The Art of Baking Blind

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘Why do you look sad?’

  Alfie is staring at her, inquisitive.

  ‘I’m not sad, my darling. I’m happy.’

  ‘You look sad. Like when you saw Max’s new baby sister.’

  ‘Did I?’ She gulps. Was she that transparent? ‘I wasn’t sad then, lovely, and I’m not now.’

  She finds herself beginning to explain to him that sometimes people can be overwhelmed with good emotions, but she loses him quickly, his eyes flickering to the cooling gingerbread men before she has finished the sentence.

  ‘Never mind,’ she finishes. ‘Now, how about we try one of those?’

  Kathleen

  The baby is staying tight inside her. Tight, tight, tight. Every hour she checks between her thighs but there is no blood. Then she makes herself wait two hours. Oh, thank goodness. Her inner thighs remain dry.

  The baby kicks again. A flutter or a kick? A flutter kick. Perhaps she – for she feels as if she is having a girl – is learning how to swim. She imagines taking a little girl, her little girl, for swimming lessons and watching her streak underwater like mackerel spied from a fishing boat or a baby dolphin.

  The flutter kick comes again. Perceptible. Definitely there. Perhaps you’re a strong one, she addresses her belly. A strong one, and determined. Kick. There it is again.

  She panics that the stitch will not hold, that her girl will break it with all this kicking, but Julie, now visiting her three times a week, reassures her. ‘It’s a good sign, all this action. It’s when they’re quiet for a long time that you start to worry.’

  She can be quiet too, Kathleen wants to tell her. Sometimes I can wait hours without feeling a kick. And then, in the middle of the night, I lie, rigid with panic, fearing that she is no longer alive.

  31

  For the most indulgent of trifles, simply steep Madeira cake in kirsch, scatter with fresh cherries or raspberries, coat with a layer of melted chocolate, and then add home-made custard and velvet pillows of cream. Top with toasted flaked almonds or dark chocolate curls. Omit jelly and please do not think of including tinned mandarins or peach halves. This is a very adult, very sensuous, dessert.

  ‘I am SO excited.’ Vicki is practically trembling as she climbs the final flight of stairs, close on the heels of Cora.

  The bakers, gathered for the pudding stage of the Search for the New Mrs Eaden, are being given unprecedented access to her recipe archive in the hope they might find inspiration there.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re actually going to see Kathleen’s writing. That we’re going to get to touch her things,’ she pants as they near the attic rooms at Bradley Hall, which currently house the recipe collection. ‘It’s going to be the closest we get to a master-class with her. Just incredible. Such a privilege.’ She stops to catch her breath.

  ‘She was only human.’ Jenny is amused by her hero-worship; the self-conscious way in which she refers to her by her first name and then blushes.

  ‘Oh, I know…’ Vicki is unconvinced. ‘But she was something special—’

  ‘She was lucky,’ Claire cuts in, as they pause, slightly out of breath, half a flight from the former servants’ quarters. ‘I bet you could have been a Mrs Eaden, written books like her and got them published, if you’d managed to marry a millionaire who happened to develop a chain of supermarkets.’

  ‘Oh no, I could never have been like her,’ Vicki contradicts. ‘She was way ahead of her age. Look at the way she writes: she makes you want to bake everything she describes and gobble it up at the same time.’

  ‘Oh, all right. I’ll give her that,’ Claire says, mock-grumbling, as she rolls her eyes at Mike.

  ‘I think she was special,’ Cora, ever the loyal employee, chips in as she takes in the threatened mutiny gathering behind her.

  ‘She was extraordinary,’ Vicki agrees as they follow a meagre corridor to a larger attic room. ‘Otherwise, why would any of us be bothering with this?’

  They push through a green baize door and enter the warren of servants’ bedrooms: low-ceilinged and poky compared to the grandeur of the rooms downstairs. A door at the end is labelled archive. Cora gestures to her and Vicki knocks, tentative.

  Though the passages leading to it are dark, the attic room is bright. Sunshine floods through the casement windows and refracts off the whitewashed floors, shocking them with an intense light. A line of glass-topped display cases streaks across one side, and an Ercol couch, elm frets splayed against the walls, provides a splash of burnt-orange tweed. What a beautiful room, thinks Vicki. Then: I wonder if Kathleen came up here.

  A man, thin, stooped, dressed in a worn corduroy jacket and tweeds, emerges from a desk in one corner, exuding dust and diffidence. He wrings his hands, red-raw Vicki cannot help noticing, and massages his pronounced knuckles, but his smile, as he invites them to enter his world, is welcoming.

  ‘Paul Usher. Delighted to meet you all – and to introduce you properly to Kathleen Eaden. These exhibits’ – he gestures to the display cases – ‘have all been catalogued. These’ – he gestures to a pile of notebooks placed on the other side of the room – ‘are still in the process of being assessed.

  ‘You will find it easier – and I would prefer it – if you looked at the catalogued exhibits; but, if there’s something specific you would like, we can plunder this pile.’

  Vicki, Claire, Karen and Mike make straight for the catalogued items containing recipes for puddings, as they have been instructed. The notes are copious: pages upon pages of exercise pads detailing the best combination of ingredients, or the optimum heat, for an array of desserts.

  Vicki cannot stop her fingers from trembling, as if the thought of touching the pages Kathleen had written on is overwhelming. Yet no one else seems the least bit tentative. Mike is rifling through an arch-lever file, and Karen flicking through a hardback notepad as casually as if it were a well-thumbed magazine.

  Only Claire seems to sense her trepidation, and gives her a smile. ‘Come on. Don’t look so worried. You need to get stuck in!’

  And so she does, her nerves quietening as she becomes engrossed in the recipes. Every few minutes, she gives a squeal and calls Claire over.

  ‘Look – her chocolate soufflé recipe. The one I’ve been practising. In her own handwriting! Isn’t it beautiful? Looping and gracious – and such lovely ink. I wish I could write like that…’

  ‘What’s she written in the margin?’

  ‘“The ultimate pudding for a seduction.”’ They pause, then giggle.

  ‘Well, lucky old George,’ Vicki says.

  ‘Or maybe not him?’ Karen has overheard their conversation.

  ‘Karen! She wouldn’t. Not Mrs Eaden. Not Kathleen.’

  The older woman gives a shrug and goes back to her reading.

  ‘There’s one for her trifle here.’ Claire calls Vicki over.

  ‘Oooh. Let’s have a look: cherries, kirsch, home-made Madeira cake, whipped cream, custard, toasted flaked almonds – and a layer of dark chocolate…’

  ‘I want to make it now!’ Claire says.

  ‘I’d never have thought of the chocolate.’ Vicki bites her lip, cross with herself for being trumped by someone baking nearly half a century earlier. ‘What a clever idea.’

  ‘What about this one: a gâteau Paris–Brest?’

  ‘They’re such hard work. Have you made one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ Vicki feels the tiniest, guiltiest, bit smug. ‘They’re difficult … but impressive. Look – she gives directions for making the praline cream: you have to caramelise the almonds and then grind them down. That’s interesting: she says you can use hazelnuts or a combination of both.’

  ‘Don’t think I’ll be copying that.’

  ‘No, but choux pastry always looks good.’

  Having found a recipe for elegant choux pastry swans, Vicki takes the file to the sofa, a type she has always coveted but which Greg deems too retro.

  It is, she has repeatedly
told him, a design classic. Who cares if it is more suited to a Hoxton loft than an Edwardian semi bursting with toys?

  ‘Rather stylish for the servants’ quarters?’ She smiles at Paul Usher, keen to display her style kudos.

  ‘Kathleen Eaden chose it for her drawing room. It’s from Ercol’s 1965 collection and made just down the road in High Wycombe. But George felt it was too modern for the rest of the house, and Kathleen never got round to sending it to their house in Chelsea where she had similar furniture.’

  On the other side of the room, Jenny is looking for something specific.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have her recipe for a rabbit pie – with cider, cream and bacon, do you?’ she asks the archivist. ‘I just remember my mother making it. It was in The Art of Baking – and I’d love to see the original version.’

  Paul Usher smiles. ‘Believe it or not, I haven’t catalogued her traditional pies yet – but they’re in the notebooks I’m working on at the moment. If you’d be so kind as to put on these gloves, I’m sure we can find it together.’

  Despite herself, she feels a thrill as she turns the pages of the notebooks, white silk gloves adding to the mystique. Kathleen’s looping script swirls: firm, decisive, precise.

  Jenny is surprised that the ink remains a bright cobalt blue, as if kept from the world for years.

  ‘Have these not been looked at much?’ she queries.

  ‘Not those, no. Publishers have always been much more interested in her puddings and cakes.’

  He gives a sniff. ‘It’s a shame, really. She’s equally innovative when writing about savoury food but there isn’t the appetite for it, if you’ll pardon the pun. In my experience, people are always more interested in the sweet things of life.’

  She continues with her search, passing the recipe for game pie mentioned by Kathleen Eaden that calls for pheasant, partridge, red wine and cognac. She finds the ingredients for chicken and grouse pie: one fat grouse, one chicken, six rashers of bacon, and six hard-boiled eggs. Yes, she checks, it really does stipulate eggs. There are recipes for raised game pies, raised veal and ham pies, pork pies; for quiches – lobster; asparagus; and sausage and leek. She is beginning to believe that she imagined the recipe – or that it was entirely Lucy’s creation – by the time she finds it. But here it is, neatly underscored in blue: rabbit pie, braised in cider and cream.

  Seeing each step meticulously detailed takes her back, once again, to the rectory kitchen: Lucy enveloped in steam; Eleanor and Jenny playing as she sautés shallots, braises the meat. And yet there is something that halts her reverie, and distracts her. Tucked behind the page is an opened letter, folded in half, and addressed from … well, it looks like Cornwall. A couple of sheets of blue-grey Basildon Bond written in the same decisive script.

  She glances at Paul, then at the others poring over their sweet recipes. Jenny has always held that it is bad form to read other people’s letters; and yet, this is different, somehow. It is already opened and apparently discarded. And the date is 18 June 1972 – over forty years ago. Besides, there is surely something serendipitous about her finding it: as if it were waiting for her to stumble upon as she rifled for her recipe? Or perhaps that’s a poor excuse. Perhaps she is just more inquisitive than she wants to believe.

  She glances at the archivist. His head is in a file. Furtively, she lifts the recipe book to hide her opening out the letter, and begins to read. Her eyes flit as she drinks up the information then move more slowly as she seeks to process it.

  Time seems to be suspended. Particles of dust dance around Jenny but life, as she knows it, doesn’t appear to be continuing. She feels winded, just as she did when she spotted Nigel and Gabby on that wet lunchtime, back in March. There is no retching this time but a gnawing ache in her stomach. A profound sadness. Things fall apart, she thinks; the centre cannot hold.

  Paul Usher is looking at her in expectation, taking in the flush to her cheeks; her disorientation.

  ‘Thank you.’ She blushes. ‘I found it. Just as I’d hoped to.’

  He smiles.

  ‘Amazing,’ she burbles, and feels she has to explain herself. ‘To see it written out on the page.’ She tries a joke. ‘Well, at least I know my mother can’t claim the credit for it.’

  He returns to his books.

  ‘There’s just one question…’ She tries to sound casual. ‘Who was Charlie? I saw the name written at the top of a recipe,’ she lies – and blushes. She feels as if she has to keep the letter’s existence hidden, and the fact she has read it. She needs to protect its author in all her vulnerability.

  ‘Charlie?’ His eyes narrow. ‘Charlie Pollington was Kathleen’s adored younger brother.’

  ‘And Kitty?’

  But she does not need to ask the question.

  ‘Kitty?’ The archivist leans back, assessing her properly now, and she wonders if the discovery of the letter wasn’t really so fortuitous.

  ‘Kitty was Kathleen Eaden.’

  Kathleen

  Twenty weeks. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. The kicks are getting stronger now. Less of a flutter; more of a poke.

  ‘Hello, little one.’ She smiles down at her stomach, trying to assess if she can spot a limb, if the surface has changed with the pressure. ‘Don’t try to come out yet. Just you stay in there, nice and warm.’

  When George visits her, she takes his broad hand and places it against her cotton nightdress.

  ‘Will I hurt it?’ He looks alarmed.

  ‘George. It’s your baby. Look, touch my skin.’ His fingers graze her pubic hair and he flushes. He has not touched her since James Caruthers sewed her up tight.

  ‘Just hold your hand there – no, there.’ She guides him until his palm warms the spot where the baby last kicked. He looks terrified, poor love, though she can understand it and only the regularity of the kicks and their increasing strength have reassured her that she can touch her stomach at all.

  ‘Did you feel it?’

  ‘Not sure … Not yet.’

  ‘Just be patient. Here, try stroking it. She likes that.’

  ‘She?’

  She blushes. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I’ve just got this feeling … that we’re having a girl.’

  ‘No you didn’t but I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  He looks bemused. ‘I’d be delighted. More than delighted.’ And he smiles.

  They wait: Kathleen fearful, as ever, that the kicks will stop; George noticeably nervous. He begins stroking her belly in clockwise circles, his flat, wide fingers surprising her, as ever, with their delicate touch.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ His eyes widen in surprise.

  ‘Did you feel it that time?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Definitely yes!’

  ‘And again?’

  ‘Yes. Goodness. That was strong.’

  ‘She is, isn’t she?’ She laughs.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies in delight, and she sees that he has tears in his eyes. ‘Yes, she most definitely is.’

  32

  To make the densely rich chocolate cake that is a Sachertorte you need only four ingredients. Oh, but what ingredients: dark chocolate, eggs, sugar, ground almonds – and for the ganache, more chocolate and double cream. It is just as well it keeps, for this is a cake to be eaten one sliver at a time. It is rich; it is decadent; and it is supremely grown-up.

  Karen feels almost calm by the time she goes to bed after an invigorating run and a soothing bath – though no food. She is in the mood for abstention after being cajoled into tasting her concoctions today.

  She is back on track. Her baked alaskas were superlative – Harriet’s description – and it suddenly becomes more important to gain her approval than Dan’s. Her Sachertorte also vied with Jenny’s for the best bake: the ganache glassily smooth, her piped chocolate elegant – surprising given that her writing is usually so girlish with its carefully curved lines and fat ‘a’s.

  She has not been able to resist purging h
erself this evening: emptying any remnants of her meringue and chocolate torte into the toilet of her en suite bathroom. Her throat burns in the aftermath but she has sought to soothe it, and her twisted stomach, with peppermint tea.

  She feels virtuous. Slipping beneath the crisp, ironed sheets, she tries to relax. If there are no slip-ups tomorrow, and she sees no reason why there should be, she might be on course to win. She falls asleep contemplating tomorrow’s challenge: a croquembouche, perhaps? Surely a tiramisu would be too easy? What about a form of patisserie involving a mousseline?

  When her mobile rings, she is in a deep sleep and it takes three rings for her to realise where the sound is coming from. She fumbles at her bedside table for her smartphone, which is vibrating as well as ringing, its white cover glowing with fluorescent light. The time shows 6.03.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice is uncharacteristically bleary.

  ‘Mrs Hammond?’ The voice at the other end is male and official.

  ‘Yes?’ She is awake now, adrenalin sending sleep packing. An unexpected call this early in the morning is never a good thing. She swings her legs out of the bed and sits up, her bottom perched on the edge of the mattress, poised for action.

  ‘It’s Sergeant Steve Tyler here, the custody officer from Southampton central police station. I’m ringing to inform you that your car, your Audi, registration plate AK61 2BU, has been stolen and badly damaged – “written off”, is how we’d put it.

  ‘I also need to inform you that your son Jake was driving it at the time.’

  ‘Jake?’ She is standing up now. ‘What? Is he all right? He’s not dead is he?’ Her voice rises in near-hysteria. Her bowels loosen, liquefied by panic.

  ‘No, he’s not dead, madam. He’s absolutely fine and, miraculously, no one was injured. But he is in custody here at the station.’

  ‘In custody?’

  ‘In the cells, madam. Don’t worry. He’s had his rights read to him and seen the duty solicitor. He’ll be interviewed later this morning.’

  ‘Interviewed?’ His lack of emotion means it takes a while for her to understand what he is saying. She is mortified by the extent to which she asks questions but it all seems so incomprehensible, they are automatic.