Springtime at the Cider Kitchen

by Fay Keenan

  23

  At the same time as Caroline was getting better acquainted with the Old Somerset Hunt hounds and their master, Jonathan was preparing himself for something he hadn’t done in a very long time. Despite being back in the family firm for a little while now, he’d avoided this particular activity; it brought back too many memories of the times before the split in the family, when he, his brother and his father had been a cohesive team. But he didn’t want to keep avoiding it; it was time to immerse himself fully in the duty of being a cider producer and the weekly event that he was about to take part in was a huge signifier of that duty.

  As Jonathan walked into the main barn, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the more subdued lighting. Even during the day, the gloom was accentuated by the heavy, dark oak vats and the slightly lighter wooden joists that ran across the roof of the building. Although the shell of the barn these days was steel, the beams of the old one remained. He could hear the voices of Sophie Henderson and David Armitage, the Carter’s Cider chief tasters, coming from the gantry above the main vat where they were carrying out the first checks. He mounted the steps to join them.

  ‘Thought I’d sit in on this one, today, if that’s all right?’ Jonathan said as he reached them.

  ‘Of course,’ Sophie said. Tall, blonde and in her mid twenties, she’d been at Carter’s Cider since she left school after her A Levels. ‘It’s always nice to have a member of the family on board when we do this.’ She leaned over the side of the platform and pulled the handle that was attached to the hatch on top of the vat. ‘What brings you out here today?’

  ‘He’s not sat in on a tasting since he’s been back,’ Matthew’s voice, with just the slightest trace of amusement, came drifting up from the barn floor before he also ascended the gantry steps. ‘I suspect he wants a reminder of what the stuff tastes like!’

  ‘All we need is the old man and we’d have a full house,’ David muttered under his breath to Sophie. Both of them withdrew to the vat on the other side of the gantry to continue their tests, giving the brothers a little bit of space.

  Once he’d joined Jonathan, Matthew, immediately, assuming control, stepped forward and dipped the second glass jug from the tray into the top of the vat, then poured a glass from it. Pausing briefly, he held it out to his brother.

  Jonathan looked at the glass warily. ‘Are you sure you haven’t poisoned this?’

  ‘A year ago the thought might have crossed my mind.’ Matthew gave a tight smile, ‘but I wouldn’t want to ruin a hundred and twenty thousand pints just for you.’ Filling his own glass, he took a sip and watched as his brother did the same. It was the first taste of the family cider direct from the vats that Jonathan had taken since he’d returned to Little Somerby.

  ‘Christ, that’s good,’ Jonathan said. The sweetness of the blend, combined with the subtlest flavour from the barrels themselves was what Carter’s Cider was famous for, but this was truly something special. ‘I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s better than anything we produced when Dad was MD.’

  ‘Don’t let him hear you say that,’ Matthew replied. ‘He still has his doubts about the Dabinett Royal cross blend, even though it’s been a massive seller this year.’

  Jonathan smirked. ‘I never thought I’d hear you contradicting the old man’s wisdom when it came to apple blending.’ He glanced around the barn where the eight oak vats stood. ‘But I suppose things have changed a bit.’

  ‘Yes. They have.’

  Jonathan took another sip from his glass and then called across to Sophie and David. ‘Not that I’m an expert as yet, but this one seems to be coming along all right. Are you happy with it?’

  ‘As happy as can be expected,’ David, as ever, was deadpan. ‘The one in the right hand vat needs a bit more time, though.’

  Jonathan let the atmosphere of the place, the ceremony of the occasion, wash over him for a little longer. He remembered coming up here when he was much younger with Jack as well as Matthew, his father’s insistence on tasting the product come rain or shine every week when he was in charge. Even the time he slipped a disc in his back couldn’t keep him away from the vats. It was a history that Jonathan had run from, one he’d forsaken, but now one he desperately wanted to reclaim.

  The clunk of Matthew’s glass back onto the tray broke Jonathan out of his reverie. ‘I’d better get back to the office,’ Mathew said. ‘Got a lot on. I suspect you have, too.’ Without waiting for his brother’s reply, he jogged down the steps.

  Jonathan drained his glass and put it carefully back on the tray, too.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said to David and Sophie, who were apparently engrossed in checking one of the other vats. As he descended the steps back onto the barn floor, he was sure he didn’t imagine David’s gruff voice muttering ‘that’s a turn up for the books.’ David was right, he supposed. After all, this was somewhere that not so long ago he’d never imagined being either.

  24

  The day of the drag hunt meet dawned bright and surprisingly chilly for October with a slight frost glittering in the trees and grass outside. As Caroline pulled back her living room curtains, she mutinously found herself hoping that at least one of those over privileged twats would slip on the damp grass and injure themselves. She’d agreed to host the meet because Jonathan, and later Matthew, had told her in no uncertain terms that it was a part of the county’s heritage that she needed to cash in on. Her protests about it had fallen on deaf ears. She was rapidly beginning to realise that the outwardly amiable Carter bothers had cores of steel when it came to furthering the interests of the family firm. Very little got in their way; certainly not the manager of their restaurant.

  That was the problem with this arrangement, she thought. She might have autonomy over the business to a certain extent, and the hiring and firing rights for the staff, but when it came to decisions she didn’t agree with, she was still just a consultant manager. Jonathan and Matthew had made that perfectly clear in the last conversation they’d had with her before the issue was concluded. She’d just have to suck her principles up along with the mulled cider, it seemed.

  After grabbing a quick shower and throwing on some skinny jeans and a jumper (she was buggered if she was going to dress up for the occasion), Caroline headed down to the kitchen to check the supplies. It wasn’t just the hunt meet today; she had a full complement of tables for lunch and an almost full diary for the evening. She admitted grudgingly that the lunch bookings were probably because of the timing of the hunt meet, eleven o’clock, and some people had obviously decided to make a date of it, but even so, it still rankled.

  When she got into the kitchen she checked the dates on the fridge stock. This was something Gino usually did, but she’d given him the day off to go and visit his grandfather, who was recovering in Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton after an operation. Emma had agreed to come in and cover the lunchtime and evening services and put the finishing touches on the finger foods for the meet. The stock inside the fridge was all fine but as she turned back to the steel preparation counter, she gasped. There, obviously having been out all night, was the entire supply of crayfish tails and dishes of homemade mayonnaise to go with them. And they should have been put in the fridge overnight. It wasn’t exactly tropical in the kitchen, being October, but Caroline knew the temperature certainly wouldn’t have been down to the legal minimum for a professional fridge.

  She was immediately torn; if Gino had been here and the seafood had been for her own party, she’d have chucked the lot out immediately; it was too much of a risk to serve them in the restaurant. However, there was no time to redo them and this left a huge gap in the refreshments. She could call Emma now, get her in an hour early to knock up something else, but she’d relied on her sous chef enough lately and the girl deserved a lie in. She could get Gino back in but it didn’t seem fair under the circumstances.

  Before she could think about it any further, the restaurant’s landline rang and she hurried out of the kitchen to a
nswer it. As she was entering a booking for the evening on The Cider Kitchen’s computer system, she noticed that some of the tables in the restaurant hadn’t been re-laid, so as soon as she had the booking sorted, she got on with that.

  A little while later, the space outside the restaurant was filling with assembled foot followers, horses and a small group of animal rights protesters handing out leaflets. It was all highly civilised. Even the hounds milling around were behaving themselves. Caroline found herself grudgingly admiring the scene, as riders in tweed coats, khaki coats and the odd red one checked girths, touched the peaks of their riding hats in acknowledgement of the Master and answered questions from curious first time spectators. Once again, she felt a twinge of longing to have some time to grab her sketch pad and capture the scene but she had far too much to do. A tray of mulled cider was being passed around and in a moment the food would come out from the kitchen.

  It was only then that Caroline remembered the crayfish. To her horror, she saw Sasha, her youngest waitress, heading out of the restaurant with the tray in her hands. Hemmed in by hunt supporters, though, she wouldn’t reach Sasha in time to take the tray off her. As she walked as quickly as she could through the crowd, her view of Sasha temporarily obscured, she heard a scream and a crash. Breaking through at last she saw that Rob, her new acquaintance and master of the Old Somerset hounds, had dismounted from his horse and was striding into the middle of a melee of jaws and tails. Caroline picked up her pace and found Sasha holding an empty platter, the contents of which was now being polished off by most of the hounds.

  ‘I’m sorry, Caroline,’ Sasha stammered, pink with embarrassment. ‘They’re so huge. One of them stuck its nose up my skirt as I came out with the snacks and I jumped a mile.’

  ‘Bertie, Misty, Thunder, leave!’ Rob’s voice cut through Sasha’s apologies. The hounds instantly fell away.

  ‘Thank you,’ Caroline said as Rob grinned apologetically.

  ‘They’re total opportunists,’ he said. He turned to Sasha. ‘Are you all right, love? They can’t resist sniffing anything new and I’m afraid you were too nice to pass up with those snacks on the tray.’

  Sasha nodded. ‘I’m OK, thanks. Hadn’t realised how big they are up close!’ She looked regretfully at the mess on the floor. ‘Good job you did loads of extra cheese and biscuits. They looked nice, too.’

  ‘No harm done,’ Caroline said. Her heart was still pounding at the thought that any of the crayfish might have been served to the people at the meet.

  ‘We’ll be ready for the off in a few minutes,’ Rob called, as his phone pinged with a message. ‘Drink up everyone. Jason’s finished laying the trail.’

  There was a flurry of activity as the riders finished their cider and snacks. Even Caroline, with her vehement anti blood sport principles, had to admit they looked rather glorious against the backdrop of the orchards and hills as they finally set off. Watching them go as the crowd thinned out she spotted Jonathan chatting to a couple of bystanders. As if summoned by her gaze, he turned and smiled at her. He really was heart breaking when he did that, she thought. But she didn’t have time to chat; the lunchtime service wouldn’t sort itself and she needed to change into something smarter now the hunt had left.

  *

  Later that day, Caroline was just readying the restaurant for the evening service when Meredith walked in. Dressed simply in a white shirt and straight black skirt with her dark hair in a long plait down her back, her face was flushed from the cold afternoon air.

  ‘You survived then?’ Caroline said as Meredith closed the restaurant door to keep out the chill. Since their heart to heart about Meredith’s new sibling, she and Meredith had developed a close relationship and although she fundamentally disagreed with Meredith joining in with the hunt, she liked her enough to overlook it. It was good to see Meredith looking so much happier about things, too. She hadn’t asked what the outcome of her dinner with Matthew and Anna had been, but from Meredith’s demeanour, she assumed it had all worked out well.

  ‘Yes, and so did Rosa, thankfully. It’s her first time out for a while.’

  ‘She’s all, er, recovered, then?’ Caroline didn’t know the first thing about horses; the hunt meet was the closest she’d been to a horse barring the odd donkey ride at the seaside as a kid. The proximity of quite so many animals since she’d moved to the country was something she was still getting used to. Scrumpy and Solly were one thing, but some of the more rural aspects of living in Somerset, including being stopped by cows being herded down the main road in Little Somerby on occasion, were quite surprising.

  ‘She’s fine.’ Meredith paused. ‘Which is more than I can say for quite a few of the hounds.’

  Caroline’s stomach fluttered. ‘What was wrong with them?’ She asked carefully.

  ‘Well, I’m not really sure,’ Meredith called from the kitchen, where she’d gone to collect her white apron. ‘About two hours in, suddenly half the pack stopped following the scent and, no word of a lie, all ran off and, er, relieved themselves. The smell was horrendous. Not even Rob could get them back on track for about ten minutes. We kind of lost momentum after that and decided to call it a day. Rob was really worried.’

  ‘Really?’ Caroline kept her voice carefully neutral. Inside she was panicking, wondering if she was going to get lumbered with a huge vet’s bill for stomach pumping hounds poisoned by off seafood. ‘I wonder what caused that.’

  ‘Who can say?’ Meredith replied. ‘They’re pretty sneaky when they’re let out across country. Could have eaten anything out there. But it’s odd that it happened so quickly. I’m sure they’ll be fine after a good rest, though.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Many bookings tonight?’ Meredith paused, looking curiously at Caroline. ‘Are you all right?’

  Caroline pulled herself together, trying not to think about profits potentially being handed over for sick dogs. ‘I’m fine. Just six tables pre-booked tonight. First one in at seven.’

  ‘OK then. I’ll set up.’ Meredith loped off to the kitchen.

  Caroline sagged back against the table she was standing by. Then she jumped a mile as her mobile phone buzzed in the pocket of her trousers. It was a text from Jonathan.

  OK to pop in later? Need to discuss something.

  *

  Later, to Jonathan, meant nearly eleven o’clock that evening. Caroline couldn’t help noticing his dishevelled casual clothing and slightly ruffled hair. She hoped it was a conscious fashion choice and not caused by the fact that he’d just rolled out of someone else’s bed. Not that she cared, of course, she reminded herself hastily.

  Catching her eye, he signalled a ‘no rush’ gesture and settled down on one of the stools by the bar. Sasha, working a split shift today, smiled winningly at him and set to making him a coffee while he waited. Why was it that all females, no matter how old they were, immediately seemed to melt in Jonathan’s presence? Caroline thought. Except for her, of course. Savagely, she clashed the cutlery together on the plates she’d just cleared from a table, earning herself a shocked glance from the elderly couple sat to her left. Smiling apologetically, she hurried out to the kitchen with the dishes and hoped that the last customers would finish their meals soon so that she could see what Jonathan wanted and then get to bed.

  Eventually they all left and she closed the till, intending to shove the cash drawer in the safe before she locked up. Jonathan had his head bowed, looking at the screen of his mobile phone as she approached.

  ‘Can I get you another coffee?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Only if you’re going to join me,’ he replied.

  Caroline made herself a heavy-on-the-milk latte and then made Jonathan a flat white; she didn’t want to be up all night. She pushed his cup over to him and then came round the other side of the bar, taking a seat on the stool next to him.

  ‘So is this a social call?’ she asked as Jonathan put his phone back in his shirt pocket.

  ‘Not exactly,’
Jonathan said. ‘I just wanted to check something with you.’

  ‘What?’ Caroline’s stomach lurched. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure.’ Jonathan let the silence hang between them. ‘Meredith mentioned something to me this afternoon when she got back from the meet, and it’s been on my mind.’

  The subdued lighting turned Jonathan’s normally cerulean eyes a darker shade of blue, giving them a depth that Caroline instantly felt nervous of. Stalling for time, she took another sip of her coffee. ‘Oh yes?’ She tried to sound noncommittal.

  ‘Yes. She said they had to cut the chase short this afternoon after an incident with the hounds. Virtually the whole pack had to be picked up and taken back to the kennels after they started shitting everywhere. Rob’s only just settled them for the night, apparently, and he thought he’d have to get the vet out earlier this evening.’ Jonathan’s gaze was unflinching; his eyes never moved from hers as he spoke. In another context, this would be disturbingly sexy, thought Caroline,

  ‘That’s awful,’ Caroline stammered. Rob had been so welcoming to her when she’d visited the kennels and despite believing that hunting was fundamentally anachronistic and wrong, she’d never have wished any harm to the hounds. ‘Does… does he know what might have happened?’

  Jonathan let the pause hang between them again as he took a sip of his coffee. ‘He thinks they might have been affected by something they ate. A bout of canine food poisoning. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?’

  Caroline choked on her latte. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Well, the only thing I can think of was that tray of seafood that Sasha dropped on the ground.’ Jonathan kept looking at her. ‘Given your, er, objections to hunting, it seems rather coincidental that food meant for the meet might be the cause of a few upset stomachs.’