by Claire Sandy
The kitchen was a different place at 6 a.m. There was birdsong. There was tranquillity. There was a lack of Dunwoodys.
In a few hours the kettle would be boiling, the grill would be lit, the radio tuned to Radio 4 would be competing with the other radio tuned to Radio 1, and people who shared her surname would be looking to Marie to satisfy their toast/orange juice/plaiting needs.
For now, it was a sanctuary. Marie yawned. She was glad she’d agreed when her sloshed other half had raised an eyebrow and asked, ‘Early night, wench?’ They’d had a memorable half-hour on the floor of their bedroom; she wrapped her arms around herself, smiling a secretive, interior smile at the memory, surprised and glad that they could still go from nought to sixty after all this time.
But she was paying for it this morning. Every bone in her body rebelled at the earliness of the hour. She caught Mary Berry’s eye, twinkling up at her from the cover of the Complete Baking Bible.
‘Yes, Mary, you’re right.’ Marie did a Pilates stretch that almost killed her. ‘To work!’
It was time to go back to basics. To follow her instructions to the letter. To focus. This was what Mary advised at the front of the book, and Mary was right.
Mary was always right.
Like an alchemist, Marie weighed her ingredients with neurotic care. She put the oven on in good time. She creamed without complaint. She didn’t forget the baking powder. She lined the tins as if lining for her life. She watched a YouTube video about how to test sponges for doneness and finally grasped the proper use of a cocktail stick. She didn’t constantly open and close the oven door. She remained calm throughout, and only swore when Prinny yawned suddenly from his bed in the utility room and startled her.
With the sponge safely in the oven, Marie fixed herself a coffee and felt drawn to the window. Outside, Caraway Close was shaking itself and coming to life.
Erika at number fourteen was on her porch with her poodle, picking up the newspaper. Even first thing, Erika was camera-ready in a magnificent negligee.
Marie pondered that word: negligee. She’d assumed nobody still wore them, but there was no other word for Erika’s floaty chiffon creation. As Robert pointed out, every self-respecting suburban road had its sexpot; and their example, a well-preserved fifty-something, was a particularly fine one.
Erika had a facelift and a poodle, and a devotion to uplift bras that delighted her many gentleman callers. A divorcee, she liked to quote Zsa Zsa Gabor: ‘I’m a marvellous housekeeper – I always keep the house!’ Gaudily dressed as if to match her decor – if Marie squinted, she could make out swirly wallpaper and big mirrors through the windows – Erika was satsuma-skinned, with eyebrows arched in constant surprise. Marie had never before seen her without make-up. Erika looked tired today, as well she might after three husbands, but she also looked more approachable. The poodle darted out and Erika ran girlishly after it in her high-heeled slippers, scooping up the mangy little beast before it reached the gate.
A Good morning! floated in the early morning air as Erika’s immediate neighbour – their houses divided by a white picket fence – stepped out in a tracksuit.
Free of vanity, Hattie was a holistic masseur. Not, to Marie’s disappointment, the sort who uses aromatic oils and plays whale music, but the sort who pummels you remorselessly and bangs on about your endocrine system. With a shining innocent face, round and Land Girlish, she was a leading light in the Residents’ Association. After a few stretches against the fence, Hattie popped her earphones in and was off through her squeaking gate to thump around the Close.
The timer sang and Marie approached the oven with reverence. She looked down at Mary, beaming reassuringly from the worktop. ‘Wish me luck!’
Robert pondered the alternative universe that women inhabited. It was a place where they had room in their brains for muffin recipes, and time in their day to make the things.
Biting into Caroline’s latest offering, he admitted it was good. Almost as good as the cheapo ones available at any supermarket. There was nothing special about Caroline’s cooking; the muffins, like their creator, were all style and no substance. Year-on-year clock-department sales figures had nosedived since Caroline’s appointment: her assistant was demotivated, her shop-floor staff ignored.
Yet there she was, kneeling by Magda’s armchair in the staff lounge, the two of them thick as thieves, just because she could bang out an indifferent muffin.
Sauntering over, Robert put on his breezy face. (Marie insisted it was his serial-killer face, but he was pretty sure it was breezy.) ‘Nice muffins,’ he said and regretted it. Not quite a double entendre, but definitely getting that way.
‘Thanks,’ said Caroline.
‘How does she find the time?’ Magda shook her head in awe.
Maybe because she makes small baked goods WHEN SHE SHOULD BE DOING HER BLOODY JOB. Robert didn’t say this; he chose instead to underline his credentials as a serious-minded elder. ‘There was a brilliant interview in this month’s Buyers Today with the chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative. Some interesting stuff about the global buying chain.’
‘I saw that,’ nodded Magda. ‘Very thought-provoking.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Caroline prodded Magda. Robert could that see she’d ever so slightly overstepped the mark. Magda drew back, an Empress once more. ‘Who’d bother with that boring interview when your piece is on the back page?’
Magda relaxed and Robert stiffened. He hadn’t reached as far as the back page – Buyers Today was such a boring publication that there was an urban myth that it had killed a buyer in Liverpool who’d read it from cover to cover – and so he said with a rictus smile, ‘Oh yeah, that was great!’
‘You liked it?’ Magda seemed both pleased and taken aback. With her head to one side, she reminded Robert of Prinny when droppable food was being eaten. Magda, however, had sharper teeth. ‘What did you make of my basic premise?’
‘I . . .’ Robert would have liked the staff lounge to burst into flames at that point, but when it didn’t happen, he said slowly, groping from word to word, ‘I thought . . . you . . . made a very . . . good point.’
‘Thank you.’ Magda narrowed her eyes. Why, thought Robert wildly, didn’t the woman ever listen this attentively when he talked sense. ‘So you agree with it?’
‘I do,’ said Robert adamantly.
‘Robert, you’ve surprised me.’ Magda stood and squeezed his arm. ‘I’m impressed.’ She stalked away to her office, to make important calls, or possibly eat a baby.
‘You’ve surprised me too,’ said Caroline. ‘Muffin?’
‘Ta.’ Robert took one and sat down, reaching for the copy of Buyers Today on the staffroom coffee table. While Caroline wandered off to spread the muffin love, he flicked hastily to the last page, to find four columns of type under a flatteringly soft-focus Magda (she looked about eight years old) and the headline ‘Tough Times Call for Tough Measures’. He read, with mounting dismay, the ideas he’d just praised.
Like a hot knife through butter, today’s executives must be unafraid of reducing their staffing levels, it began, in the uncompromising style typical of the Empress. One paragraph in particular leapt out at him. One answer is to merge buying departments. Can the industry afford the luxury of two salaries, where one may suffice? There are some obvious bedfellows. It might be possible, for example, to combine gifts and stationery, or even silverware and clocks.
Robert ate the muffin mechanically, its blueberries exploding – pfff! – in his mouth without tasting of anything. He’d just tightened a noose around his own neck.
Time to get back to his desk for a conference call with Godley’s about production problems with the new spoon design. Caroline ambushed him at the door, holding out the plate.
‘Last one, Rob!’
‘No, thanks.’ Robert paused. ‘Don’t worry, by the way,’ he said conspiratorially, ‘I’m not after your job. Magda couldn’t merge us. I know sod-all about clocks.’
‘Real
ly?’ Caroline’s perfume at this proximity was suffocating. ‘Have you ever noticed my surname, Rob?’
Pointless to tell her, for the umpty-fifth time, that nobody called him Rob. ‘Godley,’ he said, and then, with dawning horror that he tried too late to hide, ‘that Godley?’
‘My family’s been in silverware for – ooh, a hundred years now.’ Caroline stuck the plate under his nose. ‘Go on!’ she sang. ‘It’s your last chance!’
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
02.08.13
14.09
SUBJECT: Stuff
Hi Soulmate
I really do not ever want a girlfriend. What we have is better. This is a meeting of minds!! Laugh if you want but it is.
Love is over rated. And sex is a whole pile of stuff. Sometimes I wish I was a kid again like my little sisters and got my kicks dressing Prinny in a scarf. Sex makes everything too complicated.
Why don’t we talk on the phone? It’s weard that we don’t. We could skype. We should.
For all I know you could have a boyfriend! ha ha!
laters
Angus
P.S. Do you have a boyfriend?
Mary was right. Mary was always right. Go back to basics, she’d advised, and all will be well.
‘This is fecking good,’ spluttered Aileen. Her white tunic was covered in moist crumbs, as was her chin. ‘Jaysus, I could be walled up in this and eat me way out.’
‘Delicious,’ agreed Lynda, daintily picking apart a slice of Marie’s Victoria sponge. ‘Really light. The perfect amount of jam. Not too sweet. Bravo, boss lady!’
Fighting back the urge to do a lap of victory in the cramped reception area, Marie sighed with satisfaction. ‘It is good, isn’t it?’ She revelled in her victory against – well, herself, the slapdash old-style Marie. No longer a woman who chucked in a handful of this and a handful of that and hoped for the best, she was now a baker.
‘I’ve eaten so many cake samples in the last few weeks.’ Lynda’s pretty mouth turned down. ‘Dry. Uninspired. No bounce. I’ve been exposed to unorganic eggs!’
Feeling that a shocked You haven’t! was called for, Marie supplied it.
‘And preservatives!’ Lynda was cranking up another wedding rant. Marie tuned out, picking up only the highlights – ‘E-numbers’; ‘dirty apron’; ‘eyebrows that met in the middle’ – until her attention was grabbed by Lynda’s sudden cry of ‘Hang on! Aileen was right, for once. You can make my wedding cake!’
Gabbling, Marie sought to apply the brakes to Lynda’s runaway bus. ‘Hang on, wait a sec. I’ve only baked one edible item in my life. Don’t go—’
‘But you wanted to be involved with the wedding? Remember?’
‘Um . . .’ Marie had said so, and meant it, but this was too involved.
‘Since . . .’ Lynda slowed. ‘Since . . .’
Sparing her from having to refer out loud to losing her mum, Marie said, ‘We know what you mean, Lynda.’
‘Since that, you’ve done so much for me. You’re not just my boss, Marie. I trust you.’
‘Just to be clear,’ Aileen butted in, ‘I don’t.’
‘I’d love to bake your cake, but it’s not a good idea.’ Marie hated to ruffle those serene features, but Lynda was wrong to rely on her for this. Emotional support: yes. Shoulder to cry on: always. A willing ear for troubles large and small: went without saying. But cooking the focal point of the biggest day of Lynda’s life: madness! ‘You need somebody with experience. A track record. You need somebody—’
Lynda interrupted. ‘I need somebody who loves me,’ she said.
And with that, Marie’s case fell apart. She bowed her head and said feebly, ‘What kind of cake do you want?’
‘A croquembouche!’
Aileen scowled and stole Lynda’s plate. ‘A what-now?’
‘I don’t even know what that is.’ Marie was nervous. It sounded French. As a rule Marie approved of the French – Gérard Depardieu, champagne, eating your own weight in baguettes, these were all undeniably good things – but cake-wise, the French liked things fancy. ‘What is a crock . . . crocky . . . ?’
‘Look it up,’ growled Lynda. Lynda the receptionist/friend was adorable, but Lynda the bride was a tricky beast who could tear down buildings with her bare, manicured hands. ‘It’s just a cake. If you can do this,’ she gestured at the sponge, ‘you can do a croquembouche.’
‘She’s right,’ said Aileen, who was, Marie knew, taking Lynda’s side for the heck of it.
All modern women are stretched. Marie, like every one of her compadres, had insufficient time to meet the daily million-and-three demands made of her. She had to work, cook, clean, travel, wipe noses, soothe feelings, listen, yell, gauge symptoms, feed the dog, have sex. And all this while retaining in her head the best way to boil an egg, along with how many sugars everybody took in their tea, who couldn’t stand radishes, and how to work the battalion of remote controls that stood between her and a quick Escape to the Country. So she knew, with a certainty that couldn’t be doubted, that she had neither the time nor the brain space to make Lynda’s cake.
Always best, Marie felt, to be honest. So she looked Lynda square in the eye and said, ‘Of course I’ll make your crockyboosh.’
Close up, Lynda’s Afro smelled great, which was just as well, as Marie’s face spent a full minute in there while she was hugged by a woman who really knew how to hug.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ Lynda’s freeform dance of joy was interrupted by a beep from the switchboard. ‘Hello, Smile!’ she beamed into the mouthpiece.
‘Biiig mistake,’ whispered Aileen happily to her boss.
‘Yeah. I know.’
Lynda’s recent history, all there in her face as she’d waited for Marie’s answer, had overridden common sense.
Marie and Aileen had been through the diagnosis of Lynda’s mother with her. They’d celebrated the periods of hope, and had weathered the decline. Marie had managed not to cry at the funeral, her arm around a hopelessly sobbing Aileen, and afterwards there were countless minor kindnesses – a Bounty bar waiting on Lynda’s desk in the morning, an arm-rub when her expression turned inwards – as Lynda ‘got over it’.
As if, Marie often thought, we get over such things.
Marie had been with Lynda in a changing room and had stood back, gasping, at how lovely the girl looked in her white gown; and then Marie had cried, because they both knew somebody else should be there, doing the gasping.
In short, somebody with a heart as soft as Marie’s couldn’t possibly say no.
‘Yes . . . yes . . . no problem,’ Lynda was saying into her headpiece, once again calm and professional. ‘Just come in straight away.’ She looked at Marie. ‘Mr Blake. Sudden excruciating pain. Probably that tooth you advised him to have the nerve removed from.’ She pulled a face. ‘Gonna be a late one.’
‘Right. Darn!’ Marie whipped out her phone. ‘Robert? Listen, love, you’ll have to start dinner tonight . . . Pop into Sainsbury’s and pick up some . . . You’re already there? Why? Never mind, buy sausages and fry them and aim them at the kids, and I’ll be home as soon as I can.’ She went to scrub up, puzzled. ‘My husband’s never set foot in Sainsbury’s without a list from me and explicit instructions.’
‘He’s having an affair,’ said Aileen, scuttling after her. ‘With some bitch who works in Sainsbury’s.’
A smell hung in the hallway as Marie finally stepped over her own threshold that evening. She discerned burnt sausage and something else – something yeasty. ‘Guys?’ she queried, dumping her bag and coat and going through to the kitchen. The twins lay on and around Prinny, watching the small television and sending a delighted ‘Mummee!’ her way. Beyond the patio doors Angus toiled up and down with the lawnmower, headphones on, body present, but mind elsewhere, judging by the wobbly lines in the grass.
And Robert.
‘Hello, love.’ Marie stopped, looked hi
m up and down. ‘You’re wearing an apron.’
‘If you can’t join them,’ said Robert grimly, ‘bloody well join the bloody bastards.’
‘Swears!’ cried Iris from the rug.
‘Sorry.’ Robert padded off to the utility room, returning with a large bowl covered with a teacloth. ‘We kept you a horrible sausage, if you’re interested.’
Marie picked up a flour-spattered open book, noticing that Mary had been moved to the top of the fridge and bridling briefly at her mentor’s demotion. ‘Paul Hollywood’s Bread.’ Blimey. ‘Is this cos of Caroline and her cupcakes of doom?’
‘It’s about me fighting back at last.’ Robert rolled up his shirt sleeves. ‘It’s about me waking up to smell the coffee, and admitting that experience counts for nothing in my job.’ He persuaded the cellulite-ridden dollop of dough onto a floured board and punched it. ‘Like my knowledge counts for nothing.’ Punch. ‘And my loyalty and diligence, and being on time every morning for years on end, count for bloody nothing.’ Punch. Punch. Punch.
‘Swears!’ shouted Iris, Rose and Marie.
‘Sorry.’ Robert peered at the pages. ‘Is this how you knead?’ he asked.
‘Couldn’t tell you.’
He pummelled and pushed, and the dough flopped forward and fell back, like a drunk. ‘I’m up against it at work, Marie. More than you know.’
That stung. What hadn’t he told her? ‘Really? Want to talk about it?’
‘No. I want to make some Cheddar and rosemary rolls that will blow Magda’s knickers off.’ Robert turned the dough and slapped it, rather camply.
As Marie lay in a hot bath (interrupted only eight times by a twin asking urgent questions like Can flies go to heaven? and When I was in your tummy, could I see out?) she wondered if there was such a thing as being too blithe about a marriage. She trusted Robert absolutely; left alone on a desert island with a Playboy Playmate, he’d bore the poor girl with his family photograph album. And yet . . . Was cooking for another woman a kind of culinary adultery?
It was beyond the bath gel’s powers to soothe away this troubling new thought entirely, but Marie kept it at bay, relishing her sacred half-hour among the suds. She thought instead of Robert’s choice of foodie tribe leader.