‘I’ll go left and you go right,’ directed Mary.
‘Righty-ho.’
Jack hunted behind the barrels, pulled out a box, but it only had rusted metal connectors and beer taps in it. He straightened up, said something that was in his mind and growing too big to keep in any longer.
‘I’m so sorry about all this, Mary. Especially as you may not get home to your family for Christmas Day.’
Mary loved his voice and here, with the acoustics of the cellar, it sounded extra rich and deep. Private-school posh and cultured. She imagined that if he sang in a choir, they wouldn’t know whether to put him in the bass or the baritone section.
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ she replied. ‘I wasn’t doing much anyway this year.’
‘I know family is important to you.’
‘Yes, it is,’ she agreed, ‘but us lot don’t need the excuse of Christmas to get together.’
‘Very true,’ said Jack. ‘But they will be worrying about you.’
They would, and she wished she could let them know she was all right. She didn’t want her mum nattering about her and spoiling her holiday in the Canaries with her ‘friend’. She said she and David were simply pals who had adjoining allotments but they were both widowed and missed doing things with someone else and David was gentlemanly and good-natured so Mary hoped love would blossom between them. Her dad wouldn’t have wanted her lovely mum to wear widow’s weeds for the rest of her life.
‘What were your plans, incidentally?’ asked Jack then.
‘I was going to spend Christmas by myself this year.’
‘Honestly?’
‘You sound shocked.’
‘I hadn’t got you down as a “by yourself” sort of person,’ said Jack.
‘I like my own company sometimes.’ Mary didn’t say that this Christmas she’d planned to be alone for a reason. It wasn’t only Bridge and Luke who wanted to treat the new year as a fresh start.
‘What about you, Jack? What events, parties will you end up missing?’
‘Just some drinks with friends,’ he said. Married friends, some with babies. Die-hard bachelors who had embraced their new roles as husbands and fathers because they’d met ‘their type’. Although thinking about it now, they hadn’t really. Fran was far away from Zak’s Jennifer Lopez ideal and Roman, who always had a penchant for ice queens, was expecting child number three with a chatty raven-haired Irish girl carving out a career as a stand-up comedian. Roman and Georgie had invited him for Christmas dinner and he’d politely declined. He wanted what they had too much to enjoy it in a spectator capacity.
‘Ah, that’s a shame.’
‘I’ll live,’ said Jack. The gap between his world and that of his friends was widening with every baby that came along, he knew this. The common ground dissipating, conversation drying up.
‘Well, there’s no point in worrying about something we can’t control,’ said Mary, pulling the legs of a step ladder apart so she could stand on it to reach some high shelving.
Jack opened the double doors of a cupboard. Result. ‘How’s this?’ He held up a box, the picture on the lid foxed and faded.
‘Buckaroo,’ said Mary with delight. ‘I haven’t played that for years. Yes, definitely take that upstairs.’
‘It’s ancient. May not work.’
‘Or it might,’ Mary contested.
‘You’re so much more optimistic than I am,’ said Jack, with a small strained smile.
‘ “Optimism is a muscle that gets stronger with use,” that’s what my dad used to say,’ said Mary. Here’s another gem from the Roy Padgett book of wisdom that you need to know, Mary and she’d roll her eyes or groan. How many times had she heard him say that and what she wouldn’t give to hear him say it again.
‘He sounds a very wise man,’ said Jack.
‘He was,’ said Mary. Was. Such a little word to have the power it did. At first, when her dad had died, thinking of him as ‘was’ rather than ‘is’ broke her. She hadn’t been able to process that he was no longer around, that she couldn’t ring him to tell him this or that as she always had. She loved her mum dearly, but she had always been a daddy’s girl. He was the first port of call to tell when she got her A-level results, passed her driving test, got the job working for Butterly’s. Still now, two years later, sometimes she thought ‘I must tell my dad…’ On those times, optimism didn’t work so well.
‘My dad used to say that optimism had a magic. Take that Buckaroo for instance. Neither of us knows if it’ll work or not, so maybe if we presume it will, it will. And if we presume it won’t, it won’t,’ said Mary, shifting some cobwebby demijohns to poke behind them.
‘Okay, then I’ll revise what I said and say… I can’t wait to see us all playing Buckaroo.’ Jack smiled again, properly this time, a smile that stretched his lips to their full extent and Mary thought how altered he looked when he did that, like a totally different person. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen him smile in the office, his expression was usually one that implied there was a lot going on in the brain behind it and it was all serious scone business.
‘That’s better.’ Mary smiled back at him and once again he thought how her eyes seemed to brighten when she did so, as if a light had been switched on inside her. He also thought that Mary’s dad might have not been best pleased about the way she was treated by Butterly’s when he died. Something that he should have been aware of and broached with her long before this.
‘Ah, bingo. Literally,’ said Mary, reaching up to drag over a box with a bingo set in it. There was also a cheap-looking chess and draughts set and a pack of Donkey cards, as well as some monster dead spiders, their skeletal bodies looking like the spikes of miniature broken umbrellas. She’d never been one to be scared of creepy crawlies though. She’d been brought up in the countryside where big spiders weren’t uncommon. Plus, one of her favourite childhood books was Charlotte’s Web and that had coloured her young view of spiders somewhat.
‘I think this lot might suffice,’ said Mary, brushing some dirt from her pale blue shirt. ‘They—’
‘Mary,’ said Jack, interrupting her flow. ‘I have an apology to make to you.’
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ said Mary. ‘No one knew this weather was going to—’
Jack stopped her again; she’d got the wrong end of the stick. ‘No, I don’t mean about that.’ He paused, shamed by what he was about to say. ‘When your father died, we sent you some flowers, didn’t we? From the company, as we always do in such circumstances.’
‘Yes.’ Mary nodded, slightly befuddled.
‘It wasn’t enough,’ said Jack. ‘They were just flowers. A standard company token. I never realised what you must have been feeling, not until… last year, when it happened to me… my father passed…’
‘It’s fine,’ said Mary, rescuing him.
‘No, it isn’t fine one bit. I had no idea what it would be like. I wasn’t prepared for how low I’d get.’
‘Ah.’ Mary understood him now. ‘It’s a club no one wants to join, Jack. I don’t think anyone can know until they walk through its doors.’
He remembered asking Kimberley, Mary’s temporary replacement, to email and enquire how she was doing and if she had an idea when she’d be coming back to work, even though there was no rush. He shouldn’t have asked at all. Or at the very least he should have sent the email himself.
Mary remembered how hurt she’d been to get the curt email from Kimberley. Jack wants to know when you’ll be back. No enquiry as to how she was. Not a word of concern. That hurt had segued into anger enough for her to reply: I’ll be off as long as I have to be. She went back three weeks after the funeral and Kimberley was shunted off to finance again, despite hoping she’d made a big enough impression to stay in the position.
‘I wondered if we’d pressured you to return to work too soon,’ said Jack.
‘You didn’t,’ said Mary. ‘I came back when I felt ready. I wasn’t going to rush my g
rief for anyone.’ Not even you.
‘Quite right too.’
Jack held out his hands to take the games from Mary. His gallantry jarred with the memory of that email now refreshed in her mind and words bubbled out of her mouth before she had time to slam on the brake.
‘Actually, I was proper annoyed to tell you the truth, Jack,’ she said.
‘I absolutely—’
‘If you’d told me my job was on the line because I was taking too long to grieve, I’d have told you to stuff it… where… the sun doesn’t shine.’
Jack’s mouth opened to reply, but she didn’t leave a breathing space for him to butt in.
‘Not even asking how I was, just Jack wants to know when you’ll be back… yes, if I’m honest… it flipping stung.’
So Kimberley hadn’t done as he’d asked. Not that it mattered, because he shouldn’t have delegated the task to a PA who wasn’t a patch on Mary.
‘Mary, I’m so dreadfully sorry. I asked Kimberley to stress there was no rush at all, but it was insensitive of me to even ask the question in the circum—’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course.’
Mary’s top lip curled in anger. That Kimberley really was a sort.
‘I see,’ said Mary. It made things slightly better, but yes, Jack should have sent the email himself. She would have done it, had the situation been reversed, and not relied on a snake in lipstick who had her own agenda.
‘You should have told me to stick my job. I would have deserved it,’ said Jack, contritely. Another small embarrassed smile. ‘It’s long overdue, but I’m sorry if that’s how Kimberley’s email came across, I really am. I have obviously no idea of how much you do for me in the office, but I know it’s a lot, because I notice you when you’re not there.’ As soon as the words were out, Jack wished he could have pulled them back into his mouth, rearranged them better. ‘I mean I—’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Mary, rescuing him once again because smoothing over stuff was instinctive, her forte, but his words rang like bells in the campanile of her skull. Notice you when you’re not there. That said it all, didn’t it.
Chapter 13
‘Ah, the big game hunters have returned to the fold,’ said Luke, who laughed at his own wordplay as Jack and Mary walked back into the lounge.
‘We have bingo, Buckaroo, cards, chess and draughts,’ said Mary, forcing out cheer when she felt like crumbling.
‘Wonderful,’ said Robin, whose stomach then grumbled loud enough for them all to hear.
‘I think that’s tantamount to a dinner gong,’ declared Charlie.
‘My turn to rustle up some grub for us, I think.’ Luke rubbed his hands together. ‘Any volunteers to help?’ He raised his eyebrows at Bridge who turned her head away in avoidance.
‘I’ll come,’ said Jack, brushing cobwebs from his sweater. He’d missed a long stringy one. Mary had an urge to dust it off, in the way Princess Margaret had once dusted a piece of lint from Group Captain Townsend’s jacket, thereby signalling to anyone with an ounce of gumption that she was in love with him. But Mary’s hand didn’t stray to Jack. She wished her heart would catch up with the brain that was playing those words over and over like a stuck record: Notice you when you’re not there. Notice you when you’re not there.
‘I’ll have a game of draughts with you in the meantime, Mary. Set them up,’ said Charlie. ‘Winner gets first choice of the chocolates that I’ll get out of my suitcase later.’
‘You sneaked chocolates into your suitcase?’ said Robin. ‘Think of your cholesterol levels!’
‘Oh, bugger off. And yes, I bought some, in case you didn’t buy me any,’ parried Charlie.
But Robin had. His favourites. From Patrick Roger in Paris, presently sitting in his suitcase, and he hoped that come Christmas morning, Charlie scoffed the lot, one after the other until he was full.
* * *
‘So you make vegan scones then, do you?’ said Luke to Jack, as they hunted through the pantry. ‘How do they taste?’
‘Very, very good,’ replied Jack. ‘We…’
Jack’s voice trailed off. He had a recollection of Mary standing by his desk. ‘Can I just say that I think veganism is going to be a booming business, and the company should really look at producing vegan scones that taste as good as the others.’ He cringed inwardly as he remembered dismissing her with a patronising, ‘Yes, thank you, Mary.’ Then a year later, the head of product development had said the same thing and Jack had jumped straight on it, because that boom had already started happening and he’d almost missed the boat.
‘You were saying,’ Luke prompted him.
‘We had to work hard on the recipe though, the road to success was paved with a lot of failed attempts. Firstly they were too dry, then bland, but they still sold quite well. Finally, we thought… er… we thought we should go back to the drawing board and revamp the recipe. Eventually.’ Mary again: ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying but the vegan scones aren’t great, Jack. They taste cheap and dried out. They have to be better. They have to be more moist… and buttery.’ And that time he’d listened.
Because of Mary his output had increased by ten per cent and growing, they’d won a baking industry award and a bounty of positive PR for the ‘Butterly Buttery Vegan Scone’. And he’d given the head of product development the bulk of the credit for it, upped his salary. He’d given Mary a ‘Thanks for your input on the vegan scones’ compliment in passing once. Having time away from the office and to think really was showing him up to be a prize prick.
‘We should talk, I’d be extremely interested in buying some for Plant Boy,’ said Luke. ‘By some, I mean a lot.’
‘Happy to. I’ll give you my business card before we leave and I’ll take yours.’
Luke hunted through the fridge, pulled a tray out, read the packaging label. ‘Ah, nut cutlets from Hollybury Farm, wherever that is.’ Local farm shop, he presumed. Most of the clingfilmed trays on the shelves bore the same brand sticker. ‘These will do nicely for us all. Thank goodness the landlord had plans to cater for us lot as well as you carnivores tomorrow.’
‘You’re a fully-fledged vegetarian yourself then?’ asked Jack.
‘I wasn’t when I started Plant Boy, but I more or less am now. I’ve done a lot of homework and I find the diet suits me for many reasons. I wanted people to have good tasty alternatives to meat so they could make changes that weren’t too painful or going to break their banks. More than half our products are suitable for vegans, and they’re good.’
‘So Bridge was never part of your business then?’
Luke’s features gathered in a semblance of horror. ‘God no. It was bad enough living with each other, never mind working together as well.’
He opened up the freezer to hunt for something to go with the nut cutlets and found inspiration in the second drawer.
‘Ah, frozen pitta breads. That’s sorted then. We’ll have veggie kebabs for lunch. We shall grill these and serve them up with cheese, diced red onion, tomatoes. I’ll rustle up a makeshift tzatziki, says the man who six years ago would have had to consult the internet on how to boil water. Ha.’ He laughed at himself. ‘You can be on chopping duty, Jack. Grab a knife, a cucumber and some garlic.’
Jack let Luke direct him on how much of what to chop.
‘Do you think you and Bridge will eventually find a friendship going forward?’ he asked.
‘No idea.’ Luke shrugged. ‘I’d like to think we could. We’ve done all the fighting we can, there’s nothing left to throw at each other. I even think we enjoyed it in the beginning, all that anger made us forget the hurt.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, I realise so many things about our marriage; given time to let the waters settle, I see clearly what being with Bridge brought me.’
‘Like?’ prompted Jack, expecting the answer to be: an ulcer.
‘This rich, calm bloke with his shit together that you see before you grew from th
e soil of my time with her. I wouldn’t be here now had it not been for Bridge. I see that. And I’ll stretch my neck out and say that she wouldn’t be the shit-together, rich… maybe not calm though, woman she is if it hadn’t been for me. We were each other’s stepping stones to contentment.’
Luke turned on the grill to defrost the pitta breads.
‘Tell me more about Butterly’s. Give me some background. How did you start the business?’
‘Well, actually it was my grandfather who set it up,’ began Jack. ‘He was just a man employed in a bakery who had an idea that he could make more money selling the baker’s products on markets for a cut of the profits. Then he realised that if he produced the scones himself and sold them, his profits would be even bigger. So he taught himself to bake in my great-grandmother’s kitchen, set on some of the family as bakers, then bought premises, then a factory. Then Dad took over, then me… That’s about it, really. What I’ve done with the business isn’t anything like as impressive as you setting one up from scratch.’
‘But you must have expanded it? Or did it always produce two million scones per day?’
‘Yes, I expanded it. I’ve trebled production in four years. And extended the lines. My father wouldn’t have even entertained the thought of vegan scones, he thought veganism was a “flash in the pan” that would peter out in no time.’
‘Ha,’ exclaimed Luke.
The success of that product had encouraged Jack to break away from the long-held company policy of keeping it simple, and in doing so, he’d made himself an extremely rich man. He didn’t want to think how much he owed to the Butterly Buttery Vegan Scone.
‘You’ve got a good team working for you?’ Luke enquired of him.
‘Yes, they’re… all very efficient. At least they are now,’ answered Jack. ‘I had to get some new blood in when I took over.’
‘Oh?’
‘Dad was…’ Oh, how to put it delicately – there wasn’t really a way. ‘He… wasn’t a great businessman. He thought he was, because he was lucky: the basic product was first-rate and he had excellent salesmen, but he also had too much chaff in with the wheat. Most of the management did as little as possible for their inflated salaries and the product development chef hadn’t developed a single thing in years. Dad hadn’t wanted anything developed, though; that was the problem. So the chef sat in his office, picked horses from a newspaper and smoked.’
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day Page 10
