The Little Christmas Kitchen

by Jenny Oliver

  Anyway, it’s all there. You don’t have to use it. I just thought I would have liked it when I first moved to London.

  Enjoy. Look up more than you would normally (some bloke said that to me on the tube). And if you get lonely give dad a ring - he’d love to hear from you.

  Ella

  Maddy was so astounded she had to read it over and over again. Flicking through the pages of lists and scanning over the best restaurants, theatre shows, bars, cafes. Ella had put her favourite spa and physio, good routes to jog, exhibitions she’d enjoyed, flea markets, food markets, must-see tourists attractions that she’d like but might miss like the Harrods food hall or the top floor restaurant at Harvey Nichols. Maddy turned page after page smiling at hastily drawn maps and crossed out mistakes.

  It was almost impossible to align the Ella that had turned up in Greece with this Ella – the Ella who had made this list to make sure her sister was ok.

  She sat crossed legged on the bed, a pillow across her thighs, and stared at the notebook. She took the paperclip off and looked at Ella’s scribbles – her life; her handwriting.

  She realised then how much she’d underestimated her. How she’d thought the old Ella gone. How she’d thought the breakdown of their relationship went right to the core when perhaps it was only skin deep. Perhaps underneath it all her sister would always look out for her; Ella may not like her but she would always protect her.

  That thought made her hold the notebook to her lips for a moment as a smile spread across her face.

  A couple of minutes later a sharp knock on the door drew Maddy’s eyes away from the pages of looped, slanted script that she knew so well as Ella’s, and pulling on the cardigan from her case she went to answer it.

  ‘Margery! How are you?’ Maddy asked when she saw her standing in the hallway.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine Madeline.’ Margery was holding her hands clasped to her front, dressed smartly in grey woollen trousers and a peach sweater and pearls. ‘I wondered if you might like to pop in for a glass of sherry? Not for long, I have to go to bed soon, but just a quick glass.’

  Maddy felt herself smile. Could think of nothing she’d like more than a distraction from all the circling thoughts of family in her head. Grabbing her keys she pulled the door shut and followed Margery into her apartment.

  Inside it smelt like her granny’s house, of wax polish and minestrone soup. The dim lighting in the front room cast a warm glow, sparkling off the crystal decanter and prisming on the Laura Ashley wallpaper, classical carols were playing on an old tape deck while the tatty Christmas tree was trying its hardest to live up to expectation as too few baubles and ancient fairy lights weighed down its dying branches.

  ‘Sweet or dry?’ Maddy heard Margery ask and when she shrugged that she didn’t mind, Margery said, ‘Well I prefer dry so why don’t you start with that and if you don’t like it you can swap.’

  ‘Ok.’ Maddy nodded, looking round the room at the little ornaments, the black and white photos on the side table, the antimacassars on the sofa. When she looked at Margery she thought her hand was shaking as she took the stopper out of the decanter. She was nervous, Maddy realised and, as Margery handed her a little sherry glass, tried to make casual small talk by picking up the nearest photo frame and asking, ‘Who’s this Margery?’

  Margery paused mid-pour. ‘My husband.’

  ‘Oh I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘I’m not. He left me for his secretary. Probably for the best. He drank too much. Cheers.’ she said, holding up her glass and clinking with Maddy.

  Maddy had to stifle a smile at Margery’s curt matter-of-factness and moved onto the next picture. ‘Aw, and what about this one? Is this you?’ she asked, looking at a photo of two girls and their mother standing in front of an ivy covered cottage, a big labrador asleep at their feet.

  Margery put her specs on and came over to have a look. ‘Yes that’s me on the right. That’s my sister. She lives in Australia now. And that’s my mother. Very cold woman. Oh and there’s Bonnie. I loved that dog.’

  As Maddy stared at the picture it suddenly occurred to her what the washed-out faded photograph was of in Ella’s drawer. It was the last summer they’d had just the four of them and the cat. They’d just come back from Greece, just picked the cat up from the cattery and there’d been a fight about who got to hold her. Maddy had won but the cat had scratched all up her arm. Ella had made a face like she deserved it but then helped her to hold it tighter. Their mum had held out the camera and taken a snap just before the cat had bolted. Afterwards they’d had lunch in the garden, pretending they were still on holiday, and the cat had crunched on fish heads. It was the last time that there were no cracks. It was before the bickering turned to proper arguments. Before they’d become two pairs. Her and her mum. Her dad and Ella. Gradual at first and then a divide like a tear between them.

  Margery took the photo frame from her and put it back on the shelf. ‘It’s always a little more lonely this time of year. I don’t really look at these.’

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ Maddy asked.

  ‘Oh nothing, I just watch a bit of TV and then go to bed.’

  ‘And Christmas Eve?’

  ‘Nothing. Never do.’

  All these people, all lonely, Maddy thought. Families and friendships with tears in them just like hers.

  She took a sip of the sherry and watched as Margery rearranged her photos. Thought of Veronica on her doorstep and Ella’s notebook in her bag. She could fix this, she realised suddenly. Not for everyone, but maybe for a few. If Ella could watch over her from a different country, and Veronica could defend her father so staunchly, then Maddy could swallow her pride. She could patch over what was torn and make it stronger.

  CHAPTER 39

  ELLA

  Ella had never enjoyed cooking so much. The rain had lightened as the wind had picked up, and the fire crackled and glowed as it howled down the chimney. Her mum had got up early and left her to sleep, so when she appeared in the kitchen there was freshly baked bread, homemade fig jam, a big silver coffee pot with a napkin tied around the handle to stop anyone getting burned. There was yoghurt and bowls of stewed fruit, pomegranates bursting with ruby seeds, orange juice and crushed tomatoes to spread on toast.

  Dimitri was sitting at the table already in his boxers and a t-shirt. His hair was all skewiff from sleep and his eyelids heavy. She had this strange urge to go and curl up on his lap but instead grabbed a piece of bread and jam, poured a thick, strong coffee and asked her mum where she should start.

  ‘Well I’m thinking redo the mince pies and some more sausage rolls, with shortcrust this time,’ her mum said, glancing up from her crumpled list. ‘The meatballs need doing, there’s tiny prawn quiches which I think will be fine to do today, they shouldn’t go soggy.’ She laughed. ‘But the little blinis we need to do at the last minute, I’m actually trying a new recipe for them from this…’ She held up a Red magazine at the page with a glossy photograph of stilton and blueberries tumbling from the tiny pancakes. ‘I’m going to do pomegranate because I’ve got them coming out my ears.’ She pointed to a giant glass bowl of the plump red fruit on the surface then looked back at her list. ‘Oh yes, there’s gazpacho out of wild greens but Dimitri needs to pick them from his garden. I have started the stuffed peppers – look at these, aren’t they sweet.’ She held up some miniature little red ones. ‘There’s a caper salsa you could do. I have the recipe for it written here.’ She pointed to an illegible piece of paper and Ella made a face. ‘Ok, yes, I see your point. I could dictate it for you. Then we’ll have big bowls of tzatziki, I’ve got to make more humous. Tomorrow we’ll do a tabbouleh with lots more pomegranate and I’ll do the calamari. Then–’ she turned over the paper and exhaled, blowing her fringe up out of her eyes. ‘We’ve got more Kourabiethes and Amygdalota – you remember them don’t you?’

  Ella shook her head.

  ‘They’re my favourite. Make double.’ Dim
itri shouted over.

  ‘Those little almond biscuits that your dad liked.’

  When she thought back, for the first time Ella didn’t have a bittersweet memory of the past, instead she just remembered her dad ramming them one after another in his mouth until he couldn’t talk and them all tickling him so he nearly chocked with laughter, and she smiled. ‘Yeah I know the ones.’

  Her mum looked up from her list and smiled back. ‘Maybe you can take him some when you go home.’

  ‘Yeah maybe.’

  She heard Dimitri shift in his seat. There had been no talk of Ella going home.

  ‘And that, I think is nearly it.’ Her mum scanned the list. ‘Oh shit, no there’s a massive moussaka, mini chicken souvlaki–’ she peered at her writing trying to decipher it, ‘… potatoes? God I’ve got no idea what that says. Baklava – I’ve done that, walnut cake – Gran’s done that. Dimitri will you bring the morello cherry liqueur with you?’

  Dimitri nodded.

  ‘It’s divine. We left it out on the roof during the summer and the heat from the sun just makes it–’ she kissed her fingers. ‘It’s wonderful. Oh and here, I added this this morning just for you – pineapple and cheese on sticks.’ She turned the paper round so Ella could see, a big beaming grin on her face.

  Ella laughed. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Ok, so why don’t you start on the capers? And then when you’re done with that maybe the quiches? That ok?’

  ‘Perfect.’ Ella said, taking a bite of her bread and jam, the sweetness of the figs melting in her mouth and a sip of the freshly squeezed orange juice tart on her tongue made her close her eyes with delight.

  When she took the seat opposite Dimitri he looked up, bewildered. ‘What’s happened between you two?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nothing.’ Ella frowned. ‘Same as it’s always been.’

  He scoffed. ‘Yeah right.’

  Ella looked down at her bowl of capers, hiding a smile on her face as she started to crush them in the pestle and mortar.

  As the food piled up and the space in the fridges decreased, the list was predominantly words crossed out and empty cups of coffee and tea were replaced with red wine, Ella sat back and took a moment to look round the taverna. Moody Agatha and head waiter Alexander had been drafted in for decorations, ordered around by her grandmother. Crepe paper concertinas had been draped from the poles supporting the roof, out and over to one of the olive trees that stood between the tables, a hole in the concrete floor allowing room for the ancient trunk. More strings of fairy lights hung from the eaves, kissed by the wind they danced against the plastic storm walls.

  On every table were jam jars tied with ribbon, bunches of hellebore lolling over the fresh white tablecloths, their dusky pink petals drooping too heavy for their stems. Strings of mussel shells, their insides gilded, had been looped across the windows and the mantle piece, the gold shimmering as it reflected the flickering lights. Ella’s granddad had been given the task of festooning the railings with silver tinsel while Dimitri had had to stand on a chair, his t-shirt pulling up to reveal his hairy belly as he stretched out to screw in a new bulb on a string of coloured lights. As he did, her granddad had flicked the switch so they buzzed on in his palm, the shock knocking him back down to the ground – making her granddad snigger.

  Ella watched, feeling like if she breathed it in deep enough it might stay with her better once she was home.

  CHAPTER 40

  MADDY

  Maddy cooked all day. All her mum’s specialities from the ancient recipe book open in front of her, the food splattered pages completely incongruous in the sparkling kitchen. She sent texts and emails to everyone she’d met in London as she queued at the fishmonger for white fish that she baked in garlic breadcrumbs in Ella’s never-before-used oven. Rifling through Ella’s bureau she found a packet of cream and gold notelets that she made a silent promise to replace before she left and scrawled out some hasty party invitations. When she dashed out again in the heavy snow because she’d forgotten to go to the butchers for rabbit, she posted invitation cards through the doors of the apartment block, and, miscounting how many there were, popped out again to post more as red wine and cinnamon from the stifado scented the kitchen. Then she made all her mum’s usual mezze and added some that she found in one of Ella’s glossy, untouched cookbooks: crispy shallot and basil fritters, tiny cheeseburgers in miniature buns and bite-sized Yorkshire puddings that she filled with turkey and red currant jelly. For dessert she made florentines and cupcakes with mixed spice and cranberries, Melomakarona cookies that she couldn’t help eating as they cooled, and the tiny mince pies of her aunt’s with stars on the top.

  Then at lunchtime she took off her apron and knocked on Margery’s door with her guitar in her hand and asked if she might be able to use her tape player.

  ‘Certainly.’ Margery opened the door wider to let her in. ‘Doesn’t your sister have one of those fancy new ones?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, but I want to use a tape. It fits better with what I want to do.’

  She’d been thinking about it since last night, lying in bed staring out the window at the snow, the flakes picked out perfectly by the street lamps, trying to come up with the strongest link she had with her dad and Christmas.

  ‘Do you have a cassette?’ Margery asked.

  Maddy shook her head and made a face of apology. ‘I was hoping you might have one of them as well.’

  Margery smirked and, leaning forward, threw open the doors of a black lacquered cupboard in the front room to reveal stacks and stacks of tapes and about ten packets of blanks ones still in their cellophane. ‘I can’t abide any of these MP3s and things. If it works, why change it?’ she said, then changing the subject added, ‘Lovely invitation by the way, thank you. I’m really looking forward to your party. Picked out what I’m going to wear already. Do you want me to bring anything? I’ve got the rest of the bottle of sherry.’

  ‘That would be perfect.’ Maddy smiled, unwrapping a blank cassette and slotting it into the machine.

  ‘So are you going to play the guitar?’ Margery asked.

  Maddy nodded. ‘I’m actually going to sing something for my dad.’

  ‘How lovely.’ Margery made herself comfortable on the sofa. Maddy had intended to ask her to leave because she was nervous and embarrassed and didn’t want an audience, but Margery seemed delighted to be able to watch. ‘Off you go. Do you want me to show you how it works?’

  Maddy shook her head. Her dad had had one just like it in the nineties and she knew exactly how it worked, she’d spent hours lying on the living room rug listening to his music. To his Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan. Now she sat on a stool in Margery’s front room and leant forward to press the record button, her fingers strumming for the right key, and her voice singing the words to White Christmas without her having to hardly think about it she knew them so well.

  She closed her eyes and saw the Christmas table laid with candles and crackers, presents stacked as high as mountains under a tree that touched the ceiling. It didn’t matter so much suddenly what came after those Christmases, – it was that she had them, unlike Walter, there in her memory to be called on when needed. Snapshots of her dad, mayonnaise round his mouth as he ate his Big Mac and pushed the tape into the machine for the last song of Christmas, her mum carving the turkey with her eyes half shut anxious that she hadn’t burnt it, all her grandparents arguing during midnight mass because some of them wanted to sneak out early to go to the pub, her and Ella singing in stupid voices at the village carols and comparing their presents to check that neither of them got more. Boxing day in their pyjamas watching films all day on the sofa while munching on turkey sandwiches so big that they could hardly get their mouths round them. Trudging round the sales while their dad winced at all the people and their mum took back half her Christmas presents. Everything tinged with the rosy glow of nostalgia, more sweet than bitter. The first slice of fruit cake thick with marzipan, thimb
lefuls of their great grandmother’s morello cherry liqueur, hot coffee and the sweet cinnamon kataifi and baklava on Christmas morning. Poorly remembered Greek blessings and guilt from their great-grandmother for not trekking to the orthodox church in Bayswater on Epiphany. All of it played like the strip of tape in the machine, a ghost of the past laid finally to rest in a better place.

  When she opened her eyes the song was finished. The only sound the whir of the tape player, Maddy hardly able to believe it was done, and then after a few seconds Margery started to clap.

  ‘I adored that, Madeline. I simply adored it.’

  Maddy rested her guitar against the cupboard and pressed stop on the machine. She glanced over to where Margery sat, her feet tucked underneath her, her palms pressed together and resting over her lips, and saw her eyes shimmering wet in the low light.

  ‘You think so?’ Maddy asked, tentatively. ‘You think it’s ok?’

  ‘Madeline, I think it was simply stunning.’

  Maddy couldn’t stop herself from smiling as she clicked open the tape deck and slotted the cassette into its case.

  ‘I’d better drop this off then,’ she said slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Margery looked at her watch. ‘Not too long till the party kicks off.’

  ‘Do you think people will come?’

  ‘Maddy darling, I know people will come.’ she said, standing up and brushing lint from her trousers, ‘There was much talk about it down in the laundry room. I just hope you have enough food.’

  ‘Oh believe me,’ Maddy laughed, ‘I have enough food!’

  Wrapped up in Ella’s coat and scarf and gloves, Maddy took a taxi to her dad’s office and handed the parcel to the receptionist letting them know that it was urgent. She had slipped one of the notecards into the jiffy bag and had almost crossed her fingers when she handed the package over.