by JP Wright
Along with the vile junket, the May Day festival traditionally sees the first of that year's baking contests, the first chance for bitter rivals to see who has come out of the winter hibernation with fire in their belly, prepared to lavish unlimited attention and first class ingredients on their creations in order to win. There are ranks of jam jars too, and pies, but the blue riband event is always 'cake, filled and iced'. This year, as in many previous, the competition was well-supported, with entries from the Vicar's wife (never enough egg, and a suspicion that she uses marg rather than butter); the Doctor's wife (in the past disqualified for using ready-made icing; now she swears she is clean); the landlady of the King's Head (oddly parsimonious with the booze when baking); a team effort from the 'Marsh Row Ladies', a group of single or semi-detached mothers living in the cluster of new boxes squeezed between village and copse, whom Mother pointedly insists on calling the 'Marsh Row Women'; and even an offering from the eccentric gentleman in the mustard cords who recently purchased one of the better houses in the village but whose cake did not rise to the occasion. All these could never hope to be anything better than runners-up, as the true competition was and always will be between Mother and Mrs Baker. This year, as in the past, it was close, but the judges decided that Mother's cake, dark and moist, dense with ground almond and finished with a flawless shell of chocolate, was too continental, more suited to accompany coffee than tea; they had chosen instead Mrs Baker's perfectly decent but predictable butter-iced mocha.
Despite this rivalry, and because whichever won it was clear that the two of them were in a league of their own, Mother and Mrs Baker were on good terms. Perhaps Mrs Baker was particularly kindly disposed towards Mother because, following on from her May Day victory here in Hapeney Fen, she had found continued success with the same recipe at the fêtes of surrounding villages, and most recently at the harvest festival. Only the season-closing Vicar’s Invitational remained and she would have a clean sweep: hearing a rumour that Mother had been seen experimentally grating squash into a mixing bowl, she was still confident that her traditional approach would win the day, but perhaps she thought that she could put pressure on Kitty and me to reveal Mother's plans. Whatever the reasons for her cordiality, it was fortunate for us because, Kitty having rattled the door thoroughly for a couple of minutes, a window opened on the first floor and Mrs Baker popped her head out to call, “Give me a minute, girls, and I'll be down.”
Although she was yawning pointedly when she opened the door, and tucking a few stray wiry grey hairs back into her bun, she did not complain about being disturbed, but ushered us inside the shop, and locked the door behind us. “Now,” she said, clapping her big red hands together, “What can I do for you girls?”
Of course Kitty began to prattle on about the cake, Marcus, the cat, other suspects (with a dark glance at me), but I cut across her with “There was a problem with the cake, an accident, so Mother sent us to fetch some for tea, but ...” I looked around at the empty shelves and waved my hands weakly, finishing, “I'm sorry we didn't call ahead.”
“Well, accidents will happen, even in the best families,” muttered Mrs Baker, with what I thought was an un-called-for hint of satisfaction, “Cake or cakes is it you need? Never mind – whichever it was, we have neither here. Call me yesterday and I'd have some today; call me this morning and I'll have some tomorrow,” she continued unhelpfully. I turned to leave. Kitty was picking at the little paper clock.
“We'll tell Mother,” I sighed.
“I'm sure Mother will manage,” piped up the verruca, standing in my way, “After all, she is ever such a good cook. If you can't help, it's okay.” She watched Mrs B over my shoulder, shrewdly gauging her response, “She can do so much more than just cakes; no doubt we shall have something sophisticated, can-apes or some such.” The effect was a little spoiled by her mispronunciation, but she had snared her prey.
“To have with tea was it?” the Baker asked.
“Yes ma'am.”
“When are you expected back?”
“By four,” I said, turning away from the door again. The pimple grinned and continued toying with the clock. “Well, tea is planned for four, but of course there is the getting ready.”
“No time to lose then!” exclaimed Mrs B, rubbing her hands together briskly. “We will make scones – perfect with tea, and people can add their own butter or cream and jam.” My sister may be a blight on my life, but when she uses her witch's powers for good, I almost approve of her.
“Butter is no good on a scone,” she pronounced, pushing her luck, “It is too slippery. The best way is this: first a very thin layer of jam to provide grip – preferably blackcurrant for intensity; strawberry is too weak, raspberry too seedy; then a good layer of cream, evenly spread; then a lot of jam, then a blob of cream; then a tiny bit of jam on top. If it is possible to eat without getting a jammy nose, then you really aren't trying hard enough.”
“Scones would be fine, Mrs Baker,” I put in hastily, giving the zit a 'shut-up' glance. “Perhaps I shall be able to help?”
“I will need you to,” she replied, “Many cooks make shortbread. Light fingers spoil the broth for the devil you know.” With which mysterious pronouncements she led us past the counter and through to the kitchen behind.
It was more like a laundry or factory than a kitchen. Mother's kitchen is a mess of spice-racks, egg-holders, knife-blocks, antique clocks, paper-weights, souvenir plates, swimming certificates, recipe books, twine, glue, and half-done knitting projects. Her oven is a cranky enamelled antique, whose door needs to be slammed to keep it closed, and there are half a dozen mixers, blenders and juicers, fryers, rice-cookers and waffle irons that have been used once and then pushed to the back of a cupboard. This kitchen was clear and clean. There were two giant mixers that looked like top-loading washing machines; there was a long stainless steel work-surface; there was a pair of gas burners; there were two racks of trays on castors, used to wheel bread and cakes into the shop. The only piece that looked out of place was an ancient cast-iron pie press: everything else was polished and gleaming. One entire wall was taken up by the gigantic oven, which was divided into a dozen compartments, each with its own heavy door, so that it looked something like a chest of draws, something like a robot, something like a crocodile: it was pretty scary. Even though it had not been used since the early morning – Mrs B was up at dawn every morning – it still gave out a palpable heat, and the intoxicating smell of yeast.
Mrs B fussed about with various knobs and dials and the oven began to make quiet pinking noises. “Lift down that kettle” she commanded, waving behind her as she slid baking trays into the oven, “and set it on the heat.” So I did, and then felt a fool when K quietly lifted it off again, filled it with water, and replaced it. I was too weak with thirst to do anything but watch the kettle, but the pest became increasingly restless as we waited for it to boil; before it whistled she piped up,
“I think I should take a turn around the village – check the horse trough, see whether the mill has turned up any bodies, see whether anyone suspicious has been seen about, any fresh soil turned in the graveyard …” Her eyes flashed with morbid excitement. Happy to have her out of the way, I muttered assent as she pinged out of the door.
“She's a lively one,” said Mrs B, in that way people have of disapproving of other people's kids. “Lively” means bloody nuisance. “Curious” means bloody ugly. “Thoughtful” means simple. “Interesting” means not right in the head. All of which could be fairly said about Kitty, but only by me. I tried to explain about the weekend, Mother's guests, and the pimple's detective enthusiasm.
“Well, she'll find plenty stirring in Hapeney Fen,” said Mrs B. This despite the complete lack of any sign of life as we had walked into the village. “There was a circus up in town last week, and Mrs Buckle the Doctor's wife had a pie stolen. I reckon more likely those Marsh Lane boys than the circus people, and in any case it wouldn't have been a pie worth stealing, though she was very prou
d of having added a quince from her own tree don-cha-know.”
The kettle finished boiling and I was bustled out of the way for the business of teapot rinsing, tea-leaf scooping and water pouring, though I could see nothing difficult or mysterious about it. Oh tea! Oh nectar! At last. By that stage I would have drunk it straight from the pot, but I was forced to wait: “Patience – let it brew a while,” the Baker told me, as I looked about for cups and milk. “She'll not find any bodies in the mill race though,” she continued, “There's not been any water through there since they drug out old Farmer Tickle, and that was when I were a girl. Your grandfather would have knowed him; one of his tenants, no doubt.”
“I never heard about that!” I exclaimed, “Was it suicide?”
Mrs Baker chuckled, “Oh, I don't know, dear. Don't think they'd tell a little girl like me. I'd reckon he was drunk – all his family's known for it. But mebbe there was some rumour, because for sure us children used to scare us silly out in the woods with stories about his restless soul climbing up out of that mill race and stalking about. About that time, there was a couple of kiddies had wandered off or been lost up at Hapeney Magna, so we said that Farmer Tickle's ghost had got 'em, and that made us feel safer somehow – he was our village ghost, so we had nothing to fear.”
There are good reasons why children are afraid of woods and tell tales of ghosts; good reasons why there is one house in every village that every school-child knows you must run past whilst holding your breath because there is a witch or a devil living there. Despite these precautions, children go missing: it is not new, they always have. Only, in towns, I suppose, there is no time for playground tradition to build up a protective wall, and some kids have no sense, or are isolated.
These are the kinds of dark thoughts one has when deprived of tea for too long. Finally, it was brewed and poured, and I was just settling against the work-surface to sip it when Mrs Baker slurped hers down, slapped her dry hands together and declared, “Enough lounging – let's get on! Scones for how many was it then?”
“For ten,” I said, after a quick count, allowing for myself and Kitty too, and assuming Mother's late guest would arrive.
“We'll do two dozen then,” said Mrs B, and began dragging equipment from a cupboard. She heaved up onto the work-surface a huge mixing bowl, a smaller one, and a big metal scoop. The last one she thrust at me, instructing “You'll find the flour through there; get us a full scoop of the self-raising.”
Through the door she indicated was a narrow store-room, with another door at the far end that I supposed opened onto the back yard of the buildings, where occasionally bleeping vans delivering baker's goods jousted with trucks from the brewery supplying the pub next door.
There were three big plastic bins – just the same as rubbish bins – labelled 'Str.', 'P', and 'SR'. It was clear enough which I needed, but it was strange scooping food out of a bin. On shelves above were stacks of other containers. I opened a couple to find raisins, sunflower seeds, and a dark brown spice. Maybe cinnamon or clove. Which reminded me: “Mrs Baker?”
“Mmm?”
“What is mace?”
“Jar top left my love.”
Sure enough, on the highest shelf, a little tangled nest nestled in a jar. Funny things. I brought the jar back into the kitchen, with my scoop of flour. “Is your Mother needin' some for a cake?” the crafty old woman asked me, eager for any hint I might drop about Mother's baking plans.
“No,” I said, perhaps a little too pleased to have disappointed her, “it's in my recipe for school. I have to make lasagne, and it says to make a béchamel with mace, clove, bay, and something else … I have not read the whole thing yet,” I admitted, “I guess it goes in with the meat.”
“Betcha-mel is a fancy kind of white sauce,” chuckled Mrs B, tipping my scoop of flour into her bowl while I flushed and studied the mace. Not so clever now, eh? “You'll steep your bits and bobs in the milk, and then use that to make the sauce with the fat and the flour.” That made more sense. When I got a chance, I decided, I would read through the whole thing properly.
“May I borrow some?” I asked, in my best-behaved voice, rattling the mace in its jar.
“You only need one good piece. Put the rest back, and while you're at it, go in the fridge for some butter.” The fridge was a huge, rattling old thing, the size of a wardrobe, big enough to get shut inside (yes, even with my big bum – ha ha) – if it were not for the slabs of butter, tubs of marg, vats of cream, racks of eggs and ranks of milk cartons that filled it. Mother's new fridge was the opposite. It purred where this one growled, shivered where this one shuddered, gleamed where this was chipped and dented. It was full of carefully prepared delicacies, rather than raw ingredients. For all its heavy door and scary noises, I rather preferred this old monster.
“Bring the baking powder too” called its mistress, “– tub just above the flour,” and just as I got to the door she added, “and the caster sugar … and an egg. Your Mother'll be wantin’ the luxury version I reckon.” I juggled butter, egg and sugar to the work-surface, where my tea was getting cold and lonely, and went back again for the baking powder, and then was sent back again (“Caster sugar, dear, not icing. And salt. And bring another egg why not?”).
By the time I returned, Mrs B had broken a pack of butter into the flour. She added a handful of sugar and a pinch of salt and with a tickling motion, her chubby fingers a blur, combined it all together into fine crumbs. It was effortless, and done in a minute.
“I had Italian food once,” she grunted, “This was when my Peter were alive. He was always one to try new things. I'm not really, not me. We went to the Little Venice in town there, on the high street …” She lifted a handful of crumbs and let them run, yellow, light and even, through her fingers. “If you're planning jam and cream, you won't be wanting fruit in there then?” she asked. I said I supposed not: scone etiquette is not really on my syllabus. “The evenin' started badly,” she said, returning to her story, whilst glancing at the oven and laying one floury hand against its hot surface, apparently not content to trust the dials, “It started badly when I stepped into a great big puddle on the pavement outside; then they wanted to give us wine in a jug, and a candle in a wine bottle; then the starter was melon with bacon wrapped around it.”
“Was is prosciutto?” I asked.
“No, it was horrible,” replied Mrs B, who did not speak much Italian. “Get them eggs beaten and add some milk.”
“How many mills?” I asked, all professional, anxious to make up for my earlier display of ignorance. I glanced about for a measuring jug whilst cracking the eggs into the smaller bowl – proud that no shell got into it – and found a whisk to beat them. Light on her feet despite her girth, Mrs B snatched the milk from the work-surface and sloshed some into my bowl, glanced at the carton, then added a few drops more.
“Quarter pint.” she nodded. I whisked it in, and then she whisked it away and dumped the lot into her bowl. “Your hands clean?” I shook my head. “Then get them in the sink.” So I washed them, though the blackberry stains stayed, and then she let me make the dough. I felt like a kid making mud pies at first, feeling the slimy egg and milk between my fingers and the flour pushing up under my nails. By the time it was mixed into a sticky ball, there was a layer covering my hands like gloves. Mrs B threw in a bit more flour, and spread a handful more onto the worktop. I was just starting to enjoy the feel of the soft dough when her hand dipped into the bowl and scooped out the ball.
“Don't bully it – it's not bread,” she said, and with three brisk movements flattened my sticky ball into a smooth, thick slab with her hefty rolling pin. I cut as many circles as I could; she scraped up the remaining dough and, 1-2-3, it was back on the surface to cut again. Without seeming to move, my instructor (I was learning away like mad, though I hate to admit it) appeared at my side with two hot baking trays, onto which she flipped our scones. There was a scrap of dough left, which she rolled in one hand and slapped onto
a tray, “One for the cooks,” she winked, and with a clang and a scrape the whole lot was in the oven. “There,” she puffed, “They'll be done before the oven knows they're in there, as my Peter use’ta say.” She clapped her hands together to release a great cloud of flour. “Get those sticky hands in the sink again,” she ordered.
While I washed my hands, Mrs B piled the bowls and whisk and jug into the sink; by the time I had washed them too, she had poured away my tea, with barely a sip taken. As I washed the cups, quietly furious with the old bat, she put the kettle on the gas again (thank goodness!) saying “Time for another one before them scones get ready. I wonder where your little sister has got to.”
I was rather wondering too, knowing that even with her imagination the village's distractions were limited. Time was rushing by: Mother would be waiting, tea had to be served; and I had to get down to some work. While we were waiting – again – for the tea to brew, I asked Mrs Baker, “Do you happen to have any jam?”, knowing with some certainty that Mother did not, because I had finished off all but the last few scrapings on a piece of toast the day before, and might have forgotten to mention it to her. I followed the old lady into her store-room, where she knelt down, grumbling under her breath about her knees, to rummage in the back of a cupboard. Now that, I thought with some satisfaction, is a fat arse! But then, at this rate, I will be twice her size when I am her age. Some rule of geometric progression applies.
“I ‘ave some strawberry I had put by for the old folk. The Vicar will be disappointed, but I suppose he can be modified with something or other else,” she said, passing out two huge jars. “I am afraid your sister will not be satisfied, but blackcurrant is too foreign fancy for me: for jam, English jam, it ‘as to be strawberry.” I nodded. Whatever – at this point, so long as it was jam, I did not care. “Now,” said Mrs B, heaving herself up, “you'll be wanting cream too. I've always plenty.”
“Thank-you,” I said, staggering a little as she piled two tubs of clotted cream on top of the jam-jars. And I just then remembered, “Eggs. Mother said she needed more eggs too.”
“I suppose she'll be meanin' to bake another cake,” said Mrs B slyly. “She don't like to be beaten, your Mother.” I said that I supposed so and that I supposed not, and hurried to put down the jam and cream before she added eggs to the stack. Then she sent me to find a couple of bags from the shop, and one of those special cake boxes to put the scones in. “Speaking of foreign and fancy,” she called, “I wondered whether your mother's planning to enter this 'ik-zotic bakes' category at the Vicar’s Invitational?” I really had no idea. “Because your talking about Italian food put me in mind of some little biscuits they tried to give us at the end of that awful meal. Almondy little things, they would have been good enough with a cup of coffee, for those who like it. But they wanted us to dunk them in their native fire-water. Spoiling of a good biscuit, dunkin' it in that stuff. But you know, they are getting awfully popular again, those little almondy things, and I fancy they would do me well at the festival. What do you think?”
“Macaron?” I asked, knowing as I said it that it was not quite right.
“Is that what the Italians call them? No dear, that is their pasta. One of the more sensible ones. At least it stays on the fork long enough to eat.”
“Amaretti?” I tried again.
“If you say so,” she conceded. “Anyway, mention it to your mother won't you? I shan't make all that effort to be in competition with just the Doctor’s wife, the boozy old girl from next door, and Colonel Mustard, who couldn't get a balloon to rise leave alone a loaf.”
This talk of biscuits was not helping my hunger pangs. Not to mention the golden smell of baking scone that wafted from the oven as Mrs B opened it. Of course, my suffering was not to end there: just as I had lifted all the supplies into the bags; just as the scones had come out of the oven, and Mrs B had split the extra one and buttered it; just as the tea had brewed and was being poured, the door pinged, and in leapt my nemesis, the wicked little sister, the pimple, the pustule, the zit. She was grubbier than ever. Her knees were muddy, her elbows were scuffed, she had dirt under her finger-nails, even some in her hair, which was all over her face.
“Jeezus, K!”
“Well, you had best get going,” said the Baker, her voice muffled by buttered scone, swilling my tea down the sink and thrusting the box of scones at Kitty, “Time and tea wait for no woman you know.” She bustled us out through the door, bumped it shut with her hip, and retreated to her kitchen to munch the rest of her cook's share and savour her tea.
I did not ask Kitty what the hell she had been up to, and she was unusually quiet. In any case, we had enough to do carrying Mother's provisions. K had the scones, and a box of eggs in a bag. I had the heavy jars of jam, and the cream, and my little curl of mace. “We'll go back through the woods,” I told her.
“Why? Do we have to?”
“Why? Because it's quicker. And because I said so, earthworm.” Which was a fair-enough comment given her filthy condition, even though it was not really quicker but avoided the lodge, which was my real reason for going that way. Kitty stopped arguing and followed, which was odd, and should have warned me that something was up, but as it was I was happy to have her quiet so I could concentrate on carrying the heavy jam and walking and trying not to sweat. It was getting hazy and buggy by then and even coming out of the hot kitchen was hardly a relief, but I kept up a rapid pace, with K dragging behind me, as we walked up the new road and round the back of the boxes there to the path. Though the houses had been built on most of the marsh (into which it is to be hoped they will sink before long), there was still a boggy patch to cross, picking our way carefully over soggy planks that shifted worryingly under our feet, before we reached the shadow of the woods, where the combination of the slow stream, the shade of the trees and the moist warmth of the hazy afternoon combined to invite swarms of bugs to attack us. What they were doing before we got there, I do not know, but they greeted us as though they had been waiting all this time just for our company, and they were thirsty too.
The stream, what there was of it, smelled brackish or brockish – anyway, like something had died in it further upstream. In spring, the stream is busy and full and brings freshness to the wood from the meadow above, scattering reflections of new leaves, dancing about and making her ticklish way over the roots and rocks. In high summer, she tends to sulk or languish in the heat, and dallies in little pools to entice with a low voice the feet of strangers to cool themselves. Now, at the dead end of the season, the nymph had become world-weary and wise to the way of the satyrs, her bright green dresses were holed and their bark chewed by insects, her hips were a little more padded and her scent muskier, and the river had shrunk back into the ground, leaving only a trickle and a muddy ditch that sucked at shoes and bred those vile bugs that were bothering me so insistently. K, they seemed to leave alone. Perhaps she was grubby enough that they could not pick her out against the natural background.
“You smell like a badger,” I told her, “The bugs don't want to go near you.”
“Yeah, they prefer your B.O,” she countered, adding, “I'm going to check the den. Hold this.” And she thrust the box of scones at me, which I barely held on to, and trotted off up the path swinging her bag of eggs. I trudged on behind her, following the path along the river bank. There was a place further up where the bank was low, and flattish rocks had been hefted into the river, generations ago, to provide a crossing that was dry even when the river was high in spring, and from there the path cuts straight across to pop out of the copse near the stile, unless you take the turning up-hill to where the den is.
A few birds shuttled from branch to branch, shouting the odds, though not with the energy of springtime. They would be thinking of leaving soon, back to Africa. For those birds, it suddenly occurred to me, our carefully tended gardens and tamed English countryside are as savage a gladiatorial arena as the tropical jungle that haunts the dreams of retired impe
rialists. Probably more so: this is where they breed, so I suppose this is where the stakes are highest. Our imagined heart of darkness is their winter sunshine break.
I should have enjoyed the peace and contemplation more, and who knows what truths I might have discovered, if it were not for the bugs and trying to stop the scones from slipping about in their box, and worrying about the handles of the plastic bag breaking, and not having a hand free to push my hair off my face, where it was sticking. I was sweaty, I am afraid (Gentle reader, you may shudder at will). Also, I felt like there was a spider in my hair, perhaps scouting for web-building potential, and I could do nothing about it. In any case, only a few minutes had passed – I had just reached the crossing place – when the heavy calm was broken by a crashing, a breaking of twigs, and thumping footsteps on the leafy ground. Down the hill came Kitty, wide-eyed and wild-haired, with her skinny arms flailing about, the eggs in their bag in desperate danger. She looked like an electric shock made flesh as she vaulted the stream, barely touching the stones, closely followed by three boys, who just splashed through the mud, careless of the dirty water over-topping their trainers. Correction: two boys and a girl, I realised as they hesitated, seeing me. They were around Kitty's age, I supposed. Hard to tell. They were quite small, but seemed dense: concentrated by anger and meanness. Grandfather used to say that tomatoes and lettuces should grow outside, because they needed a little hardship to give them flavour. The tomatoes were okay, but the lettuce was always bitter and tough. Perhaps he was making the best of a bad situation – Grandmother Tickham had not let him spend money on a new greenhouse after the old one rotted and fell down. Bits of glass turn up in the vegetable beds even now, which makes weeding risky.
One of the boys was straw-haired, with almost no eyebrows, and he had on glasses that were pressed close to his face so that his pale eyes were magnified. It made him look crazy. The girl was dark-haired, doughy, with no promise of beauty to come. Her skin was coarse, the pores open, and her mouth was puckered like an old woman's. The other boy was smaller, with a nasty little ratty face and a smear of dried blood across his mouth. He was carrying a stick.
They did not pause for long, but they did continue their advance more cautiously. As Kitty backed into me I could feel her trembling, her knobbly knees rattling inside her red jeans.
I will not tell you what those kids said. The girl, the girl in particular, was vile. There are words that even I would not use to describe my little sister. I understood from their screeching and swearing that they were angry with Kitty, and they explained in broad metaphorical terms what they planned to do to her, and generously included me. The girl had the mouth, but she and the pale, crazy-looking one kept nudging the rat-boy forward, and they began to encourage him in their own primitive language, “Go on Wayne, do 'er”, “Whack 'em” and so on.
This is not something for which my education is supposed to prepare me. Even in times past, while the boys were slogging about a muddy rugby field learning the brutal skills and building the character they would need to face down an angry group of natives with nothing but a walking stick and a command of classical literature, even then us girls would have been trained in nothing more deadly than needle-point. Now, I suppose, we are being trained to take our place in the modern world, which is clean, built-up, recycled, computerised, wireless, mapped to the millimetre, entirely under control, and no longer contains feral natives. Except that it does: here they were in front of me, snarling in anglo-saxon and brandishing rude weapons.
I pushed Kitty behind me, and dumped the box of precious scones on the path. As rat-boy took another step forward, the girl's hand in his back, I stepped forward too, and bent my face down to almost meet his. A strange voice came out of me, something like Mother at her most queenly. “What do you think you are doing?” it said, and then “You will drop that silly stick, young man, before somebody gets hurt.” As if that had not been his main intention. He scowled up at me, red-eyed. “And as for you, Miss … what is your name?”
“Chelsey.” Of course it was.
From their tomb beneath the church and their plots under the grass around it, generations of fearsome women, maiden aunts and matrons, spoke through me, without consulting me. “You should be ashamed, being involved in this. And you should be ashamed of your filthy mouth. Fancy lowering yourself to the level of these boys.”
It was no stoop for her. “Drat you,” she said, or something like it, but petulantly, and beginning to back away. Wayne was backing away too. It may have been the voice; on the other hand, it may have been the fork that I had plucked, almost without thinking, from Kitty's back pocket and was holding between the boy's face and mine, the prongs threatening his eyes. Later, the pest claimed it had been my B.O. that had sent them scuttling off, but for now she was quiet, pale and grateful enough as Wayne and Chelsey shuffled around us, glaring but keeping their distance, and dragging with them the crazy-looking boy, whose pasty face was blank, whose odd eyes seemed focused elsewhere, on an image of the violence he had been promised. Or perhaps it was just his glasses.
As they shambled away down the hill, I checked our supplies. A couple of scones were dented, but not seriously damaged. Amazingly, only one egg was cracked. Kitty flung it furiously after the track-suited backs of her retreating enemies, but fortunately it splattered harmlessly against a tree. I did not fancy re-starting those hostilities. The voice of my ancestors had left me, and without its support I felt pretty shaky. Unlike the pimple, who seemed to recover her usual oblivious cheerfulness almost immediately.
“What the hell was all that about?” I asked her, as we crossed the stream with our burdens. She shrugged and muttered something. I rather fancied she had started the whole business: ratty Wayne had certainly been hit. If it was Kitty who had done it, I felt rather proud of her. My own reaction seemed ridiculous: surely, the appropriate response would have been sudden, unanswerable violence, rather than matronly scolding. I could see myself, in khaki shorts (surely a disaster so far as my bum goes), with a mob pressing in around me, hungry for vengeance after the local mission had stolen their children, or farmer stolen their watering hole, waving my fork and chiding them for not dressing properly for the occasion. Lucky for me (and those natives) that we do not do that whole empire-building thing anymore. We encourage self-build now. That way, if it all goes wrong, it is not our fault. All we did was bulldoze the ground to get them started.
By the time we came out of the woods, the sky was completely clouded over. It was almost as gloomy and oppressive out in the open as it had been under the trees. Coming back with our burdens the way we had left, through the kitchen garden, we found Mother in the kitchen surrounded by a knot of staff, all babbling at once: she glanced up, looking rather drawn. I rather fancied she might need the fork to hold them at bay. “Scones,” I said, dumping them on the table, and “Jam,” thump, “cream, and eggs,” more carefully.
Without waiting for her thanks, I retreated to my bedroom to try to concentrate on my work, and to find to my dismay on re-reading the directions for my practical assessment that not only was lasagne a more complicated dish than I had thought, but also that I was expected to make three courses.
Chapter 5