Sisters

by Prue Leith

  She reached for the Zippo, tried to light one of her joints, and said, “How do you work this thing? It should be in a museum.”

  “I know. It used to be my dad’s.” He took it from her and lit her cigarette. “I keep it because it’s a design classic.”

  “Is it now?” she said, teasing. “A design classic indeed!”

  “Yes,” he said, “like the Eames chair and the Dualit toaster.”

  She took a deep drag, holding the breath deep in her lungs to give it time to do its magic, then she passed him the joint.

  He took it between finger and thumb, and smiled into her eyes. She was supremely, hugely happy. Right now she had no doubts at all.

  She said, “You won’t believe me, I know. But I’ve never been in love before.”

  “You are not in love now, baby.”

  Her face clouded for a second, then she said, putting a hand on his wrist:

  “I am, Eduardo.”

  Eduardo looked at her with a slight, indulgent shake of the head. “Whatever,” he said.

  She repressed a wash of disappointment. If only he’d say he loved her. But she’d noticed before that such talk embarrassed him. That he changed the subject if she talked about the two of them at all. It was understandable. It had only been six weeks, and it must be hard for him. He and Poppy had been together for eleven years, and they had two children. The guilt trip must be awful.

  Tonight she felt no guilt at all. She was so happy, there wasn’t room for any other emotion. She was working harder and doing better work for her clients than ever. And she had more energy, felt healthier, and was more patient with her kitchen staff. That’s what love does for you, she thought. Just like they say, it makes you a better person.

  They sat in near silence and finished the joints. Then Carrie said, “Let’s eat”, and they carried bowls of pumpkin ravioli into the sitting room. They ate it with fresh Parmesan, grated, not shaved. Carrie thought the fashion for shaving Parmesan was a style-led mistake: you didn’t get the same depth of flavor, and it took forever. She grated the stuff in a machine, and it took seconds.

  “This is delicious, Carrie. Wonderful,” Eduardo said, his mouth full.

  “Good. Courtesy of Fratelli Franco.” Carrie ladled two more giant ravioli, slippery with tomato and tarragon sauce, onto his plate and added a heavy sprinkling of Parmesan.

  “Who is, I mean who are, Fratelli Franco?”

  “Chilled pasta company. They’ve asked Dominic Antoni to produce twelve pasta recipes for them, but he’s too grand to test anything, and it turns out he can’t write, can’t spell, can’t add.”

  “Is he the chef at Mansoni’s? The one who throws people out, and beats up his kitchen staff?”

  “The man himself. He gets three grand for each recipe, and his face on the pasta packet.” Carrie cut into one of her ravioli, and tested the texture of the pumpkin filling with the back of her fork. Then she took a careful mouthful, concentrating for a moment. Satisfied, her attention switched back to Eduardo. She went on, “Thirty-six grand for having your picture taken isn’t bad, is it?”

  “Doesn’t he do anything? Do you write the recipes, everything?” He looked skeptical.

  “Yup. I do. But he has ideas. Mostly useless. Here, look.” She stood up and fished among the papers on her desk. She found what she was looking for, and passed it to Eduardo. It was a single sheet of Mansoni letterhead, scribbled in pencil:

  Dear Carrie,

  Ideas for the pasta thing. Can’t think of any more. So do what you like.

  Rigatoni with wild boar sauce

  Pumpkin ravioli (tarragon jus?)

  Canneloni with pig’s trotter farce, pine nuts on top

  Soft-shell crab tortellini, basil and olive oil dressing

  Pasta salad with chunks of spicy fresh tuna—keep the tuna raw

  Tagliatelle with double-smoked air-dried Cumbrian ham, cream sauce

  Farfalle with flageolet beans, wilted rocket and garlic

  XXX Dom

  Eduardo said, “Sounds delicious to me.”

  Carrie nodded and said, “Sure. In his restaurant. Only trouble is the recipes are for home cooks buying pasta in a supermarket.” She reached for the letter and looked at the list. “How are they going to get wild boar, pig’s trotters, soft-shell crab, Cumbrian air-dried ham?” She tossed the sheet back on the pile. “The man’s an idiot.”

  “So what do you do?” Eduardo looked at her with admiration.

  “I try to stick to his ideas if they’ll work. Like this pumpkin thing. It’s simple to do, pumpkin isn’t too hard to find.” She flopped down beside him on the sofa, and snuggled against him. “But otherwise I just do something else. Use things people have heard of, and can buy. Like spinach and ricotta, minced pork rather than pig’s trotters, crabsticks and prawns rather than soft-shell crabs and so on.”

  “Doesn’t he mind?” Eduardo had put down his empty bowl and was caressing her forearm. Carrie stopped listening and closed her eyes. God, it felt good.

  Eduardo repeated his question and Carrie made an effort to ignore the stroking.

  “Mind? He doesn’t notice. He’s too busy being a superstar.”

  “Does he pay you, or does the pasta company?” He leaned over her and kissed her forehead. One hand was on her knee, moving up her thigh, disappearing under her short denim skirt.

  Carrie wriggled back on the sofa, away from him, trying to concentrate on the conversation. But the marihuana had got to her. She was floating, feeling the power and the beauty of it. She said, “They both do. He pays me for the recipe development. When I think I’ve got them right, I send them to him, all neatly typed on Mansoni paper.”

  Eduardo took her bowl off her lap, and put it on the floor. He undid the zip of her skirt, and his cool hand explored the silk of her boxers, felt the firm small roll of her belly. Carrie’s breathing was speeding up. He said, “Keep talking. I want to know about the business.”

  Carrie was drifting divinely now. She didn’t want to talk about recipes. She wanted to stretch out on the sofa and make it easy for Eduardo to put his hands wherever he wanted to. But she also liked him controlling her, telling her what to do.

  She took a wobbly breath and tried not to think about his hands. She said, “Fratelli Franco don’t know I write Dom’s recipes. They think I just test them and do the food for the photography, so they pay me for that.”

  “How much?” The pitch of Eduardo’s voice had dropped, and Carrie knew his desire matched hers. She put her tongue in his ear. But he said, “Answer me. How much?”

  “I do alright. About £600 a recipe, altogether.”

  “Quite the little businesswoman.” Carrie knew he was patronizing her but he could have been crooning to her. Who could believe the sound of a man’s voice could be such a turn-on?

  Eduardo gently pulled her tee-shirt over her head. Her bare breasts jiggled as she lowered her arms. He stroked her body very slowly in an upward movement, pausing with his hand on the underside of her left breast, holding it as though to weigh it.

  “And beautiful too,” he said. “A design classic if ever I saw one.”

  Chapter 10

  Carrie and Lulu surveyed the buffet table. It did look good, thought Carrie. Tiered pineapple shapes were covered with diamonds of apricot, lime and violet marzipan and stuck with ornamental skewers, every bit as elaborate as hatpins. There were turreted blancmange castles, and sugar follies of ruined pillars garlanded with cherubs. Frosted grapes and crystallized dates were piled in formal pyramids or captured in lacy caramel cages. There were silver epergnes of fruit made of clear, hollow sugar, so realistic it was hard to believe the oranges, pears, figs and apples were not the real thing. Carrie had gone to a specialist confectioner for them, and had watched him blowing the liquid sugar like glass.

  They’d cribbed the tiered buff
et idea from a Careme design for the Prince Regent at the Brighton Pavilion. Not that they’d been able to follow his recipes. His molded jellies and mousses needed so much gelatine or starch to keep them from collapsing they’d have been disgusting. They had compromised with edible but less dramatic versions on the bottom tiers and inedible pieces monteés on the upper ones, safely out of reach.

  Princess Alice and her husband, a City financier, came in. The banker, round and fat, was convincingly dressed as George the Fourth, his thin and beaky wife miscast as the voluptuous Caroline. They’d come to check the arrangements for after the concert. Guests were to listen to Handel’s Water Music by the pond, then come back to the house for dinner.

  “It is quite, quite perfect,” she exclaimed, fingering the garlands of flowers and gathered silk swags round the buffet.

  “It was fun to do.” Carrie replied. She felt a curious urge to curtsey, as if she were in a play. Get a grip, she told herself, she’s only a very minor royal even if she’s dressed as a queen. And even if she does live in a grace-and-favor house in the middle of Richmond Park. Leaving Lulu to handle the Oohs and Aahs, and “However do you do it?’s” she went through to the kitchen to supervise preparations for the dinner.

  From the kitchen window Carrie looked across the gravel drive at the arriving shepherdesses and Regency bucks. As they stepped out of modern taxis and chauffeur-driven cars some were loud in their self-consciousness, shouting and hooting to each other across the gravel. The more confident were quieter and mild-mannered, putting out a gloved hand to be helped from the car, smiling and decorous.

  The guests hardly glanced at the bewigged and liveried servants standing in lines either side of the path to the garden. They took glasses of champagne off the proffered trays as if from a table. God, I’m glad I’m not a waiter, thought Carrie. The temptation to toss it in their faces must be huge.

  Carrie wondered when Eduardo and Poppy would arrive. Poppy would know how to handle herself in costume. She’d know to gather her dress to climb steps, but not to do so when descending. She’d smile her thanks to the immobile waiter; she’d know the depth of curtsey required for every rank of aristo.

  Carrie admired her sister’s ability, once in costume, to assume a beauty and dignity she did not have in real life. But when she thought of Poppy’s gloved hand resting on Eduardo’s arm, a needle of jealousy went through her. Of course, she loved them both. But she resented being in the kitchen while the two of them stepped into this Regency House, in Regency clothes, to eat her Regency food.

  Turning from the window she looked at her checklist taped to the fridge door, and mentally ticked it off. The oysters had been shucked and were waiting on ice, the soup was made and only needed reheating, the soused mackerel fillets were ready to go, the accompanying mustard potatoes and grape relish already in their bowls.

  In truth, a Regency banquet was easier to manage than a modern one, because you didn’t individually plate each guest’s food, and not all the guests ate everything. The dishes (except the soup, which was served to everyone) were put down the middle of the table and the diners ate what they could reach or persuade their neighbor to pass them. The courses came in waves, the “removes” replacing spent platters. She’d cheated a bit, of course. Modern taste buds required a lot less spice and couldn’t cope with partridges high to the point of stinking.

  She glanced at her watch. 8 o’clock exactly. Dinner would not be served until ten, and she was well ahead. She was down to the bread.

  8 p.m. Bake the rolls

  Prep the partridges

  Dress salad

  Prep parsnip cakes

  Fry croutons

  Soup on to heat

  She went through to the larder and lifted the box of partridges down from the slate shelf and carried it back into the kitchen. She picked up the small saucepan of melted butter from the Aga, and used the large paintbrush to swiftly grease two giant baking trays. Then she laid out the partridges, twenty-five to a tray, and slapped her butter brush over each bacon-barded bird.

  She tested the bread dough with a finger. Perfect. Puffy and risen. She sprayed a fine mist over the balls of dough with a water-gun, then slammed the two baking sheets into the electric oven.

  She stamped fifty perfect small ovals out of the baked parsnip and potato mixture and arranged them on small trays. They could go into the bottom of the Aga at 9 p.m. to warm through.

  She set young Kitty, nervous but keen, to deep-fry the heart-shaped croutons, instructing her to drain them on kitchen paper. Then she flipped the switch behind the soup cauldron, lifted its lid, used one of the teaspoons in her chef’s jacket to taste it, and flung the spoon into the washing-up water. She said to the lad up to his elbows in the sink, “Jamie, give the soup a stir every few minutes will you? That cauldron sticks.”

  “Yes, Chef,” he said.

  Carrie turned to the salad. Using her fingers to turn the leaves, she thought, as she always did, of the French phrase “Elle tourne la salade avec les doigts”. It implied youth and innocence, virginity. The idea being, she supposed, that if you were a virgin you would be so squeaky clean you could put your hands in the salad. Well, she, 32 and no virgin, turned the salad with her fingers because it was the quickest way to do it, and it didn’t bruise the leaves.

  She lifted the dressed leaves into the three salad bowls, taking care not to streak the sides of the bowls with dressing. She rinsed her hands under the tap, dried them on the torchon hanging from her apron strings, and turned back to the time plan. Her eye ran down the familiar list. She liked catering at this stage, when everything was organized and you were working to a schedule, on time and in control. And then something further down the list caught her eye:

  9:15 p.m. Sorbet from freezer to fridge to soften

  Oh my God. The sorbet. She’d forgotten the sorbet. It was still in the freezer in Primrose Hill.

  She stood immobile, her eyes closed, her mind racing. It didn’t matter. No one would miss it. They could just skip the course altogether, and go straight from fish quenelles to partridge. She turned to Jamie, “Get me a menu from the dining room, will you, Jamie?”

  He reached to the windowsill and handed her one. “There’s one here, Chef,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Carrie opened the menu and studied its cherub-infested print. There it was: “Sorbet of lime and pomegranate” in filigree writing with a swag of limes and green leaves tied up with trailing ribbons each side of the statement.

  “Get Lulu, will you?” she said, as she yanked her towel out of her apron ties and reached behind the door to fish in her coat pocket for her keys.

  “Lulu,” she said as her second chef appeared. “I’ve forgotten the bloody sorbets. I’m going to get them.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “It’s OK.” Carrie grinned at Lulu. “You know I like a crisis. We’ll be fine. They aren’t due to eat until 10. Just follow the time-plan. Don’t be tempted to put the partridges in too soon.”

  Lulu nodded. Thank God for someone who never flaps, thought Carrie. I must give her a raise, that’s what. She went on, “Everything’s on time. The bread is in. Better keep an eye on it in case the top cooks faster. David knows what he’s doing out front. Just make sure the waiters march in in line. They are meant to look like Regency servants, not like a bunch of out-of-work actors.”

  “Got it,” said Lulu. “See ya.”

  Carrie ran out of the back hall, past racks of shooting sticks, tennis racquets, and every size of royal wellie.

  As she drove fast out of Richmond Park, through the great iron gates, the thought that someone might lock them at sunset flicked into her brain. Maybe the few posh people who lived in the park had keys? No, if they closed the gates at all it would be at 1 a.m., like Hyde Park.

  There was no traffic, and no one stopped her as she broke speed limits and jumped lights, and the return journey wa
s trouble free too. As she swung up to Richmond Gate, the box of sorbets beside her on the passenger seat, it was just past 9:30. The guests would still be at the concert.

  She accelerated into the park entrance, and came bang up against the great gates, shut. She skidded to a stop. Oh God, I don’t believe this, she muttered, jumping out of the car. The gates were locked. She dived back into the car, arms flailing around for her handbag behind the seats. She needed her mobile phone.

  No handbag. Christ. She’d come with only her keys.

  Cool it, she said to herself. I’ll drive to the next entrance. One of these bloody gates must be open.

  At Ham gate the gates were closed too, and she drove blindly on with a vague idea there was a keeper’s lodge at Kingston gate.

  There was. She saw with relief that there was someone at the front window of the lodge.

  She jerked to a stop, leapt out and ran up the little path. She rang the bell and knocked on the door simultaneously. Almost immediately it opened and a small offended woman said, “All right, all right.” Then she looked suspiciously at Carrie and said, “What is it?”

  “I’ve got to get into the park. It’s urgent,” said Carrie, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “Sorry. I don’t live here. I’m just babysitting.” She looked pleased, nodding with satisfaction.

  “But this is the lodge keeper’s house. He must have keys to those gates.” Carrie waved her arm in the general direction of the park.

  “Well, if he does, I don’t know anything about them.” The woman smiled, her face smug. “And if I did,” she ended, “I couldn’t just let you in, could I?”

  Carrie repressed a desire to push past her and ransack the house.

  She ran back to the car, jumped in and slewed back onto the road.

  She drove as fast as she dared, swallowing rising panic. Christ, 9:50. Dinner was due to start in ten minutes.