The Art of Baking Blind (26 page)

‘God knows. Force of habit, perhaps. He's been doing marathons for years. Residual competitiveness? He needs to compete against me at something! A desire to keep his paunch in check? Well, he's barely done that.' She gives a sardonic laugh. ‘I can't fathom him out.'

There is a brief silence while Emma wonders whether she is meant to offer reassurance or comment on the state of their marriage, but Gabby sails on, oblivious. ‘Your father, however, has shown steadfast determination. He's been a delight to train with. He knows what he wants, and he goes and gets it.' She gives Emma's arm another little squeeze.

Emma feels bleak. She wants to extricate her arm but knows that to do this would be pointed; and draw attention to Gabby's confidences. Yet not to do so feels increasingly disloyal to Jenny.

‘You sound like you've been training quite a bit with Dad?'

‘Three times a week. He's my protégé. I'm going to get him into triathlons next. He tells me he's a good swimmer.'

‘Dad?' Emma laughs at a childhood recollection. ‘He's a bit splashy. Empties half the swimming pool.' She gains some comfort from this exclusive knowledge.

‘Really? That surprises me. Well, of course, he's more svelte than when you were a child, and impressively well-coordinated.'

Emma feels she has been put back in her place. She engineers removing her arm by pretending to search for a tissue, digging away in the pocket of her jeans until she unearths a particularly crusty one. Gabby glances at it with barely disguised disdain.

Blowing her nose, she takes out her phone and notices the missed call.

‘Oh, look, Mum's phoned. I wonder what she wanted. Can I call her back now or will she be baking?' She looks at her watch; does the calculation. ‘I think she'll be busy.' Thumb flicking, she checks her texts.

Gabby appears unruffled. ‘They're chalk and cheese, aren't they really, your parents? I mean, your mother's so creative but her hobbies are essentially sedentary – whereas your father's so active.'

Emma remonstrates. ‘I don't think that's fair. Mum does lots of walking and she's hugely active in village life.'

‘It wasn't a criticism!' Gabby looks amused rather than appalled. ‘But you must admit, being active on the parish council and in local fundraising is hardly the same as running marathons. Your father operates on a different level.'

Before Emma can think of a pithy rejoinder, Nigel proves his lover's point, pounding past, red-faced and sweating profusely; oblivious to them; conscious only of the finishing line.

‘Nigel, Nigel. Go for it, you can do it!' Gabby is ecstatic. She whoops, punching the air and turning to Emma, her face exuding pride.

Emma feels as if she has been punched in the belly. Stunned, she surrenders to her hug, joins in her squeals of excitement – then pushes to the finishing line determined to reach her father first, to claim the victor's embrace. Deep inside, fear and loathing combine. The affair, guessed at but not fully admitted to, is real. Her poor, poor mother. No wonder she has looked so closed, recently; so pinched.

It is only later, after Gabby has flung her arms around Nigel's neck and given him a massive kiss only to greet Peter with less enthusiasm; after they have had a celebratory sandwich on the Champs-Élysées: ‘Nigel, you need to get protein in you within an hour of competing,' Gabby had admonished; after they have spurned Emma's idea of a celebratory beer – ‘About the worst thing he could do; far too dehydrating,' Gabby had tutted. ‘I'd better not then,' said Nigel – that Emma's phone belatedly pings with her mother's text.

She calls immediately but when it kicks in to Jenny's answerphone, she fears her voice will tremble. She kills the call and tries to formulate a text. What to say to convey her sympathy for what is happening; her unquestioning loyalty? ‘Tried to call. Wish you were here with us, Mum. I miss you and love you. Xxx'

27

For a pie that sings of the countryside, simply sauté smoked bacon, shallots, carrots and rosemary. Add rabbit pieces, stock and cider, and simmer until the meat just slips off the bone. Stir in cream. Top with egg-washed shortcrust pastry. Serve with home-grown vegetables.

Jenny, of course, is oblivious to Emma's turmoil. Paris, the marathon, Gabby have all been relegated, for the moment, to the very back of her mind.

She has too much to think about. The bakers have been told to create a pie of their choosing, and, for Jenny, this is a chance to pay homage to her own mother. A rural child of the sixties and seventies, she can recall Lucy's rabbit pie, flavoured with rosemary, shallots and cider, far more vividly than the rare meals she has enjoyed at Michelin-starred restaurants. Just sautéing the bacon, takes her back to the rectory kitchen.

‘What's that?' the six-year-old Jenny had asked, taking in the skinned rabbit being jointed by her mother on the stripped pine table.

‘Just a chicken.' Lucy had smiled, looking up from her copy of
The Art of Baking,
from which she was adapting the recipe.

‘This is the boring bit. You can help me with the pastry. Go and play.'

Even as an infant, Jenny had sensed her mother wasn't being entirely honest. She had hidden under the kitchen table, watching her deftly butcher the meat then add it to the frying bacon with the butter, flour, cider, aromatics and seasoning.

The heady aroma of alcohol simmering with braised meat and herbs had soon enveloped Lucy, bestowing a steamy halo. Later, Jenny had watched her strip hot rabbit from the bones, then transform it into something even more succulent by stirring through a dollop of cream.

Jenny had decorated the shortcrust lid – her usual job – and, as ever, had agonised over producing a fitting covering.

‘That's lovely, darling,' Lucy, impatient to get it into the Aga, had reassured her.

‘But I haven't got the chicken right.' Jenny's face had pinched in concentration. ‘It looks like a rabbit.'

Lucy, her hands dusty with flour, had bent and dropped a kiss on the top of her head, breathing in the scent of clean hair and baking.

‘Well, I prefer rabbits to chickens.'

Now, as Jenny tweaks the already imaginative recipe – adding a hint of garlic, a touch of tarragon – she hopes she is channelling her talent. More than that, she feels as if her mother were present: directing her moves, hovering by her side. Lucy's words mingle with Vicki's in a sweet polyphony of reassurance: ‘That's lovely, darling'; ‘You can win this: you're head and shoulders above the rest.'

*   *   *

Vicki, sifting her fat and flour into fine breadcrumbs, is thinking back to her childhood kitchen: a cold room, the cupboards half empty, the surfaces clear and sterile in which she ate supermarket quiche and watery iceberg while her mother marked homework upstairs.

In her early teens, Vicki tried to interest her in home-cooked food: attempting pasta with home-made tomato sauce or spaghetti carbonara; an overcooked kedgeree; an ill-conceived lentil curry. But Frances was too preoccupied, and too concerned with maintaining her svelte figure, to show much interest. The teenage Vicki found it soulless to try to cook properly and so subsisted on staples. Food became fodder. Jacket potatoes with cheese; fish finger sandwiches; pasta and tuna; boiled egg and soldiers; scrambled eggs.

Vicki has no memory of Frances ever attempting a pie. In fact, she is certain she has never made one. But she does remember Frances pulling a face as she nibbled a Cornish pasty on a rare holiday to St Ives.

‘I'll eat it for you, Mummy,' the eight-year-old Vicki had offered, having demolished the egg and cress sandwich bought as the healthier option. The golden pastry heaving with steak had seemed exotic; its warmth reassuring against the wind whipping in from the Atlantic.

‘Urgh, no. It's far too greasy. Quite disgusting,' said Frances. She had taken only two mouthfuls, then, when no one was looking, had tossed it into a bin.

Binding pastry, Vicki realises she has never known her mother to eat it. Every attempt to get her to try her treacle tart or her salmon and watercress flan has ended in a request for ‘just a sliver', and the frustration of watching her dissect the filling only to push the pastry to the side of her plate, or hide it under her knife. She has never challenged her mother over this, just as she has never really challenged her over anything. Now, she realises, she wants to ask: Why can't you enjoy my food?

Increasingly, Vicki realises, baking is the means of creating a domestic idyll she has never experienced. Of cocooning Alfie and Greg in the homely fug of good cooking that she longed for as a child.

She has a clear flashback to sitting in her friend Nicola's kitchen after hockey practice, breathing in beef bourguignon, as Nicky's three brothers piled around the table. Nicky's mother, affluent, capable and apparently unruffled, had heaped plates high with buttery mashed potato and meat smothered in rich plum-coloured gravy. Nicky and her siblings had taken this for granted: joshing with one another through full mouthfuls; demanding seconds; barely thanking their mother. Vicki, unused to boys and continual teasing, had been cowed the first time she visited. But, as she lapped up the warm casserole, she had relaxed into her silence. Even now, beef bourguignon is her ultimate comfort food.

And so she is cooking a pie based on this: a rich beef stew, seasoned with garlic, shallots, thyme and pancetta; simmered in red wine for as long as possible; topped with rich flaky pastry – egg-washed golden brown. As she sautés and simmers, binds and rolls, she drinks up the odour of an idealised childhood and imagines recreating it.

For a moment, she imagines having her own noisy brood: a trio of boys and a much doted-on baby girl, perhaps; or a more even pair of each – the teenage boys towering above her; the girls, exquisitely beautiful, long-limbed and long-haired.

A family with just one child seems so vulnerable. Three or four would be perfect. She sighs. Her period started this morning. She mustn't be over-ambitious. If she could manage just one more, she would be overjoyed.

But what about Amy's job? The question pops up at the most unlikely moments. No, she's ruled that out … unless she strikes herself a deal: if she is not pregnant by late June, the date of the application deadline, she could apply. It's only a maternity leave. She wouldn't be going back for ever. And it might be just what she needs.

*   *   *

For three hours the bakers work, binding and resting their dough; making their fillings; constructing the pies, and baking them until they are golden.

‘You've all done very well,' Dan declares with unfamiliar generosity.

Karen fixes a smile on her face and forces herself to look at him. He meets her gaze and gives a smile that is friendly but neutral. The sort of smile you would give an acquaintance whose name you cannot quite remember but who you feel obliged to acknowledge when you pass in the street.

‘The pastry's a good colour on most of them, although this' – he gestures at Vicki's – ‘is perhaps a little too golden. So it's going to come down to texture and taste.'

The judges probe and cut, taste and deliberate, cleansing their palates with chilled bottled water between each bite. Jenny's pie is clearly exemplary: the sweetness of the shallots complementing the gaminess of the rabbit, the cider cutting through the richness of the cream. Vicki scores well with a robust beef and red wine offering and Claire excels, surprising herself more than the judges, with a stargazy pie that is stunningly presented: heads and tails of pilchards bursting out of the crust as if streaking through a becalmed sea.

‘I'm more surprised at this one.' Dan gestures at Mike's offering, a pie in which he has tried to conjure up memories of a fantastic Spanish holiday with Rachel by marrying beef with chorizo. ‘A fantastic puff pastry and the steak is meltingly tender. But what's gone on with your seasoning? It's just too fiery. You've paprika and strong chorizo in here – and far too much sherry vinegar. Please don't take this the wrong way but it's as if this pie's trying to prove something.'

‘Trying to be a bit macho, perhaps?' Mike helps him out.

‘Well – yes. Not that you're not…'

Mike smiles. ‘I think I've been rumbled.'

He glances at Claire, and she laughs.

 

 

Kathleen

New Year's Eve and she is lying in bed, listening to the chimes of Big Ben on her wireless. George is at a New Year's party. He had been reluctant to leave her, but she had been insistent.

‘There's no need for both of us to be incarcerated, darling. You go and toast in 1966 for me.'

‘Well … if you don't mind.'

‘I insist. And enjoy it. Wish I was drinking champagne and dancing! Go on. Celebrate! This is going to be a good year.'

She smooths down her covers and ruminates on 1965. Not a good one by any definition. A year that has seen her experience three miscarriages in quick succession and almost throw her other baby –
The Art of Baking
– away.

This year, she is more hopeful. The book is almost finished. Reinvigorated by autumn, she has rewritten pies and pastries and romped through puddings. All that remains are a few choice words on afternoon tea.

She sips at a glass of elderflower cordial and allows herself a moment's self-congratulation. She is proud of the book now that she has tempered the brightness with a warmth that tells of her love of baking. Her belief it should be at the heart of the family.

She smiles and mouths the crucial word, tears springing to her eyes as she does so. Oh, she is being ridiculous – or perhaps just hormonal – but she still feels emotional whenever she reflects on this idea.

For, miraculously, she is pregnant. A baby is hiding inside her. Curled up safe for eight weeks, or perhaps a week more. Her Christmas present from George was a diamond bracelet from Boodles; from James Caruthers a stitch in her cervix. All she has to do now is lie very still.