What Would Mary Berry Do?

by Claire Sandy

  ‘You get on with your stuff. Never mind about me.’

  The stench of burning martyr overwhelmed the lovely buttery smells of the cake. ‘If you hadn’t upgraded our little gathering to a sodding soirée, I wouldn’t be baking at all, matey.’

  ‘You’re not baking for the party . . .’ began Robert, still in the other room.

  When he left his sentence hanging, Marie encouraged him with a tart, ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’re baking,’ said Robert, over the noise of a tower of CDs collapsing, ‘to show off.’

  The juggler of the family often has to swallow their irritation, take the high road, do the decent thing. With this in mind, Marie buttoned her lip and disrobed another Flake. But not before she stuck her tongue out – really far – at the door that divided her from her beloved.

  The fifth of November dawned cool and foggy. Up with the lark, or possibly before it, Marie confronted the six piled sponges sandwiched together with chocolate frosting. Shaping them into the beehive profile of a bonfire had been tricky. Not trickier than she’d expected, because Marie expected every aspect of baking to be tricky the first time around. One of Mary’s promises was that everything got easier with practice.

  For this project, Marie had graduated from basic icing to the more complex American style of filling. Egg whites had been whipped until stiff, and sugar boiled to exactly 115 degrees Centigrade, while the world (except for those show-off larks) slept. Now, working swiftly before it set, she trowelled the resulting chocolate sludge all over her cake.

  One last flourish and it was done. Time to smother it with Flake firewood.

  ‘Mummy . . .’ Iris, rubbing her eyes, was beside her in a nightie patterned with cats. A nightie that was far too short.

  Marie scribbled Buy nighties (twins) on the blackboard by the fridge, then bent to kiss her daughter’s face, still creased and crumpled with sleep.

  ‘I had a dream. About bad men.’ Iris’s mouth turned down.

  ‘Oh, sweetie pie.’ Marie bent down and hugged her close, folding Iris right up and calling on all her Mum-power to chase the bad men clean away.

  ‘One of them was being mean to Prinny.’

  ‘No!’ Marie feigned shock. ‘Our Prinny? How dare they?’

  ‘How very dare they?’ giggled Iris, who loved a catchphrase.

  Plonked on the worktop with a Hobnob (and no sister around to claim half), Iris was content again. Instructed sternly not to touch, she eyed the chocolate beast.

  ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ asked Marie, pressing Flakes around the base.

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s obvious.’ Iris nibbled the edges of her Hobnob. ‘But why are you making a poo-cake, Mum?’

  With the whizz-bang of rockets in their ears, the guests turned their faces upwards to watch the dazzling dahlia-shaped explosions in the dark fabric of the sky

  ‘I love the red best!’ shouted Iris. ‘No! The orange! No! The blue!’

  The fireworks made kids of them all; even Caroline lost herself enough to say ‘Oooh!’ unselfconsciously when a particularly dramatic Roman candle let rip. Marie’s ears were cold, but she didn’t want to dash indoors and miss the fun and/or horrific accidents. After the finale – ‘The biggest damn rocket Caraway Close has ever seen’ was Robert’s reckless promise – she’d run in and pull on a woolly hat. She had plenty, each of them a shapeless bastard knitted by Granny Gaynor. Surreptitiously she put a hand to her hair and pulled out the hairclip holding up her untidy bun.

  She’d tussled with that bun for a full half-hour, while Robert had gone through his own pre-party beauty routine (washed his face, in other words). She’d aimed for artless, sexily dishevelled. She’d probably achieved homeless. Finally turning away from the mirror and bundling her hair up any old how, Marie had asked Robert peevishly, ‘Should I cut it?’ It was a rhetorical question and she’d beetled out, grumbling, ‘I’m too bloody old for long hair. Mutton dressed as lamb.’

  Glad now of her long hair’s ear-warming qualities, the thought remained. The relentless march of her forties threw up some knotty decisions. Could she keep her long hair? Did the tops of her arms stand up to scrutiny in short sleeves? When had she swapped knees with a Premier League footballer?

  ‘The garden looks wonderful.’ Their neighbour Johann was at her side. He was Belgian, and handsome, in a European heavy-glasses-and-brogues kind of way.

  ‘Amazing what a few fairy lights can do.’ Every twiggy shrub and exhausted tree in the wintery backyard had been draped with string after string of fairy lights. The twins had urged her on – ‘More, Mum, MORE!’ – and the wee maniacs had been right. Somewhere between the fairy-light hanging, the lantern lighting, the strategic placing of folded blankets and the construction of a ‘bar’ (spangly fabric thrown over an old sideboard), Marie had realised she was enjoying herself, and the parched old garden, a stubby winter eyesore, was altered and had become magical.

  ‘It looks like a stage set,’ said Johann, his hair so trendy it was possibly already out of date.

  ‘Thanks, by the way, for lending us your garden furniture.’ Johann and Graham had donated LA-style slatted wooden loungers, each costing more than all the garden furniture Marie had ever bought put together. All the neighbours had been happy to help: the Gnomes had lent a ripped hammock; Hattie had dragged round a tiled table she’d bought in Morocco (with Made in Birmingham clearly stamped on the underside). Marie hadn’t canvassed Lucy, citing lack of time to Robert, but knowing the shabbier truth herself: she didn’t want to be beholden to her bête noire.

  Passing by, Hattie clinked glasses with Marie. ‘Great party!’

  And it was. Nothing to make the Great Gatsby look to his laurels, but a leap forward for the Dunwoodys. Marie had taken Mary’s advice and had put good food and hospitality at the heart of it all: just as Ms Berry had prophesied, the rest took care of itself. Every baker is a secret praise-junkie, but tonight Marie’s reward was the buoyantly jolly mood in her garden.

  ‘You made it!’ Marie kissed Lynda and her fiancé, straining her neck to look up at Barrington’s handsome, serious face. He was a red-hot twenty-two-year-old with the dignified demeanour of a Victorian papa, and Marie always forgot how very tall he was.

  ‘I want to thank you,’ he said in a deep, rolling, rather thrilling voice, ‘for agreeing to bake our wedding cake. I hear you’ve already made three or four, in preparation for the real one.’ Barrington took both Marie’s hands in his, his dark eyes full of gratitude. ‘It means a lot to us.’

  ‘Happy to help,’ said Marie, feeling as if this righteous man might see right through her smile to her crow-black, lying-about-making-croquembouche soul. ‘Help yourself to drinks!’

  Moving from firework to firework, wielding the extremely long match Marie had bought for him, Robert kept the crowd happy with ongoing bangs and explosions. To quell her neurotic fears, he’d downloaded a Firework Safety pamphlet and followed its instructions to the letter. He’d laid out a firework zone (the lawn), then allowed for fallout and created a spectator zone (the patio). Marie could tell that he relished being Master of Ceremonies by the touch of showmanship as he reached out to light the blue touchpaper.

  Some of the showboating was for his boss. Magda, an overdressed peacock in fedora and cashmere cape among the bobble hats and stripy scarves, had wiped the white plastic chair that Caroline commandeered for her before seating herself as if on a throne.

  A husky voice behind Marie drawled, ‘I must compliment you on your husband’s buns.’ This was direct, even for Erika, swathed in furs like Russian royalty. She flourished her gourmet hot dog, and Marie realised it was a compliment on Robert’s kitchen skills and not on his buttocks.

  ‘Gourmet’ hot dogs had confused Marie when Robert suggested them. Surely, like Pot Noodles, hot dogs were defiantly lowbrow. But no: add a home-made bun, quality saveloys (Angus had sniggered at this for quite some time) plus home-made relish and the result was worthy of the pretentious title. In deference to Magda,
the whole buffet had been upgraded; now that Mary had taught Marie to respect cooking times and to accept that a crowded oven takes longer, the baked potatoes were seductively soft all the way through.

  Angus, on serving duty, was doling out potatoes loaded with either chilli con carne or wild-mushroom ragu. Aileen, unable to choose, had both, while Barrington reached for a beer from the ice buckets, where it nestled alongside viognier for Magda and the finest Fanta for the kids.

  The ear-numbing explosion of the last, showiest rocket erupting overhead in a fizzing shower of whites and golds coincided with some late arrivals. Tod stepped out onto the patio, flanked by his high priestesses: Lucy looked as if she’d stepped off the ‘It’s Fireworks Night!’ page of a catalogue; Chloe’s black wrappings rendered her a disembodied and deathly pale face in the dark.

  Immediately pounced upon by the twins, Chloe was detached from her family by two pairs of mittened hands and a determined, ‘We need you to fill out a form for us.’

  Amused, bemused, Chloe let herself be ambushed. ‘What form? What are you two loonies on about?’

  ‘This!’ Iris flourished a clipboard, and Marie guessed it was the handwritten questionnaire she’d seen them laboriously create earlier on, the one headed OPERATION FIND OUR STUPID BROTHER A GIRLFRIEND.

  Wondering why her nemesis was in her house more often than her closest friends, Marie moved towards Lucy, but was waylaid by Robert, fresh from his triumph.

  The unexpected kiss was warm-lipped, cold-nosed, intense and bounced her right back to their first dates, when he’d turn suddenly and grab her as they walked along the street.

  Yanked back to the here and now, Marie heard a male voice say ‘My turn, matey’ and Tod inserted himself between the couple, replacing Robert’s arms with his own, Robert’s stubble with his smooth cheek, and the time-travelling smooch with his lips planted just to the side of Marie’s mouth, an almost-kiss that was somehow more intimate than the full-on version.

  Head swimming at the switcheroo, Marie hoped Robert wouldn’t be vexed by it, but as Tod pulled away she saw that Robert was already greeting Lucy, laughing with her and accepting – seriously? – a cake from her hands. A simple white cake with a pastel fondant Guy Fawkes, it made Marie’s Action Man waiting in the utility room, dressed up to the nines in pantaloons and feathered hat filched from a Disney doll, seem irredeemably gauche. Marie touched the kissed patch of skin to the side of her mouth and felt it tingle.

  ‘Here,’ Robert immediately handed Lucy’s cake over to Marie, as if it were a baby that needed changing. ‘Isn’t that thoughtful of Lucy?’

  ‘Very,’ said Marie, saved from further pleasantries by Caroline, who was piling high a plate of offerings for the Goddess Magda.

  ‘How many calories in a baked potato?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘Um,’ said Marie. ‘More than three?’ Since Magda’s arrival, Robert had changed from a man enjoying his own party to an actor playing the part of a man enjoying his own party. Fiercely protective of him, Marie knew she had to be cordial to his colleagues. Magda was easy enough: imperious but friendly. Caroline was an entirely different kettle of fish: chic and sharp, she practically had BITCH tattooed across her forehead.

  With Tod in the periphery of her vision – would he kiss all the women like that? – Marie brandished a paper plate on Lucy’s behalf. ‘What can I get you from the buffet?’

  ‘It all looks sooo delicious,’ said Lucy, her hand to her throat as she stared at the spread. ‘But,’ she said decisively, ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Okey-dokey.’ The paper plate returned to the pile, only to be snatched up by Mrs Gnome.

  ‘I’m having seconds,’ she said with the trademark clacketty-clack of her dentures. ‘You should ’ave an ’ot dog, madam.’ She prodded Lucy in the ribs with a serving spoon. ‘Not an ounce of fat on ya. Your poor hubby.’ Mrs Gnome shook her head sadly. ‘Like shagging a pile of folded deckchairs.’ She limped away, leaving Marie and Lucy regarding each other awkwardly.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ said Marie, feeling responsible for her disagreeable guest. ‘When she arrived, she asked me what was I hiding under my poncho, and said no wonder I eat for two.’

  ‘Deep down she’s lovely,’ said Lucy.

  Wondering how far you’d have to drill to find Mrs Gnome’s loveliness, Marie moved on. It was exhausting, this proper hostessing. In the pre-Mary Berry years she would have been huddled with the naughtiest-looking clique, the back-of-the-class crew, snorting at rude jokes and sending the twins for refills. Now she buzzed from guest to guest like a bee, topping up here, taking an empty plate there, directing this person to the loo, that person to a vacant seat, smoothing ruffled feathers in Mrs Gnome’s wake and agreeing that, yes, they’d been very lucky with the weather.

  ‘Hey, handsome!’ shouted Erika above the polite conversation. ‘Where’s my kiss?’

  Tod, who’d been dutifully listening to Hattie talk about her colon, waggled a finger at her. ‘Naughty-naughty,’ he said, but leaned over to kiss her, rather primly, on the cheek.

  ‘You can do better than that . . .’ purred Erika.

  ‘Wifey on the premises!’ laughed Tod, slapping Erika’s hand playfully. He saw Marie’s expression and said, ‘Oh dear, we’ve shocked our hostess.’

  ‘No. Not at all. Not a bit,’ said Marie. ‘God, no!’

  ‘Shame,’ said Tod, moving back to Hattie.

  I’m not sophisticated enough for this, thought Marie, hurrying on with a plate of sausages. Erika spoke to all the men in that sex-kitten growl. Tod complimented all the ladies. I’m just an old married bat who’s forgotten that consenting adults can flirt without anybody getting hurt.

  The evening was speeding past. Time to check on Prinny, shut in the master en suite, far from bangs and whooshes and with a wipe-clean floor. Trotting upstairs with a chewy treat, Marie encountered the dog on the landing.

  ‘Prin?’ She scratched his chin and watched the animal’s eyes half-close with joy. Prinny was anybody’s for a tickle; Marie had been a bit like that at uni. ‘What are you doing out here?’ A rectangle of light from the en suite crawled along the bedroom carpet and out onto the landing. Voices – confident female ones – rang out.

  Creeping into her own bedroom like an intruder, one hand on Prinny’s collar, Marie stole to the bathroom door, wondering who’d been bold enough to seek out a loo upstairs when there was a perfectly good one (repainted that morning, in fact) on the ground floor.

  ‘Sure it’s OK to use Robert’s en suite?’ The perfectly enunciated voice was loud enough to address a Nuremberg Rally: Magda. ‘Feels odd.’

  ‘His wife said it was fine.’

  Ooh, Caroline, you fibber, thought Marie, frowning down at Prinny, who was enjoying his chew a little too loudly. It wouldn’t do to be caught eavesdropping on your guests.

  ‘Those little girls are fab, aren’t they?’

  Thank you, Magda. I think so too.

  The loo flushed. Prinny jumped.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Hmm? Bloody hmm?

  ‘Robert’s a genius baker,’ said Magda, slightly distracted, as if she was checking herself in the mirror. To a backdrop of what had to be Caroline’s tinkling wee, she said, ‘Not many people would bother to make hot-dog buns.’

  There was a scraping of feet and some rustling. Caroline was pulling up her – no doubt expensive – knickers as she said, ‘Although, like you said the other day, perhaps this . . . mania for baking explains why he’s taking his eye off the ball at work.’

  Marie stiffened. This was why she was earwigging; she knew there was something iffy about that Caroline.

  Taps ran.

  ‘Did I say that, Caroline?’

  ‘You were dead right, Magda. His heart isn’t in silverware, it’s in food.’

  ‘When did I say—’

  As her vowels became distorted (Marie could imagine Caroline dragging lipstick over her dishonest mouth), Caroline interrupted, ‘Mind y
ou, should make your big decision easier!’

  Magda’s response was sudden and sharp, as if all the air had been sucked out of the shower room and toxic gas piped in. ‘A decision that important is never easy. And I don’t need any help reaching it. Call me a cab, would you?’

  Marie smiled. Magda was no easy touch; Caroline’s attempt at stabbing Robert in the back, to his face (as it were), had been foiled. For now. The light went out and the door opened, with Marie stepping neatly behind it.

  Tripping over Prinny, Caroline muttered, ‘Stupid fucking mongrel.’

  ‘Good dog!’ mouthed Marie in the dark, waiting for the carthorse clip-clop of the women’s heels to fade on the stairs.

  It was cake time. ‘Sorry,’ said Aileen, emerging from the utility room as Marie reached it.

  ‘What for?’ Marie looked dubious. It could easily have been for the tartan trousers Aileen was wearing; most of her outfits merited an apology. ‘Ah, I see.’ A few of the logs had been filched from the chocolate bonfire. She recalled the scribbles she’d found on a treatment form the day before. Aileen Keaton. Beneath it: A. Keaton. Then: Mrs Aileen Keaton. And she forgave her. Any woman who fantasised about Klay with a K had worse problems than gluttony and kleptomania to worry about. ‘Give me a hand, Aileen. It’s a two-woman job.’

  Gingerly lighting a sparkler and setting it between Action Man’s legs, Marie nodded to Aileen, and between them they hoisted the crooked pyre and carried it out to the patio.

  Graham gave it a roll on the drums by tapping a wrought-iron table, as Johann began to clap. ‘Brava!’ he shouted.

  ‘Dunnit look lovely!’ said Mrs Gnome unexpectedly.

  ‘Now that’s a cake!’ said Tod.

  A crowd pressed around Marie as she sliced and served, the delighted reaction to the lava-red interior worth the trouble of scrubbing the red dye from her hands. The party hubbub turned primeval, as everybody scoffed and gorged and let out little sticky groans of pleasure.

  A plate hit the floor. Not a paper plate – it smashed and a Rorschach blot of cake disfigured the patio slabs. ‘For God’s sake, Tod!’ shouted Lucy, her hands to her head.