Wedding Tiers (18 page)

It was only in the late afternoon, when Pia popped over to visit before returning to London with Maria, that I got any gossip at all.

‘You left early last night, God-ma,’ she said, ‘but then, most of the oldies left soon after Mum and Tim did.’

‘Thanks for ranking me with the geriatrics,’ I said, and she grinned.

‘Noah was around quite late. He said he saw you home after Mum and Tim left, because you’d had a bit much to drink. Then you’d insisted on picking Mum’s bouquet to pieces and putting the flowers in water, which sounded just like you! He said he helped, and it took for ever.’

‘Oh…yes, he did. It’s very fiddly, but they’re half dead now anyway,’ I said sadly, looking at the drooping blooms.

‘Noah didn’t stay right to the end of the party, because he said he had to go to bed and sober up, but not necessarily in that order, so he could drive back to London today.’

‘So he’s gone?’

‘Yes, though not until quite late because he said alcohol stayed in your system for hours longer than you might think. Mum wouldn’t have minded how long he’d stayed in the gatehouse, but he has a portrait sitting tomorrow and he’s supposed to be going to some charity event tonight with his girlfriend. She’s Anji somebody, a model. She phoned him up to make sure he was going to make it.’

I immediately felt guilty. I’d forgotten he might have someone else in his life even if, as he said, he didn’t take these things seriously.

‘I think her star is on the wane, because he was a bit short with her, which isn’t like him.’ She giggled. ‘But then, he looked a bit rough at breakfast and I’ve never seen him anything other than smooth and elegant before. I felt a bit jaded myself.’ She yawned. ‘Gina cooked us all what she called a full English breakfast, though she fries the eggs in olive oil.’

‘It’s healthier. I like them like that too. I buy gallon tins of extra-virgin olive oil through the co-op group.’ I hadn’t felt really hungry for days, but suddenly the thought of a bacon sandwich made me absolutely ravenous! There was some organic bacon in the freezer; we share a free-range pig once a year with the Graces and Dorrie Spottiswode.

Pia’s voice followed me across the room as I lifted some out and put it on a dish to defrost.

‘Jasper is…well, he’s different,’ she was saying dreamily. ‘We got off on the wrong foot at first. I must be so vain if I think a boy only has to clap eyes on me and he’s mine! But once you told me what his interests were, we got on fine. He has to return to university for a couple of weeks, but then it’s the Christmas break and he’ll be back at Middlemoss again, which isn’t very far away from Blessings by car.’

‘I thought you seemed taken with him. But he’s a serious boy, not at all the type you’ve been going around with.’

‘I know, he thinks I’m a complete Paris Hilton airhead, but I’m going to change that.’

‘How?’

‘I’m going to research all the stuff he was talking about on the internet—and I do have some serious friends, you know! And maybe I’ll really think about doing something with my life rather than just the party circuit. That was only ever to get back at Mum for…well for Dad dying, I suppose, though that was hardly her fault,’ she added honestly.

‘She did love Joe, and they were very happy together—and she loves you too, Pia. She’s always talking about you and worrying about what you’re doing.’

‘She is?’ Pia looked at me doubtfully. ‘If you say so. But all she ever seems to do is criticise me, my friends and my lifestyle.’

‘Parenting maybe isn’t her strong point,’ I conceded. ‘But then, her own mother wasn’t a very good role model and it worries
her that you’ll turn out like your granny if you go off the rails, so that’s why she’s so hard on you sometimes.’

Pia giggled. ‘I know, Granny Gloria is a complete dipso and even last night she was making a play for anything in trousers, until Aunt Daisy dragged her away. I mean, what
is
she like!’

Pia sounded admiring rather than disapproving, but I suppose being a dipso slut is the norm among some of her circle of friends. When I remember Libby’s teenage plans to better herself, ready to marry the Right Sort of Man (kind, solid, wealthy, older) and be a good wife, it makes you think. Nowadays, you just need to be a skinny, uneducated, hard-drinking, fashionista to attract the kind of footballer or TV celebrity that girls of Pia’s age seem to want.

‘I know you think it’s too soon for Libby to get married again, but sometimes you fall in love, just like
that
, and you can’t help it,’ I told her.

‘Like you and Ben—which always seemed a bit Romeo and Juliet, though it was just his parents who thought you were from the wrong side of the tracks for their blue-eyed boy, wasn’t it? Your granny didn’t mind at all.’

‘No. She thought Ben’s parents were a pair of pretentious prats, but she would have put up with them if they’d given her the chance, for my sake. And actually, I went round once to see Ben’s mother to try if we could get along better, but it was useless. Granny says her husband was in love with my mother first and married Nell on the rebound, but I don’t see why she should blame
me
for that.’ I sighed. ‘Anyway, I tried. They’re probably highly delighted that Ben has left me and shacked up with an older, sophisticated and rich woman instead.’

‘Is that what he’s done? Mum didn’t give me the details, just said he’d been having an affair and you’d thrown him out.’

‘Yes…well, you might as well know, darling, in case you see him in London. It turned out he’d been having an affair with this woman for a year without my knowing anything about it,
and now she’s pregnant. In fact, it seems that’s why she made a play for him in the first place. She’s in her early forties, so I suppose it was now or never, if she wanted a baby.’

‘I never thought you and Ben would end like this,’ Pia said sadly. ‘He always seemed to adore you and you shared
everything’

‘In retrospect, I don’t know about “share”’, I said thoughtfully. ‘My world revolved around him and creating the sort of home life he needed to produce his artwork, but all the things I did, like the gardening and baking and so on, I actually love doing.’

‘Maybe he just had a sort of moment of madness and he regrets it now?’ she suggested hopefully.

‘It was a bit more than that but I don’t think I would ever have found out if Olivia hadn’t phoned and told me about it. Ben tried to finish with her after he found out she was pregnant, but now she wants to marry him.’

‘Perhaps if you hadn’t thrown him out, he would have chosen to stay with you, God-ma?’

‘Maybe—but although he says he still loves me, I’ll never feel the same way about him again. It was a…I don’t know how to explain this to you, Pia, but it was a gross betrayal. I might forgive him, in time, but he’s not the man I loved.’

‘I see what you mean,’ she said, ‘and let’s face it, there
are
still other fish in the sea. You looked lovely yesterday too. Normally you wear such terrible clothes, I’ve never really noticed,’ she said, suddenly sounding just like her mother.

‘Thanks,’ I said drily, though all this sudden praise made me think I must look a total dog most of the time.

‘I wasn’t the only one who thought so,’ Pia said pointedly. ‘I saw Rob Rafferty make a pass at you, and later he was looking for you and asked me for your phone number.’

‘I hope you didn’t give it to him!’ I asked, alarmed and flattered in equal measure.

‘No, I told him I’d forgotten it, but he gave me his number to pass on to you if you want it?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve never wanted to live dangerously.’

‘He wasn’t the only interested man either, was he? Noah seemed to be hanging around—and he walked you home!’

I felt myself go slightly pink. ‘Your mother told him to keep an eye on me because I was upset about Ben. He was just being kind—in an interfering sort of way. He saw me home, helped me unpick the flowers from your mother’s bouquet, which took for ever, then left. There’s absolutely no reason why I should ever see him again.’ I sincerely hoped not, anyway! ‘Don’t try to pair me off with any other men, darling, because I’m done with love. Been there, got the heartache, learned my lesson.’

‘I never thought I’d hear you being cynical about love,’ Pia said. ‘And you adore weddings, you know you do! And what about your lovely wedding cakes?’

‘OK, so perhaps true love exists for other people, but not for me. And yes, the sound of wedding bells will always make me go all gooey and excited inside, and I’ll go on making brides the cakes of their dreams, even if there is a more than even chance those dreams will be shattered within a couple of years of marriage, at most.’

Pia was shaking her head. ‘You’re what they call a contradiction in terms, God-ma!’

I had another call from Russell at ten, just as I was on my way to bed. At least I was sober this time, because I felt so bone-achingly tired I thought I might just drop off naturally.

I suppose it’s kind of Russell to keep in touch like this, but I would have appreciated it more from Mary and during the daylight hours.

He asked me how I was and whether I was lonely, and I said brightly that I hadn’t had time to be, and anyway I had lots of friends in the village. I’m not sure how convincing I was.

But now I’ve had my very energetic catharsis, I do seem to have come back to life a bit. I mean to try to carry on as normal
from now on, even if Ben’s betrayal ripped out a large chunk of me by the roots and tossed it onto the compost heap.

If I keep going through the motions of gardening, preserving and cooking, following the cycle of the seasons, then eventually some kind of tranquillity, even happiness, should return, as it did years before when I lost my parents.

I should have written and sent in the next instalment of my ‘Cakes and Ale’ column by now and have already had one plaintive email from Charlie Rhymer, the editor of
Skint Old Northern Woman
, asking where it was. I told her I’d had a death in the family, which I have: the death of my love, my hopes and my dreams. But she was so sympathetic that in the end I told her about Ben.

‘And now I really don’t know what to do, because normally my articles are sprinkled with mentions of what the Artist is up to. I mean, do I now remark casually that the Artist has gone to be creative—and even procreative—elsewhere, or simply never mention him again?’

‘I see what you mean,’ she agreed thoughtfully. ‘I think the
casual approach, saying he has moved on, would be best, but I still think you will gets lots of mail from upset readers because they liked the whole idea of you two being self-sufficient together. And Ben was the one who often weakened and bought consumer goods, wasn’t he? That made for an interesting angle. But you are the star.’

I smiled wryly. ‘I think Aggie is the star, really. Half the emails you send on seem to be about her! But at least she doesn’t mind what I write about her, because now my cover is blown I’m having to be much more careful what I say about people.’

Still, I promised to sort it out and get the column emailed out to her by the end of the day. I wish Libby was back, so I could talk everything over with her. My other Neatslake friends are treating me like I’m recovering from some debilitating illness. It’s the people who know me best who can see past my calm exterior and know I’m not myself…unlike Noah, who took me at face value.

Pansy Grace came across the Green with a home-made, nutmeg-sprinkled custard tart and Harry kept popping in on various pretexts to check that I was not lying in an alcoholic stupor on the hearthrug, though actually I’d gone off drinking to excess.

Even Dorrie Spottiswode pushed a box of strange little pills through the letterbox the other day, with a note saying she’d asked Hebe Winter to make up something. I was looking a little peaky, and these were guaranteed to set me right. I was a bit dubious about those pills, because not only did they look and smell pretty strange, but Hebe Winter has a reputation for dabbling in the darker arts. I expect that’s undeserved, though, since she’s very active in the Church.

They reminded me of the Chinese herbal pills and medicine, which I’d barely touched before Ben’s bombshell. I felt a bit guilty, because if I hadn’t destroyed them I suppose I could have given them to Libby eventually, if she really did want to try to get pregnant.

But then, I don’t want to encourage her until I’ve just had a
little
word with her mother about what she implied at the reception…

Just after I’d managed to wind up the ‘Cakes and Ale’ column with a brief phrase about the Artist having flown south, some prospective customers arrived to look at my folder of cake photographs.

It’s unusual for both the bride and bridegroom to come together, without even the bride’s mother in attendance, but once the happy couple told me what they had in mind, I wasn’t surprised she’d left them to get on with it.

They were both keen fans of manga graphic novels, and wanted a single large cake with the top iced to look like a cartoon. They’d brought one or two to show me, in case I didn’t know what they meant, thank goodness, because I didn’t, really.

‘So, you want me to make a square or oblong cake and then
paint
a comic book image of you both getting married on the top? In natural, edible colours, of course,’ I added. ‘I don’t use any other kind.’

‘That’s right,’ said the girl, who’d managed to apply her makeup in a way that already made her look as if she could have been peeled off a page.

Her fiancé handed me a couple of computer printouts. ‘These are our avatar selves—I thought they’d be useful.’

‘I know it’s short notice, but we’d given up on the idea of a cake until someone told us about you,’ the girl said, looking at me hopefully.

It sounded pretty straightforward and would at least keep me occupied. ‘I don’t see why not,’ I agreed. ‘I can do the outlining and lettering in black with a liquorice pen, once I’ve painted on the colours. The cake could be propped up to display the picture for the photographs, before you cut it.’

I’d have got Ben to draw it out for me first, had he not already painted himself right out of the picture.

One of Harry’s last remaining cronies suddenly passed away. It upset him quite a bit, though there was still an element of glee that he’d outlived yet another of his friends!

He spent the whole of the next day with the widow, helping her with the arrangements, so I was on hen duty and had Mac with me too. They’d gone off laying and they aren’t too keen on going into the run when it’s so cold. They fluff out to about twice their normal size, like giant feather dusters.

But the next morning, when Harry resumed his normal round, I baked the manga cake base in my largest rectangular tin and I’d just taken it out of the oven when the phone rang.

I tossed aside my oven gloves and reached for the receiver, only to wish I hadn’t when an immediately familiar deep voice said, suavely, ‘Hello, Josie? It’s me—Noah.’

I felt as if someone had run a cold finger up and down my spine.

‘Umm…’ I managed, after swallowing hard.

‘Don’t let the wild excitement at hearing from me carry you away, darling, will you?’

‘I’ll try not to,’ I said, finding my voice again now the first shock was over. ‘How did you get my number?’

‘I ran into Pia earlier today, and she gave it to me. I left you mine, if you recall, but you didn’t ring me.’ From the tone of his voice, that was totally unheard of. He even sounded a bit miffed.

‘There didn’t seem any point,’ I said briefly, quite surprised because I thought he had a glamorous long-term girlfriend and wouldn’t have wanted me to contact him.

‘No? Well, after I spoke with Pia I just wanted to make sure you were OK about what happened.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Because, according to Pia, you hadn’t just broken up with a
boyfriend, but with your long-term partner and the love of your life. She said you were devastated by it, so clearly I misread the situation. I don’t want you to think I purposely took advantage of you when you were vulnerable.’

‘No, I don’t think that at all,’ I broke in hastily. ‘There’s no need to worry, because I’m fine about what we did. It meant nothing to either of us then, and it means nothing now. It only happened because we were both peapodded.’

‘What?’

‘The peapod wine—my fault, I knew it was lethal.’

‘I don’t think we can entirely blame what happened on peapod wine, Josie! I—’

‘Look, Noah,’ I interrupted firmly, ‘it was quite nice, but—’

‘Nice?’

‘Yes, very. In fact, I probably ought to be thanking you, because our encounter was quite cathartic—like a sort of emotional enema, getting rid of the blockage so I could go on with my life. So, thanks and goodbye,’ I added brightly and put down the phone.

My hand had gone numb so I must have been clenching it hard, but I thought I carried that off rather well, considering he took me by surprise. I didn’t suppose he’d bother getting in touch again.

Later Ben phoned me up too, so obviously the poet Wendy Cope is quite right about men being like buses, and when one does eventually stop, two or three more will start pulling over and flashing their lights. It needed only Rob Rafferty to run me to earth, to make a full set.

Perish the thought. I’d done with love and, useful though it was, I don’t think I’m really suited to random sexual encounters either.

‘What do you want, Ben?’ I said shortly, and was surprised to find his call made me feel irritated rather than anguished. ‘I’ve
just spread warm apricot jam over a wedding cake and I want to get the marzipan on. It’s a rush order.’

‘I’ve been talking to Harry. I wanted to try and explain things to him a bit, after he tore a strip off me in the pub—not that I didn’t deserve it, I know. He told me one of his friends had died. Poor old Bob! It’s only a couple of days since I saw him.’

‘Yes, it was terribly sudden, though he hadn’t been well for ages. He got home from the pub, sat down in his chair and that was it. The funeral is Wednesday and I’ll probably go with Harry, if only to make sure he’s warmly enough wrapped up and—’

I broke off, realising I’d automatically started chatting to Ben as if nothing had ever come between us.

‘I wish I could come, Josie. I—I’m not sure I can function without you and Neatslake and everything. I feel like I’ve been cut off from some vital lifeline.’

‘Maybe you should have thought about that before. But I expect you’ll get used to it. You were always pretty keen to get back to London after you’d been home for a while. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got yet another customer coming to discuss a wedding cake and I need to finish the marzipan on this one before she does.’

He was still saying persuasively, ‘But, Josie, darling—’ when I put the phone down.

I’m not his darling any more, nor anyone else’s.

‘So, since we met on the slopes and we’re both really keen skiers, what we wanted was a ski cake,’ said the bride-to-be, who herself had a long, curving nose rather like a ski slope. ‘One with a steep, really twisty run, with little figures, and maybe something written around it, like “Wishing Bev and Steve the run of their lives”?’

‘You mean all downhill?’ I said absently, fiddling with my pen. My mind had a tendency to keep running over my phonecalls, which had both undermined my hard-won tranquillity a little, but in different ways.

There was a silence and I looked up to find her staring at me rather perplexedly, from boiled-gooseberry eyes. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. But no on-the-piste jokes, either.’

‘I’ll think it over and see what I come up with,’ I promised. ‘A ski-run cake won’t be too difficult because I can use a lot of Christmas cake decorations, like small pine trees and that sort of thing.’

The phone rang yet again at that moment, but muted, because it was under the thick, knitted hen teacosy.

‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ she asked.

‘No, the chances are it’ll only be yet another man I don’t want to speak to.’

‘Really?’ She looked at me doubtfully I was back in my patchwork dungarees and rainbow-striped cardigan, so I don’t suppose I looked much like a man-magnet.

But if she thought I was mad as a hatter, she was still too impressed by the quality of my previous customers and my appearance in the terribly upmarket
Country at Heart
magazine, to take her order elsewhere. Eccentricity was clearly OK in that milieu.