The Art of Baking Blind (21 page)

They had left the party early. Later that night, she had heard him making a furtive call on his mobile. He had killed the call when she entered, and she then had to endure the repeated ping of a barrage of text messages.

‘Someone wants to get hold of you,' she had cracked.

He had feigned nonchalance. ‘I expect one of the girls has sat on their phone by mistake.' And then, with a lie so brazen she wondered if she was imagining things: ‘No, it's a wrong number.'

Today, however, she is putting aside her fears about her relationship. Nigel has already completed a ten-mile run so that he can be at home for the festivities and this acceptance of the need to attend a lavish family meal fills her with hope. Despite his reference to her weight, she has overheard her daughters speculate about her having become lighter. Quite unintentionally, her waistbands have grown looser. The stress of her deteriorating relationship and her participation in the competition have meant she has become obsessed with baking – but not with eating. Excessive familiarity with sugar and butter means she no longer craves it. Sometimes, she is too exhausted, or preoccupied, to want to eat much of the food.

But not today.

‘This looks gorgeous, Mum.' Lizzie is all smiles as they sit down. ‘I haven't eaten like this since Christmas.'

‘Me neither. Not sure what the French would make of this: they'd definitely approve of the meat, but perhaps just served with the green beans,' pronounces Emma, dissecting the meal.

‘Well, you can always just eat them.' Jenny refuses to be ruffled. ‘But I made the parsnips especially for you.'

‘Oh no, I'm going to devour it all.' Emma gives the laugh of a slender girl whose metabolism allows her to consume vast amounts of food without losing her litheness.

‘What about you, Dad?' she chivvies her father. ‘Can you drop the diet for one day? Let yourself be just a little bit bad?'

There is a moment of tense silence. Oh, just let him help himself to whatever passes muster and don't draw attention to the decadence of the food.

Nigel looks up from the lamb he is carving and smiles graciously. ‘The Paris marathon's only a week away, Em. So, no, I'm not going to undo everything I've been working on with, what would you call it, a “blow-out”. Your mother's gone to a huge effort, and I'm sure we're all very grateful, but that doesn't mean I have to be pressurised into eating all this food.'

His words discolour the atmosphere like a dirty paintbrush dipped in a jar of clean water. For once, Emma is momentarily silenced and contents herself with piling carrots on to her plate. Lizzie looks to her mother for reassurance. Jenny passes her the red wine gravy, her face a study in calmness.

‘No one's pressurising you to eat anything, darling. We all understand about the marathon. I just wanted to cook a celebratory meal and people can pick and choose as they like.'

As if to demonstrate, she begins to place beans and carrots on her plate alongside the lamb and its claret-red gravy. But she feels constrained from reaching for her favourite part of the feast, the roast potatoes and parsnips, so aware is she of the need not to antagonise her husband, to pass judgement on his choices, or invite comment on hers.

The girls, meanwhile, cannot help observing what their father has chosen: two slices of lamb, the fat meticulously removed and discarded at the side of the plate, like the innards of a mouse the cat has tortured; a single new potato, naked in its creamy purity; and a pile of green beans and spring greens, proclaiming their health-giving benefits with their aggressive darkness.

‘Is that all you're having, Dad?' Emma cannot refrain from passing comment.

‘For the moment, yes. Some of us don't feel the need to gorge ourselves.'

The colour rises in Emma's cheeks and Jenny knows she should spring to her defence, to point out that no one is over-indulging – or, if they are, well, isn't that part of the point of a feast.

But Emma is more than capable of sticking up for herself.

‘I'm not gorging myself, Dad; I'm just enjoying Mum's cooking. And I'm interested in your diet. Really. I'm amazed that you can put in your distances on such a limited intake of food.'

Nigel continues to chew, his jaw working meticulously on what must be the only tough piece of meat in the joint or a particularly stringy spring green. The delay increases the tension but when he speaks he remains good-humoured; the
pater familias
indulging his youngsters.

‘Well, Emma, I'm trying to reduce my body weight so that I can run faster. Elite runners are on average 10 to 15 per cent lighter than non-runners – so, for me, that means being under eleven stone: something I'm still half a stone off which, with the marathon a week away, I won't achieve now.

‘For every pound I lose, I will gain two seconds a mile. So, if I lose ten pounds, I'll gain twenty seconds. Over the length of a marathon that means shaving nine minutes off my time.'

Emma ponders this information, finishing her mouthful.

‘Well, you've clearly lost a lot, Dad, and that's very commendable. But surely starving yourself, or significantly reducing your calorific intake, this close to the race is dangerous?'

Nigel leans back in his chair, and feigns amusement.

‘Surprisingly, I've found no evidence for that.' He smiles and his tone becomes more patronising as he explains his theory. ‘Every pound I lose is going to help my race time and give me a new personal best. So I'm going to carry on trying to reduce my weight as much as I can.'

‘I just wondered if this was the most effective way.' Emma doesn't know when to stop. ‘Aren't you meant to carb load in the week running up to a race? You know you need those complex carbs to give you a slow release of energy. If you dramatically reduce the amount of carbs you eat, you risk lower glycogen stores – and hitting the wall.'

A vein throbs on Nigel's temple. His voice becomes tight.

‘With all due respect, I think I know a little more about this subject than you. Yes, I know I need carbohydrates but I will carb load just before the race – not, as you're suggesting, a week before. When I do eat carbs, they will be slow-release complex ones: porridge, for instance. Not roast potatoes and parsnips saturated in fat or the rest of the stodge your mother insists on putting on the table.'

He pushes back his chair and glowers at the assembled women. Jenny, seething at the criticism of her food but wary of antagonising him, looks at her plate, concentrating on chewing a mouthful of food she cannot swallow. Lizzie blinks like a startled rabbit. Only Emma returns his gaze unperturbed. Implacable.

Eventually, he breaks the silence.

‘Well, well done for ruining the meal, Emma. There's nothing quite like destroying someone's appetite by analysing what they're eating and criticising their food choices. You need to bear that in mind, my girl.'

He waits for an apology.

‘OK, Dad.' Emma assumes a sunniness that suggests she is innocent of any involvement in the argument. ‘Don't let's have a ruined meal, though. Mum's made her Mrs Eaden's trifle, or there's Sachertorte and simnel cake?'

The look on her face could be interpreted as a taunt, though Jenny cannot believe Emma is quite so reckless as to do this. Her father turns puce; the vein on his forehead pronounced as the blood rushes to his face.

‘Are you intent on mocking me?' He rises from the table, thrusting back the chair, all pretence at even-handedness abandoned. ‘Why the hell would I want cream or chocolate if I can't even eat a roast potato?'

For a moment, his face is that of a petulant child forbidden chocolate at a party and Jenny feels a rush of sympathy. Then he dispels it.

‘I'm going out.'

He turns on his heel, banging the dining room door behind him. They wait then hear the front door slam and his feet pound over the gravel. A moment later, his Volvo drives off, wheels screeching in his hurry to depart.

His wife and daughters look at one another.

‘Another parsnip, Lizzie?' Emma tries to lighten the mood.

‘Oh, Emma, how could you?' Jenny exudes frustration.

Immediately, Lizzie rushes to her side. ‘Don't cry, Mum. This is all delicious. It's not your fault Daddy's become obsessive – and so bad-tempered.' She glances at the door as if fearing he can hear her. ‘Really, it's not.'

Jenny gives a furious smile and wipes her watering eyes with an ironed linen napkin. ‘It's all right, darling.' She rubs at the mascara smear.

Emma sits mute, pain etched across her face. Slowly she rises, joins her mother and sister and puts her arms around them.

‘I'm sorry, Mum.' The apology is heartfelt. ‘I didn't mean to antagonise – but really, he's talking bollocks.'

‘Emma.'

‘I'm sorry, Mum, but he is. He's like some male anorexic. And he's not going to have the power to complete that marathon. Serves him bloody right, too.'

Lizzie gives a guilty snigger. ‘Perhaps that will do him good. Make him realise he's being excessive – and bumptious. And make him realise he's bloody lucky to have Mum, and her food.'

Jenny sits there, held by her daughters, taking in the sweet smell of their hair, a smell she found intoxicating when they were children but in which she can now rarely indulge. She wants to hold this moment for ever: the feeling of being cosseted that she experienced in the arms of her own mother, but which has been absent as an adult.

She holds the tableau a moment longer then, self-conscious, forces herself to break it.

‘Talking of food, I don't really feel like any more main course – but would either of you like some pudding?'

‘You bet!' Emma whirls away from her, clearing plates with an expertise gained from Saturday work as a waitress. Lizzie continues to hold her, but looks up into her face and smiles. Together they stack plates, wipe mats, and clear away cruets with a quiet efficiency born of familiarity with each other and their home.

Only later, when the dishwasher has been stacked and the cakes placed back in their tins – Lizzie cutting a last sliver; Em stealing a last mouthful – do they refer to their errant father.

‘Does he often storm off like that, Mum?' Emma broaches the subject.

‘Oh, only very rarely,' is Jenny's less than truthful reply.

‘Where does he go to?'

‘Oh – for a run, I should think.'

‘With Gabby Arkwright?'

She stops washing the roasting pan.

‘Well, sometimes, yes.'

‘He's seeing rather a lot of her, isn't he, Mum?'

‘Yes.' And in that syllable there is admission, and a warning to go no further.

‘I don't want to talk about it. I don't want a hug.' She flaps the girls away with her wet hands, then turns her back and plunges her reddened fingers back into the washing-up bowl.

Lizzie and Emma stand nonplussed; a childhood certainty dismantled with the most casual of questions. On the kitchen table, the trifle disintegrates, thick whipped cream slumping into a pool of custard, kirsch-soaked cherries and sodden sponge.

 

 

Kathleen

The third time it happened, she had half expected it. And yet it had still come as a surprise.

What made it even harder was that she had done everything she could to prevent it. As soon as she had known, at six weeks, that she was pregnant she had taken to her bed, as instructed, and for eight lonely weeks she had lain there, straining to listen, through her open window, to the chatter of shoppers, the click of heels on the King's Road nearby.

‘UTTAM!' Mr Caruthers, with his love of acronyms, had been insistent. ‘That's the treatment for habitual abortions.'

‘UTTAM?' she had queried, not daring to question his other terminology – with its associations of illegality, back streets and murder.

‘Up to toilet and meals. Apart from that, you must rest. And rest properly. Let's give this little fellow' – he did not seem to consider that the baby could be a girl – ‘the best chance we can, shall we?'

She did not like to say that she had tried to do that all along.

There had been progesterone injections, as well. Administered by Julie, who came weekly to plunge a needle into her buttocks. And an instruction that George should refrain from his husbandly duties.

‘No marital relations, I'm afraid. No sexual intercourse.' James Caruthers had been explicit.

‘No, no. Of course not.' George, attending the consultation, had flushed puce.

‘I know all this is rather a pain' – the doctor had sounded languid – ‘but it's imperative for Mrs Eaden – and for baby.'

‘What about my book – and my baking?' she had ventured as he had doled out instructions. ‘I'm supposed to finish it by May: that's less than four months away.'

He had looked at her sternly.

‘I'm afraid building up your baby is your work now.'

She must have looked crestfallen for he softened.

‘You can write from your bed but no baking. No getting up and going down to the kitchen, or even sitting at a desk. You must remain propped up in your bed or largely supine. Your baby's health comes first.'

She had smiled at that. She had long since stopped viewing herself as an individual, as someone whose needs should be considered while she got on with the vital work of carrying a baby. She was a vessel whose sole role was to nurture a new life. And she was happy with that. What could be more important than keeping a child safe, especially an unborn one? Nothing was more important, or, for her, it seemed, more difficult.

Still, she was going to write. Propped against four pillows, her notepad perched on her knees, she honed her descriptions of succulent pies and the lightest of pastries. Mrs Jennings helped: baking to her instructions and bringing the results straight up to the bedroom to discuss pitfalls.