‘Well,’ Colin said, ‘I make it eleven o’clock and I vote we get things started. If we get any latecomers, they’ll just have to take what’s left over.’
‘There’s plenty to go round,’ Dora said.
Cathy got up from her seat and went to the table where her own creations were currently stashed inside large Tupperware containers. ‘Shall I uncover everything then?’ she asked.
‘Might as well,’ Dora said.
As Erica unwrapped her offerings, she glanced across to see Cathy prise the lids from her tubs and gave a little gasp of approval.
‘Oh, I feel so ashamed now,’ she said, laughing. ‘Look at those! Mary Berry couldn’t do better.’
‘You haven’t tasted them yet,’ Cathy said, blushing. ‘Looks could be deceiving.’
‘I doubt it,’ she replied. ‘No cake could look that good without tasting good too. And you’ve made so many!’
‘Well, I didn’t think it would be enough to be honest,’ Cathy said.
‘Did you think we were feeding the multitudes?’ Colin asked with a smile.
‘Sort of,’ Cathy replied.
She sat down without taking a cake and waited. It felt polite, somehow, to make sure everyone else took what they wanted first. Though she’d feel it improper and a bit arrogant to think that everyone would want to eat hers, secretly she couldn’t help feeling that they did look better than all the shop-bought ones and certainly better than the sorry, sunken little fairy cakes that one of the other ladies had brought in. And she didn’t think this because she believed for a minute she was better or more talented than anyone else, but because her mum’s recipes were so good that it was more or less impossible that anything baked to one of them could turn out wrong. That was all Cathy had done – followed the recipes to the virtual letter, her mum having never written anything down and Cathy having memorised them over the years. It was her mum who had been the real talent.
‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Dora asked her.
‘I just thought… Well, I was waiting for everyone else.’
‘You’ve baked them – you get first choice; to hell with this lot of scroungers.’
‘Dora!’ Iris cried, but Colin simply threw back his head and laughed.
‘Say it like it is, Dora!’
‘Nobody is scrounging!’ Iris said testily. ‘Everyone has donated and deserves their fair share.’
‘Oh, don’t be so sensitive.’ Dora waved an airy hand to dismiss Iris’s possibly misplaced outrage.
‘I’ll have a cake after all,’ Cathy said and shoved a coconut madeleine into her mouth with some haste, just so she wouldn’t have to offer an opinion on scrounging either way.
‘Oooh, I’m having one of those,’ Erica said, leaning over to help herself to one of the cakes she’d just seen Cathy eat. ‘Did you bake these too?’
Cathy nodded.
‘Oooh!’ Erica exclaimed again warmly. ‘That’s fantastic!’
Then Colin made a beeline for the banana loaf, while Dora took a Black Forest muffin and Iris popped a square of millionaire’s shortbread into her mouth with a satisfied sigh.
While Cathy’s sense of pride grew with every expression of absolute cake-induced rapture, so did her embarrassment. Accepting compliments wasn’t something that came easily to her, regardless of how well-intentioned they were. She was beginning to wish she’d dumped her cakes and left before anyone could eat them.
‘How do you get this so light?’ one woman asked as she marvelled at a cherry scone.
‘Oh, I can always taste baking powder in mine no matter what I do,’ another said. ‘Nothing worse… You must give me the recipe for yours, Cathy.’
‘Oh, me too!’ the first woman said.
‘No point in giving me the recipe for anything,’ Erica said with a laugh as she took her second coconut madeleine from the tub. ‘But any time you feel like baking some for me, I’d be glad to take them off your hands!’
To be polite, and because she felt sorry for the sunken fairy cakes, Cathy took one and bit into it.
‘Oh, I don’t suppose that’s a patch on yours,’ the lady who’d brought them in said. Cathy thought she might be Myrtle but she couldn’t be sure.
‘No, no, it’s lovely,’ Cathy said, forcing a smile. There was nothing wrong with it – a perfectly adequate little cake – but it wasn’t very thrilling. Cathy swallowed it down anyway.
‘Would you like another?’ the lady asked.
‘Ooh, yes please. Makes a change from eating my own, doesn’t it?’ Cathy said, taking one but wishing she was eating her own.
‘More tea?’ Iris asked, coming round with the pot. There was a chorus of ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ and a forest of hands holding up cups to be filled, Cathy’s included. It was almost like being at primary school again when the table server asked if anyone wanted the leftover jam roly-poly before it went back to the kitchen and there’d be a veritable scrum to get it before someone else did.
‘That’s a good cup of tea,’ Erica said as she slurped from her cup.
‘Special teabags,’ Iris replied, tapping the side of her nose, and Cathy couldn’t imagine what kind of teabags required being kept secret, though she did agree it was pretty good tea.
The door opened, a faint draught coming from the larger space beyond it, and another man walked in. Cathy noted straight away the black shirt and jacket and starched white dog collar. He was far younger than she’d have expected a vicar to be and actually quite good-looking, in a gentle sort of way, with an abundance of mousey hair stylishly dishevelled, a button nose and deep blue eyes. A sort of vicarish version of a young Michael J Fox.
‘Oh, hello, Vicar,’ Iris said, looking up and suddenly sounding rather breathless. ‘I didn’t think you were going to be coming over this morning – we haven’t had time to tot up all the donations yet.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ the vicar said, shrugging off his coat. ‘I had a meeting cancelled and thought I’d come and join in the fun. If you don’t mind me staying, of course. I haven’t brought any cake obviously, but, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t want my cake if you tasted it.’
‘As long as you make a donation like everyone else, we’ll let it slide,’ Iris said with a warm smile.
‘That sounds like a fair-enough deal to me.’ He took his coat over to a stand in the corner of the room and hung it there with everyone else’s. ‘It’s a good spread today,’ he added, casting an approving glance over the tubs and packs of cakes and biscuits.
‘Oh, most of that’s down to this new lady, Cathy,’ Iris said, and when she looked at Cathy, Cathy wanted the ground to swallow her up. She didn’t want to be singled out when everyone had contributed. Admittedly, she had brought more along than anyone else but that was only because she’d got carried away planning what she was going to bake and made far more than she’d really needed to.
The vicar dug his hands in his pockets and stood at the table, examining the goodies on offer.
‘I think I’ll take a scone if that’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m quite partial to a nice scone.’