The Art of Baking Blind (5 page)

The customer blushes. Food porn. Did I say that? Claire cringes. The woman stabs her pin number into the chip and pin and they wait in silence for the transaction to go through.

‘Well, bye then,' the customer manages. She sweeps her jute bags into her trolley and rushes her baby away from the skinny girl who has unsettled her by showing some character; surprised her with her unexpected quip.

It's true, though, I do read recipe books, thinks Claire defensively. And watch re-runs of
Saturday Kitchen;
and
The Great British Bake Off;
and
MasterChef.
What else is a single mum to do with no money, a nine-year-old girl and little social life?

Much of the time she is too exhausted to put these recipes into practice, or too skint to buy the ingredients for the more complex ones. But she and Chloe regularly make sponges and pastry; gingerbread men, cupcakes, saffron bread, even Cornish pasties. Recipes that don't require expensive ingredients or excessive skill but that fill their tiny flat with the scent of a buttery hug and the promise of good times.

At twenty-seven, she knows she is unusual in taking the time to bake but she is only doing what her mother Angela has taught her to do. ‘Just carrying on the Trelawney tradition,' she tells Chloe and her tangled-haired daughter crimps the edges of the pasties or fashions gingerbread stars before launching into a dance routine, her skinny legs taking her out of the cramped kitchen in one leap.

‘You're a natural.' Claire's mum nods approvingly, though she can't quite resist tweaking the leaves on her pie crust.

‘Oi!' Claire feels a familiar stab of irritation. It looks better, though, and she leaves it in its place.

‘I wish you'd go back to baking,' Angela tends to continue; meaning, I wish you'd stop sitting on a checkout and go back to working in a bakery. But the hours are better in the supermarket, she always answers; how could she start work at five or six with Chloe?

‘Well, what about going back to college?' her mother suggests, and the catering course curtailed by an unplanned pregnancy. But they both know that's a pipe dream. The days of being a student; of dreaming about working in a revered – perhaps even a Michelin-starred – restaurant disappeared nine years ago when she was handed a screaming, mucous-and-blood-coated baby. She in no way regrets Chloe – how can she when she offers the purest, most unconditional love she has ever experienced? But getting pregnant at seventeen soon put paid to such fantasies. Claire Trelawney doesn't have the luxury of dreams.

*   *   *

In the marketing department of Eaden and Son's, Cora Young is staring at a photo. A slight young woman cuddles a long-legged girl who could almost be her sister were it not for the premature lines of anxiety above the woman's brows and the passionate ferocity of that hug. Lank hair is scraped off a pale face from which blue eyes shine with an unexpected intensity; and there is a look of tension and energy about her limbs; as if constantly vigilant, poised to spring into action.

Cora, faced with an almost exclusively middle-class array of candidates, decides the fact this one works for Eaden's can be brushed over; she won't be seen as having snuck through the back door, but rather as having fought her way there, she will be an asset.

She takes another look at the photo.

I like her, she thinks. I'll make the call.

*   *   *

When the call comes for Jennifer confirming that she sailed through the audition, she is in the middle of making short-crust pastry. Her squat fingers are coated in butter and flour and she has just bound the crumb together with iced water and a fat orange egg yolk, the wet ingredients marrying the dry in an act of culinary alchemy.

She is making a chicken and tarragon pie with buttered new potatoes and green beans for Nigel, her husband – though whether he will want it is a different matter. Perhaps the potatoes if he can catch her while they're still steaming and before she can slather them with butter. Then he'll toss them with the beans and some little gems into an undressed and unsatisfying salad. On second thoughts, he may allow himself a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Once upon a time Nigel was as much of a foodie as she is. But at fifty, his younger brother, Tom, suffered a massive heart attack and it was – as Nigel repeatedly, and somewhat sanctimoniously, puts it – ‘a wake-up call'.

Out went the evening whiskies, the chocolate after dinner, the slab of cake when he got in from work, the generous helpings of red meat. And in came running. Not a gentle jog round the block. But the obsessive, relentless running of a fifty-two-year-old man who has felt mortality snapping at his heels and is desperate to outrun it. A man who, in middle age, has decided to become a marathon runner.

‘Well, it's better than having an affair, Mum,' Lizzie, their youngest, chastises her when she ventured to comment on how their father had altered.

And of course it is, though in its way it feels like a betrayal.

It is not just the hours he puts in: the thrice-weekly runs with a twelve-mile one each weekend; the weekly running club meets, where he runs alongside fearsomely toned women triathletes; the marathons themselves – and, in just over a year, he has already clocked up four. It is his rejection of their former way of life at a time when, in a cruel twist of fate, all three of their girls have also fled: Lizzie, immersed in her first year at uni; Emma in Montpellier in the third year of her French degree; Kate, post-finals, who has just set off for a year's travelling in Australia.

She knows, of course, that she should try to be the good wife she has always been and accommodate his new needs; bend to his will; adapt her cooking. But her whole identity is tied up with providing rich food for him and every time she serves a steamed sea bass with a Thai salad or, pre-race, a bowl of pasta with a tomato-based sauce, not an unctuous carbonara, she feels a pang of resentment. She is also hungry. She eats the steamed sea bass and, of course, appreciates its delicate sweetness but she is left hankering for carbohydrates. As she clears up, she reaches for the ever replenished cake tin, or opens the fridge. With Nigel safely dispatched from the kitchen – ‘No, I'll tidy up, darling, don't you worry' – she undoes the good she has done and gorges on chocolate torte or egg custard tarts.

Of course, she knows this behaviour is unsustainable. She realised it at Christmas when Emma, always the one with the sharpest tongue, had quipped to Lizzie that Nigel had become a ‘Jack Sprat'.

‘And what does that make me?' Jennifer had retorted – challenging them to finish the nursery rhyme.

Em had had the decency to blush. ‘But we like you cuddly,' she had tried to reassure her, putting her arms around her mother's waist and trying to nuzzle into her neck as she had as a child. But the damage was done. For once, Jennifer had pushed her away, rejecting the child who was typically the most frugal with her affection. ‘Try to think before you speak,' she had hissed. ‘I do have feelings.'

Nigel, wandering into the room as she stalked out, had rolled his eyes at his grown-up daughters and offered his opinion. ‘Menopausal.' She had heard the girls' laughter, and though she knew they were just trying to hide their embarrassment and placate their father, it had struck her as the cruellest betrayal. She had looked down at her stomach, bulging against the waistband of her velvet trousers after a particularly lavish Christmas lunch, and had been filled with self-loathing. More than that, standing beneath the mistletoe, her broad feet planted firmly on the seventeenth-century flagstones of her hallway, she had felt hollowed out with despair.

Of course, Nigel was right. She is menopausal but her relentless baking has nothing to do with this and everything to do with trying to fill the growing emptiness in her life.

She feels bereft. She has lost the role she has played for twenty-five years but, like a hamster racing neurotically on a wheel, she cannot stop and adapt to changing circumstances. She has always cooked for her family and the fact that no one wants her food – or, seemingly, her attention – does not deflect her. The pies and cakes keep coming; for village fêtes, charity coffee mornings, elderly neighbours. When friends comment on her generosity, her response suggests it is natural; that it is a reflex. ‘Well,' she says. ‘Food is love.'

‘Jennifer Briggs.' The voice on the end of the telephone breaks into her reverie.

‘Jenny, yes.'

‘We're calling from the Search for the New Mrs Eaden. You auditioned on Tuesday? We'd like you to take part.'

Standing in her kitchen, gripping the phone with still damp hands on which tendrils of wet pastry cling, Jennifer's heart swells.

 

 

Kathleen

She bakes, as she prefers to do, in her Chelsea town-house kitchen. Sun streaming through the sash windows, bathing her in light.

Her scales are neatly aligned; her ingredients arranged in size order. A reporter's notepad and a pencil sit on a side table – ready to jot down any tweaks to her recipes or thoughts for
The Art of Baking,
the book she has confirmed she will publish next year.

Today, though, the page is empty. Inspiration unnecessary, or, perhaps, refusing to strike. She has already written the next column: an ode to the joys of cake baking in which she somewhat rashly promises ‘heaven in a cake tin' by mixing fat, flour, sugar and eggs. And so there is no demand that she bake. She can just potter; creating sponges or biscuits, meringues or patisserie for the sheer thrill of doing something she enjoys.

She is systematic, though, and prolific. Intently focused, she bakes from memory, making batch after batch of the most familiar sponges: Madeira cake; coffee and walnut cake, and a Battenburg, coloured with almond essence and sieved raspberries. A chocolate cake comes next, to be topped with a rich fudge icing; then madeleines – chaste in contrast to such decadence. By lunchtime, the table heaves with sponges in various states of readiness; cooling; complete; or freshly anointed with the most exquisitely judged icing.

Despite herself, she finds she is reaching for her notebook, conjuring up the cakes' deliciousness with a few choice words: the fudge icing is ‘muddy'; the Battenburg ‘scented'; the coffee cake ‘just the right side of bitter'. No, that's not right. The coffee cake ‘marries sweetness with sophistication: the butter cream lifting the sponge; the walnuts adding a certain creaminess'. Is that correct? Are walnuts more creamy than bitter? She nibbles one, then crosses out the description and provides an unsatisfying alternative. ‘Creamy bitterness?' she writes and underscores the question mark.

Perched at the table, she takes a sip of Earl Grey and allows herself to sample one small madeleine: the blandest of cakes, perhaps, but comforting, nevertheless. She wraps a couple for George to enjoy later and places the coffee and walnut cake in a tin to give to her cook, Mrs Jennings. But most of these beauties are destined for a different home.

By mid-afternoon, the cakes have been boxed and sent two and a half miles away to the Westminster Children's Hospital, situated on the corner of Vincent Square.

The consultants are bemused that a hospital treating severely malnourished children should receive such unsolicited goodies. But the nurses enjoy them for their tea break.

6

Try to involve your children as much as possible in your baking. They will love the chance to work alongside their mother and it is never too early to teach both little girls and boys to bake. Remember to show patience and good humour, to smile at their endeavours, and you will be assured of a willing helper ever eager for your praise.

‘Quickly, Alfie. No, not that way.' Vicki is struggling to pinion her resistant child into his car seat as a chill wind whips her body and threatens to slam her with the car door.

It is seven forty-five on the day of the first round of the competition, and Vicki has to get Alfie to her friend, Ali, in Putney, before driving to Eaden's country estate in Buckinghamshire for ten o'clock and the start of the competition. She should have masses of time but that is without contending with the vagaries of London traffic – and of her son.

She is already braced for the inevitable meltdown – ‘But Mummeeee, I need you' – and has factored in twenty minutes to deal with it. She could write the script: twenty minutes of initial reassurance, followed by firm parenting, followed by blatant bribery. She will only extricate herself from his clutches, as they both know, with the desperate promise of Lego. And then his tears will miraculously evaporate. She will race to her car and then inch her way up an exhaust-choked Fulham Palace Road at the peak of rush hour. She will feel guilty, stressed, angry. Just anticipating it makes the band of tension around her forehead tighten.

‘I said: “No”.'

A friend once told her the way to deal with car seat resistance was to punch your child in the stomach. At the time she assumed it was a joke, the kind of black humour the more witty of her mummy friends trade in; the sort of comment you see on Mumsnet where bored mothers vie to churn out the best one-liners. Now she is not so sure. She contemplates her offspring grimly. He is grinning cherubically, trying to swipe the felt hairclip holding her fringe while she uses both hands to try to force the central seat-belt buckle together. His torso, fast becoming that of a strong little boy not a cuddly toddler, strains against her, his back arching. She jerks her head away from his clutches and simultaneously forces him back in his seat. The seat belt is buckled. He holds her gaze, the smirk melting into a bottom lip wobble. She repeats, with a somewhat steely satisfaction: ‘I said: “No”.'

Since when did she become this hectoring figure? she wonders, as she slams his door unnecessarily aggressively, opens the driver's door, and buckles her own seat belt. She does not want to be a shouty mummy. It is, as one health visitor once told her, somewhat euphemistically, ‘not helpful'. And it is certainly not what outstanding teachers do.