I give thanks for making myself pudding last night. Not for after dinner but for instead! My appetites for both cooking and eating are a tad jaded right now but it doesn't take much effort to whip up an apple and forest fruits Eve's pudding, nor to demolish two servings without realising you've done it. I give thanks for wedging the cooker door shut as it was nippy in the kitchen so I didn't mind some heat escaping, and as the oven really only seems to have two settings - chilled and chargrilled - it made for a sort of 'medium' temperature inside and a better bake.
I give thanks for a series of short videos on Facebook of a park not far from here I have been longing to visit. Not suffering unduly after yesterday's walking I'm wondering if I might get there soon but yesterday was downhill and on the flat, whereas this would be down and up and down at least...if not and up again after! There are a lot of seats though...and it's all looking so lush with new growth. Maybe next week when Jan is here? I give thanks for being able even to think of it as a possibility...
I give thanks for being able to take it physically easy this morning, catching up with internet chores before getting stuck into more cleaning and tidying up this afternoon. It's been weeks since anyone has been at my place but me, and as I tend to leave my specs off indoors it's been interesting putting them on and seeing all the cobwebs and dirt with fresh (focused) eyes.
I give thanks for finding this story which is often in my mind, but not anywhere on my computer. I came across a USB drive sorting through boxes at the weekend however and after plugging it in I found it! Ooh, and I give thanks Rachel is on her way...I'm in need of some therapy!
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 torso, 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 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 tempting cleavage
before her.
No
oil painting himself, Callista’s father was nonetheless a kindly,
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 bin bag. 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, inviting distant male
cousins of suitable age and sexual orientation to stay. Her father
persuaded the odd unattached apprentice, willing and 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.
Regeneration
in the centre of town saw 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 space bar and mouse. Unhindered by a social life
however, she diligently devoted herself to her studies and when the
year was out added the qualification to several unsuccessful job
applications. Once again her father did what he could to assist,
making enquiries among his business contacts until 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 their 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 with recipes chosen to show she recognised what was
special about them. There was 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.
Yet, though the recipients thanked her profusely, not one began to
recognise 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.
She
inherited the house of course, the mortgage cleared a few years
previously. There were two insurance policies that paid out
handsomely and a comfortable little nest egg of savings. Callista
had never spent a whole wage packet throughout her working life. Her
bank balance had been very healthy before the accident; now she
became a little richer day by day.
Her
colleagues were sympathetic about her loss and made suggestions as to
how she could spend her unaccompanied time, her accumulating money.
Take in a lodger, they said, take a holiday, join a dating agency.
But none of these ideas appealed. They were the only people left in
Callista’s world yet remained unable to help her define her dreams,
her plans, her hopes of happiness. When the prettiest girl in the
office got married she declined to attend but proudly made the
wedding cake when requested. This poignantly romantic creation of
fondant flowers and spun sugar lace was admired by all at the
reception in a way that Callista was beginning to wonder if she
herself would ever be.
A
few months later the work syndicate’s numbers came up on the
lottery and while the others blew their shares on clothes and
cruises, on cost price conservatories and cars they’d been
coveting, Callista worked out she could live on her winnings for the
next few years, and handed in her notice.
She
had the ancient gas cooker ripped out and replaced with a duel fuel,
double oven Aga. It radiated a constant cosy glow and was always
ready to cook, in much the same way as its owner. Now no one could
notice or comment on what she ate, Callista gradually eliminated
everything from her diet but the cakes and cookies and puddings she
made. Nothing else was necessary for nourishment she decided. There
was protein enough in the eggs and nuts and seeds she used, the
dollops of cream or mascarpone cheese. Dried and fresh fruits would
provide vitamins and minerals, and even a vegetable or two cropped up
here and there, in pumpkin pie and marrow jam. And, of course, there
was fat and sugar and carbohydrate aplenty.
She
bought a computer and keyboard with extra large keys for her extra
large fingertips and discovered the discretion of internet shopping.
She found sites where she could order all her baking things, her
toiletries and household needs, her hard to find plus size garments.
It was soon after that she stopped going out. There seemed to be no
point as so many things could be sent directly to her. Before long
the only people she spoke to were delivery drivers and the occasional
customer service advisor with a telephone query or order.
She
exercised a little every day, bending down to fill or unload the
dishwasher, chopping and kneading, creaming and folding, slow solid
steps between range and kitchen table. When the narrow stairs became
too much of a squeeze she made the old scullery into a wet room
allowing ample space for ablutionary manoeuvre and invested in a
sturdy double sofa bed that she left made up in the living room to
nap whenever she chose. Though her realm was shrinking Callista
grew, and grew contented too. The only thing missing from her life
was someone with whom to share all its sweetness. But good things
are waiting for those who wait. Callista still believed her hero
would come for her, inevitably, eventually. And eventually, sure
enough, he did. Or rather they
did because funnily enough long-awaited heroes sometimes, like the
buses of urban myth, come along in threes.
The
first was a paramedic summoned on the advice of the Samaritans after
a desperately breathless call when she thought she might be dying and
had no one else to tell. She had collapsed on the bed by the time he
arrived, the struggle to don a satin kimono in which to greet him
proving too much of a challenge. Resourceful as his calling
required, he found his way round to the unlocked kitchen door.
Tenderly, respectfully, he coaxed the inadequate folds of the
slippery garment over the mountainous folds of her flesh and helped
her to her feet. No one had touched Callista’s skin for a very
long time and her heartbeats skipped in a far more pleasant manner
than they had done a few hours before.
Her
second rescuer was the builder contracted by Social Services to
dismantle part of the wall, for Callista, now larger even than the
Aga, could leave no other way. She knew he was not the one she
yearned for when he gobbled up her cherry topped Bakewells as
indifferently as if they’d come from a packet, but she remembered
him with fondness to the end of her days as the one who released her
from her self satisfying confinement.
The
third and most significant man to enter Callista’s life was a red
haired reporter from the local newspaper who arrived at her hospital
bedside the following morning hoping for a scoop on this human
interest tale. Easing his ample buttocks onto an inadequate plastic
chair he took out his notebook and began to ask gently probing
questions. Callista was not really listening though.
‘Would
you like a piece of cake?’ she whispered. For somehow she had
managed to secrete amongst her voluminous nightclothes a Tupperware
box containing remnants of her previous diet to supplement the
Spartan nutritional regime now imposed on her.
‘Mmmm,
carrot cake - my favourite!’ he exclaimed, suitably furtively, but
smiling in moist mouthed anticipation at the butter cream coated
slices.
Rotating
the portion between his sausage shaped fingers, he gazed as if
tasting it with his eyes before he took a surprisingly dainty bite.
Callista watched him chew and swallow, the flick of his tongue to
capture a crumb that strayed onto the first of his chins. She
savoured his sigh of satisfaction, mirroring it unconsciously with a
blissful one of her own. All the ingredients were gathered together,
the blending could begin. The emptiness of Callista’s soul was
filling with peace at last.
