Nina was rendered speechless. This great clumsy oaf had no idea what he was talking about. Greg had been, in her opinion, an angel since the day he was born. Not perfect, but still an angel to her. And he was most definitely not an angel in heaven right now. She’d like to hit Bryn. Instead she clamped her palms together, concentrated on taking slow deep breaths, and making her mind a blank.
“Look. I’m sorry,” Bryn said, but Nina ignored him. The silence was painful.
“Okay,” Maudie said, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the air. “I’ve been thinking. If we put two and two together, we’ve got an art collection and a newspaper article. Perhaps the Mayor is a grand thief of artwork? Perhaps he is a swindler. Perhaps, oooooh, perhaps he married Miss Clapham or Mrs Potts secretly, so he could have their art collection. Oh, I know! He sold a few pictures without their consent for a paltry sum, not realising their worth. Or…”
“Too many two and twos,” Nina said. “I’m going home.”
She turned on her heel and strode along the beach, back to the village. Along one end of the playground, past Sweet Treats, whose signage creaked softly as she passed beneath it, and up Mrs Potts’ uneven path and into Mrs Potts’ ugly little house. She made it to her room before the floodgates opened, and even then her sobs were so distraught that Mrs Potts turned down the volume on her television to listen, deciding that the girl was better left to cry out whatever her problem was, and certain she had not brought someone home with her.
Nina fell asleep in a huddle on the top of the blankets, her hair covering her face, her feet still sandy from the beach. Her dreams were, inevitably, of Greg. They ran along the beach together, she watched while he climbed trees, they shared an enormous bowl of steamed chocolate pudding, he fell off his bike, and when she reached out to comfort him, Greg wasn’t there.
Chapter 31
c. AD 720, IRAQ: Arabs open a distillery in Baghdad to make rose water.
If Bryn could make a list, so could she, Nina decided as she stood, arms akimbo staring at the sugar bags stacked against the kitchen wall. The kitchen table was loaded with butter, and stacked along the narrow bench was cocoa, vanilla essence, red food colouring, coconut, cream of tartar, and gelatine. Everything she needed except for the milk, which Bryn had assured her would be kept in the big fridge at the shop and she could have it anytime she asked.
“It’s all there now?” Nina had said, feeling irritated with Bryn, with Miss Clapham, even with Queen Victoria who gazed impassively beyond the insurmountable pile of groceries.
“Only some of it,” Bryn said. “I’ve got extra milk coming in every day from now until the fete for your use. Miss Clapham ordered it before she left.”
He had left with a promise that he and Maudie would help wash the dishes, and Nina was left alone with only the crackling wood for company. Somehow she must get rid of all the sugar before Miss Clapham’s return. There was nothing for it but to cook. Faint nausea came over her at the thought. She gripped the table to steady herself.
“I won’t be letting a little hard work frighten me,” Nina said to Queen Victoria. She dragged the blackboard from behind the cupboards and set it on a chair. She wrote the date of the fete across the top, ignoring the savage wrench in her heart and the sharp intake of breath as she wrote. She listed all the sweets Maudie had ever mentioned, then flicked fat ticks alongside those she knew how to make. There were too many she hadn’t tried, and she worried about whether she should master a few more recipes or stick with the tried and true.
“What I really need to do,” she said, tapping the blackboard with her fingernails, “is cook this stuff on Mrs Potts’ stove.”
But first, she’d ask Maudie if she could use the café kitchen. There would be more space and less criticism. Perhaps Maudie might even help.
*
When the shop closed that afternoon, Nina walked over to see Maudie. Maudie listened to Nina’s request without saying anything. Nina began to wish she’d not intruded.
“I’ll show you out back,” Maudie said. “The stove is better than your fire, but still not enough for you to do a lot of cooking on. See?”
Nina saw. There was an oven. There were three microwaves. There was an industrial dishwasher.
“I could microwave, I suppose,” Nina said.
“Wouldn’t work,” Maudie interrupted. “Anyone would know that the sweets weren’t Miss Clapham’s tried and true recipes. You’ll need a proper stove top, not what we’ve got here.”
Nina could not bear to think about her significantly-narrowed options. No options at all, she thought miserably. It’s the fire or nothing.
“We don’t really cook, you see?” Maudie said. “We get food in,” – she waved at the walk-in freezer - “and we nuke it. The things we cook ourselves are baked in the oven. I’ll tell you what though. I’m sure Bryn would let you use the stove at home. It’s gas and all.”
“Ah, I couldn’t be asking Bryn,” Nina said. “It wouldn’t be right, me in his kitchen all hours of the night.”
“I’ll be there, and I could help you.”
“It’s a lot to ask,” Nina said. “You’ve already had a big day here.” She thought for a minute, then turned to leave. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll have a go at cooking the whole lot on the fire. Like Miss Clapham.” She hoped Maudie could not see her face reflected in the glass of the café. She did not aspire to be like Miss Clapham, and she never would. But if she promised faithfully to cook on the fire, then nobody could blame her if stocks were lower than expected at the fete.
Maudie shrugged. “Keep the idea in mind,” she said. “I know Bryn. He’d be happy to help. And so would I.”
Happy? Nina doubted it. Happy? It was not a word she’d use for the unfortunate Bryn.
*
Nina carried enough ingredients home to cook a little in the evening. Mrs Potts had grudgingly agreed to her request to use the stove. “You’ll be washing the dishes and scrubbing the floor,” she grumbled.
She cooked, then scrubbed and cleaned until 2am. “That was not a successful event,” Nina said when Mrs Potts clumped into the kitchen as the sun crept over the horizon. “This stove is too old. The elements can’t get hot enough. I’d rather cook on the fire.”
She realised as she said it that Mrs Potts had taken her words as an insult. But honestly, she said to the Queen, how can anyone compliment an old electric stove with the numbers rubbed from the dials and the elements twisted and uneven?
Somehow the day slid by. Old Tom came by to light the fire, but Nina had already lit it. He dumped the kindling into the box, looked around the kitchen and sighed. “Won’t you be doing a stand at the fete?” he said.
“I will,” Nina said. “I doubt it will be nearly as good as Miss Clapham’s though.”
“We’ll see,” Old Tom grunted as he took his coconut ice. “We’ll see.”
As he walked away, Nina nearly called out to him. She should have told him she wouldn’t be opening the shop the next day. Too bad if Miss Clapham was open every day of the week. She would not. She was in the habit of taking a day to rest, and nothing on earth would persuade her to skip it. Not even a village desperate for its campground to open again.
Chapter 32
c. AD 750, CHINA: licorice root, ginger, and ground nuts are filled with sugar for a tasty treat.
As Nina dusted the window ledge and peered through the window into the street beyond, Maudie looked up from raising the umbrellas over the coffee tables. She gave a cheery wave before nodding to a customer seated in a shaft of sunshine. Nina watched as Maudie took a notepad and pen from her pocket and proceeded to take the order. Her manner was strangely brisk and efficient.
“Odd,” Nina said aloud. “I didn’t realise they did table service.”
The customer shifted in his seat so his gaze rested squarely on Sweet Treats. Nina shifted a little – she wanted to see, not be seen.
Who was he? No doubt someone passing through, however a faint memo
ry niggled at the edge of her thoughts. Was he, or wasn’t he, the man she’d seen at the coffee shop the day Miss Clapham disappeared?
*
There was a tree in the backyard of Sweet Treats. It was a big tree, an old tree. No doubt it was a protected tree, Nina thought, as she stood within its shade. Little grey buds could be seen like fat clumps of semolina among the green-silver of its leaves. Soon the tree would burst into flower, its red flowers perfectly complemented by its leaves.
She shrugged herself out of her reverie. Until now, she’d quite enjoyed lighting the fire in the early morning, opening the shop at 10am, closing at 4pm, and spending one last hour completing the cleaning and preparing for the following day. But it was getting warmer, and she now kept all the doors and windows open when the fire was lit.
Nina swished the skirts of her dress and petticoats to allow the air to cool her legs. Only a fortnight ago, she had thought she looked ridiculous and had even struggled to put the bonnet on correctly; now it seemed second nature to climb into the split drawers, the shift, the multiple petticoats, the dress, and the apron. She still did not like the thick long stockings or the heavy boots, and if they’d been somewhere hidden, she’d have abandoned them completely.
It was three days after the incident of the unknown man in the coffee shop that Nina found herself needing cochineal in the middle of the day. She slipped out the door, looked to the right and the left, hitched her skirts and half-ran to Staceys.
“What a fetching sight,” Bryn said, standing aside for Nina to enter the store. “A fine Victorian woman showing her dainty ankles.”
“Ha!” Nina said. “Maybe I’m just a country girl. Can I talk to you?”
“Indeed you must, in the most dulcet of tones,” Bryn said. Nina looked at him carefully. What strange humour was he entertaining this time?
Bryn spoke from the corner of his mouth. “His Majesty. Marching up and down the aisle, ostensibly looking for something but quite obviously doing a little snooping.”
“His majesty?”
“The mayor. Say nothing you don’t want him to hear. I swear he has the ears of an elephant.”
“I just need some cochineal,” Nina said.
“That way,” Bryn said. “Essences and food colourings on the top shelf about halfway along.”
The Mayor moved towards the door while Bryn added cochineal to Sweet Treats’ account. She smiled and took the small bottle, then recognised the Mayor. ‘He’s the man I saw that first day at the café. And he has no manners,’ she thought. ‘He’s taking up the entire doorway.’
The Mayor stood aside to let her through the door, not quite removing himself from the narrow space. Her eyes widened in disbelief and she looked back at him as she regained her balance on the street. She could have sworn the Mayor had pressed against her. The ridiculous man winked.
“So you’re the young beauty entrusted to the care of Sweet Treats,” he said, as he eyed her up and down. “A vast improvement in the looks department. Let’s hope you cause a little less trouble than Miss Clapham.” He winked again and made that dreadful clicking sound at the back of his throat before turning on his heel and glaring at Bryn who had turned an unattractive shade of puce and stood a good ten centimetres taller than he usually did. “Don’t be standing there gawping, boy,” the Mayor snapped. “You have better things to do.”
Nina fled to the safety of Sweet Treats where she stood behind the counter, hands shaking. Heaven forbid the right honourable Laud ever enter her premises.
Two customers came in during the next fifteen minutes. Then Mrs Potts arrived with a pile of newspapers spilling from her arms.
“Old newspapers,” she said, in her gruff way. “You’ll want to be sharing them with those two over there.”
“Newspapers,” Nina said.
“Obviously.” Mrs Potts shoved them into Nina’s arms. “And I’ll have a quarter pound of humbugs.”
Nina weighed out the required sweets and scooped them into a bag. Mrs Potts had in her hand a crisp ten dollar note, but when Nina told her the price, she foraged in her bag for the right change.
This was going to take a long time. Nina kept a smile on her face, as Mrs Potts picked the coins from the depths of her bag.
Should she have let Mrs Potts have the sweets for free, she wondered. What would Miss Clapham have done? For good measure, she took a new bag and put in a couple of aniseed wheels, a scoop of granny mints, and a half-scoop of raspberry drops.
Finally, finally the transaction was complete. As Mrs Potts prepared to go, she waggled a finger at Nina. “Now, mind you use those papers wisely,” she said.
“I will,” Nina promised. “And thank you.”
But Mrs Potts was paying no attention. “Why,” she said. “Look at that fellow, bold as brass, sitting in Maudie’s café with his nose so far in the air it is a wonder he can see past himself. What I wouldn’t give to take one of those papers back from you and give him a whump with it. Right on the top of his head.”
“I met him,” Nina said. “He’s not very nice.”
“Do you think I could go out the back door?”
“If you want,” Nina said. “But you’d still have to go around to the front.”
“You’re right. I’ll just stay here for a bit,” Mrs Potts said. “It’s been a long while since I gazed on Miss Clapham’s images.”
Nina blinked. Was Mrs Potts referring to the paintings hanging on the wall? It seemed she was. Nina wished she knew more about the link between Mrs Potts and Miss Clapham. Would Mrs Potts think her nosey if she asked about their mutual interest in Victorian art?
When Mrs Potts abruptly straightened and disappeared to the back of the shop, Nina’s first instinct was to follow her. But a creak at the door brought her attention away from Mrs Potts and to the impatient rapping on the countertop of Laud Mayor’s bejewelled knuckles.
“You’ll be after saving the village, I dare say,” Laud Mayor said.
Nina shook her head. “How can I help you?” she said. Coals of fire, coals of fire. She repeated the mantra in her head. Coals of fire.
“You can help me by not aiding and abetting those two,” he said with an angry jerk of his head. “You need me, but I don’t need you.”
As he spoke, Nina stuffed a bag full with the freshest, biggest pieces of fudge that she had. “Here,” she said, holding out the bag. “For you.”
She’d like to have said that his attitude softened, but if anything it seemed to make him more aggressive. “You can’t sweet-talk me,” he said, “so don’t even try.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said to his departing back. “I just want to heap coals of fire.”
Why, Nina wondered, as she watched Laud Mayor stalk towards the beach, did everyone think she wanted to save the village? She surely hadn’t said anything. Did she look like she wanted to save the village?
Chapter 33
c. AD 754, JAPAN: Jian Zhen, a Buddhist monk, masks the flavour of his medicines with sugar.
Mrs Potts had used every brussel sprout from the generous pickings in her garden. Now she was onto cauliflower, and broccoli, and red and green cabbage.
“How dare you?” she snapped when Nina pushed aside her plate, with half her food untouched. “Waste not, want not.”
“I will not want,” Nina said. “I am full.” She felt as though she were five years old and struggling to eat everything on her plate having eaten her favourites first. The problem, though, was that this meal had no favourites. She was not full. Nor could she fall asleep at the table, as she had done as a child, to be carried upstairs to her own soft bed by her father.
She missed her father; she missed her mother. When she had fallen pregnant at fifteen, she had become fiercely independent. She had recognised the foolishness of the boy who was now the father of her child; she had recognised her own fallibility and determined she would not live within the limits of a conventional marriage simply because the people she knew, the circles she moved in, could
barely look an unwed mother, let alone a pregnant teenager, in the eye.
Her parents had begged her to stay with them, to not run away. They would help her care for the child. She could complete high school.
The offer was tempting but when she stood alongside them in church, listening to the congregation singing hymns that seemed to be irrelevant to her situation in life, when she imagined her mother ostracised and her father burdened with another mouth to feed even as he approached his retirement, she had come to a crashing resolution. She would leave. She had got herself in this predicament. She would live with the consequences.
Her parents had written regularly – two or three times a week. She had written them once every ten days. She provided them with a postal box address. They knew the city where she lived and that was all. When little Greg arrived, she sent one photograph of the baby swaddled in a blue blanket in the hospital crib, and then, with tears in her heart resolved to not write again.
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