Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ she said, tidying the papers on her desk. ‘The Globe are to give away a couple of places as a reader promotion, and he’s so well known that a line about the course under his column, which we won’t even have to pay for, plus a banner on his website, will sell all the places.’ She looked up at Lucy. ‘And if he agrees to mention your courses too, we’ll be overbooked.’

  Lucy could feel the hot blood in her cheeks. For a moment she stared at Joanna in disbelief then burst out, ‘What? Are you mad?’

  Joanna’s head jerked up, a frown replacing her smile, ‘Why? Of course I’m not mad. It’s a brilliant coup. I’ve been working on it for weeks, but only just got Orlando’s OK. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Jo, Have you forgotten Orlando Black is the guy who nicked my column on the Globe, the … the … half-brained ignoramus who doesn’t know the first thing about food? Who ponces round the telly saying “Wow” and “Cool”?’

  Joanna walked round her desk, reached for Lucy’s hands and dragged her to the sofa. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to talk about this.’

  Lucy thought afterwards that being dressed down by Joanna was like being ticked off by her long-ago headmistress.

  ‘Lucy, this is nonsense. These are holiday courses, not postgraduate degrees in gastronomic history. Orlando is charming, women love him, he has enthusiasm, he is famous. Besides, he worships you. So stop being so prickly. Orlando will be a huge success.’

  Somehow her students’ enthusiasm revived Lucy’s own interest in writing. She had done little since she’d delivered Peasant Soups and now she started to plot out a follow-up: Peasant Hotpots, perhaps. She loved all those slow-cooked family recipes like cassoulet, goulash, bollito, stoved pork, comforting and infallible. While her students were out sightseeing or having a siesta after lunch, she’d spend the afternoon at a table in the bay window of the dining room.

  One day, at the end of her first week when she was absorbed with the universal spread of the tomato, its popularity in almost every culture, and its affinity with both garlic and chilli, she became aware of someone looming over her.

  Mildly irritated, she looked up to see Joshua, the sixty-something food photographer who had come to a couple of her classes. He had an all-white thatch of hair and a round pink face. He looked expectant, obviously waiting for an answer.

  She frowned. ‘Did you say something?’

  Joshua backed away at once, saying, ‘Oh, so sorry, I’m interrupting.’

  Lucy, regretting her curtness, forced a smile,

  ‘No, it’s me that should apologise, I was miles away. What did you say?’

  ‘No, honestly. You’re busy …’

  She was anxious now to put things right.

  ‘No really, please sit down.’ She turned to face him and pushed the neighbouring chair towards him with her foot. He sat, but unwillingly. ‘Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ she went on. ‘How come you turn up to odd lessons? You must live locally I guess.’

  Joshua’s smile revealed slightly crooked but very white, teeth.

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m doing the same course as the others, only over six weeks. I came on a Monday to get your first lesson; Tuesday for the next, then Wednesday, etc.’

  ‘And Joanna let you do that? Doesn’t it screw up her ability to fully book each week?’

  ‘I suppose it does, but she’d agreed before Orlando’s article packed the place out, and she thought it would be a good experiment – maybe next year they will offer once-a-week courses aimed at locals – to develop the business unrestricted by the number of bedrooms.’

  Lucy made an effort not to dwell on Orlando’s help in establishing her courses. ‘That’s Joanna all right. She’s good, isn’t she?’

  Joshua shifted his slightly overweight body to face her more comfortably, and replied, ‘She is, very. I’ve known this place for donkey’s years. Always nice and a great setting, but completely anarchic with nothing ever working. She’s made a colossal difference. We get meals on time now. And they are edible. Indeed delicious.’

  ‘That’s because the cookery students cook them, or most of them. Must save on cook’s wages too.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But that’s good. It retains something of the old cooperative, greeny-goodie-hippie feel, don’t you think?’

  ‘I didn’t know it before, but it sounds horrible! I’m much too old for horrible food and no hot water.’

  ‘Agreed, so am I. It used to be chaotic. Once I signed up for a painting course and the tutor hadn’t been booked. Most of the students were Londoners spending a week of their hard-earned holidays here, and I felt so sorry for them I ended up teaching photography instead.’

  ‘Really? How extraordinarily good of you!’

  ‘Not at all. We had a terrific time. I took them all over the region and the keen painters sat at their easels and I taught the rest of them the basics of photography. We got the local gallery owner in to crit their paintings and photographs at the end of the week when we had a little exhibition. Some of them even sold. Sometimes chaos works.’

  What a nice guy, thought Lucy. And the thought that Grace, her uptight daughter, and Archie, her work-driven son-in-law, could join her here, absorbing something of Pencarrick’s peace, flashed through her mind – and was instantly dismissed as fantasy.

  Lucy was pleased that Joshua took to popping in on days he wasn’t due for a class and waylaying her for a cup of coffee. Sometimes they strolled along the cliff-tops together, or collected (and dutifully returned), shells on the beach. Lucy found him companionable and interesting and was grateful for the company.

  A perfect walker for a widow, thought Lucy. Maybe he’s lonely too.

  One day Joshua rang her.

  ‘When I interrupted your writing that day, I er …1 failed to ask you what I’d come in for.’

  Funny guy, thought Lucy. He’s seen me a dozen times since then.

  ‘So what was that?’

  ‘Any chance of your skipping the community supper?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s not compulsory. Why?’

  ‘I want you to see my photographs.’

  ‘Not your etchings, then?’

  He laughed. ‘If I had any, then them too.’

  Lucy was mildly excited on arriving at Joshua’s cottage. It felt a bit like a date, something she hadn’t had for forty years at least.

  The house was on the quayside and had once been the harbour master’s. It was solidly built with a boathouse underneath, living quarters above and, above that, a loft for sail-making. This was now Joshua’s studio.

  Lucy walked ahead of Joshua into the long open space, bright with summer light flooding the four big windows and the now-glassed-in door that had once been used for hauling up sails.

  They gazed down on the little harbour with its pleasure boats in the lee of the breakwater.

  Then Lucy looked about her, taking in the furled black blinds above the windows, ready to drop down to exclude the light, and the massive roll of white paper, big as a broadloom carpet, suspended behind a low wooden platform, painted white.

  ‘Do you do fashion photography as well as food?’ she asked.

  ‘I used to. And I still occasionally do portraits, mostly of cookery writers or chefs for book jackets or magazines.’ He looked at the curtain of white paper. ‘If they insist on wearing their chefs’ white jackets, I have to spray the background some other colour. But I prefer food photography.’

  Lucy drifted slowly round the studio. A clutter of stylist’s props covered an old dresser and a pine table: baskets balanced on copper jam pans; Victorian cream skimmers and ladles stuck, like flowers, in terracotta jugs; bread boards, flower-patterned dishes and teacups stacked in haphazard piles. It looked like a good junk shop.

  Next to this olde worlde display was its complete opposite: a minimalist kitchen in bright white and stainless steel, the worktop bare except for a shiny Dualit toaster, an Italian espresso machine, and the ha
ndles of Global knives and a Chinese cleaver protruding from a slit in the back of the work bench.

  Lucy smiled at Joshua. ‘May I?’ she said, pulling open a drawer to reveal a blowtorch for browning, mini-whizzer for frothing sauces, and squeezy bottles for arty swirls of sauce on the plate. The next drawer, double width, had built-in compartments containing neatly segregated wooden spoons, fish slices, draining spoons, small tools like peelers, cherry stoners, Japanese mini-grater, lemon zester, etc.

  She was impressed. Photographer’s studios were usually full of dead coffee cups and debris from long-gone shoots. Joshua must be either a very good photographer who made a handsome living and could afford the best, or a rich fantasist who played at it with all the right tools.

  She looked at him, speculating. He was absorbed in undoing the ties of a portfolio case and opening it on the central stainless steel workbench. Sensing her gaze, he lifted his eyes to hers, and his face came alive, a pleased smile spreading over it.

  ‘Come and look,’ he said.

  They flipped slowly through the pictures. The photographs were divided into three groups. First came a set that looked like Old Master paintings, all soft light and deep shadows caressing the still-life objects: a round cheese, cut open, next to a pottery bowl with two apples in it, a half-folded napkin, a pitcher of wine. Lucy instinctively touched the surface of the print, half expecting the feel of paint.

  Next came black and white action shots of young chefs in a modern restaurant kitchen. Lucy’s attention was caught by the youth, seriousness and concentration of two young pastry chefs, both women. One was cracking eggs into a bowl, the other holding a dripping spoon at eye level to check the thickness of the syrup. Interspersed were pictures of young men during the service, moving so fast the images blurred and streaked. They had the immediacy and excitement of a trade that is not for wimps, but for those who can hold their own in the coordinated ballet that cooking at speed can be.

  The third set of photographs consisted of straightforward shots of finished dishes. They were exquisite. Lucy paused at a picture of a perfectly round stack of crayfish and avocado, topped with an explosion of chervil and chives, and then at one of a thick piece of cod glinting through its herbal crust.

  ‘These are wonderful,’ said Lucy. ‘They make your mouth water. Who is the cook? He’s good.’

  ‘Um. That’s me.’

  Puzzled, Lucy shook her head. ‘It can’t be. How can you do the cooking and take the photographs? And anyway, this lot looks like Raymond Blanc or Marcus Wareing.’

  Joshua laughed. ‘Good. That means I’m learning! But actually it’s not too difficult. I work alone and take my time. Get the shot set up before I cook the dish. This lot are for a cookbook to be published in Holland by a well-known chef, but he can’t leave his restaurant to come here. So he sent me some of his restaurant china and his wife emailed me the recipes and the digital snaps she took during the service, just before the dishes left the kitchen. It’s not so hard.’

  Lucy noticed that Joshua’s natural reticence had been banished by his enthusiasm for his work. He bustled about the studio, showing her photographs and published cookbooks – she recognised several she’d reviewed in the Globe days. Then he lifted a second portfolio onto the table and undid the ties.

  ‘This is what I really wanted to show you.’ He opened the folder. Inside were A3 and A2 prints on thick matt paper. The top picture was of a stem of red chillies in the centre of the page, with, to one side, smaller photographs of the flower in bud and in bloom, and to the other, pictures of the leaf and the root of the plant.

  ‘I love the detail and accuracy of botanical drawing,’ he said, ‘and I thought it would be interesting to do the same thing with the camera. And of course I’m now hooked.’ He shuffled quickly through large prints of cabbages, celery, celeriac, beets, carrots, tomatoes, all similarly treated.

  ‘Not so fast,’ cried Lucy, putting out a hand. ‘Go away. Let me look.’

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said.

  When he returned, Lucy was still deeply absorbed in the pictures, studying the delicacy of pale celery leaves with light shining through them, the precision of the tiny parallel ridges on the outside of the stalk, and the gradual greening towards the top. She barely noticed his presence, or the coffee he put down beside her. She was mesmerised.

  ‘These are the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever seen, Joshua.’

  Visibly pleased, he came round the table.

  ‘Good. I could get addicted to your approval,’ he said.

  ‘This is as much fine art as photography. I think you should have an exhibition in Cork Street.’

  ‘And I think we should ask your publisher if I could do the photographs for your book.’

  Lucy looked at him, delighted. ‘Josh, that’s a great idea!’ And then she shook her head. ‘But it’s too late. They’ve already hired Alexander Toby.’

  ‘Alex Toby? Well, he’s really good. Congratulations’

  He sounded like Lucy felt: disappointed at the instant death of a good idea.

  ‘Ah well. If we are still friends in a year’s time, maybe we could work together on my next book?’

  ‘Believe me, Lucy, we’ll still be friends.’

  When Lucy got back to Pencarrick she emailed her publisher: Alex Toby is on for the book, isn’t he? It’s just that I’ve met this brilliant, very original, photographer and if Alex isn’t signed up yet … ?

  Next morning she had the reply, ‘Yes, Toby signed up. Will start shooting beginning of August. He’s providing both cook and stylist so he should go fast. Will ask him to email you photos as he does them. Schedule is tight but we are still on for late October publication.

  But, miraculously, two weeks later, in the middle of July, she had another email: Was her pet photographer still available? Alexander Toby had had to cry off, his old mother ill in Scotland.

  Josh caught an early train to London the next day to give a slide show to the design people at the publishers.

  Joshua found Lucy in the bar that evening. She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he’d been successful.

  ‘Hi, Josh, how did you get on? Did you get the job?’

  He didn’t answer but handed her a packet. Inside was a book. A first edition of MFK Fisher’s With Bold Knife and Fork.

  ‘Ah, Josh! This is her best book! How wonderful. Where did you get it? And why?’

  ‘I got it in Books for Cooks,’ he said. ‘It’s to thank you.’

  ‘You got the job!’ Lucy put her arms round his neck and hugged him. ‘Oh Josh, how wonderful.’

  ‘Yup. They signed me up then and there, and they are leaving you and me to decide which fifty recipes we want to photograph.’

  Lucy ordered two glasses of champagne. ‘Here’s to Peasant Soups then.’

  ‘And to the start of the lifelong successful professional collaboration of the great food writer Lucy Barnes and the great photographer Joshua Emmet.’

  ‘Steady on! We may fall out at the first picture.’

  ‘We won’t, you know.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Joanna watched Stewart come out of Truro station and look around him, searching for her. For a second or two, she just watched him, thinking both how distinguished he looked, and how out of place among all the holiday-makers. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored lightweight business suit and carried his usual oversized briefcase in his hand. He looked cool and unrumpled in spite of the heat.

  She didn’t wave, delaying the moment when he would see her and his face would light with pleasure.

  When he spotted her, it was exactly like that. His face opened in a wide smile, he lifted his free hand in greeting and hurried across the tarmac. And then she was in his arms, the now familiar pleasure of his embrace compounded by her pride in him. She could not help the delight that this beautiful man, this confident, achieving, wonderful chap was hers. How childish, she thought, but I like the fact that total strangers s
ee him hugging me.

  ‘Joanna, you look wonderful.’

  ‘So do you. Though you’re not exactly in holiday gear.’

  ‘I know. I feel ridiculous in shorts. I did bring a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of loafers.’

  They climbed into the car and he pulled her to him. ‘I need a proper hello,’ he said.

  Joanna returned his kiss, desire mounting. His face against hers, he said, ‘Jo, I miss you so. Every week leaving you gets harder. Your yo-yo existence between Greenfarms, London and Cornwall is mad.’

  She forced herself to push him away.

  ‘Darling, could we discuss this later? I want you to look at a bit of Cornwall.’

  She drove slowly, taking B roads down leafy tunnels with high Cornish walls covered thickly in greenery. Stewart seemed to relax, his hand on her thigh.

  Of course she knew he wanted her to come and live with him in Yorkshire. He so loved the North, but she felt a long way from that sort of commitment. There were too many obstacles which Stewart was unaware of or would never understand.

  One of them was his daughter. Joanna was now almost certain that Caroline was not going to make it as the boss of Greenfarms. Last month Alasdair had come to see her.

  ‘Joanna, I hate to do this. She’s my cousin after all, but I need some help here. Caroline is going to lose two of her department heads if we are not careful.’

  ‘Why, what’s up?’

  ‘Yesterday the head buyer, you know, Bob Carsens, told me his order for vegetable packaging had been cancelled by Caroline. We are going to have to pay full whack for it. It’s printed with our labels and is ready to ship.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why did she cancel it?’

  ‘Because it is not a hundred per cent biodegradable. Which Bob knew and had agreed. The alternative, which is totally biodegradable, and which Caroline has ordered instead, is twice the price.’

  ‘Well, to be fair, we pride ourselves on our green reputation

  Alasdair interrupted,