What Would Mary Berry Do?

by Claire Sandy

  Anybody with a feather could have knocked down Marie. Lucy? Teflon Lucy throwing a plate and screaming at her husband? As her nemesis pushed through the silenced crowd into the house, Marie put down her knife and made to follow her, her mind racing as to what she’d say.

  ‘No, no, I’ll go.’ Tod strode after his wife, adding grimly in an aside, ‘God knows, I’ve had plenty of practice.’

  Communal good manners asserted themselves: an animated hum of conversation sprang into life, with only the odd furtive look towards the tantalising muted row within the conservatory.

  Somebody turned up the music; Robert cleared up the shards of plate; the party healed over the wound.

  Alone on a bench, nibbling her black-varnished nails, sat Chloe. Marie, making her way towards her, followed the girl’s line of sight and found, of course, Angus, who was listening to Erika talk about herself as he tried not to stare at her breasts.

  ‘Budge up.’ Marie flopped down and plonked a bowl in Chloe’s lap. ‘Cake. Cures all ills.’

  ‘Not mine.’ Chloe picked off a tiny scrap of red sponge and rolled it into a ball before tasting it. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Nice to eat something humble for a change.’

  Smiling at the backhanded compliment, Marie said, ‘Your mum – sorry, mother – spoils you and your dad.’ She meant that as a good thing, but Chloe obviously didn’t agree.

  ‘If only we could just have a croissant on a plate instead of in a gingham basket. Or a paper napkin like you use, instead of vintage bloody linen she’s sourced at an antiques fair.’ Chloe picked up speed: this was evidently a perennial gripe. ‘And why does she source things anyway? Why can’t she just buy stuff, like normal people?’

  Caroline strolled past, squawking into her mobile. ‘Yes, soon as possible . . . address? Oh God, the back of bloody beyond . . .’ She saw Marie and handed over the phone. ‘Tell this cab firm where we are, would you?’

  After Marie had helped out and Caroline stalked back towards the bar, Chloe carried on, impatient to burp it all out. ‘And nobody else in my class has starters on a weeknight! Tonight she even made some amuse-bouches!’

  ‘And were they amusing?’ Marie’s attempt to lighten the mood was doomed. ‘Listen,’ she said, feeling the girl’s pain, but also eager to introduce some perspective, ‘most people would kill to live with a home-maker like Lucy.’

  Chloe wasn’t listening. She’d leapfrogged ahead in her mind, Marie could tell.

  ‘What?’ asked Marie gently. She recognised this pregnant air of something about to break, of a confession or a fear ready to be aired.

  ‘There’s a big lie in my life.’

  ‘A lie?’ Marie felt the need to tread very, very carefully. She was intensely curious about the Gray house, but she was also immensely fond of this strange, big-eyed girl, who thought she’d disguised all her insecurities by swathing them in black and adding a scowl. ‘Am I the right person to talk to?’

  ‘Yes!’ Chloe shed ten years as her face crumpled. ‘I can’t lie any more. It’s wearing me down.’

  If her own children went to a stranger with their woes, Marie would want that stranger to turn them round and point them back at their parents. ‘Sweetie,’ she began, hoping the soft word would help to soften what could sound like a refusal to listen.

  ‘Chloe!’ Lucy stood over them. ‘You’ve had cake.’ It was, no two ways about it, accusatory.

  ‘Yes, I mean, I . . .’ Chloe looked down at the empty plate, as if caught stealing. Crumb by crumb, she’d polished off the lot.

  ‘Home!’ said Lucy, with a clipped tartness to her tone that was absent when she turned to Marie. ‘Thank you so much for a lovely evening.’

  ‘Chloe can stay for a bit. If she wants.’ Marie put a finger under Chloe’s chin, felt Lucy bridle, and held the girl’s gaze. ‘Do you want to stay?’

  ‘Nah. I’d better . . . you know?’ The upward inflection, the evasive expression – Chloe had closed down again.

  Hello Wife

  I’m leaving this note by the anti-ageing cream so you’ll definitely find it before you go to bed. Listen: NEVER CUT YOUR HAIR. Please. I’ve always loved your hair. In fact, when I’m old, I intend to live in your hair. So don’t cut it. OK?

  Your husband x

  DECEMBER

  Christmas

  Yule Log

  OPERATION FIND OUR STUPID BROTHER A GIRLFRIEND

  Name: Chloe Gray

  QUESTION 1 – Do you like little sisters of boys?

  Yes.

  QUESTION 2 – Would you be nice to a boy, not shouting?

  I wouldn’t shout.

  QUESTION 3 – Are you pretty?

  I don’t know! I don’t think so.

  QUESTION 4 – Are you a big tarty-tart?

  No.

  QUESTION 5 – Do you like dogs?

  I love dogs. Especially Prinny!

  QUESTION 6 – Are you a femininist?

  Definitely.

  QUESTION 7 – Would you sing with us if we arsked?

  Yes.

  QUESTION 8 – What is your favourite bit of a fun fare?

  I find the dodgems v v exiting.

  QUESTION 9 – Do you really like Angus lots, almost loving a bit in a way?

  You are very nosy and I’m going now!

  TO DO LIST

  • Order doll bed online for Rose

  • Order doll fridge online for Iris

  • Fashionable something (???) for Angus

  • Send overseas cards NOW

  • Order turkey

  • Wash curtains

  • Find Mum’s tablecloth in attic

  • Presents for Aileen/Lynda

  • Christmas tip for paper boy

  • Send cards to R’s family

  • Quietly, and when nobody is looking, GO STARK STARING MAD.

  Christmas. The working mother’s Vietnam.

  How, thought Marie as she wrestled with the fold-down steps to the attic, has it crept up on me again? Reliably, on the exact same date every year, each Christmas found Marie with her metaphorical pants down. Even without her new-found lust for baking, the festive season was a logistical nightmare.

  Weeks of planning, list-compiling and impulse purchases culminated in one frantic day of cooking an ostrich-sized fowl that Robert would pronounce ‘a bit dry’, an Everest of washing up and a credit-card-bill bottom line that could be mistaken for a telephone number.

  Stumbling up the steps, Marie gingerly inserted herself into the gloom of the attic, the swaying bulb rendering the corners ominous. It was an unsettling metaphor for her head up here: a dusty place where anything stored was soon forgotten. She exhaled unhappily and had a classic early-December thought: Why the hell didn’t I put the decorations away carefully last year? She’d promised herself, in this very spot, in this very mood, twelve months previously that she would never again scrabble around like a rat, tearing open random boxes, only to find the Christmas tree eventually in a box marked ‘dining-room miscellaneous’. She had vowed to wrap each bauble in tissue, wind the lights around cardboard tubes, launder and iron the holly-patterned napkins, before stowing them all in boxes plainly labelled in thick black marker pen.

  And then, after the big day, she’d impatiently flung everything into black bin-bags and hurled them overarm into the attic, before shutting the trapdoor with a bang and applying herself to the last of the advocaat.

  After brief diversions into a box of the twins’ old toys, a box of manuals for long-dead household appliances and a massive box that contained one single broken tape measure, Marie struck Christmas gold: a plastic baby Jesus, some torn paper chains and a Polaroid of Robert trying to look pleased with his new slippers.

  And another thing, said the Mrs Angry currently managing Marie’s thoughts, why is Christmas women’s work? She hadn’t noticed Robert working on a To Do list written in his own blood. He wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night shouting Barbie caravan! Neither was his mind stuck in a constant
loop of Must order the turkey – but none of us really like turkey – but Christmas isn’t Christmas without a turkey – must order the turkey. If she were to instigate a game of word association and start with ‘turkey’, Robert would probably answer ‘package holiday’.

  Yet again her ovaries had determined matters. Marie pulled open a box marked ‘things’ in Robert’s neat hand. Cards, this time. Ancient Christmas cards. She folded the lid down, but not before the handwriting – small and faltering – on the top envelope caught her eye.

  It was a red envelope, unopened. Her mother’s writing.

  Ambushed by the past, Marie let out a small ‘Oh Mum!’ The last card, never opened. But never thrown away.

  When she thought of her mother, she thought of a hundred jostling images. Her mum had been a giggler, a teller-off, a soother, a partner in crime. She’d been intoxicated with her daughter, constantly smelling her hair or gathering Marie to her like an armful of flowers. ‘You are my riches,’ she used to say when tiny Marie, pink and warm from the bath, had sat on her lap by the fire.

  The image Marie hated and fought was the last one, a wretched sparrow-version of her lovely mum making barely a dent in the hospice bed. This card had been written in that place, each letter painfully formed. It could, Marie decided, wait another year to be read.

  ‘What do you think Angus wants?’

  ‘In general? Or for Chris—’ Robert thought better of his joke. Something about his wife’s face as she leaned back on the pillows, scribbling on a piece of paper that looked like the world’s longest bus ticket, suggested this was no time for jokes. He took off his glasses, knowing he mustn’t look as if he longed to get back to his new Paul Hollywood book. That – long years a-husbanding told him – would be wrong. ‘Um . . . money, I suspect. I wanted money at his age.’ He still wanted it now. ‘He’ll need a few quid to get to Scotland.’

  ‘I’m thinking of putting my foot down about Scotland.’

  ‘The whole country or . . .’ Again, his wife’s face warned him to abandon the joke. ‘He’s sixteen now, love. If he wants to visit mates in other parts of the country, we should let him. I had a friend in Yorkshire when I was his age, and I used to jump on the train every school holiday.’

  ‘That was you, and that was then.’ Marie wrote something furiously, as if she hated the pen and the pen hated the paper. ‘He’s a young sixteen. And we don’t even know this friend he’s going to see.’

  ‘I know you raised your eyebrows when he said they met online, but I had a chat with Angus and there’s nothing dodgy. It all checks out – it’s a girl his own age, and I reckon he’s escaping Lauren what’s-her-name,’ smiled Robert, as if proud of his son’s girl trouble.

  ‘So. Your mother.’

  ‘My mother,’ repeated Robert, sure that something more was expected of him, but having not a clue as to what. ‘Oh, you mean, what should we get her?’ Never had words on a page seemed so enticing; Robert felt his eyes stray to a list of ingredients before he shut Paul Hollywood with a bang. ‘Let’s see. Bath salts? Or, what’s that stuff – chalky, whiffy, oh yeah: talc!’ he shouted triumphantly.

  ‘I might as well ask Prinny,’ muttered Marie, and then, louder: ‘Actually, that’s a point. What’ll we get Prinny?’

  ‘Talc?’ suggested Robert.

  ‘Why do I bother?’ huffed Marie.

  ‘No idea.’ Robert took up his book again.

  On the floor, within reach, lay her Mary Berry book. She could simply pick it up and read it, ignore the slavering demands of Christmas, just like her husband. Another option was to pick it up and beat him with it. But Marie did neither. She did what women have always done when faced with Christmas: she soldiered on.

  She understood Robert. Christmas-blindness was a reaction to the days when he’d had to organise it all himself while his mother had another attack of the vapours and lay on the sofa with a bottle of Baileys. There would have been no presents under the tree for his sisters if Robert hadn’t organised them. In fact, there would have been no tree.

  Sneaking a look at him, perving over doughnuts, Marie felt hot shame at her urge to beat him. ‘Who’s having Gaynor this year?’

  ‘Not us, thank the sweet Lord Baby Jesus. She’s going to her neighbours.’

  The sigh of relief was not altogether sincere. Marie’s ideal Christmas – that elusive creature that flitted within sight each year and then darted off – would involve all the generations, with young and old united by their good cheer and their contempt for turkey. Since the death of Marie’s mum, there’d been a job vacancy; if Gaynor had shown any desire to be the family matriarch, Marie would have supported her gleefully. But the woman who embroidered tablecloths with red berries, knitted everybody scarves in their favourite colours and wore comedy antlers on her head all day had died, while the woman who pretended to give money to Oxfam instead of presents lived on.

  It had taken decades for Marie to understand her mum’s simple, enormous satisfaction in making things. When Marie had been dashing in and out to parties, to college, to her first job, she’d felt sorry for her mother, sitting with a needle or a ball of wool or a washing-up basin of papier mâché. Staying at home while the rest of the world whirled past was like denying life, and Marie thanked her lucky stars that she had choices. She’d always wanted to earn her own money, to be independent, to plant her flag on the world. Nothing flashy: just a pretty flag of her own design on her own little hillock would suffice.

  Be careful what you wish for. The writing on her To Do list danced tipsily, and Marie rubbed her temples, like a bad actress in a painkiller advert. Since the overheard mention of Magda’s ‘big decision’ at the bonfire party, Marie had visualised an axe poised over Robert’s neck. Caroline was a clever strategist, and Robert seemed to have laid down his weapons. He seemed resigned to his impending messy execution. If Caroline won – no other way to think of it: this was a competition – Marie would be the breadwinner. She wondered how men had coped with the pressure of this mantle down the generations.

  It had been a long day. She deserved a little bit of Mary. Like a school library book at the rude bits, the book fell open at a well-thumbed page.

  Yule log. A staple on the Christmas sideboard since Marie was old enough to drool. This year’s would be home-made for the first time since Mum had died. A thought stabbed Marie, an insistent bony finger: Must ring Dad.

  ‘Whaddyathink of me new high heels?’ Aileen did a twirl and fell over.

  Helping her up from the reception rug, Marie said, ‘They’re a bit high for work.’ Unless one’s a prostitute.

  ‘Hmm. And me top?’

  ‘A bit low for work.’ Come to think of it, Aileen’s whole outfit was rather prostitute-y.

  ‘This is all for Klay, I suppose?’ Lynda, who had given up all pretence of work now that the wedding was less than a month away, halted her tireless search for the perfect bridal nail colour to counsel Aileen. ‘You should just be yourself around men.’

  For most people that was excellent advice. But for Aileen . . . ‘Tone it down a bit,’ said Marie. ‘That much cleavage, this time of day, it gives the wrong impression.’

  ‘But men like boobs!’ said Aileen. Never a patient woman, she’d been waiting weeks for Klay to come to his senses and ask her out.

  ‘Judging by his staff, Klay is indeed a boob man, but that doesn’t mean you should show that much flesh.’ Marie tried to pixelate her employee’s décolletage. Impressive but scary, it was the Cheddar Gorge of cleavage: a man could get lost down there. ‘Lynda, is our three fifteen late?’

  ‘We don’t have a three fifteen.’ Lynda tapped a nail painted with ‘Pearly Princess’ on the diary. ‘They cancelled.’ She stopped, lips clamped together, as if her mouth was full of ball bearings.

  ‘I know that face. Another defection?’

  Lynda nodded. ‘Same pattern. Mid-twenties. Said she wanted to take advantage of Klay’s Christmas offer.’

  ‘Free whitening with eve
ry check-up,’ said Marie, peering through the glazed door towards Perfect You’s window display, featuring a life-sized Photoshopped Nicole Kidman holding a money-off voucher.

  ‘He’s a genius,’ breathed Aileen as her top button flew off.

  As if conjured up, Klay appeared at the door of Perfect You ushering out a customer, kissing her on both cheeks, small chubby hands flying as he made his hammy goodbyes.

  ‘Look at him!’ growled Aileen. ‘Now that’s a man.’

  And that’s a nemesis. Lucy was putting up her umbrella against the hailstones, smiling as she backed away in a barrage of Klay-with-a-‘k’ compliments. Typical, Marie thought. Even though she now knows I’m a dentist, she still goes to the flashy newcomer. She heard the thud of another nail in Smile!’s coffin; there were so many nails these days that the noise almost constituted a theme tune.

  ‘Why don’t we offer—’ Lynda was cut off by Marie’s firm ‘Nope!’.

  ‘But, Marie, free whitening might entice some patients back.’ Lynda had a head for business, as the marquee-hire company who’d given her an 80 per cent discount would attest.

  ‘The whole point of being a dentist is to improve dental health.’ Marie wondered if she sounded righteous and smug and decided she didn’t care. ‘I can’t offer whitening to people who don’t really need it. That sets them on a lifelong journey of paying for the upkeep. Plus we’ll end up with a nation of fluorescent-toothed TOWIE types.’ She could have gone on, could have bored them again with how, as a dentist, the colour of teeth told her a lot about what was going on beneath the enamel, but she spared them and repeated, ‘So nope, it’s not for us.’

  ‘Let’s invite Klay to our mince-pies-and-sherry day.’ Aileen was reapplying jammy lipstick in a pocket mirror.

  ‘Let’s not.’ Marie tidied the magazines, then mussed them up, then tidied them again.

  ‘You two are supposed to support me.’ Aileen snapped the mirror shut, her wound plaits bristling. ‘You’re me posse, me homies. If you don’t help, how will I ever experience the joy of sexual congress with the hottest dentist I’ve ever laid eyes on?’