Sweet Treats

by Christine Miles

  “Better than that, there’s a bed,” Nina said, and hoped a layer of dust did not cover everything in Miss Clapham’s bedroom. “Come on. Lean on me.”

  “I’m truly alright,” John said when the rush of customers had gone and Nina stood by the bed. “The last time I rode a bus I was a child. I’d forgotten how ill they made me.”

  “Well, you stay there until you’re ready to stand upright. You know where to find me.”

  “Just a few more minutes and I’ll be fine,” John said.

  When Nina next checked on him, John was fast asleep. His chest was sunken, his knees knobbly, and his hands thin. She wished she could comfort him as he had comforted Greg, simply by being in the same room.

  “It is so good to see you.” John’s voice startled Nina from her reverie, and she hoped he did not see her blush. “I’ve come to help you and here I am, lying on the bed like a toothless old man.”

  He did look a lot better now, Nina thought. Not nearly so frail as he had when he got off the bus. “You’re going to have to stay here forever,” she joked. “We can’t be sending you back on the nasty old bus.”

  He laughed. “Show me around,” he said, pushing himself painfully to the side of the bed. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “You haven’t? But you recommended me.”

  “I did, because I know Miss Clapham from when she was a university student and boarding with my parents when I was a child. She told us about Sweet Treats when she sent Christmas cards, so I knew it was the perfect place for you, and Miss Clapham the perfect person to work with.”

  “Well, Miss Clapham isn’t here,” Nina said. “And I think you might be in for an eye-opening experience. Do you like ginger fudge?”

  They moved through to the kitchen, easily, as though the house was a part of them and not the first occasion they’d been together in weeks.

  “What do you cook on?”

  “The fire,” Nina said.

  “The what?”

  “You heard right,” Nina said. “I have learned to split wood, I can light the fire with a flint and striker (but I have a secret stash of matches, don’t tell Miss Clapham), and I can – finally - create a fine fudge on that fire. What’s more, I can cook and serve customers at the same time, but I’m glad you’re here because you can be the stirrer.”

  “Great,” John said. “I was afraid I’d have to sit around looking intelligent to your customers. This way I can hide out the back.”

  Nina laughed. “You won’t want to hide out the back,” she said. “All my customers leave happy, well, most of them anyway,” and she regaled him with the tale of the dentured woman on her first day in Sweet Treats.

  Mrs Potts, when Nina turned up at home that evening, wasn’t best pleased to see John. “It’s been a long day,” she said, “and I’m tired. Dinner is in the oven.”

  Nina cringed. What dreadful feast would Mrs Potts serve for dinner tonight?

  But she was in for a surprise. “Pie,” Mrs Potts announced. “Saw it in the freezer at Staceys and thought I’d save myself the effort of cooking.”

  “Yum,” Nina said. “Can John stay for dinner?”

  “There’s nowhere else to go, is there?” Mrs Potts snapped. “He’ll be sleeping at Sweet Treats, I suppose. Unless he wants to sleep on the sofa.”

  Nina looked at John, hoping he could see the apology in her face. It would be great indeed if Mrs Potts could talk to John, instead of about him.

  As if she’d read Nina’s mind, Mrs Potts turned her attention to John. “You’re a bit skinny,” she said, looking him up and down. “I suppose you eat like a horse.”

  John didn’t enlighten her with facts. “I don’t eat terribly much,” he said. “And I’ve brought something to add to the table.” He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a red plastic tub. Nina fell on it instantly.

  “Plum pudding!” she screeched. “We must have it with custard.”

  “Not enough milk,” Mrs Potts snapped.

  “I’ve got the shop key,” Nina said. “I’ll slip back and get the things we need.”

  Mrs Potts nearly had a smile on her face when Nina returned with the milk and sugar and custard powder. John did that to people; he brought out smiles when it seemed there was nothing in the world to smile about. Nina wondered what he’d said to loosen up the grim Mrs Potts.

  The pie was delicious, its heavily gravied interior nearly but not quite making the oily cabbage dumped alongside palatable. A very old bottle of tomato sauce was found in the back of the cupboard which was placed with aplomb in the centre of the table. Nina looked at it dubiously, longingly. Who knew in what condition the sauce would be? It could well be suitable only as a science fair exhibit.

  Mrs Potts shambled into the living room after the dishes were done, leaving Nina and John to talk in the kitchen. “It’ll be the sofa for you,” she said to John as she departed. “I go to bed at 10.”

  “Phew,” John said. “What would you have had if she had stayed home all day?”

  “Cabbage.” Nina screwed up her nose.

  “That’s all?”

  Nina nodded, an unhappy tear filling the edge of an eye. She wiped it away quickly with her sleeve. She was happy John was here and she would not spoil his visit with her tears.

  John moved his chair closer. “Why do you stay here?”

  “Where else would I stay?”

  “In Sweet Treats, of course,” he said. “Miss Clapham isn’t here; she’d expect you to be comfortable.”

  “But I can’t stay there,” Nina said. “That letter she sent you said the successful applicant would be provided with accommodation. I’m not a successful applicant. I just happened to turn up the same day she disappeared. I’m just, like, there.”

  “Miss Clapham would have considered you successful from the time she agreed to have you come,” John said. “I don’t know what she’s up to, why she’s gone away, but I know she wouldn’t have done so if she’d not felt she could trust you.”

  “But everybody thinks she’s so wonderful that it’s scary, and what if she returns while I’m asleep in her bed?”

  “She’ll just have to wait her turn then, won’t she?” John said with a laugh. “First in, best served.”

  Nina giggled. The things she worried about seemed ridiculous when John had heard her out. He must think her a right numpty.

  “You could stay at Sweet Treats.”

  John shook his head. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable,” he said. “She’d be expecting a girl to make use of her bedroom, not some hairy bloke. We’ll tell Mrs Potts tonight that you’re moving out in the morning. Maybe she’ll let me sleep on the sofa tonight.”

  He wasn’t hairy, Nina wanted to say, but she thought it might embarrass him that she’d noticed.

  It would be nice to sleep at Sweet Treats. Miss Clapham’s room, now that Nina had been in it, had been sensibly attractive. It had not been un-pretty; it had merely had a no-nonsense, comfortable feel to it, as though Miss Clapham spent a lot of time in it. It dawned on Nina that Miss Clapham had probably used it as her living room too. One could hardly spend every evening sitting on the wooden stools in the kitchen where all the work had taken place since sun-up.

  “Actually,” Nina said. “I would like very much to move in to Sweet Treats.”

  “There’s no rush,” John said. “If I could sleep on the sofa?”

  “You won’t be able to sleep on the sofa,” Nina said. “You haven’t seen it yet – a child could sleep on it, but not a full-grown man. What’s more, the clock doesn’t tock softly. It shouts. And just when you’ve got used to the half-hourly chimes, the beastly cat will yowl outside the window.”

  “And they say the countryside is peaceful.”

  Nina grinned. “They also say nothing happens in the country, which is just absolutely not true.” And Nina regaled him further with the happenings in the small town since her arrival.

  “Amazing,” John said, when she was finished. “And you thin
k you’re going to solve this conundrum?”

  “If Miss Clapham were to simply return, I am fairly certain there would be nothing to solve. Nobody seems to know where she’s gone; there are some people who probably have an inkling of what she’s up to, but not one single person has provided the missing link.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find it,” John said. “You’re good at things like that.”

  Mrs Potts wandered into the kitchen. She rinsed her teacup, shook the crumbs from the saucer, took out her dentures and rinsed them too.

  John grimaced but there was a crinkle to the sides of his nose, which meant he wanted to laugh. Suddenly, as Nina stood to rinse their own mugs, Mrs Potts’ odd ways didn’t seem quite so gruesome. She felt John’s eyes on her, that slow, thoughtful gaze which she’d seen in Greg’s eyes when he was so ill. He loves with his eyes, Nina thought, reaching out to squeeze John’s hand. He’s not got long to live, and the least I can do is show I love him too.

  “And I’ll be at Staceys again tomorrow.” Mrs Potts threw a glance at Nina.

  “I am very grateful,” Nina said. “Tomorrow it’s mail day.”

  “There’ll be a lot of sorting to do,” Mrs Potts said, “and a lot of people popping in to see if there’s any correspondence for them.”

  Mrs Potts should have inherited Staceys; her father had been a fool. The woman knew the ins and outs as though she’d not spent the past few years away from the shop. Perhaps Bryn might find gainful employment far from the little village so Mrs Potts might have some semblance of a normal life once again.

  “Honestly, Nina,” she said to herself as she squeezed between Miss Clapham’s too tight sheets. “You do have the most ridiculous ideas.”

  Chapter 55

  c. AD 1526, INDIA: between battles, Mogus leaders nibble on sweetmeats made from sugar, almonds, and coconut.

  Maudie sprang across the street the moment she saw Nina. “I’m back, and it was so good,” she said. “Look! I’ve got you a little present.” She pulled from her pocket a small notebook. Embedded in a cameo on its cover was an image of Queen Victoria.

  “Very British,” Nina said, turning it over in her hands.

  “I thought you’d like it. I’ve seen you looking at Queen Victoria.”

  “Just when I’m not amused,” Nina said. “But I do like this notebook. I love stationery.”

  John rounded the corner. He was unprepossessing from a distance – he had no stride, nor did he shuffle. Maudie didn’t even notice him.

  “Here’s John,” Nina said. “My friend.”

  Maudie looked John up and down. “You’ll be coming in to get a muffin,” she said. “And a coffee with a great dollop of cream.”

  Nina wanted to tell her it would make no difference, but this was Maudie’s conversation with John. He merely smiled. “That would be very nice,” he said, and Nina watched as Maudie’s eyes lit up. To hear John’s voice was to overlook his fading self.

  “Could I see those newspapers Bryn gave you?”

  Nina took the roll of papers from the mantle; Maudie quicky unfurled them. She squinted at the faint print, then rolled them up again, snapping the rubber band around the bundle with a practiced flick of the wrist and returned them to the mantle, quite disinterested. “I’ll read them later,” she said.

  Nina looked at Maudie. Hard. “I’ll try not to burn them first,” she said.

  Maudie laughed. A tight little laugh, and Nina wondered what she was trying to convey. Tonight, she promised herself. Tonight she would look at the newspapers. Why couldn’t Bryn or Maudie just read the articles again themselves, she thought irritably.

  Maudie stood in the doorway, hand on the frame, expectancy on her face. “I said, did you make any progress on Laud Mayor?”

  “Progress?” Nina laughed, embarrassed that she’d missed Maudie’s question the first time. A degree of hysteria crept in as she remembered Mrs Potts’ encounter with the Mayor. “I don’t know if you’d call it progress, but, oh, I’ll tell you later,” she said. “You’ll either laugh or you’ll cry.”

  Maudie smiled. “I thought I’d put two and two together while I was gone, but there wasn’t enough time.”

  John looked at Nina with big question marks on his face as Maudie dashed across the road.

  “She’s mad about ‘two and two’,” Nina said. “Thinks all the problems in the world can be solved by adding two and two.”

  “But the newspapers?”

  “It’s all part of the saga of finding the dirt on the mayor. Those pages contain several articles which are thought to be related to the mayor. Somehow I am to read them and find the missing link so that our feeble attempts at saving the village don’t come to naught.”

  “Can I read them?”

  Nina shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “I hope you see something I haven’t.”

  Maudie came to Sweet Treats later, when John was lying down once again. “He’s nice,” she said. “Perhaps he could help us with the cooking for the fete.”

  Nina wiped down the table. Already her thoughts were moving on to the myriad of tasks to do before the day was over. “I don’t think so,” Nina said. “He needs building up, not wearing out.”

  Chapter 56

  c. AD 1533, FRANCE: Catherine de Medicis brings her secret Italian recipe for gelato to France when she marries the king.

  Miss Clapham was not impressed. News had reached her of the mayor’s drenching. She had been making such progress, and had thought she would soon be able to return to her little sweet shop, but the bucket incident would cause complications. She ran the bone-handled file beneath her nails. She had looked forward to this interview; she hoped news of the mayor’s embarrassment hadn’t reached the media. She needed to be one jump ahead, and she needed to be untarnished by negative gossip.

  Not that the people she spoke with would consider it negative. They’d be elated. But Miss Clapham liked to play fair – all is fair in love and war, wasn’t it, she wondered. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps she was muddling her phrases. Or her interpretations. She slipped the nail file back into its case, beneath the small elastic band – and thought what a very fine line there was between love and war.

  Chapter 57

  c. AD 1535, ENGLAND: the mayor of Coventry welcomes visiting dukes with a banquet of dessert and candies called comfits, leaches, marchpane, jumbles, and suckets.

  Bryn held the small box in his hands. He’d taken a long while to choose the outer box which the man at the crematorium had said would make his final memories with Jen – he hated to think of Jen being a pile of ash in a box – more personal. He’d finally decided on black velvet. Jen’s mother had had a velvet skirt once, and Jen had loved to stroke the skirt with her fingertips, certain that her mother took no notice. Her mother’s skirt had been a deep red, but the only red velvet on display was far too red, gaudy even, and he couldn’t bring himself to buy it. What was the too-bold and frightening colour doing in such a place anyway, he wondered. Tacky. That’s what it was.

  As he went through the great stone gates and up the path through the daffodil field, Bryn realised that Spring was nearly gone. This was not good. He’d wanted to give Jen a most beautiful send-off, and now here he stood on a windy hillside with daffodils beaten flat almost to the ground. He had to sit on a seat, and gaze out across the city to the ocean and the islands beyond to get a grip. He’d thought about taking Jen home. He could buy a packet of bulbs and plant them in their own garden – his own garden, he remembered – and the little box could be planted alongside them. Then he wondered about taking her back to the crematorium but that thought didn’t go very far.

  She had loved this hill and this view and even this seat so much, which is where Bryn got the idea of what to do. Jen had always attracted people to her – all kinds of people, and she’d been lovely to them all. Instead of finding a cluster of double-headed daffodils with the trumpets on them that would win prizes in competitions, which is what he’d thought to do, he would look f
or a daffodil that stood against the wind. It wouldn’t matter if it was a bit damaged. It would only matter that the daffodil remained standing while all around its daffodil friends touched the earth.

  He found a bloom which suited his purposes completely. It was on the edge of the hill, close to a stand of bush, its golden petals torn, but its stem straight and tall. He cupped the box in both hands, running his own fingers over the velvet and thinking how like Jen’s skin the velvet felt, so it was that he barely noticed that he’d tipped the ashes onto the ground until he stood up to leave.

  It was when he slammed the car door and shoved his key into the ignition that he realised he’d ended a period in his life. He took one last glance up the hill, released a deep breath, and turned the music up loud. Dreaming. Their song.