What Would Mary Berry Do?

by Claire Sandy

  That was a mental image Marie could live without. ‘Can’t you fall for somebody else?’ she asked, lining up leaflets on the mantelpiece as fastidiously as if it was the final of a Lining Up Leaflets competition. ‘Throw a stone in the most miserable nightclub and you’ll hit a better prospect than Klay. Go and have congress with a normal bloke.’

  ‘I haven’t saved me virginity all these years to waste it on some eejit in a club.’ Aileen rearranged in her hair the fourteen sparkling Claire’s Accessories accessories that she considered de rigueur these days.

  Marie and Lynda exchanged a glance, checking that they’d heard right. Later they’d discuss this in detail, teasing out the nuances, fine-tuning their theories about how a woman could reach her thirties in today’s hypersexualised world without having the merest bonk, but for now they had to tread carefully. Aileen was a strange ’un, but she was their strange ’un.

  ‘What’s so special about Klay?’ Marie used a softer voice, the one she’d used to tell the twins about periods, only to be interrupted with an airy ‘Oh, we know all about the red weewee thing’.

  ‘His looks, obviously.’ Aileen sailed past the baffled expressions. ‘And his air of mystery.’

  Marie glanced out of the window and saw Klay rolling about with a customer’s pug in the window of Perfect You.

  ‘And come on, bitches!’ Aileen dipped her head and smiled coquettishly, a move that made Marie suddenly want to go to the toilet. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed the chemistry.’

  ‘You’ve barely spoken to him.’ Lynda, on the threshold of the most expensively romantic day of her life, was brutally honest. ‘I shouldn’t think he remembers your name – even if you do stagger over there in your stupid shoes and your boobalicious tops to borrow a cup of sugar every other day.’

  ‘He remembers me all roight.’ At moments of stress, excitement and, it would appear, disturbingly sexual certainty, Aileen’s accent cranked up the Irishness. ‘You should have seen what he was doing to me last night in me dreams.’

  ‘No. I shouldn’t.’ Marie held up a stern hand in case Aileen was in the mood to share.

  Sitting in her car outside St Ethelred’s, with ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ on the radio, Marie tried to summon a festive sense of goodwill to all men, but felt only unease.

  The Smile! mince-pies-and-sherry day had been a success. A muted success, of course – not like the party across the road, where Klay’s muscly, oiled Sexy Santas had handed out shots – but a success nonetheless. The stack of presents on the back seat had surprised and profoundly touched Marie. With a global recession in full swing, housing markets lurching and benefits being slashed as if Freddy Krueger were Chancellor of the Exchequer, she hadn’t expected anything from her patients this year, and yet today had brought a steady influx of novelty slippers, bath gel and body lotion: all the staples from the shops catering for People You Don’t Know Very Well Yet Feel Compelled to Buy a Present For.

  Old Jonas had been first in, of course, bearing a bottle of horrible perfume that Marie had immediately squirted all over herself, sniffing rapturously and trying not to pass out. He’d been settled in the nicest chair, fussed over like a guest of honour as the party waxed and waned around him – Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ underscoring the action, as mums with pushchairs sipped their sherries guiltily, unaccustomed to an afternoon hot blast of alcohol. Marie’s least-favourite guests had been greeted with the same gusto as her pets, and everybody left full of cheer, with vivid pink dots (part alcohol, part joy) on their cheeks.

  Smile! was a living, breathing creature to Marie. She was proud of it, she worried about it, and on days like today it blew her away with its capacity to enrich life. Who would have thought a dental surgery party would be so well attended? She had been sorry to leave early, but she’d decided to surprise the kids with a lift home on the last day of term. Angus was so reliable, walking his sisters to and from school every day, never complaining, never ducking out of his duties. She suspected that at times he could be less than charming with them – she’d overheard a snapped ‘You’re doing my head in!’ once or twice – but he was solid big-brother material, and today she would whisk them all home in the dubious luxury of her rarely vacuumed Focus.

  Stroking the crocheted steering-wheel cover fondly, Marie saw her motor car in dewy soft focus. She usually cursed its inability to start first time on winter mornings; the left windscreen wiper that had a mind of its own; the glove box that fell open when she braked. But since she’d marked it out as the first victim of her austerity drive, she appreciated its good points. She’d laughed a lot in this car; ferried her children from A to B and then on to C; driven to see her friend Jo, generally staying over because she was too sloshed to drive back; made countless supermarket trips; delivered Prinny to the vet’s that time a savage kitten mauled him; and made the round trip to Smile! every day for a decade.

  It had served her well, despite her neglect. The blankets folded on the back seat smelled more like the dog than the dog did. The floor was a sweet-wrapper cemetery. That empty tissue box in the back window had been there when she’d bought the car.

  It was a defeat, of sorts, to have to give it up.

  Head back, eyes closed, she reminded herself that it hadn’t come to that yet, and let her thoughts roam. Some women, when encountering an unexpected free moment, might find their minds alighting on Channing Tatum’s chest, but Marie’s went straight to cake-making.

  She loved the planning stage, when your masterpiece was still theory, with no washing up to do. Her Yule log would have a twist – not your average log. Mary, she felt certain, would approve.

  Second-guessing Ms Berry was second nature now. If only Marie could channel her advice on Angus. Part man, part boy, all conundrum, he was certainly capable of travelling north of the border on his own, but Marie was curious as to why he wanted to. Why the need to skip town for New Year’s Eve? Canny old Mary would know the right words to winkle out the boy’s reasons for leaving his mates behind to meet up with a virtual stranger. Mary, that wise elder of the tribe, would probe the inner workings of his mysterious mind with the same elegant economy she brought to her recipes. Angus would open up like a flower, in marked contrast to the clenched face he’d been showing his mother for . . . Good Lord, it was months now.

  The girl’s existence had only been discovered because Angus needed his parents’ permission to visit her. He’d given only the scantest details, each one a tooth pulled from his unwilling mouth. The girl was, apparently, his age; into films; funny and, of course, cool. He hadn’t even shared her name.

  What did Angus derive from an email relationship that was missing from his flesh-and-blood relationships? As somebody who’d negotiated her own teenage years without the Internet, Marie struggled to imagine that a true friendship could be forged at such a distance. But, apparently, for the modern teen, it could: Angus was very keen indeed to get to Scotland.

  A loud and silvery noise, like cutlery clattering down iron stairs, rolled out through the school gates. The bell had sounded. Term was over and a tide of maroon blazers flooded the road.

  There they were, her three. Ponytails bobbing, Iris and Rose chatted intensely about some twinny subject – might be cow names; might be theorising who would win a race between an emu and a man on a scooter; might be how best to split an atom. Her big-footed son walked behind them, rucksack halfway down his arms and . . . Marie squinted. Were those leaves in his hair?

  ‘Mum!’ Iris saw her first and quite literally jumped for joy. Nice to provoke such a reaction, thought Marie, beaming. The little ones ran towards the car; the larger one sped up only minutely.

  ‘Surprise!’

  ‘Oh Mum you’re brilliant we made you a card look no don’t look it’s for Christmas the car smells of bananas are these presents for us?’

  ‘Angus, darling,’ said Marie, as he bent himself into the passenger seat. ‘Are you aware you have most of a tree in your hair?’

  �
�What?’ Angus ruffled his hair and a twig hit the dashboard.

  ‘And look at your knees!’ She noticed the spreading dark mud-stain on his trousers. ‘What goes on in that school?’

  ‘He’s been helping clear the waste ground round the back of the gym,’ said Iris.

  ‘Yeah. The big boys are making an adventure playground for us,’ said Rose, trying on earmuffs in the back seat.

  ‘My hero,’ said Marie approvingly.

  Why did I bother to theme the wrapping? Marie asked herself. The family had fallen on their presents like hyenas on a wildebeest. Nobody had commented on the pleasing tonality of the red-patterned papers as they tore impatiently through them. Stubbing her toe as she stuffed screwed-up tissue into a bin-bag, she consoled herself that real-life Christmas Day never resembles the movies.

  Except, that is, at number twenty-three Caraway Close, where the curtains were obligingly pulled back so that Marie, elbow-deep in kitchen-sink suds, could enjoy the blazing tree and the three figures around it, decorously handing round gifts as they sipped what Marie was pretty damned sure was hot chocolate topped with cream. (She’d planned to serve hot chocolate topped with cream, but she’d forgotten the cream. And the chocolate.)

  There was no scuffling in that idyllic scenario, no twin knocking over the tree during a desperate Barbie-centric struggle. Nor was there a teenager feigning delight with a camera flashgun that didn’t fit his camera. The man of the house at twenty-three hadn’t stayed in his (seen better days) dressing gown until noon, having failed to thank his wife for his present. Marie could hardly blame Robert – how could a jumper she’d spent so long pondering and pawing, and holding up to the light and asking the assistant would he call it heather or lilac, look so damned ordinary the moment Robert unwrapped it?

  Lucy’s Guy Fawkes outburst had proved to be a one-off. Tod had intimated, during a chat over the gate one evening, that his wife had difficult ‘times of the month’. ‘Amazing what a foot rub can do,’ he’d said, as Marie wondered if Robert would ever suggest rubbing her feet, even if she held a gun to his head. ‘A little spoiling goes a long way,’ Tod had carried on. ‘That’s why I’m taking us all off to Claridge’s for lunch on Christmas Day.’

  ‘If you ever write a handbook for husbands,’ Marie had laughed, ‘I’ll be first in the queue to buy one for Robert.’

  ‘Robert,’ Tod had said, suddenly very serious, ‘is a lucky man, and he knows it.’

  The lucky man, who’d spent the preceding six months competing with her for worktop and oven space, had become kitchen-phobic on the most notable culinary day of the year; presently peeling potatoes in the utility room with a general air of huffy put-upon-ness, Robert was maintaining his hardline attitude towards Christmas. For the first few years of family life he’d tried to ignore it, but had eventually conceded to Marie’s insistence that Christmas, like the sun or Jeremy Clarkson, is a constant in our lives and cannot be ignored. His opting out simply made more work for her. So Robert endured it instead, which wasn’t pretty, but at least meant he peeled the potatoes.

  Wondering which god she’d offended enough for him/her to nobble the dishwasher on the twenty-fifth of December, Marie swirled soapy water around the champagne flutes. She regretted her Martha Stewart-style decision to serve Bucks Fizz with the presents; she had a mini-hangover already, and Robert hadn’t commented on the use of their best glasses or her careful staging of the tray with artfully arranged tinsel. It was Lucy-style presentation without the Tod-style appreciation.

  ‘Can we put on the telly yet? asked Iris, a new Ken clutched to her chest.

  ‘At Christmas when I was your age,’ began Marie, as her anecdotes queued up, wondering which of them would be dusted off first: we weren’t allowed telly until the evening; we were happy with what we got; we helped with the lunch; we didn’t threaten to murder our beloved sibling over who got to read out the joke in the cracker. At the sight of Iris’s little face settling into an expression that could only mean withstanding Mum’s childhood anecdotes, Marie relented. ‘Oh, go on then.’

  ‘Yay!’ Iris reacted as if this was the best news ever: the true Christmas miracle. ‘Rose! TELLY!’ she screamed.

  Robert held a pan out to her through the utility-room door. ‘That enough?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Marie, ‘if you’re peeling potatoes for a solitary pensioner who doesn’t like potatoes. If you’re peeling them for the Dunwoody Christmas lunch, then obviously not.’ She relented. ‘A few more, please, or you’ll be all grumpy. You know how you like your roasties.’

  ‘I don’t like them,’ Robert corrected her, ‘I love them. I think about them all year. I may leave them all my money when I go.’

  ‘And here was me planning a world cruise with Antonio Banderas.’

  Plying his peeler once more, Robert said, ‘Hasn’t Antonio gone off a bit? He’s getting on.’

  ‘Even a gone-off-a-bit Antonio will do me.’ Marie rather loved the way Robert managed to be insanely jealous of her film-star crushes. ‘When you start that far ahead, you can afford to lose a bit of ground.’

  ‘He’s got a funny accent.’

  ‘If by “funny” you mean mind-bogglingly sexy, then yes, he does.’ Marie craned her neck to check on his technique. ‘Get all the skin off.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re not. You’re really not.’

  Robert held a potato up to his eyes, like a jeweller examining a diamond. ‘That is a perfectly peeled potato. It could win awards.’

  Opening her mouth to dispute this, Marie changed tack. ‘You know what?’ she said, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘Let’s not waste our Christmas Day row on a potato. Let’s save it up for – ooh, the affair you’re having with Magda, or the moment I crack and put the kids out with the rubbish.’

  ‘Aw,’ complained Robert, ‘I’d rather like to argue about a potato. I could get really worked up; somehow bring your friends into it; say bloody typical a lot.’ He paused and seemed to be considering his next words, before saying, ‘Rung your Dad yet?’

  ‘I’m run off my feet,’ muttered Marie. Ring Dad had been the first comprehensible thought in her head when she awoke, and it had reappeared hourly since.

  Ring Dad.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ asked Angus from the doorway, surveying the boiling pans, the beeping microwave, the overheated middle-aged woman.

  ‘All under control!’ Marie smiled at him, shooed him away. She felt as if she’d been in this kitchen since she was born.

  The stuffing was burning. The table was yet to be laid. (Mary would have laid that table the night before. But then Mary wouldn’t have sat up wrapping until 2 a.m.) The carrots were staring accusingly at her, still unpeeled and in no way cut into cute flower shapes.

  Mobile to her ear, Marie stirred gravy (which was steadfastly, sarcastically refusing to thicken) as a phone rang in a distant hallway. A woman picked up. Marie recognised the voice and could picture the care worker’s checkered overall and trainers.

  ‘He’s asleep right now,’ the voice told her, warm, measured. This woman, Marie could tell, understood.

  ‘Oh.’ Marie wished a futile wish for the thousandth time: that her father had agreed to move nearer to them, that she’d fought him on his stubborn wish to stay near the sea when it became clear he’d need to sell the house. ‘Did he . . . like his present?’ The need in her voice was raw: she was a child again, sitting in the dark while her parents chatted downstairs.

  ‘He loved it!’

  ‘Did he know it was from me?’

  The slightest of pauses and then: ‘Don has good days and bad days.’

  That’ll be a no, then.

  ‘Would you remind him I’ll be up in a week’s time?’

  ‘It’s marked on his calendar.’

  ‘I’ll bring him a cake.’

  ‘He’ll love that!’

  Somebody in the sitting room whacked up the volume, and the crashing soundtrack of a blockbuste
r movie, all bombs and bombast, invaded the kitchen.

  The pan lids danced, the gravy sulked, the turkey loomed, the smoke alarm woke up and began its raucous song.

  A car horn cut through the rattling, damp kitchen noise as Marie fanned the alarm with a filthy tea towel.

  The Grays’ Mercedes was turning outside, Tod’s hand raised in salute. Beside him, Lucy pulled her seatbelt across a white, surely new, fur-collared coat.

  Marie waved back, then stopped, stock still, as the beeps and the explosions and the shouts of ‘HANDS OFF MY SPIROGYRO!’ reached a crescendo.

  This, she thought with surprising clarity, is the moment the juggler drops the balls.

  TO: stargazinggirl247@gmail.com

  FROM: geeksrus39@gmail.com

  25.12.13

  12.34

  SUBJECT: Santa’s Little Helper

  HO HO CRAPPING HO!

  Happy thingmas, Soulmate!

  Don’t be jealous of Chloe. And don’t bother saying you’re not. You so are. I can tell.

  I’d be jealous if a guy on your street fancied you. But Chloe’s boring. She always says the obvious thing if she says anything at all. Can’t think if boys are looking at her apparently. Derp.

  Christmas is balls when you’re not a kid but we can save New Year, if you’ll just let me come and see you. PLEEEEEEEASE!

  Just give me your address and I’ll be there. Your theory is wrong. This wouldn’t fall apart if we met.

  Sheeeeit. Bashing about from downstairs. Mum’s always stressed on Christmas Day but this year there’s something else. Why can’t Dad see it? Mum’s a volcano and we’ll all be covered in lava by the time the Queen’s speech is on. (Thank God Granddad’s not here this year or we’d have to be quiet while her madge drones on and on.)

  Watched Taxi Driver last night. Well, this morning. Another all nighter. That makes it 17 times I’ve seen that film. Epic.