Lessons in Duck Hunting

by Jayne Buxton

  After we’ve been seated at our table for a few minutes, Alan seems to loosen up a little. It’s as if all that waiting, for me, and then our table, was preventing him from getting on with enjoying the evening. Perhaps he’d been worried that we’d be given a table adjacent to the swinging kitchen doors, thus discrediting his prior claim to some sort of special status based on his connections with the fireplaces.

  Alan chooses lobster bisque followed by the duck (funny that). The bisque is obviously out of the question for me, so I opt for a goat cheese salad followed by swordfish. The room is heaving, and extremely noisy, as I’d hoped it would be. This is the perfect atmosphere for a date that isn’t really.

  We spend a while talking about my work and how I got into it. (Alan, it turns out, is more of a jam man.) Then Alan tells me how he stumbled upon his passion for fireplaces while apprenticing in the family antiques business. He proceeded to sink all of an inheritance from his grandmother into his first shop, an investment that, judging by his various addresses, has paid off handsomely.

  By the time the duck and the swordfish have arrived, we’ve moved on to children. Beyond what I learned at Nick and Kate’s a couple of weeks ago, I know very little about them except their names and ages: Georgia and Bella, ages thirteen and eleven. Now, as Alan talks about them—their passion for horses, Georgia’s first disco, Bella’s long-awaited captaincy of the netball team being thwarted by a broken wrist—he seems to come alive, one muscle at a time. With each story, the waving of the arms gets slightly more untamed, the smile wider and more unabashed.

  This man really adores his children, I think. They are everything to him. Despite my better judgment, I can’t resist taking the conversation into emotional territory.

  “Alan, do you miss them? Seeing them every day I mean?”

  It’s as if I’ve uncorked a champagne bottle. “My God yes!” he exclaims. “It is the worst part of the divorce. You know, Elizabeth didn’t work so people always assumed that she was the one who did everything for the girls. All the practical stuff and all the nurturing stuff too. I remember some people came to the house for lunch and they saw all these big leather photo albums lined up on our bookshelves. They took one down and it happened to be a sort of story about Georgia’s eighth year, with funny quotes and birthday cards stuck in between the photos. And one of these people said something like ‘I bet your Mummy worked hard on this’ and the girls just said ‘No, Daddy does all this with us.’ I do. I did. It nearly kills me not to be able to do it every day.”

  Then he goes quiet. “You know, it was horrible when my marriage broke up. But when I look back I can see where it went wrong. Now I’m actually relieved to be free of the tension and the arguments. But I find it really hard to let go of the family thing.”

  Here is a man who would probably never say, “I just don’t want to be married anymore” even if he fell out of love with you. A lot of men would be perfectly happy to be newly ensconced in a chic little bachelor flat off Eaton Square while their ex-wives deal with the kitchen of life, but he’s not one of them. In a lot of ways he’s a perfect catch. Kind, loving, successful entrepreneur, not unattractive. So why is it I can’t bring myself to look at him with anything other than warmth, and a mild sense of solidarity arising out of our shared experience?

  I could tell him how much I miss the family thing too, but I feel the need to lighten the mood, so I opt for a jovial remark instead.

  “Just think though, Alan. At least there’s a good chance you won’t have to be there when Georgia brings home her first boyfriend and he turns out to be a spotty, insolent and wholly unsuitable fifteen-year-old with no academic prospects whatsoever. You could be spared that.”

  Alan takes the cue to lighten up, and we both bemoan our futures as parents of teenage girls. Then I launch into a story about my own father’s horror upon meeting my first ever boyfriend, a wannabe rock star called Ben. We pass the remaining hour of the meal on this level, floating safely on the surface of all the shared agony, angst and sympathy we might have delved into.

  I am relieved when Alan takes the bill unhesitatingly. Not because I wouldn’t have been perfectly happy to pay my share, but because that way we avoid all the uncomfortable waiting and shuffling and debating about how much tip to leave that inevitably accompany the splitting of a bill.

  We emerge from The Bluebird into the March drizzle, and Alan starts to look left and right for a taxi he can put me into. Miraculously, and defying the truism that taxis seem to go into hiding when it rains, one pulls up in front of us almost immediately.

  Then Alan does something that takes me completely by surprise. There I am expecting another spot of amateurish breathing in my ear when he takes me by the shoulders (causing my Uplifter to shift uncomfortably up my ribs) and plants a firm, not dispassionate kiss on my lips.

  “Ally, you are really quite a girl. I’d love to see you again. I’ll call you.”

  I mumble something about having had a lovely time and collapse into the back of the taxi. As the taxi spins itself around and heads off toward the suburbs, he stands on the curb for a moment, then hails his own taxi and heads off toward Eaton Place and his two bedroom flat.

  Damn, damn, damn. What do I do now, Marina? I’m horribly out of practice at this. It’s easy enough to get rid of a man you despise, but not one you quite like but have no romantic feelings for. How can I possibly say no when he calls and asks me out to the theater or the movies? How can I possibly go, knowing that each evening spent with him will take us one step closer to the ultimate excruciating, ego-bruising rejection followed by well-intentioned but interfering calls from my brother?

  If the rest of the ducks turn out to be this much trouble I’m going to have to seriously reconsider this whole business of re-launching my love life.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE HISTORY OF MARMALADE

  • Eating marmalade on toast with a cup of tea a modern habit.

  • Until 1700, a bowl of ale with some toast floating in it considered the most warming start to the day. Then came the tea revolution, and toast with tea.

  • Most people think marmalade invented by Janet Keiller. Wrong. Hails from Portugal.

  • First appeared in England and Scotland in wooden boxes, a solid sugary substance made from quinces. Fifteenth century. Keillers didn’t invent, but did commercialize. Nineteenth century.

  • Fortnum & Mason: nineteen different marmalades; Sainsbury’s: twenty; Waitrose: fifteen.

  • English enthusiasm for marmalade in its full variety and mouth-watering delectability apparently unquenchable. I’ve picked up bits and pieces of this during my eighteen months at the Cottage Garden Food Company. The rest has come from a small treasure by C. Anne Wilson called The Book of Marmalade, which I rushed out to purchase as soon as I found out about the Radio Five guest spot, having scoured the Internet for the reading lists recommended by marmalade-related sites (of which there are many hundreds, by the way). I rose at five a.m. to get some prep done before Jack and Millie woke up, and have spent the rest of the day reading furiously between meetings and phone calls. I’m damned if I’m going to allow myself to look a fool within earshot of hundreds of thousands of Radio Five devotees; and I’m damned if I’m going to let Anna go on thinking that I’m marketing’s equivalent of a drifter, someone who just turns up for work every day but doesn’t give a stuff for her product. If I can fake my commitment to a marketing plan for landing a husband I can certainly simulate the air of a passionate marmalade expert.

  Actually, the whole experience has been something of a surprise to me. I’d not known there was so much to know, for a start. And I’d forgotten how much fun it can be to try to get to grips with something new. Like a challenge, or a test.

  My fellow guests on the show are Hilary Jessop, curator of the food section in the current exhibit of Edwardian Life at the V&A, Penny Alsthrop, a woman from the West Country renowned for her marmalade concoctions, including a (reputedly) very special Marmala
de Queen Pudding, and Frederick Thomas, a Paddington Bear enthusiast and collector. We are all seated around a table in the studio waiting for the show to air, our bulky headsets giving us the appearance of aliens. I’ve done one radio interview before (a snippet about new blusher colors during London Fashion Week while I was at Chanel) but that was a long time ago so I’m nervous today. So is Frederick Thomas, who keeps adjusting his headgear and staring rather wild-eyed at the technical paraphernalia behind me. Penny Alsthrop, on the other hand, is leaning back in her chair with her legs fully extended, as if in wait for tea with her next-door neighbor rather than an interview on a radio show with 400,000 listeners.

  We all tense up a little as we hear the countdown to air time, then our host, Danny Gray, kicks off with his introduction. (You’ll never guess what just happened to me on the way in . . . wasn’t that a great show yesterday? . . . my guests today are . . .) I listen attentively to this, suspecting that he’s going to turn to me with the first question. I am, after all, the generalist in the group, and it makes sense to give a broad picture of marmalade before moving on to the finer details like how on earth Paddington Bear first came across marmalade in darkest Peru of all places.

  “So here we are, on March tenth, which in case you hadn’t realized listeners, has been National Marmalade Day since 1995. Ally James, why March the tenth? Why not June the fifth, for example?”

  I clear my throat, which is exactly what I’d not wanted to do. Radio pros never have to clear their throats; they just launch casually in without even taking a deep breath. “March tenth 1995 was chosen because it marked the five hundredth anniversary of the earliest port record of the arrival of Portuguese marmalade in Britain in 1495. Marmalade had probably been coming in for some time before that in small quantities, but unnoticed by customs men.” God, I sound as stiff as the chair back I’m resting against, and about as interesting.

  “Wait a minute, Ally. I thought we English invented marmalade. Isn’t that true?”

  “Well, actually it’s not. The earliest port records indicate that marmalade, which was originally made from quinces or marmelos in Portuguese, came from Portugal. A book published in the sixteenth century tells of the Moors of North Africa teaching the Portuguese to gobble up marmelada, so it seems that Arab food and customs were the original source of the confection in Portugal.”

  “What a shame. There I was thinking the English—or at the very least the Scots—had given the world a great gift,” says Danny, still looking at me. It’s clear I’m supposed to respond to this statement too. I wonder if the other guests are getting irritated by my apparent dominance of the first few minutes of the show.

  “Well, you’re not entirely wrong,” I say, my voice loosening up now. “The most famous story about marmalade links it with the Scottish: Mary Queen of Scots was supposedly given some to combat her seasickness on the crossing from Calais to Scotland in 1561. And Janet Keiller of Dundee was one of the first, as far as we know, to make chunky marmalade from Seville oranges, which is like the marmalade we know today. The Scots, by the way, also transferred marmalade to a new mealtime position: whereas it used to be served as a sweet food at the end of dinner, the Scots began serving it at breakfast time in the early eighteenth century.”

  Then I’m off the hook for a bit, while Danny turns to Hilary to establish whether the Edwardians really were as keen on their marmalade as we’ve read. They were, apparently; Hilary recounts that when marmalade was in its heyday in the Edwardian era, Wilkin of Tiptree issued price lists describing no fewer than 27 marmalades. Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, the Queen of Russia and the Queen of Greece, allegedly had supplies sent from Wilkins of Tiptree in Essex. And Frank Cooper’s company in Oxford still has marmalade that was taken on Scott’s expedition to the North Pole in 1911, discovered in perfect condition in 1980.

  Hilary is then asked to give a couple of examples of Edwardian marmalade recipes before Danny turns to Frederick and asks him to recount the more humorous of the references to marmalade in Michael Bond’s Paddington stories. I’m pleased when he mentions the time when Paddington goes to the theater and drops all his marmalade sandwiches onto the people in the stalls below his box, as this is a personal favorite of Millie’s.

  Then Danny puts Frederick on the spot by asking him how a bear from Peru would have come across marmalade, which, he says, doesn’t sound like a staple of the South American diet. Frederick looks momentarily stunned. After all, he’s an expert on Paddington, not marmalade. When a look of panic begins to take over his face, I can’t resist jumping in.

  “Actually, Danny, the South Americans probably caught the marmalade habit from their colonizers, the Spanish and the Portuguese. And in the nineteenth century there was quite a famous quince marmalade factory in Cuba, which is after all not too far from Peru.”

  Frederick looks grateful. Hilary, on the other hand, looks somewhat miffed. She’d probably read that part of The Book of Marmalade too. Penny just looks impatient; she’s not yet had a chance to speak.

  When Penny does get her chance, it proves difficult to shut her up. As she recounts every last detail of her recipe, as well as the story of how she came upon it in the first place, I can see that Danny is desperate for a way out. There are some people that just don’t pick up on conversational cues, even on radio shows, and Penny is one of them. In the end, Danny is forced to cut her off quite abruptly, and quickly turns to me with a question before she can get started again.

  “Ally!” he shouts eagerly. “Can you convince our listeners why they should all go out and buy a jar of marmalade today, this National Marmalade Day. I mean, what’s so special about an orange preserve with little bits in it?”

  I’ve thought about this one, so I’m glad he’s asked me.

  “Well, Danny, Noel Coward once said, ‘Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade,’ implying that marmalade was something other than a glorious treat itself. But I think he was wrong. To me marmalade is far from ordinary. It’s mysterious, sumptuous, scintillating and amusing all at once, which is surely the reason that it pops up so often in popular culture. Think of Lady Marmalade (whom you could accuse of many things, but never dullness), and the sixties pop group The Marmalades, who had a number one hit with the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” not to mention the famous breakfast scene in Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein, which inspired the naming of passthemarmalade, the website devoted to the celebration of British horror films.”

  Danny doesn’t yet look bored, so I carry on. “Marmalade is so many things. It’s an agent of fantasy and hallucination—think of those marmalade skies—and a cure for all sorts of ills, with a reputation as a stomachic, and a cure for coughs and colds. And I bet you didn’t know that it’s an aphrodisiac: Mary used it to help her try to conceive a child with Philip of Spain in the 1500s. Is there any other food about which you could say all this? Noel Coward aside, we British, at least, appreciate marmalade for the marvelous thing it is.”

  “Well, what more can we say?” effuses Danny. “I can see that you people at Cottage Garden Foods certainly love your marmalade, as do all my other guests here today. I think they might have inspired me as well. I’m off to find a bit of toast and marmalade to have with my cup of tea. In the meantime, thanks to all my guests for an enlightening half hour.”

  I’m quite pleased with my little speech, and I can tell Danny is too. It summed up the show rather nicely, saving him the trouble. He gives me a friendly wink and a wave as I take off my headphones and leave the studio with the others.

  And as I leave I’m thinking about two things. First (and it’s the first time this has crossed my mind), I think how lucky I am to be working with a product with such a fascinating history and such a hold over the hearts and breakfast tables of the British people. How much better to spend one’s days dreaming up ways of keeping the great marmalade tradition alive, or worrying about how to declump marmalade zest for that matter, than designing p
ackaging for yet another blusher at £21.99. Today, at least, I don’t feel like a product manager working for a boring food company off the M4. I feel more like someone with a genuine stake in a splendid tradition.

  And the second thing I’m thinking is: I wonder if Danny Gray is married?

  CHAPTER 20

  LIGHTING

  Last night, after I got home from work, Jack and Millie and I went shopping for new school shoes. I don’t know why, but this is something I’ve never been able to delegate. I don’t mind if Jill has to buy socks for them, or the odd birthday present for a party they have to attend, but school shoes are somehow different. School shoes, jeans, nice little sweaters—these are things a mother should buy with her children, aren’t they? It’s not just that Jill has suspect taste (which, unfortunately, she has) but that whatever the merits of the taste, it should be mine.

  When we got home there was a message from Anna Wyatt congratulating me on my performance on Danny Gray’s show. She described it as inspired; said she’d had no idea there was so much to know about marmalade, or that I knew so much. Said I’d really put Cottage Garden Foods on the map, and wouldn’t Frank Cooper’s and Robinsons be steaming. There was also a message from Alan, thanking me for a nice evening and promising to call me again.

  If I didn’t have so much else on my mind I would probably sit quietly gloating about Anna’s message and worrying about Alan’s. But I’ve quite a day ahead. I plan to buy all the uniforms for Jack and Millie’s new school. Then I’ve got to plan for this evening’s packaging and branding party, the prospect of which fills me with a peculiar combination of dread and curiosity. But more imminent and frightening than even this, I have an electrician coming at eleven a.m.

  On the face of it, Gary is an ideal duck. But this morning, I’m far from sure that using him for a practice run is a good idea. I know so little about him. He’s not like Alan, who is connected with my brother and therefore highly unlikely to be a nutcase or a trainspotter. But what do I know about Gary except that he has a sexy smile and a knack with transformers?