinking about her now I knew Mum would have allowed Bella to use those recipes without any mention of their provenance. I also understand now that for Bella using the recipes wasn’t an insult to mum’s memory or stealing her legacy. It was remembrance of the only time she’d ever been truly happy and safe – because my mum in her kitchen was the nearest thing to a mother Bella had ever had. In a way this was Bella’s tribute to my mum.
‘So, when are the kitchen designers arriving to sort the kitchen out for filming?’ she asked. We all looked horrified until she started laughing. ‘I’m only joking!’ And I knew the old Bella was back for good…
Later, Tim explained the concept behind filming ‘warts and all’, and admitted he didn’t know if it would work, but was, as always, diplomatic in his way. ‘If someone with pots of cash and oodles of style tunes in they’ll want Bella’s Christmas,’ he said, giving her a reassuring smile. ‘On the other hand there are those poor wretches who live on council estates… do they still have those?’ he asked as an aside. I couldn’t believe he was serious but he was looking around expectantly, so I nodded. ‘Oh good… so yes those poor damned souls who’ve never even heard of a bloody organic turkey and work their fingers to the bones in mills and down mines will LOVE Amy’s sweet little ideas with jam jars and tinfoil.’
I tried not to be offended by his patronising, he didn’t mean it – Tim was just trying to be nice – but the lights inside my jam jars cost nothing and they weren’t sweet – they were stunning. As for the homemade crackers, not sure they would look as good as any fancy bought ones on the Christmas tables… but they’d do the same job.
Before Bella had the chance to peel the carrot in her hand, Billy appeared with his huge box of make-up tricks.
‘Oh sorry, Ames,’ she sighed, putting down the carrot and wiping her hands on a tea towel in disgust. ‘I have to have my face done if we’re going to film more preparation scenes.’
‘You think you’re so fine,’ Beatrice huffed. ‘You don’t need no damn make-up girl, you need to get peelin them carrots, now jump to it.’
Bella looked shocked. ‘Oh I’m sorry, I don’t peel carrots… Mrs… erm.’
‘The name’s Beatrice and you damn well do peel carrots, Missy,’ she said, thrusting the discarded carrot at her in a threatening manner.
Bella looked uncomfortable, she wasn’t used to this and looked at me for help. ‘Will you explain to Mrs Beatrice that I don’t actually do anything in the kitchen…’
‘You don’t do…? What you tellin’ me now, “Mrs High and Mighty I got my own telly show”… if I’d told my mammy I don’t help in the kitchen she’d have cuffed my ear!’
‘Come on, get your potato peeler, we’ve got a million potatoes to peel, then we’re starting on the mince pies!’ Crimson added.
Bella softened at this and I saw the pride in her eyes as she went to hug her daughter. ‘Oh Cressy… you’re so much better than me. I’m proud of you.’
Cressida was the antithesis of all the drama around her, she’d developed a shell of heavy make-up, tattoos and piercings to hide the soft and caring woman she really was. There would never be loud declarations of love or elaborate gestures of kindness from Cressida – but the love and kindness was all in there.
‘Okay, okay there’s loads to do, Mum – that’s enough, let’s get on,’ Crimson rolled her eyes and returned to potato peeling.
Bella looked at me. ‘She called me “Mum”,’ she mouthed, and I smiled, knowing how much that meant to Bella.
‘Dahling, you’re busy little fingers are already at work?’ Fliss said, sweeping into the kitchen.
‘No, my busy little fingers are getting ready to wring your little neck for getting me into this.’
‘Now now, my little Christmas fairy – we need you cooking and frolicking around the kitchen.’
‘Frolicking… pissing frolicking? I don’t frolic. I’m wearing a fabulous suit from Armani’s new season collection, sent from Paris in time for my Christmas special. I’ve got a crate of vintage Krug at Dovecote – and I’m standing in a kitchen that’s like the set of a horror movie. Frolicking is NOT on my agenda.’ She winked at me. This was pantomime Bella, the old one had emerged like a butterfly, but this one she saved just to wind up Fliss.
‘Did Crimson tell you we’re doing a road trip in the New Year – just the two of us?’ Bella was addressing me, but again it was for Fliss’s benefit – she looked like she was about to faint.
‘But dahling – you can’t just go off on a road trip. What about little things like filming schedules, appearances and book signings?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘I can do all that – but it will have to fit round mine and my daughter’s trip – we’re going to rediscover food, find ourselves and spend quality time together. It’s a sort of Eat, Pray, Love trip,’ Bella smiled.
‘Yeah – with double the eating and none of the praying,’ Crimson added, smiling over at her mum.
Bella winked at her as both their brittle exteriors visibly melted.
‘I’ll give you eat, pray, love - I’m just praying we get to eat today, so roll up them sleeves missy,’ Beatrice instructed.
‘Look,’ Bella started, ‘I can stuff turkeys, create beautiful mince pies and Christmas cakes, but I’m going to be brutally honest here – I have never really got the hang of peeling a potato.’
Beatrice took a sharp intake of breath.
‘It’s just that the home economists always do stuff like that so I can get on with the “prettier” aspects of cooking.’
Beatrice shook her head and got up from her seat, walked over to Bella and gently took her hand. ‘Did your mammy never show you how to peel a ‘tato?’ she asked.
Bella shrugged. ‘No… I never saw my mum peel a potato – the only thing she ever peeled was a face mask. The stuff I learned in the kitchen was from Amy’s mum, and we were too young to peel potatoes,’ she smiled over at me.
‘Well, you come and sit over here with me, Missy, and I’ll show you how – and all them people out there might just get fed by 3p.m.,’ Beatrice said, taking her hand and leading her to the potato mountain.
I glanced at Mike who opened his eyes wide, waiting for a nuclear reaction from Bella. Fliss looked up anxiously from her script and was sitting with her hand over her mouth, frozen to the spot. And we all held our breath as Bella obediently sat down on the floor between Beatrice and Crimson – all cross-legged – something childlike about the way she was allowing Beatrice to guide her.
‘You have to grip, love – you’ve got hands like bear paws,’ she was saying, as
Bella struggled with the peeler. ‘Hold the tato firmly like you do with your man.’
Bella and Crimson looked at each other and giggled. I don’t think any of us were quite sure which part of the man Beatrice was referring to.
So for the next thirty minutes the great Bella Bradley – Kitchen Goddess – sat with Beatrice and peeled potatoes, a sight I thought I’d never see.
Later, Maisie turned up in the blue glitter jumper that Neil had bought me the Christmas before.
‘I’d like to help,’ she said, her frail body staggering across the floor.
‘We’re making mince pies now, come and join us,’ Bella said, introducing herself and beckoning Maisie over to the work surface. She began making pastry and as I mixed the mincemeat with grated carrot, Maisie brought out the trays to put the pies on.
She began to tell Bella the story she’d started to tell me on the first day we’d met about how ‘daddy’ had stopped her from marrying the love of her life.
‘I was eighteen,’ she sighed, ‘and I never saw him again… never loved anyone again.’
‘Oh Maisie that’s awful. I knew on our wedding day my husband was never going to truly love me – but who in their right mind would agree to something like that?’ She sighed. ‘You did it so you wouldn’t get hurt,’ Maisie said, dolloping mincemeat into pastry cases. She sighed, completely unperturbed by the fact that Bella Bradley had just confessed that her marriage was a business arrangement.
I looked at Bella and she raised her eyebrows at me. ‘I’d never really thought about it like that,’ she said.
‘That’s just what it was,’ Maisie nodded. ‘I did just the same, I stayed home, didn’t want to face the world.’
‘Oh, Maisie,’ Bella sighed. She was now putting the pastry lids on the mince pies and Maisie’s gnarled arthritic hand reached out to hers and held it.
‘Don’t make the same mistake I did; fall in love again, before it’s too late.’
Bella took Maisie’s other hand so she was holding both.
‘I’ll try, Maisie,’ she said, and kissed her on the cheek.
I looked away, it was a private moment between two very different women who lived in very different worlds – who’d just realised their lives weren’t that different after all.
As we continued to make piles of mince pies, Crimson joined in, mixing the mincemeat and laughing with me at Bella’s messy apron. ‘I bet you’ve never had potato starch and flour on that Christmas pinafore in your life,’ I laughed.
Bella looked down to see the stained red silk and pulled a horrified face.
‘Yeah, Mum’s keepin’ it real,’ Crimson laughed.
‘Mmm I like that… hey, I’m just keepin’ it real,’ she said.
‘You wouldn’t now “real” if it bit you on the butt, Missy,’ Beatrice said with some affection as she handed Bella and me a slice of her homemade Jamaican Christmas cake. It was dense and fruity and delicious but laced with rum and I just hoped we could keep it away from Stanley– who was currently entertaining the troops in the dining hall with a rendition of Frank Sinatra-style White Christmas.
‘Oh Beatrice, I MUST have this recipe,’ Bella was saying. I caught her eye and gave her a look.
‘With full credit of course,’ she added, smiling at me.
As we were tight for time and short of helping hands Tim recruited two more ‘assistants’, along with Maisie and Stanley, who were delighted to be included in filming.
So as we all started working in the kitchen. Bella stayed with Crimson and Beatrice, rolling out pastry and listening intently as the older woman told her stories of her childhood in Jamaica and how she’d been brought to the UK by her parents as a young girl.
‘I missed the food, especially at Christmas,’ she sighed, and paused for a moment to recall how as poor kids in rural Jamaica they never had – and never expected – a visit from Santa.
‘Us kids used to think he didn’t come to us because we didn’t have a chimney… never occurred to us it was about having no money,’ she laughed.
‘So you didn’t have any presents as a child?’ Bella asked, horrified.
‘Nah, but we had our mammy and daddy and lovely food. I loved helping Mammy make our Christmas cake.’
‘Yes – I had lovely Christmases making brownies with Amy and her mum,’ she said, putting a floury hand on my shoulder. ‘We made Christmas cakes and gingerbread and all the scrummy Christmas stuff together, didn’t we Ames?’ she smiled fondly and I smiled back.
‘…We didn’t call it Christmas cake,’ Beatrice continued. ‘It was “Hell a bottom, hell a top and hallelujah in the middle”,’ she roared, laughing, and we all joined in.
‘Oh I say, what on earth was that?’ Tim wandered over, smiling. There was no room in this little kitchen for a chair but Tim was so intrigued he sat at Beatrice’s feet, cross-legged like a little boy, and Fliss moved closer with her tea towel.
‘Well we didn’t have no fancy ovens like these,’ she pointed at the broken-down appliances lurking in the corner. ‘We had a Dutch pot we’d put on a grid over burning coals then more coals on a sheet of zinc on top of the cake, inside the pot. So the cake was in the middle… that’s hallelujah, and the burning coals at the top and bottom were hell.’ Everyone laughed and she smiled at the memory, her face glowing.
‘Did you have turkey?’ I asked, I’d moved on from the mince pies and Bella and I were now about to embark on a million sprouts.
She shook her head vigorously as she put huge trays of mince pies in the oven. ‘Ooh no only them’s that could afford it had the turkeys, but we ate curried goat with rice and gungo beans,’ she smacked her lips at the memory.
‘But surely you decorated your home for Christmas?’ Bella asked.
‘Yes we did… but not with tinsels like here, this is all very fancy. We used coloured papers and plastic flowers and always sparkling windows and a polished floor for Christmas to receive our guests on Christ’s birthday. Christmas is a wonderful reason to all be together… something people seem to have forgot,’ she waved her finger in the air as a warning.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Bella said, thoughtfully. ‘We need to get back to real Christmases… good food, friends and family together enjoying precious times.’
‘Hallelujah,’ I said. ‘So you finally got it, Bella – we need good basic ingredients locally sourced… no fancy hampers and posh champagne…’
‘Aah, that’s not what I said, Amy Lane,’ she waved her finger at me jokingly. ‘Christmas is about friends and family around a table – precious time… which means the best Christmas pudding money can buy and the best champagne one can afford.’
Everyone laughed. Bella was never going to change completely and neither was I, but it was what made us work, our dynamic, both on screen and off. I’d loosened up and given myself permission to enjoy life again and Bella had started to see there was an alternative, there were options in life – different people live according to their means and their choices and she wasn’t judging them.
We all continued to work hard in the kitchen, pulling together as a team. We were all from different worlds, but in St Swithin’s Shelter on Christmas Day we were all the same.
As she basted turkeys and boiled sprouts, Beatrice went on to tell us about early church on Christmas morning, the Christmas breeze that blew across the island, carols on the radio, and pepper lights in the trees. And Bella was transfixed, eagerly helping Beatrice with the cooking, like a child listening to a mother.
Tim had asked Mike to film all this and I was glad Beatrice would get to share her story, she told it with such love and warmth and it mingled with the recipes and baking.
‘I’m tearing up for my childhood in Jamaica and I wasn’t even there!’ Tim screamed, laughing, and Fliss was nodding energetically, both having such a lovely time listening to Beatrice. ‘Let’s have a ten minute break, eat rum cake and reminisce,’ Tim said, clapping his hands together, so Mike put the kettle on and we all drank tea
and ate a slice of the delicious fruity confection and listened to Beatrice’s lovely lilting voice – which I imagined sounded just like that Christmas breeze that blew right across Jamaica.
We had made dozens of mince pies, peeled hundreds of potatoes and even Fliss had cast off her glittery kitten heels and they were purring in a corner somewhere. She was dressed in designer glitter, cross-legged, and sitting on the floor with Bella peeling spuds and listening to Beatrice’s Christmas stories – it reminded me of the way Bella and I had listened to Mum reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ on the Christmases she stayed with us.
‘I remember the Christmas cake Amy’s mum used to make,’ Bella suddenly said, mid-mouthful. She looked at me. ‘I remember her baking the cakes and you and I “helping”,’ she giggled.
‘I think we ate more batter than we actually used,’ I nodded, smiling at the memory.
‘And the Christmas tree, Amy… your Christmas tree was always so much lovelier than ours.’
‘No. Our decorations were so old,’ I said. ‘But yours was beautiful – you had a big tree which I loved and you always had new baubles and flashing lights.’
‘But there was never anyone in to put the lights on at my house. We’d go to yours after school and your mum would be there, waiting, the house was always warm and it smelled of cinnamon… it was more like home to me than my own home. I miss those days. I miss you… and I miss your mum.’ Her voice cracked and I knew then that my mum’s death had sent her off the rails, spending time with boys like Chris Burton who used her when all she was doing was looking for love.
I glanced around me at Stanley and Maisie, both working, but listening, Mike was filming, and Tim was sitting with his hands under his chin. The kitchen was silent except for Beatrice’s lovely lilting Jamaican voice, telling of somewhere long ago and far away. And it made me think how our strange group of misfits with nowhere else to go had magically found ourselves here, together on Christmas Day… and as Beatrice spoke and everyone listened I swear I heard my mother singing.