The Baker's Tale

by Thomas Hauser

  The voices were a beautiful orchestra to her.

  “Christmas brings back the pleasures of our childhood,” Marie said as she took my arm.

  Mr. Joy lived in a large brick house in a fashionable part of London. A servant met us at the door and retreated to announce the arrival of Miss Ruby Spriggs. That was unnecessary, since Ruby had followed him inside and rushed to embrace Mr. Joy before the announcement.

  “Thank you for coming,” he told us. “Christmas is far more merry when viewed through the eyes of a child.”

  Everything in the house was beautifully kept. Holly and mistletoe were much in evidence. Mr. Joy led us into the parlour and introduced us to his other guests.

  A large evergreen tree laden with ornaments rose to the ceiling. Rosy-cheeked dolls hid behind clusters of green needles. Jolly-faced little men perched among the boughs. Fiddles and drums dangled from branches. There was a star at the top.

  Ruby stared in wonder.

  Then it was time for gifts. I had asked for the honour of bringing rolls and pastries to accompany dinner. Ruby gave our host a portrait she had drawn, which Mr. Joy promptly declared was the finest likeness of himself that he had ever seen. Marie had knitted a scarf for him in Christmas colours. Christopher had fashioned a window box in which Mr. Joy’s gardener could plant flowers in the spring.

  Following that, it was Mr. Joy’s turn to give. A music box for Marie. New coats for Christopher and myself. And for Ruby . . . A doll’s house with an open front and three distinct rooms. A parlour, a bedroom, and kitchen. Each room had miniature furniture crafted from wood. The kitchen came with an assortment of diminutive utensils and a set of tiny platters with delicacies glued tight on top.

  Ruby’s eyes opened wide and her lower jaw dropped in the manner of a toy nutcracker. There was a cry of joy and the never-to-be-forgotten image of a wildly happy child.

  Dinner was served. There were eighteen guests. Ruby was seated with Christopher and Marie on either side.

  Mr. Joy spoke a brief blessing about Christmas being a time to remember the less fortunate and expressed the hope that someday part of the Christmas spirit would live in all hearts for all of the year.

  During dinner, he engaged easily in conversation over a wide range of subjects from cheerful topics to more serious reflections. He adapted to whomever he was speaking with, whether that person was the wealthy banker seated to my left or Marie.

  Mr. Joy also proved to be an expert at carving. A roast goose is universally acknowledged to be the greatest stumbling block to perfection in that science. Many aspiring carvers who began successfully with legs of mutton and enhanced their reputation through fillets of veal, quarters of lamb, and even ducks have been defeated by a roast goose.

  To Mr. Joy, resolving a goose into its smallest component parts was a performing art. No handing the dish over to a servant, no hacking and sawing at an unruly joint. No noise, no splash. The legs of the bird slid gently down into a pool of gravy. The wings seemed to melt from the body. The breast separated into a row of juicy slices to reveal a cavern of stuffing.

  When the meal was done, Mr. Joy turned to Ruby with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I would not be surprised if we found a gingerbread soldier in the drawing room. Let us go and look for him.”

  It seemed to Ruby as if the drawing room was all nooks and corners. And in each nook and corner, there was some little chair or cupboard or something or other that made her think there could not possibly be such another good nook or corner in the room until she looked at the next one and found it equal to if not better than the one before.

  Eventually, she found the gingerbread man and returned to the parlour with Mr. Joy. Port wine, plum pudding, cheeses, pastries, and roasted chestnuts were being served.

  Then Ruby announced that she had a story to tell and recounted a tale that I believe was about a dragon, since I heard the phrase “bad dragon” several times and she snorted as though she were a dragon. At the close of the recitation, she shouted “bad dragon” one more time, exhaled as though dying, and with great drama lay down on the floor with her eyes closed and her arms across her chest.

  There was applause, which she enjoyed immensely, after which she turned to Mr. Joy and announced that it was his turn to tell a story.

  “Why don’t I read you a story,” he suggested.

  Mr. Joy went to his study, returned with a book of fairy tales, put on his reading spectacles, and began.

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess, who had everything she could wish for and a great deal more. The princess lived in a beautiful palace. She had gold and silver and diamonds—”

  “And potatoes,” Ruby interrupted.

  “That’s right. The princess had potatoes.”

  “And soup and bread and lots of jam.”

  “And what did the palace look like?” Mr. Joy inquired.

  “The princess had her own bed,” Ruby answered. “And there was a fireplace and everyone was happy.”

  As it should be in a fairy tale.

  “What did the princess look like?” Ruby asked, summoning Mr. Joy to return to the narrative.

  “Well,” he told her, “she had eyes like Ruby and hair like Ruby and smiled like Ruby and laughed like Ruby.”

  “It was me,” Ruby offered.

  “And one day, Ruby left the palace on a magical journey.”

  “And then I met a dragon.”

  “That’s right. Ruby met a dragon.”

  “A big dragon with fire in its mouth that jumped out of the woods. And I said to the dragon, ‘Do you want to play with me?’ And the dragon said yes, so I played with the dragon.”

  There was a pause.

  “Read from the book,” Ruby instructed.

  “The sky was blue. The sun was bright. The water was sparkling. The leaves were green.”

  “And then I met another dragon,” Ruby interrupted. “And this dragon didn’t want to play with me. So the first dragon that was the nice dragon ate the bad dragon.”

  “I have seen many children in my life,” Octavius Joy told us at day’s end. “But never a child like Ruby.”

  Perhaps that is because there never was another child like Ruby. Of course, many people, I am sure, feel that way about their sons and daughters and other loved ones. So I will say simply that Ruby was an energetic, charming, exuberant, marvelous, ingratiating, indefatigable bundle of joy.

  She took a child’s delight in walking the streets and looking in shop windows. When a rare winter storm came to London, she and Christopher strolled about, leaving footprints in the freshly fallen snow on London Bridge above the River Thames. Her first shoes with laces were cause for celebration.

  Like all children, she thought at times that she was the pivot on which the world turned. She drew a picture of my bakery that I affixed to the wall and, whenever she came to visit, gazed at the drawing with pride. She regarded each annual celebration of her birth as a well-earned distinction brought about as a consequence of her own monumental achievement.

  She was unruly at times.

  “Miss Spriggs,” I chastised on one such occasion. “I am older than you and, some might think, wiser. Therefore, I will inform you that it is not the custom in London to put one’s knife in one’s mouth. The fork is reserved for that purpose, but is not to be inserted in the mouth further than necessary. Also, it is worthy of mention that, in polite society, the spoon is not used as a catapult to hurl small objects round the room.”

  And she could be stubborn. Most children in London were taught to read by their parents if they were taught at all. Marie helped Christopher with his lessons and began the process of teaching Ruby.

  “I know the alphabet,” Ruby told me. “A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . Me.”

  “Now it is my turn,” I said, seeking to gently correct her. “A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E—”

  “No! A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . Me.”

  “Ruby
Spriggs, I regret to inform you that ‘me’ is not a letter in the English alphabet.”

  “Me.”

  “E.”

  “Me.”

  “Of all the obstinate, stubborn, wrong-headed little creatures that were ever born, you are the most so.”

  Stubborn, but gifted where letters were concerned.

  The Church of England at that time held to the position that one should learn to read the Bible as part of the journey to salvation. To the extent that children were taught to read and write, it was most often through religious texts.

  The learning center that Octavius Joy founded was a temple of good intentions with a different view. The center was open to men, women, and children of all ages with separate classes for children and adults. Reading was taught to the young with an eye toward Mother Goose and to adults through the reading of light classics and popular journals.

  “I want those who come here to understand when they leave that reading is for pleasure as well as knowledge,” Mr. Joy said.

  Ruby learned the letters of the alphabet and the novelty of their shapes by sound and by sight. She had a gift for putting them together on paper, which she did with the deliberation of a bookkeeper and in a hand that was clear. She worked hard at her learning.

  “A” is an archer. And also an apple. “B” is a ball. And also a boy. “C” is a cat. “D” is a dog.” And so on through the zebra at the end of the alphabet.

  Sometimes, the students at the learning center read aloud in chorus.

  “The man has a hat . . . The man has a fat cat.”

  In time, that became “The . . . handsome . . . prince . . . held the . . . beautiful . . . princess . . . in his . . . arms . . . and . . . kissed her.”

  Often, Christopher sat beside Ruby at night and listened to her read until it was too dark for her to see the letters. And they would write sentences back and forth to one another on their slates.

  “Ruby has a pretty dress . . . I love uncle.”

  Other times, Christopher read aloud to her, which he did as though the eyes of a significant portion of the population of London, if not all of England, were upon him.

  And at times, he gave in to frustration.

  “It is no use,” he said one evening. “I try and I try. I think I can read, and then I cannot. What I read makes no sense. A cow cannot jump over the moon.”

  “And an old woman does not live in a shoe,” Marie reminded him.

  His face brightened. “Now I remember. It is a ha-ha.”

  And all the while, Ruby was growing older. The winds and tides rose and fell. The earth moved round the sun myriad times.

  Ruby reached a certain age and moved her bed to share a room with Marie instead of Christopher.

  Her blue eyes seemed bluer and her spirit even lighter than before. A prettier face, a more loving heart, never bounded so lightly over the earth. There was such joy in her laugh that the sternest misanthrope would have smiled in her presence. One could not fail to become attached to her. Her charm and grace were enough to make a prison cheerful.

  She wore plain clothes, but had the carriage of a princess when she wore them. Young children clustered at her skirts. Old men and women spoke a friendly greeting when she passed. She remained devoted in attachment to Marie and Christopher. And the crowning glory of it all was that she was without guile and seemed totally unaware of how delightful she was.

  When Ruby was young, little boys had fallen in love with her, often making gifts of small trinkets, nuts, and apples. Now came attention of a similar kind from boys who were older. She kissed a few but nothing more.

  “You have your mother’s look of beauty,” Christopher told her. “You are to tell me, not only if you ever fall into trouble, but also when you fall in love.”

  He and I met on occasion for a glass of ale. Once, as we drank, he spoke to me of Ruby’s mother.

  “She was a beautiful woman, whose life was destroyed by a madman. It is all in the police records. It is not necessary for Ruby to know.”

  He continued to work cheerfully in the bakery from sunrise until dark. As Ruby grew older, she often worked with him. I watched one afternoon as she made an apple pie. Kneading away at the dough, rolling it out, cutting it into strips, lining the pie dish with it, slicing the apples, raining cinnamon upon them, packing them into the dish until it was full and wanting only the top crust.

  She wondered at the beauty of flowers, the depth of the ocean, the height and blueness of the sky. And she fell in love with reading, treasuring every book she read and receiving ongoing words of encouragement from Octavius Joy.

  “How is my favorite scholar today?” he would ask each time he saw her.

  She was in his home from time to time. She grew familiar with the dining room, parlour, drawing room, and kitchen, his study on the ground floor where he conducted business, and the wonderful staircase with a balustrade so broad that she might have walked up it almost as easily as on the stairs themselves.

  But her favorite room—and it was Mr. Joy’s favorite as well—was the library. It was a large room lit during the day by windows on the south and west walls and by lamps at night. There were comfortable chairs and an ornate carpet. But its most remarkable feature was shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling and were lined with books. Some were in fine leather-bound sets. Others had the appearance of having been collected here and there at different times.

  “There are a great many books here, are there not?” Mr. Joy had said to Ruby on one of her visits when she was young.

  “Yes, sir. I never saw so many.”

  “Someday, you shall read as many of them as you like. With a few, the back and cover are the best parts. But the insides are better where most are concerned.”

  Almost always, their conversations touched on reading. At age six, Ruby had given Mr. Joy an alphabet chart on which she painstakingly drew all twenty-six letters in an array of colours. On each of her birthdays, he gave her books commensurate with her reading skills.

  “All people should be able to reap the harvest that is stored in books,” he told her. “It is through reading that one learns the wonders of the world, the mighty changes of time, and the name of the street that one is walking on. The demon of ignorance and poverty feeds on illiteracy. I will not stand for it.”

  On Ruby’s sixteenth birthday, Mr. Joy sent word that he would like to see her at his home. She went, not knowing what to expect. He met her at the front door and brought her to his study.

  A large bay window looked out onto a bright flower garden. There was a tea service on a silver tray and a plate of nectarines beside another plate that was filled with sponge cakes.

  Mr. Joy gave Ruby a small box wrapped in red paper. She opened it. There was a necklace inside. A gold necklace with a sparkling ruby.

  “As befits your name,” he told her. “And now, there is something else that I would like to discuss.”

  Ruby waited, uncertain as to what would come next.

  “You are a young woman of special ability,” Mr. Joy continued. “You have been given much, and you have much to offer. I would like you to consider working at the learning center. You will be paid a salary. You would be a teacher.”

  Of all the things Ruby had dreamed for her future, she had never dreamed of being a teacher.

  “But only men teach,” she said.

  Octavius Joy smiled. “I cannot think of a single reason why a young woman is not qualified to teach. Can you?”

  “No, sir. It is just, I have not heard of it being commonly done.”

  “Nonsense. Mothers teach their children to read all the time.”

  One month after her sixteenth birthday, Ruby began work at the learning center, assisting older, more experienced teachers. Never have students received more diligent, kindhearted instruction.

  Some of them came to the learning center, anxious and frightened. Others pretended to be rougher than they really were. Ruby greeted each one with a smile and told them how
happy she was that they were there. Her manner and gender made learning a more comfortable experience for women. Men wanted to be in her presence. Children adored her.

  There was a patience in her face that led those who had been anxious to take readily to her. And she had words of encouragement for everyone.

  A young man about twenty years of age had a laugh that was more cheerful than intelligent. Given the fact that he had been a slow boy for the first two decades of his life, it seemed unlikely that he would ever become a fast one. Indeed, at his first session, he held his paper with the alphabet on it upside down, which seemed to suit his convenience as well as if he had been holding it right side up.

  “You must never belittle yourself,” Ruby told him.

  A stout bald gentleman with a cheerful face had a tendency to stand with his hands in his pockets and whistle while admiring the writing on the wall as one might contemplate a painting by Rembrandt.

  “Your letters are beautiful,” Ruby complimented after he struggled through his first few letters.

  And to a girl of twelve who had tears of frustration in her eyes: “Queen Victoria, who sits upon the throne, began her learning with the same alphabet. She started with ‘A’ just like you. And it took her quite a while to work her royal way to ‘Z’.”

  Then tragedy.

  In Christopher’s fortieth year, he began to feel pain and weakness that should not have been in a man his age.

  There is a dread condition that prepares its victims for death. A disease that medicine has never cured and wealth has never warded off. It is an illness that sometimes moves in giant strides and sometimes at a sluggish pace but, whether quick or slow, is certain. A condition in which the outcome of the struggle between body and soul is so sure that, day by day, the mortal part of the sufferer withers away and the spirit, feeling death at hand, welcomes the end as a lightening load.

  Ruby comforted herself with the hope that Christopher would recover, as he answered with a quiet smile each day that he felt better than the day before. But he continued to grow thinner, and his eyes sank deeply into his face until his look was that of the gaunt starving man I had seen when he and Ruby first stood in the cold outside my bakery window.