Mary Berry

by A. S. Dagnell

  While Mary remains the face of the sauces, Annabel continues to run the business day to day, organising photo shoots, liaising with press officers, dealing with overseas customers, ordering stock and arranging new products and food shows to plug their brand. But while Annabel works tirelessly to continue to expand the business, she admits it wouldn’t have happened without her parents. ‘Mum and I get along very well,’ says Annabel. ‘We work together on new ideas, marketing and product development. We share an office and she is pretty good at leaving me to get on with my business! Mary Berry & Daughter Dressings and Sauces has always been my baby but I could never have done it without Mum and Dad.’ Annabel admits she often needs to take holidays to help detach from the business, because at times it can become all-consuming. ‘If we’re out together then we will always discuss “the empire” as we call it,’ Annabel says. ‘But that is a pleasure to us because we are all so shocked by its success. It’s a real family affair – if we’re testing something new we’ll all sit round the dinner table, and my father and brother can be very blunt! But the family is the backbone of the whole thing.’

  The success of the range is doubtless testament to the bond Mary shares with her family. Their love for one another inevitably helped spur the business on and brought them even closer. But the business aside, it’s plain to see from all the interviews Mary has conducted over the years that family is the most important thing to her. In particular, she dotes on her grandchildren, with whom she loves cooking. ‘We do all sorts – cupcakes, omelettes, fruit skewers, lasagne… We cook the things they like; that’s the secret to getting them involved. And it’s very educational, all the weighing of ingredients and working out timings. It’s a great thing to do with children.’

  So while business and family have often come together to bring success for Mary, it’s still important for her to spend quality time with them, away from the ‘empire’. Such occasions include Christmas, which is big in the Berry household. It combines the two ingredients in life that Mary most values – home cooking and her family.

  ‘Food is the one thing that doesn’t worry me at Christmas because I know all about it,’ said Mary in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Throughout the year, I work on new and inventive cooking, but at this time of year, I keep things traditional. Breakfast is no feast in our house at Christmas. There are just croissants, toast and marmalade, fresh fruit and real orange juice. For lunch, I am in charge, but there are always lots of helpers. It is the one day of the year when we use the dining room and I decorate the table with red amaryllis in vases tied with red ribbon. We always have a turkey because it goes an awfully long way. I do chestnut stuffing with apricots separately, so it goes crispy, plus red cabbage, sprouts or leeks, puréed celeriac, cocktail sausages – the grandchildren love those – and masses of sauces. Afterwards, we have home-made Christmas pudding with brandy butter and then Christmas cake and tea when we get back from our walk.’

  But even if her grandchildren don’t follow in her footsteps in the kitchen, it’s obvious that simply being surrounded by them is good enough for Mary. In an interview with The Lady, Mary was asked when she was at her happiest. She replied: ‘I’m very happy at home – my young are around me … We’re a good team and I wouldn’t have them if I were anywhere else. Fantasy is reality; I’m very lucky.’ Like many of us, Mary says she wouldn’t hesitate to ‘gather up every one of my family photographs’ if she had to save anything from a house fire. Looking back on her life, Mary admits she would never want to recapture her youth. Happiness, it seems, has come with age. ‘I don’t miss anything about my youth,’ Mary told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s good to be 76, because you get so well looked after. It’s always been “Mum will do it” for my children. Now they’re so thoughtful. I’ve run around after them and it’s payback time! It’s not the thought of dying that scares me, but living without my husband. I’d like us both to die in our sleep together. Real old age, as I’ve seen with my mother, can be hard and lonely. You don’t want to be a burden on your children. Even when she was 104, my mother came for Christmas and said, “You must leave things for me to do. Let me do the sprouts.” I just pray I don’t linger too long.’

  But despite her present contentment, there was a moment in Mary’s life that would call into question whether she would ever be able to find that happiness. It involved her youngest child, William.

  CHAPTER 5

  SAVED BY CAKE

  It was a night Mary Berry will never forget; etched on her mind for evermore. It wasn’t the first night of a new show of hers on TV. Nor was it the launch of her latest cookery book. In fact, it was the simple act of cooking a lamb roast dinner one Friday evening in June 1989. It was something Mary did so regularly that, at the time, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. But it would become what she has since described as one of the most important meals she’s ever cooked.

  Mary’s youngest child William, then 19, had recently returned home from Bristol Polytechnic. He had completed his first year at the institution where he had enrolled the previous autumn as a business studies student. It’s fair to say he was doing brilliantly – his work was going well and he had made lots of friends. As with all their children, Mary and Paul had wanted to give William the best possible start in life. Prior to Bristol he had studied at Gordonstoun School, the private boarding school in Moray, Scotland.

  Gordonstoun was founded in 1933 by Dr Kurt Hahn, formerly headmaster of Salem School in southern Germany. Dr Hahn fled Germany in 1933 under threat from the Nazis for standing firm in the face of aggression. Perceiving decay in the society of the day, he aimed to foster in young people skill, compassion, honesty, initiative, adventure and a sense of service towards their fellow human beings. Hahn was fortunate to find an attractive, imposing estate in the temperate environment of Morayshire. With a handful of boys, the school began with two historic seventeenth-century buildings, Gordonstoun House and Round Square, built by the famed eccentric, Sir Robert Gordon, the so-called Wizard of Gordonstoun. The school grew from there. During the 1960s Prince Charles attended the school on the recommendation of his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had been one of its first pupils. Although Princess Anne didn’t attend, she sent her two children, Zara and Peter Phillips. Other notable alumni include Balthazar Getty, Hollywood actor and heir to the Getty oil fortune, writer William Boyd, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, cricketer Preston Mommsen and Olympic rower Heather Stanning, who won Olympic gold at London 2012 in the women’s pairs.

  The school instilled in William a sense of hard work and loyalty through its ethos of the Four Pillars of Education, with each pillar representing a part of the whole curriculum–internationalism, challenge, responsibility and service. There was one blot on William’s copy book, though: a prank played when he was 16, which led to Gordonstoun ‘sending him down’ (meaning the school authorities suspended him temporarily) for half a term to give him time to reflect on what he had done. But William returning home meant that Mary was able to get even closer to her son – something she would soon come to cherish for the rest of her life. ‘I had a very happy time with him, not ticking him off, and I learnt a lot about him,’ Mary told the Mail on Sunday. In interviews years later, Mary would describe William as her ‘bright button’.

  Now, having finishing his first stint at Bristol, he was back home in Buckinghamshire. And like the doting mother she is, Mary wanted to spoil him. As was often the case in the Berry household, Mary wanted all of her family to enjoy dinner together. Rarely a day would go by without the family gathering around the kitchen table for an evening meal, where they would catch up on what they had all been up to. But as that night was a special occasion, Mary had laid out the dining-room table with the best crockery and china.

  Perhaps like a typical teenager, William wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. He walked into the dining room just as his mum was putting the final touches to the table and looked confused. ‘William walked in and he said, “Who’s coming?”’ Mary recalled
in an interview with the Mail on Sunday. ‘“You!” I told him. “It’s for you. And it’s your favourite.”’ She added, in her interview with Desert Island Discs: ‘I remember the night before we had supper in the dining room and we had roast lamb, and I had really gone to a lot of trouble because it was lovely to have him home.’

  The meal itself went off without a hitch, as meals in that household always did, with Paul and the kids doubtless enjoying second helpings.

  But the next morning, everything would change. Nothing was out of the ordinary to begin with. William woke up as usual. It was sunny for that time of year and he decided he wanted to go out to buy a copy of The Times. So interested was he in his business studies, he regularly kept on top of the day’s financial news – even on a Saturday. William asked to borrow a car to nip to the village. The only one available was his father’s sports car, which had recently been restored. Paul had spent such time, effort and money on the refurbishment that Mary was unsure. So she called Paul, who by this point was at work at his antiques shop, to ask whether he was OK with William using the car.

  ‘We had had a sports car restored, and I said, well just ask Dad,’ she said during her appearance on Desert Island Discs. ‘And it was a January morning with the sun streaming in the windows, and so Paul said absolutely fine, off you go.’ Annabel decided she would go with William and they grabbed the keys to the car and rushed off.

  Mary went about her business as usual, working around the house and starting to prepare lunch as she usually would late on a Saturday morning. But after a while William and Annabel hadn’t returned. ‘When the two of them didn’t come back for lunch I thought: “That’s funny,”’ Mary told the Daily Mail. But she simply assumed they had got sidetracked and were taking a little longer than usual.

  But the tragic reality of the situation was about to unfold. As she sat waiting for her children, she became increasingly worried. She perched herself on a window seat overlooking her home’s pretty courtyard and, as she looked out, one of the most ominous things she has ever seen appeared. A policeman walked up the drive to the family home. Instantly Mary knew it was bad news. ‘When the policeman came to the door I knew why,’ Mary told the Mail on Sunday. ‘I was more sorry for him than I was for me. It was so difficult for him to tell me.’

  The news was just as bad as Mary feared – William had been killed and Annabel was in hospital. The police officer told Mary her two children had been involved in a car accident. William, who had been at the wheel, had driven too fast around a corner and the car had collided with another vehicle before flipping over. William had died almost instantly on impact, while Annabel had been rescued from the wreckage of the car.

  And as the policeman imparted the news, Mary’s world collapsed. ‘You know, the moment the policeman comes to the door you know exactly,’ she told Desert Island Discs. ‘And he said that sadly William had died, and Annabel was in hospital.’ The officer didn’t know how badly injured Annabel was and so Mary’s immediate reaction was to assume that Annabel would also die. She said it was a ‘ghastly’ moment, in an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘I thought: “Oh no, not two”.’ Understandably, Mary’s head was spinning. She couldn’t understand how the accident had happened. ‘He was normally such a careful driver but that day he simply drove too fast,’ Mary later told the paper.

  Struggling to contain her emotions, Mary immediately called Paul and told him the devastating news. He immediately rushed home from work. Then at 3pm the police officer took Mary and Paul to Wycombe Hospital where Annabel was being treated. As they sat in the waiting room, Mary was trying to come to terms with everything – her youngest son had died and the fate of her only daughter was unknown. Moments later, there was at least one bit of welcome news.

  ‘I can remember them giving us sweet tea and saying sit down and being really nice,’ Mary told Desert Island Discs. ‘Then I saw a pink tracksuit covered in mud running up the corridor,’ said Mary to the Daily Mail. It was Annabel; she had managed to escape with minor cuts and bruises. ‘I thought: “At least we have Annabel,”’ Mary told the Daily Mail.

  Then the nurses at the hospital approached the Berrys. They wondered if they wanted to see William’s body. Despite it being one of the most gut-wrenching moments of her life, Mary was adamant that it was something that she wanted to do. ‘People say: “Should you go and see them?” but there was never any hesitation in my mind,’ Mary said. ‘That’s a good thing to do. I wanted to know.’ Irrespective of her initial determination to go through with it, as Mary approached the hospital ward she realised how difficult it was going to be. ‘The nurses said, “Do you want to see William?” And I said, “Oh, yes!” And then I thought: “What have I said?”’ she said in an interview with the Mail on Sunday. ‘Is he going to be damaged? But he wasn’t. They had laid him in a bed and I don’t know what they did but he was so beautiful and I could touch him … He was so cold but you’d never know he was. He was perfect. You could just see the front of his face and it wasn’t even bruised. He was just my Will.’

  As she was struggling to come to terms with it all, funeral directors arrived at the hospital. Amidst all the emotion, it gave Mary a focus that helped her deal with the reality of her son’s death. She was insistent that his funeral service should be a quiet, low-key affair for close family and friends to pay their respects to the William they loved. ‘Later, when the funeral director came, all sober, asking how many beautiful brass handles we wanted on the coffin, I said, “Let’s have the most simple. It’s just a little chap going to heaven. We don’t need all this pomp.”’

  For weeks, Mary couldn’t bring herself to do anything. Life came to a standstill and she had to take time off work. ‘The shock rendered me incapable of functioning,’ Mary wrote in the Daily Mail. ‘I couldn’t do a thing … I certainly didn’t eat, even though people were rallying round and bringing me meals. I remember eating soup, but very little else.’

  For the rest of her life Mary will, understandably, always be affected by William’s death. Even more than 20 years later, having been asked about it endlessly, there’s rarely an interview where Mary doesn’t become understandably emotional as she relives those harrowing moments and comes to terms all over again with what happened. But, bravely, she has always remained philosophical, despite the tragedy. ‘There is a prominent memorial in the local church, erected by unknown parents who lost all three of their sons,’ she told the Mail on Sunday. ‘I told myself to get a grip: “I’ve only lost one. Come on!”’ She reminds herself how lucky she is even today. ‘I have everything else but William.’

  It’s a stoicism that few could muster, but all would admire. It was doubtless something she was able to achieve thanks to the support and love from her family. In the weeks, months and years following William’s death, Mary admits that they became even closer than before.

  ‘Since the accident, we’ve become very close as a family. His death has taught me all sorts of things,’ she told the Daily Mail. Not least she values the importance of having the family all around the table for a meal more than she ever did before. She knows that every meal might be the last that you have with all the people you love together. ‘We were all as a complete family the night before [William died],’ she told Desert Island Discs, ‘which is a huge bonus because I remember that.’

  ‘William was the cleverest of my children,’ Mary told the Daily Mail. ‘I feel sorry for people who have a row and then something like that happens. William went out on a high. We’d had a lovely supper the night before. A child’s death can split up a family but it brought us closer. My children became really protective of each other. Paul and I were emotionally drained but we were a pair. I hadn’t the heart to go to work because I didn’t want to leave Paul alone. We lived on soup. I used to be 11 stone but I went down to eight, just pining for William. Our good friends were amazingly supportive. Will’s death made me quite a different person. Little things don’t bother me now. If nobody’s hurt, I’m like an
old boot. The other week, I backed my car into a wall and I didn’t even get out to look. When my mother died recently, at the age of 105, I was quite matter-of-fact about it. I just thought, thank goodness for her. I’m ashamed about it but I’m not grieving at all.’

  Aside from treating every meal like it may be her last and valuing family more than ever before, William’s death taught Mary a number of other life lessons. Surprisingly, neighbours in Mary’s home village would studiously avoid her in the aftermath of William’s death. Maybe it was merely a case of them going about things with a typically English stiff upper lip. Whatever was the case, Mary has responded to this by doing quite the opposite if the tables are ever turned. ‘If there’s a tragedy in someone else’s family I would automatically go straight up to them and talk to them. Because when it happened to us, even some people we knew would cross the road to avoid talking to us. But the best thing you can do is go up to them and let them talk. The worst thing you can say is: “You’ll get over it.” You feel like socking them when they say that. You never get over it; you learn to live with it,’ Mary told the Daily Mail.

  Over the years, Mary has had a number of ways of keeping William’s memory alive. When he was little, he planted a Christmas tree in the back garden of their house. It remains there to this day and Mary says that every time she walks past it she thinks of him. Framed photographs of William are on every surface in her house and her five grandchildren all know who he is … their Uncle William, whom they never met but will always know. Perhaps even more poignantly, Mary says she has had to learn to say she has two children rather than three whenever she is asked – something that any parent can understand is particularly hard.