‘Right…’ Cathy said, suddenly feeling awkward and a little bit stupid. ‘I’ll just go and… I think Iris might want me…’
Cathy hurried away. She could hear Erica’s cheery tones as she continued to talk to her niece, and Tansy’s monosyllabic replies, and she had to wonder how even Erica could like her enough to spend so much time with her. She must have been hard work, even for a blood relative. But there was no time to dwell on that, and perhaps it was just as well, because the last of the participants arrived en masse and Cathy had to rush over to brief them so that they could begin on time. Then, as she was finishing up, she noticed the door open again and the vicar walk in. He waved a hand in greeting, and then nodded at Iris.
‘Just need a quick word if that’s OK?’ he said.
‘Of course!’ Cathy said, going to her workstation at the head of the room while everyone tied their aprons and got equipment out.
After a few minutes with Iris the vicar came to find Cathy.
‘It’s kind of you to teach everyone – Iris says you’re doing it without pay.’
‘I’m not really teaching anyone,’ Cathy replied. ‘We’re all just sort of cooking together. I give everyone the recipe and I offer help and guidance as we go along; some people haven’t baked before and they’re not sure what some of the more technical things mean. But anyone can make a cake if they’ve got a good-enough recipe and all the bits they need.’
‘Well, if your cakes are anything to go by then the recipes are very good indeed. Iris says they’re yours too – that you wrote them.’
‘I didn’t really write them,’ Cathy said. ‘My mum wrote a lot of them… well, she sort of just did them and I learned them from her and then I wrote them down for this. I usually just do it by eye – when it’s something I’ve made a lot anyway.’
The vicar nodded slowly, regarding Cathy with a thoughtful look as he did. ‘You’ve a natural talent then.’
‘No.’ Cathy smiled. ‘I’ve just got a good memory.’
He smiled too now, but Cathy had the distinct feeling that there was something going on behind it – cogs whirring, ideas being formulated.
‘Maybe I’ll join in next time,’ he said.
‘Here?’ Cathy asked.
‘If you’ve room for one more.’
‘Of course!’ Cathy said. ‘There’s always room for one more.’
The vicar nodded. ‘I’d better get on; lots to do… there always is, isn’t there?’
‘Right… Hang on.’
Cathy reached into her bag and took out a spare photocopy of her recipes.
‘I’ve been adding to it,’ she said, ‘but I think we’ll be doing flapjacks next week so, if you are coming, what you’d need is on here.’
He took the stapled pages and flicked through. ‘I like the little doodles,’ he said.
Cathy blushed; she didn’t know whether he was poking gentle fun at her or not, but there was no malice in it and she knew none would be intended. But she did feel a little silly now.
‘No, I really like them,’ he said, perhaps guessing that what he’d said could be misinterpreted. ‘It’s a nice flourish – looks sort of Arts and Crafts, you know.’
He waved it briefly in the air and nodded. ‘Thanks for this.’
‘No problem. See you next week hopefully.’
There was a lot of good-natured chatter, banter and laughter in the room as everyone worked. Unlike the first week, Cathy didn’t bake anything herself, because so many people had needed to ask for her advice that she’d quickly realised how impractical that was. So this time she only wandered the room, making herself available for encouragement or guidance, and she found that she really enjoyed how much she was getting to know everyone.
Every so often her gaze would stray over to where Erica and Tansy were baking together. She’d been over a couple of times and Erica had assured her they had it under control while Tansy, as usual, had hardly acknowledged Cathy at all. But whenever Cathy looked, Tansy was diligently poring over the recipe or screwing up her face in concentration as she checked measurements. Sometimes she’d be comparing her mixture to what Erica had in her bowl and she’d either frown, or look vaguely satisfied as she turned back to her own. And when it finally went in the oven, Tansy guarded the door, staring in at her cake as if she could will it to perfection using some kind of thought waves, so that nobody could get near to check their own, and Erica had to issue a gentle reminder of that fact. Looking mutinous, Tansy moved out of the way to let Beth take a look at how her own was doing, but when Beth looked as if she might open the oven, Tansy moved in to stop her.
‘She’s like a pit bull,’ Iris said to Dora as she watched. Cathy had caught the comment so it had been loud enough to carry that far. She just hoped that nobody else – especially Tansy – had heard it. She wondered if she’d have to talk to Iris about discretion, though that might prove to be a difficult conversation. She didn’t want to appear patronising. Iris was, after all, a grown woman with a perfectly good sense of what was socially acceptable and what was not. That she might choose to ignore that was another matter, of course…
Apart from that, the class went well and everyone seemed very proud of their Victoria sponges, even though there was some disparity in success. While some had sunken middles, and some had clearly put the jam and cream in before the sponges had cooled sufficiently so that they had little pink waterfalls oozing from the sides, and some had one fat sponge and one thin sponge, at least they all resembled what they were supposed to be and you couldn’t have perfection straight away.
As they were clearing up, Myrtle came over to Cathy.
‘I’ve got this recipe,’ she said, seeming almost shy as she showed Cathy a mildewed exercise book. She opened it at a yellowing bookmarked page. The book had to be decades old. Cathy looked to see it was for Christmas cake. ‘I’ve been looking all over the house for it, ever since you started your class. It’s my mother-in-law’s book – it came to me when she passed on. It makes a lovely Christmas cake, though I haven’t done it for years. I thought people here might like to try it.’
‘It does look lovely,’ Cathy said, scanning the page. ‘But you have to do quite a lot of preparation and I don’t know that it’s practical to do in the time we have here.’
Myrtle looked crestfallen and Cathy couldn’t bear it.
‘I would imagine this book is quite precious to you?’ she asked gently.
‘A bit,’ Myrtle said.
‘If Iris doesn’t mind, could I take it to the office to photocopy the page? I could add it to my own recipe book and distribute it to the class so they could have a go at making it in their own time. And I would say it’s a good time to make a Christmas cake, isn’t it? It should be perfect by Christmas Day if you started it about now.’
‘Oh it would!’ Myrtle said, beaming. ‘I’ll ask Iris now!’
Before Cathy could reply, she’d rushed off to Iris’s station. Cathy smiled as she went. It had looked like a lovely recipe, and not only would it make a great addition to her little book, but mostly she couldn’t wait to give it a try herself.