The Art of Baking Blind (7 page)

‘That waste of space?' her mother had virtually spat. ‘Don't be ridiculous.'

Putting her arm round Claire's tense shoulders, she had at last managed to spill her delicious secret.

‘You see, my lovely. You know how good you are at baking … Well, I entered a competition on your behalf … that Search for the New Mrs Eaden thing run by Eaden's? And, well, they want you to take part…'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I filled out an application form, telling them what you could make: cream horns, jam puffs, saffron bread and buns, pasty, stargazy pie, Chloe's birthday cakes. And, um, I sent them a photo of you. They want the area manager to audition you tomorrow – just to check you can string a sentence together and that you really can bake – and then they want you to go up to the competition, in Buckinghamshire, on Saturday. They want you to take part.'

She hadn't known whether to feel intense irritation or just sheer incredulity. Standing in their cramped kitchen, her fingers clutching the chipped Formica surface of the units, as if to steady herself, her stomach hollowed then fizzed with adrenalin.

‘But what about Chloe? What about work? I can't just swan off to some competition. I haven't the clothes, I haven't the money…'

‘We'll sort it.' Her dad, ever dependable, could barely contain his pride.

‘Of course we'll sort it,' echoed Angela. Eaden and Son would pay expenses, including train and cab fares; her parents would look after Chloe for each of the six rounds.

‘But what about work? I can't lose my job.'

‘You can swap your Saturday shifts, and Cora, the lady who contacted me, said she would talk to them; it's in their interests to have an employee who's going to be a celebrity cook and a “culinary consultant”.' Angela, getting somewhat carried away, had clearly worked it all out.

‘Let's face it, what's the worst that can happen?' Bill had asked, his face creasing with laughter.

‘I can lose my job. I can lose my income. I can get even poorer.' She had been engulfed by rising panic.

‘Love.' Her mum had smiled, and she shook her head as she marvelled at how sensible her youngest child was; how sensible she had had to become. ‘If you win this, the world's your oyster. You'll be their star employee. You'll probably be running the whole baking department! They won't be able to get enough of you.'

That was four days ago. Now, on a freezing Saturday morning after catching the 6.52 Paddington train, it is difficult to mimic her parents' bravado. And yet she knows she has to show some chutzpah; to be the feisty seventeen-year-old who believed she could take on the culinary world.

This is her chance. Her chance to do something more interesting with her life; to break away from the torpor of the checkout; to offer Chloe a better future. This is her chance not to be scared; to glimpse a future where she does more than survive on little more than the minimum wage and to enjoy a present in which she is not constantly financially sensible. This is her chance to be audacious; her chance to dream – but she is no longer sure if she knows how to.

She pushes open the swing door and follows the A4 signs proclaiming ‘Competition Kitchen'. Peeping through the window in the door she sees a massive hangar of a room, with five work stations and, at the far end, what looks like the judging table.

Despite the vast space, the kitchen is trying to be homely. Pastel bunting garlands the walls; vintage cake stands festoon the oak surfaces; four cream fridges stand guard. The limpid March light filters through windows fringed with potted-out herbs: flat-leaf parsley, rosemary, sweet basil and thyme. Halogen spots direct more reliable beams.

A door at the far corner of the room opens and, to her horror, a line of people enters. She watches as the competition weaves its way into the room: a plump matronly woman; a rich one; a yummy mummy; a middle-aged bloke, trying not to look stressed.

She hadn't realised she was so late; that, by taking an early morning train rather than leaving Chloe last night, she would automatically feel on the back foot. She takes a deep breath. I can do this, she tells herself, though she barely believes it. I'm as good as them. And then with a bravado that feels hollow: this can be mine.

‘Claire,' a strong, confident voice greets her from the front of the room, where an elegant, middle-aged woman is standing. ‘Good of you to join us.'

The room turns to look at her.

‘I'm Harriet Strong, one of the judges, and this is my fellow judge, Dan Keller.'

The woman strides towards her and thrusts out a hand, sparkling with an antique cocktail ring. It crushes against Claire's fingers.

‘Pleased to meet you,' she manages.

Harriet gives a businesslike nod and returns to the front of the kitchen. She smiles, removes a microscopic piece of fluff from her blouse, then waits for their full attention.

‘Welcome to the first Search for the New Mrs Eaden!' she declares. The room swells with nervous laughter.

‘This is the baker we want you to emulate: Kathleen Eaden.' She gestures to a large black and white photo.

Claire recognises her immediately. The same face smiles down in each Eaden's bakery department, and on the boxes of teal polka-dot crockery sold as part of the Kathleen Eaden range. Still, she is struck by how proper she looks. Hardly rock and roll. She wears a pencil skirt and a tweed jacket. Didn't she live in the Swinging Sixties? Perhaps it passed her by.

‘This photo was taken in 1963, two years after Kathleen married George,' Harriet explains. ‘She turned out to be a huge asset. As I'm sure you know, by the time they sold Eaden's to the Marshall Group in 1967, George's father's grocers had expanded to 208 supermarkets. Kathleen was key to that exponential growth and success.

‘She was everything an Eaden's customer aspired to: beautiful, elegant, refined. And women loved her. She introduced them to new ingredients but she did it gently: persuading them that they could bake beautifully and providing recipes that proved they could do it.

‘Her writing style was firm but could be playful. Like her contemporary, Robert Carrier, writing in the
Sunday Times,
she delighted in writing about cooking. And, crucially, she wasn't just style and no substance. She baked not only simply but exquisitely too.'

She smiles. ‘So, we have set a high standard – and the winner of the title, and the contract, needs to meet this. Needs to cook as perfectly as Kathleen Eaden.'

There is a pause. Bloody hell, thinks Claire. I can't do that. What was Mum thinking? Everyone here's older, more experienced, more like Kathleen Eaden than me.

She takes a deep breath and through eyes that are beginning to well reads the first recipe, on a laminated card: Victoria sponge. She wipes her eyes. The words are still there. She isn't imagining it. Victoria sponge. The easiest cake in the world. Something Chloe makes on her own and has been doing since she was seven. Child's play.

‘We thought we'd ease you in gently.' Harriet appears to be smiling at her directly.

And, like a child, like Chloe, she begins to bake.

*   *   *

Half past ten and the room vibrates with the gentle hum of collective concentration. Five people all focused on one task; all industrious; all showing a meticulous, unwarranted level of attention.

Jenny, to her surprise, is working with painful deliberation. She can make a Victoria sponge with her eyes shut – and must have made over a hundred – and yet she is weighing everything with exaggerated precision. Golden caster sugar, self-raising flour – held aloft and sieved into a bowl twice – baking powder, and pale unsalted butter: each is treated as if they were a class A drug or potentially fatal medicine. A gram over? She is taking no chances. She removes a smidgeon of flour.

Of course, she knows baking is about precision: too little raising agent, too little air, too much mixing, too cold ingredients, too hot an oven, too long a cooking time – each of these variables can reduce the perfect sponge to a flat, dry or greasy parody of the garden fête ideal. But, even so, her care is excessive. Holding the instructions, her hand shakes with nerves and she knows she is measuring so carefully to try to dispel these. But she is also being assiduous to try to block out all other thoughts.

Her stomach grumbles with anxiety, not just because this competition has become suffused with importance but because she cannot shut out Nigel's brutal words last night. She cannot reconcile her knowledge of him as a gentle man, the father of her children and her husband of twenty-five years, with someone capable of such derision. Or perhaps that's not true. She has always been aware of his sharp side, but it has never before been directed at her. Barbs and put-downs have been reserved for malingering patients and been tempered with a laugh. Now she is in the firing line, and laughter is absent.

It had happened, of course, in the kitchen. She had just brought a fresh batch of blueberry muffins out of the oven and had torn one apart: ostensibly to work out if the buttermilk and bicarb made it more aerated; in reality, to gorge on the jammy blueberries and warm, moist sponge.

Nigel had burst in after a ten-mile run, sleek in his running Lycras. Freezing-cold air blasted into the fug of the kitchen as the stable door flew open.

Despite the sub-zero temperatures, he'd looked exhilarated rather than chilled. His still-handsome face was red and glowing; his top was darkened with sweat patches, and his breathing was shallow and quick. Yet he didn't cut a ridiculous figure, the archetypal middle-aged man desperate to recapture his youth. If anything, Jenny had thought, his physique was better than thirty years ago: hardened and lean, where before it had had the softness of a studious youth.

Breathing out noisily in the kitchen, he was like a wild animal: not a cheetah – that would be to flatter him – but a fox, or a wolf. Yes, she had thought with amusement, with his dark locks, flecked with grey and slick with sweat, and his hairy legs there was definitely something vulpine about her husband.

And then, like a wild animal, he had turned.

‘Not baking again?' And where once there would have been affectionate amusement, now there was a snarl. ‘Don't you think you should lay off it a bit, Jen? It's nearly ten o'clock at night. I'm sure that even you don't need to be baking now.'

The attack was like a blow to her stomach. She had been tempted to retort that he too was pursuing his hobby at an unsociable time but remained silent, focusing instead on the way he gulped down some water, his Adam's apple rising as the liquid ran noisily down his throat. A spurt gushed from the bottle and splashed on the flagstone floor.

‘I'm just practising for tomorrow's competition,' she had excused herself, as she reached for a cloth. She bent down to wipe the small puddle, biting back a bubble of anger. ‘I just wanted to get these perfect.'

‘It's becoming a bit obsessive, though, isn't it?' he had needled her. ‘No one in their right mind needs to cook to the extent you do. And,' he continued, ‘I'm not sure it's good for your health.'

‘It's fine for my health.' Her voice was sharp, keen to prevent the unspoken criticism. But this time it was spoken.

‘It's not, Jen. Your BMI must be in the obese bracket. You're becoming, no, you've become, fat, my love.'

The word had ricocheted round the room. He had never called her that before. Cuddly, voluptuous, curvy – these have been the chosen euphemisms, uttered only when she has sought reassurance. Recently both have avoided any reference to her widening girth.

Now some unspoken contract had been breached.

She had turned to face him, tears welling in her pale blue eyes, and searched for reassurance. But his look was cold and cynical.

‘I mean it, Jen.' He was matter-of-fact, his tone frank. ‘You need to get a grip. This cookery competition is sheer indulgence. No one needs to gorge themselves on pies, cream cakes and biscuits. Least of all you.'

He had turned the knife casually as he reached into the fridge for a bottle of apple juice: ‘A bit of exercise wouldn't go amiss either. If I were your GP, I'd be advocating a strict exercise routine as well as a diet.'

‘Then it's a good job you're not,' she had hissed.

‘Well, yes. I'd see you as a drain on NHS resources,' he had retorted.

She had searched for a glimmer of humour, but there was no attempt at a quip.

He had raised an eyebrow, the look of censure unwavering. ‘I'm going to bed.' And she had been left alone, as ever, in her kitchen.

On autopilot, she had wiped the surface, taken the cooled muffins from the rack and placed them in a tin, and then, very deliberately, taken the half-eaten one and crammed it into her mouth.

Even that had offered no succour. The soft crumb was dry against her throat and she had spat it into her Belfast sink, rasping as she coughed up a sob. Clutching the cold enamel, she had let the tears come, crying out of self-pity for a lost marriage and a lost self.

Today, that excess of emotion has left her feeling hollowed out. The puffiness around her eyes has died down, and been disguised with foundation and a touch of blue eyeliner but the sense remains of a bridge crossed. She cannot dislodge a line remembered from some long-forgotten A-level text: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.' Now, who wrote that? The poet – of little use after that English exam; and of none when she started nursing – remains elusive but the words take on a mantra as she creams her fat and sugar. She imagines the mixture curdling when beaten with eggs that are too cold. The sponge can still be enjoyed, but it won't rise as well; it won't be up to scratch. It's a prosaic analogy but seems apt: with a knot in her stomach, she wonders if the same will be true of her marriage?

It seemed clear on the way down on the train, this morning, that she has a choice. Either she can do as Nigel wishes: give up the competition before even starting, give up baking, seek to starve herself; become the slim, healthy-looking wife she is now in no doubt he would like, perhaps even take up a sport – though the thought of running is laughable; maybe something suitably pedestrian, like golf. Or, she can run with this: bake like fury, bake with passion, find an outlet for her creativity that is recognised and applauded. And then, at the end of this three-month process, she can take off the blinkers, step on the scales, and step back into the role of a wife – albeit one with a marriage in tatters.