Struggling to sit upright tonight so am off to be horizontal shortly. Well actually I'll be just as long as I am standing up but I guess you knew that already! I'm giving thanks the fourth time for today for the lovely Rachel who yesterday brought me some pots of organic veggie meals on special offer in her local shop...just what I needed! I didn't give thanks for this yesterday as I hadn't tried any yet ha ha!
And fifthly I give thanks for my writing which has given me much pleasure over the years. Long may I continue to do so, though physically it's somewhat challenging nowadays. Sometimes it gives pleasure to others as well, sometimes not...but that's OK too. This story is one of my least acclaimed but I still like it. It may not be especially clever or witty or wise, it may not make you laugh or cry but it always makes my mouth water!
Peace of Cake
Callista was not a physically appealing child. With eyelashes too stubby for effective fluttering and mousy hair too lank for winsome tossing, she valiantly mimicked but failed to master the prepubescent wiles of her peers. Her juvenile body, the approximate shape of a dogfish egg case, was in no way enhanced by the frilly, flowery clothing she wore and her thick ankles and wrists were only brought to unfortunate attention by the strappy sandals and jangling bangles that struggled to surround them.
Her mother, similarly ill favoured, chose her daughter’s name and wardrobe in the vain hope of cheating the fate of her genes and producing a pretty cygnet rather than the kind of ugly duckling girl that she herself had been. She had won her husband in an era when good looks were less of a necessity in finding a partner. While her classmates waltzed their way to romance in clouds of scent and organza she had joined her own mother at the Women’s Institute produce stall. Pinafore clad, she had waited behind her prize-winning pies and preserves in as confident anticipation of attracting a suitor as a more alluring girl might do with a tantalising cleavage before her.
No oil painting himself, Callista’s father was nonetheless a kind and practical man. It was he who selected her middle name (the plainer, more honest, Jane) and, in almost as unrealistic hope as his wife’s, attempted to steer the female members of his household towards the tracksuit racks when forced to accompany them shopping. He wanted his daughter to appreciate and accentuate the qualities she did possess - her warm heart and cool hands with pastry - instead of laying herself open to ridicule by falling in with her mother’s predilection for dressing her in the confections of the day.
Mercifully in adolescence Callista began exhibit some of her father’s common sense. She took to wearing shapeless garments of indeterminate hue and soon learnt to forego the current mating rituals and their unflattering venues. Pubs and clubs were not settings that did her justice. Alcohol made her already red nose shine, lycra gave her the appearance of a duvet stuffed into a dustbin liner. She seemed happy to spend her evenings and weekends at home honing her culinary skills, her pocket money on cookery books and extra utensils and ingredients to supplement her mother’s traditionally stocked kitchen cupboards. She bought a crème brulée torch and fancy shaped cookie cutters, stem ginger in syrup, cinnamon sticks and star anise.
With a sweet tooth and no slender figure to maintain she indulged a growing passion for the preparation, and especially the consumption, of cakes and biscuits, puddings and desserts. Though happy to eat their share of these delicious treats her parents wondered how their daughter’s solitary hobby would help her achieve the kind of fulfilling companionship that had sustained them over the years. When Callista left school never having even been asked on a date they put their heads together. Her mother began to trawl her address book and contact long out of touch relatives to invite distant male cousins of suitable age and sexual orientation to stay. Her father persuaded the odd unattached apprentice eager to please their foreman to come round for Sunday tea.
Callista plied these hapless chaps with buttered bara brith and many layered Black Forest gateau, with crisp macaroons and snowy peaks of strawberry studded pavlova - except for the one who proved to be diabetic. But, perhaps as overwhelmed by the quantity of food as the quantity of Callista herself, if the visitors’ eyes strayed with longing from their plates it was to the slow moving hands of the clock on the wall and not the young woman beside them. She remained an unclaimed treasure.
A stylish new shopping centre in the town had seen the demise of the indoor market. The wooden table across which Callista’s parents’ eyes first met was no more and they racked their brains for some other way of courting courtship for their daughter. They reasoned that an older man, a boss perhaps, might see beyond her less than lovely exterior and recognise what contentment she could bring to their inner regions.
She was enrolled on an office skills course at a nearby college where she found to her surprise that her fingers so nimble with an icing nozzle fumbled with keyboard and mouse. But, without the distractions of a social life, she was diligent in her studies and when the year was out she optimistically added her qualification to several unsuccessful job applications. Once again her father did what he could to assist by making enquiries among his business contacts and eventually Callista was taken on by a double glazing firm. The manager was a harassed looking woman in her forties with no discernable Sapphic tendencies - so no chance of romance there - but her parents were relieved that their daughter had now emerged into an arena where she might find the one who would cherish her.
Callista answered the phone and sent out invoices, tasks that required no particular physical attributes. Good natured and generous, she got on well with the rest of the staff but always turned down any invitations to join rowdy office nights out - the birthday celebrations, the leaving dos, the infamous Christmas party. Instead she baked festive food appropriate to the occasion, providing iced Victoria sponges complete with the relevant number of candles, simnel cake decorated with marzipan eggs, sugar dusted pies brimming with brandy laden mincemeat.
The single salesmen received particular attention when their birthdays came around, recipes chosen to show she appreciated what was special about them - lemon drizzle for acerbic Sam, coffee for dusky complexioned Hassan, pecan pie for Jed who hailed from across the Atlantic, and even a fruit cake for Toby whose heart was immune to feminine charms but who still had a stomach to please. But, although they thanked her profusely, the recipients still failed to appreciate the special things about her.
Thus uneventfully the seasons went by. Her boss took a long sabbatical to raise a pre-menopausal baby and Toby moved into her role and office. Sam left under a shadow to join a rival firm. It seemed to Callista’s parents that despite their best efforts their daughter would remain a spinster all her life, caring for them until their deaths before quietly going to her own. In fact it was during a discussion of this that her father, uncharacteristically careless, took his eyes off the road and hands off the wheel for a moment to express his concern to his wife and slammed at some considerable speed into the side of a turning lorry. They were both killed instantly.
Part 2 to follow manana por la manana (my keyboard can speak Spanish but not write it!)
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