Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 Black Pudding

  Chapter 2 The Last Cake on the Plate

  Chapter 3 A Selection of Cheeses

  Chapter 4 Stewed Coffee

  Chapter 5 Preparing the Hors d’oeuvres

  Chapter 6 “Er, this is not what I ordered, waiter…”

  Chapter 7 The Chocolate Selection Box

  Chapter 8 Full Fat Milk

  Chapter 9 A Pint of the Usual, Please Guv’nor

  Chapter 10 Dial-a-Pizza

  Chapter 11 Serve the Sauce on the Side, Please…

  Chapter 12 A Pint of Lager and Lyme

  Chapter 13 The Doughnut or the Eclair?

  Chapter 14 A Fine Granary Sandwich filled with the Most Delicious Fresh Produce, Wrapped in a Cotton Neckerchief and Tied to the End of a Stick

  Chapter 15 Mutton Dressed as Beef

  Chapter 16 Not a Bit Like the Pack-shot

  Chapter 17 Full as an Egg

  Chapter 18 Weaning onto Solids

  Chapter 19 Today’s Specials…

  Chapter 20 Sour Milk

  Chapter 21 Last Night’s Curry for Breakfast

  Chapter 22 Sour and Sweet

  Chapter 23 Forgot to Turn the Oven On

  Chapter 24 The Collapsed Soufflé

  Chapter 25 A Spoonful of Sugar

  Chapter 26 The Icing Without the Need for a Cake

  Chapter 27 Flat as a Pancake

  Chapter 28 Entrée

  Chapter 29 Tasting the Soup

  Chapter 30 The Dog Hair in the Sandwich

  Chapter 31 More Tea Vicar?

  Chapter 32 The Waffer Thin Mint…

  Chapter 33 The Fat of the Land

  Chapter 34 The Meat of the Sandwich

  Chapter 35 Sampling the Local Fayre

  Chapter 36 Marinating the Chicken

  Chapter 37 The Sixpence in the Pudding

  Chapter 38 Corned Beef Hash

  Chapter 39 Egg Sandwiches Left on the School Bus

  Chapter 40 The Angel Layer Cake

  Chapter 41 The Forbidden Fruit

  Chapter 42 That Ham Sandwich

  Chapter 43 Sweetmeats

  Chapter 44 The Toad in the Hole

  Chapter 45 The Small Portion

  Chapter 46 Choosing from the Menu

  Chapter 47 It has to be Chocolate Mousse…

  Chapter 48 Indigestion

  Chapter 49 Strawberries and Cream

  Chapter 50 Fish Without Chips

  Chapter 51 Whipping the Cream

  Chapter 52 More Crust than Pie, More Potato than Meat

  Chapter 53 Ready-Prepared Carrots

  Chapter 54 Boiled Sheep Lips and a Generous Helping of Potatoes

  Chapter 55 Lifting the Pie Lid

  Chapter 56 Hold the Muffin

  Chapter 57 Meat and Two Veg

  Chapter 58 The Icing on the Cake

  Chapter 59 Menu Planning

  Chapter 60 The Starched White Linen Over the School Woodwork Project

  Chapter 61 Putting out the Best China

  Chapter 62 Half Rice / Half Chips

  Chapter 63 Separating the Yolk from the White

  Chapter 64 Porked

  Chapter 65 The Food of Love

  Chapter 66 Soggy Sprouts

  Chapter 67 Being Put onto Dried Food

  Chapter 68 Missing the Potato from the Apple Pie

  Chapter 69 Spotting the Pilchards

  Chapter 70 Fish Food

  Chapter 71 A Carry-Out

  Chapter 72 Relaxing the Roast

  Chapter 73 The Skin from the Rice Pudding

  Chapter 74 Just Desserts

  Chapter 75 The Banquet

  Chapter 76 Coffee and Mints

  Chapter 77 Boxing up the Leftovers

  chocolate mousse

  and

  two spoons

  by

  Lorraine Jenkin

  Honno modern fiction

  For Huw, for Charlotte and for Maude.

  Thank you to all those that have helped

  – for their time, their support and,

  occasionally, their derision.

  Chapter 1

  Black Pudding

  With one hell of a crash, Lettie Howells’ dinner service hit the wall. Lettie shielded her head as the shards of china showered around her and then scattered across the floor. Even the perpetrator was surprised at the result…

  Alan Bentley pushed back the lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes as the upturning of the table had put him off balance. His heart was pounding and his breathing was deep from the rage that tore through him. Why did she insist on doing this again and again? Turning a petty disagreement into a full-blown row.

  He heard the cry that struggled from his girlfriend’s mouth as she too slid down the wall and, in her fright, sought to make herself as insignificant as possible. He felt no pity but instead looked down at her and hated her again. A kick from his brogue easily found the remains of the coffee pot and she flinched as it too crashed on the wall behind her.

  Usually at this time, she would curl up into a ball, sobbing that she hadn’t meant to, whatever it was that she was supposed to have done, and the final kick would complete his fury. Alan turned his back on her and gripped the work surface, fighting to regain his poise. “You just never bloody learn, do you? Never bloody learn,” he hissed. Any onlooker might wonder who he was talking to – Lettie or himself.

  They had been here before – the time she had parked her car too close to his and caught his number plate with her tow hitch. Then she had borrowed his favourite jumper and left it in the cinema, and just even thinking about that bloody wet dog filled him with frustration once more.

  “Why can’t you just talk to me? You don’t have to smash things up,” she said after each episode. But how could he possibly get the right words out to someone who was just sitting on the floor sobbing? Looking around for inspiration, he found none and instead swept two mugs from the counter, the contents splashing over their owner before they too smashed onto the floor.

  Then the fight sapped from him and once more he was left with a tinge of shame when looking at the destruction he had wrought. Lettie was still sobbing as quietly as she could so as not to provoke further anger, his dinner was all over her and the wall and he just didn’t know where to start making it better. So he didn’t. He grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and strode smartly out of the door, pausing only to glare at Lettie then very deliberately swap the channel on the radio. See, if she had just left the cricket on, there would have been no need for any of this…

  After she had heard the front door slam, Lettie waited a while and then uncurled and sat up, wincing as she pulled bits of chicken and onion out of her hair. She sat and tried to assess the damage, both to herself and her surroundings. She brushed at the coffee that had seeped into her clothes and slumped back against the wall.

  Normally now, she would break again into sobs and pick herself, and anything else, up from the floor and begin the process of tidying up, eradicating any sign of the argument. In the next twenty-four hours she would mull over the event, trying to pinpoint the trigger, the comment or action that had turned the pointless bicker into such a rage. Therefore, when Alan breezed back into her home, it would be as if nothing had happened.

  But that wasn’t going to happen this time. Lettie had concluded that the number plate incident was of her making, fair-dos. However, the jumper left in the cinema was an accident and the wet bloody dog caught lying on the new jacket was just life. She had told herself, after being left crying in a restaurant whilst he made a big issue of racing back to the cinema, that this behaviour really wasn’t acceptable. However, after he
threw the contents of her coat rack over the garden fence into the river and then pushed her into the brambles on the night of the wet dog, she had decided that he had had his last chance. If Alan did anything else then that was it. So, she supposed: this was “it”.

  Lettie was surprised to find that she actually felt quite excited. In hindsight, she realised that she had possibly been looking forward to the next row, although she had turned the cricket off from a dislike of cricket, rather than as a means to provoke a final rage. Just think…no more careful smiles and trying to steer or second-guess somebody else’s humour and needs. The release was tangible and she felt as if the band around her chest undid a few notches.

  She still had to pick up the bits of crockery, she still had to bathe her eyes, but she did it knowing that it was for the last time, and she did it with music blaring from the radio…

  Chapter 2

  The Last Cake on the Plate

  In the faraway town of Glan Llanfair, nestling in the lee of the Mid Wales mountains, trudged a man and his hound. The man’s protective trousers and steel toe-capped boots restricted his gait to a lope. The bare chest revealed what was known as a farmer’s tan, the shape of his company shirt being silhouetted on his person. The rucksack that his parents had given him to take his lunch in when he had started working in the forestry, twenty-three years ago, just about managed to carry his flask, water bottle and lunch box, being frayed, frail and faded. But the ability and desire to repair it was relentless and its owner was confident that it had many years left in it still.

  He walked through the park, along the avenue of trees that bordered the river. Alfie, his big black Labrador, got new vigour after his day’s sniffing in the forestry and scampered off to meet some acquaintances and join the children splashing each other in the river. Parents, who had long since resigned themselves to another load of washing, sat on the benches chatting and watching their children, pleading with them not to engulf the younger ones in water that was far too cold for adults.

  Dougie Ev’s felt as he usually did at the end of the day, tired and a bit sore. Muscles ached and he could feel the chafing from his boots where his socks had slipped down. His job was physical from the moment it started to the moment he laid down his tools. Climbing, attaching ropes and chains, using the chainsaw and throwing the offcuts out of the way was physically relentless. The margins were tight in forestry and didn’t allow for slow work or additional help. However, the job allowed the progress to be tangible and at the end of the day he could survey the work he and his partner had done…far better in Dougie’s eyes than an ever-replenishing in tray of paper.

  He cut across the rugby pitch, managing to avoid the lengths of elastoplast and bandage that had successfully held the prop’s ears to his head that weekend. He entered the tranquil churchyard that his parents and grandparents were buried in, and bid them good evening as he always did. Swinging out of the churchyard kissing gates, he no longer noticed that he had no one to kiss.

  The daily torment started about this time – to pint or not to pint? A few chuckles and an hour of pointless conversation, or a pot of tea and a long soak? Usually the pint won, as by the time he’d reached the gent’s outfitters that sold every fashion of the nineteen fifties, he had managed to convince himself that he could fit both options in.

  But today had been a long day and he and Alfie were in need of a rest. He heaved himself up the railings on the steep slope of Cobbledy Lane. It was a shortcut that wrecked the heels of ladies shoes and provided a resting place for chips and broken glass. Alfie did not help the ambience by cocking his leg in the usual place.

  The pair meandered along the last stretch of Stryd y Fachnad, past the stone cottages and the empty shop where old Mrs George lived with her three dogs, seven cats and soiled newspapers. Dougie bid, “Noswaith dda,” to the two old boys sat on the bench and turned into the gate of number twenty-one. As the front door clicked shut, Dougie dumped his bag and shirt on the kitchen table and started the rituals involved in spending another night in alone.

  Chapter 3

  A Selection of Cheeses

  A soak in the bath and the changing of the bed linen that he had slept in on the previous night worked their cure and left Lettie able to attempt the next element on the journey to recovery. It was something that shamed her, but was an essential part of the process. Having peered out of her door in order to check that the road was clear, she began the trudge up the hill to her sister’s house.

  Alex, or Alexandra as she was known by their mother alone, was two years older than Lettie, or Letitia as she was also known by her mother alone, and at least two years wiser, more mature and more…just more sorted. She had the kind of clarity in her life that Lettie only dreamt about. She had a husband who enjoyed her (and her him), two children to dote on and be doted on by, and the lovely Rex – the Red setter that was the mascot of their family life. He didn’t sleep on people’s coats, especially after he had been swimming in the sea, but instead gambolled around, adored and petted by everyone who saw him.

  At times such as these, the juxtaposition of the two sister’s homes was indicative of their respected sortedness – to Lettie at least. Alex lived with her family on the top of the hill, in a house of character, born of their hard-earned (joint) incomes – hers from running the florist in town and his from a partnership in the local estate agency. Although large on the outside, it was always cosy and welcoming within. Alex’s eye for colour that made her so popular with her customers, also made their home a delight and one that welcomed Lettie on a regular basis.

  In contrast, Lettie lived in a cottage in the older part of town. It was a characterful home about which people always said, “But it looks so small from the outside,” until they got inside and realised that it was actually quite small inside too… Backing onto the river, Lettie’s cottage was in the central clutter of Lyme Regis that had no such luxuries as parking spaces, large gardens or views. Instead it had glued-up sash windows, gaps under the front door and the tendency to be urinated on by late night revellers on their way home.

  Lettie realised that her pace was slowing as she dragged herself into her sister’s Sunday afternoon, knowing that she would not stand up to the scrutiny that was never there. Her eyes were puffy from crying and their redness contrasted with the rest of her pale face, which was still in shock from “it”. And, to cap it all, she could smell the sweat from her less than fresh T-shirt, nicely warmed up from the exertion of the hill. Basically, she felt and looked like shit and there was really no point in trying to avoid it. Even Molly, the dog that skipped along beside her, couldn’t lift her spirits, especially as the stick in Molly’s mouth occasionally scraped through Lettie’s trousers onto her shins.

  Lettie felt ashamed. Not necessarily because of what had happened, but that somehow it had happened again. She thought of all the times that she and Alex had talked over her relationship with Alan, with Alex trying hard to understand the apparent attraction. Alex had long since given up calling Alan all the things that he deserved to be called; even before the violent episodes, he had still been what is termed a pig. Her telling Lettie that she must be mad to be with a pig didn’t help Lettie and certainly didn’t give her the confidence to leave him. Instead it had made Lettie defensive about Alan, trying to fight a corner that wasn’t worth fighting.

  So Alex had taken on the role of listener and consoler and Lettie loved her for it. Occasionally Rich would walk past, overhear something and say, “Oh for goodness sake, Lettie, the bloke’s a prick,” but he would get away with it, as he seemingly thought no less of Lettie for being with Alan. Lettie was sure that they must discuss her and Alan’s relationship and she was also sure that they were probably right in what they said. She would love to have the kind of partner that she could take to family gatherings, someone who would chat easily with Rich as they covered the barbeque griddle with lighter fluid… someone who would watch the children’s puppet shows and who could make their mother want to
be twenty-five again.

  Lettie finally reached the double gates and Rich (by name and nature) heard Rex barking his welcome and came down the drive to greet her. His smiles dropped when he sensed her plight and instead of his usual bear hug, he put his arm through hers and walked her gently up the drive, as if preventing her from running off.

  “Hi, Rich.”

  “Hi, Lettie.”

  “It’s OK, it’s different this time.”

  “Is it? Is it really?” he said, not sounding convinced. Rich and Lettie had known each other for years and he happily played the role of friend and older brother, as well as suitor to her sister. Tall and lean, his neat appearance gave plenty of scope for friendly ribbing by the scruffier Lettie and the pair had bantered together over the years – she laughing at his orderliness and ability to reduce everything to an economic level, he at her scattiness and ability to reduce orderliness to chaos.

  He steered her past the borders packed with vegetables and interspersed with flowers and together they stepped over the children’s bikes, which had been abandoned after a better game was invented.

  “Alex!” shouted Rich, nudging the kitchen door open with his hip. “Lettie’s here for you.” Wonderful as he was, Rich was at a loss with what to do with his sister-in-law’s predicaments, unable to come to terms with the damage his own sex was able to inflict on the fairer one.

  Alex turned from the chopping board to see Lettie’s embarrassed expression and the shrug of light-heartedness that she gave before crumpling into tears. Dropping her knife and carrot, Alexandra swept Lettie into her arms and cradled the sad head, stroking her hair and shushing her until the gulps subsided.

  This ritual allowed the rest of the discussion to commence. Starting with the what, they drank tea through the why and ate cake through the now what. And, although Lettie had always said it would be different this time, somehow Alex sensed that maybe this time it would be.