Sweet Treats

by Christine Miles

  Nina shrugged. “Why not?”

  “It says Laud Mayor. It’s not reserved for someone, is it?”

  “It is, technically, the Mayor’s chair, but as it’s in a public place anyone can sit on it.”

  “I will,” said her mother. “I will pretend I am the Mayor.”

  “You don’t want to do that.” Nina laughed. “Our Mayor is another story altogether.”

  “It’s not a comfortable seat at all,” her mother said. “I imagine he’s not a comfortable person. A seat does say a lot about a man.”

  “He’s aiming to get rid of us all,” Nina said, and she told them about the Mayor’s intention and their opposition.

  “How long have you been here?” her father said.

  “Nearly three weeks.”

  “And you’re saving the place already?”

  “It’s not just me, Dad. I didn’t want to do it at all, but then I got mad. My friends here were already trying to figure out why he disliked us so much. We know his intention, but not the reason for it; for now we just need to thwart him.”

  “That’s easily done,” Nina’s father said. “How long have you got?”

  “Until Monday.”

  “And you think you’ll be successful?”

  “Maybe. Hope so.”

  “You can do it,” he said. “Keep your eye on the goal. Don’t give up. Don’t be distracted. And do be afraid.” He nodded towards the park benches. “Whoever put those plaques on the seats knew what they were on about.”

  “Do be afraid?”

  “Yes. Not paralysingly afraid. Just afraid enough to work as though you might not succeed. You understand?”

  Nina nodded.

  “Those are the words on the seats.” Nina spoke at the same time as her father.

  “I’ll tell you another trick,” he said, but he too was interrupted.

  “I’ve shut the shop early,” Maudie said. “I can help you make lots and lots of sweet stuff. How come you’re out here?”

  “It stopped raining, Maudie,” Nina said. “So we’ve been walking and walking and soon we’re going to eat. Come and eat with us.”

  “But there’s no time,” Maudie wailed. “The fete is tomorrow. We’re not ready. You’re not ready!”

  “We’ll have enough, just you wait,” Nina said.

  Maudie slapped her forehead. “I’ve been putting two and two together” – Nina raised her eyebrows - “and we can definitely use the money for the library.”

  “Great.” Nina interrupted Maudie. “Now will you eat with us?”

  “And Mrs Potts said she was a whizz at making marshmallow, and could she have some sugar too?”

  “Mrs Potts?” Nina said. “Our Mrs Potts?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, would you?” Maudie said.

  Nina, thinking of all the brussel sprouts and cabbages she’d consumed, shook her head. “Have you seen her marshmallow?”

  “Ooooh, yes. She used to make it all the time when her father was alive. She’d give it to Miss Clapham to sell. That was when they were the best of friends.”

  Best of friends? It kept coming up, that Miss Clapham and Mrs Potts were best of friends once. But not now.

  “Claudia says if you’ll send some sugar over with Old Tom she’ll make toffee apples. Says she loves toffee apples and has a basketful of green apples.”

  “You know how the weather forecast was for rain tomorrow?” Nina said. “Has it changed?”

  “Of course not,” Maudie said. “But I’ve listened to so many reports over the years, and I’ve put two and two together and decided they don’t know what they’re talking about. All you have to do is look at the sunset in the evening, and look at the sky in the morning and you can see exactly what the weather will do.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Nina’s mother said. “What on earth are you cooking up?”

  “A storm,” Nina said. A flash of lightning followed by the crash of thunder made them all jump.

  “It’s the fete tomorrow,” Maudie said. “Miss Clapham always had an enormous display of homemade sweets for sale. Nina should be making her stuff now, before daylight has gone.” She turned to Nina. “Well?”

  “Old Tom said he was setting up the spotlights this afternoon and running the cord over to the café this evening.”

  “What!” her mother shrieked. “I saw there was no stove, but surely the place is wired with electricity.”

  Nina shook her head. “You know how you took me camping and taught me to cook on a campfire? Well, now I get to use all those skills.”

  “But there must be electricity even if you have no stove.”

  Nina laughed. “No electricity. But I do have a well, Mum. With a pump. It’s fun. In a way.”

  Chapter 64

  c. AD 1602, ENGLAND: a book on gentlewomanly pastimes instructs how to make candied rose petals – right on the rosebush.

  They cooked late into the night. Her friends had copied Miss Clapham’s recipes, taken a bag of sugar and were even now cooking on the hall stoves. Bryn and Maudie had the lights of Staceys gleaming into the night, taking foil trays and greaseproof paper and utensils to the cooks, and coming up with all manner of boxes and trays to transport the cooking to Sweet Treats.

  Mrs Potts and Claudia and Old Tom worked on their sweets in their homes. Nina and her parents sweated over the heat of the fire. Nina had begged John to join them. “I need someone to hold the torch,” she said.

  “Is that all?” John said, his voice betraying his exhaustion. “Relegated to holding a torch?”

  Perhaps she should have let him slip away to bed. She ached to include him, but really, he was too ill.

  “Without the torch, I can’t do anything.”

  John smiled at Nina. He would not think of himself. He would think of Nina’s persistence, of her courage, of her love for Greg. Somehow he would see this thing out. Then he’d leave her to the attentions of Bryn. Any fool could see Bryn was in love with her.

  Though her arms ached and her eyes burned, Nina was surrounded by people who would work with her to achieve results. On and on through the night, everyone worked, bringing trays and boxes and empty drawers and washing baskets, filled with fresh cooking, ready to be sliced and packaged into the stripy bags which were unique to Sweet Treats.

  It was 3am when Nina called a halt. “Enough,” she said, and while there were protests, they were not loud enough or prolonged enough for anyone to take seriously. “There’s a ten-kilo sack of sugar left,” Maudie said, but Nina waved it away.

  “Enough,” she said. “Miss Clapham would understand.”

  For once, nobody argued with her. Each person wended their way to their own beds. Nina, too tired to sleep and too anxious about the morning’s preparations, tiptoed to the front of Sweet Treats and sat on the stool. She placed her elbows on the counter and looked up into Queen Victoria’s face.

  “Who knows what tomorrow will bring,” she said, and it was not a question.

  Queen Victoria, inevitably, said nothing.

  “It can’t rain.” Nina’s gaze dropped to the images below Her Majesty, and she promptly stopped thinking about the morrow. An art collection of independent women at Mrs Potts’ home and in Sweet Treats. Art magazines in the bottom drawer. Art magazines beneath the bed. Bryn had said his mother had given her magazines, many of them unopened, to Mrs Potts and Miss Clapham – she’d needed room for storing the extra linen, games, and memorabilia which came with having a family.

  But there were magazines missing. Could Laud Mayor have snaffled them? Why would he want them? Did he still have them, or had he moved them on?

  But they’re not really the point, she argued. The pictures hid the real clue. They all shared the same theme. But perhaps that is not the point either, she thought, uncertainty filling her mind. Laud Mayor took a special interest in those pictures when he was in here last. Laud Mayor was looking for something. Laud Mayor, presumably, will find what he’s looking for when he run
s us all out of town.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she found herself taking another close look at the pictures. With only the streetlight to see by, it seemed a foolishness, but there had to be something special about one of the pictures, whether it was here on the wall of Sweet Treats, or tucked away in her bedroom at Mrs Potts.

  Mrs Potts would have known, though, if there was a secret attached to a picture. They wouldn’t have been hung in a crooked line on a bedroom wall if she thought there was anything special or valuable or precious about them.

  Which means, Nina thought, that one of these pictures held the secret to Laud Mayor’s vindictiveness.

  “Probably staring me right in the face,” she said, taking each frame off the wall, turning it over in her hands, and hanging it back on its hook. “Probably staring me right in the face, and I still can’t see it.”

  Chapter 65

  c. AD 1621, UNITED STATES: aboriginal peoples introduce a popped corn snack to New England settlers – three hundred years before the first movies.

  The table, when it was set up in the park the next morning, sagged beneath its load of confectionery. A Sweet Treats banner hung overhead, and Nina wore a fresh dress from Miss Clapham’s collection. It was elegant, and required an outdoor bonnet instead of the indoor cap she wore as she worked. John was also in costume. Bryn set up a cheese display opposite them. Nina’s eyes lit up.

  “Cheese!” she said. “My favourite food!”

  “Great day,” Maudie said, and she promptly ruined the peace by turning on a generator. “Sorry,” she shouted over the din. “I’ve got to be able to make the coffees.”

  Barbara and George arrived. Her mother’s little coin purse bulged promisingly, and her father jingled the coins in his pockets. “You’re not going to spend all that here, are you?” Nina said.

  “What’s a fete if you’re not going to be a little frivolous,” her father said, and Nina was reminded of the school galas they’d enjoyed when she was a child. Dad had always come up with a big handful of coins, encouraging her to spend every single bit of it.

  A cake stand, a white elephant stall, a second-hand book stall, a display of Christmas crafts, a collection of machinery and tools… from where she stood, Nina could see the stalls, but what else was happening out there?

  A horse pulled a gig, two children squeezed up against the driver, giggling and laughing as hard as if they were on a merry-go-round. Greg would have felt sorry for the horse, trotting around and around in circles all day. A group of children paraded with their calves and lambs, and even a goat. A strongman competition would be held later in the day, along with running races and sack races and three-legged races.

  It was Greg’s birthday and he should have been here to enjoy it. A mother, eager to taste Bryn’s cheeses, snapped at her two little girls. “Stop crying,” she said. “There’ll be no toffee apple for you if you don’t shut up.” Please, oh please, Nina wanted to shout, treasure them! Make it a happy day for everyone.

  A boy, about Greg’s age, walked proudly beside his grandfather. They bought a bag of toffee to share. As they walked away, Nina wished Greg was exploring the fete with his own grandfather.

  A group of youngsters, full of bravado at being let loose from their parents, hung over her table, touching the bags and exclaiming at the sugary aroma in the air. “I can make fudge,” one girl bragged. “I can eat it!” a boy quipped.

  “Quick,” Nina said to herself. “As quick as Greg.”

  She stuffed the thought deep inside her. She would enjoy the day for him. Somehow she’d get over the dreadful feeling of having the knife twisted every time a child looked up at her with a shining face and pudgy hand filled with coins. “Happy birthday, Greg,” she said. “Happy birthday to you.”

  Nina kept the smile nailed to her face. John talked a lot. About everything. Cars. Horses. Generators. Houses. Buses. Later, Nina thought he’d been trying to distract her. She’d never, since Greg became ill, had so much exposure to family groups.

  The crowds came. She’d had no idea so many people would come. She’d been anxious that the toffee apples would melt in the sun, or that there would be too much fudge left over, or that the marshmallow would wilt, but her worries were for nothing. By two o’clock her table was nearly empty. She left John sitting by the table while she ran back to Sweet Treats to collect boiled lollies.

  Her eye lit on the newspapers. She would make John sit down. He could read the stories. If he didn’t want to read he could at least look like he was reading. He’d worked far too hard, been standing for far too long. She’d ask him to make sure she took them home that evening. It was important that she read them before she slept; it was important that she looked around Sweet Treats to see if any of the missing magazines were there.

  Tomorrow was December 1. Tomorrow Laud Mayor would stride up the main street with that insufferable look on his face, gloating about the rates hike. Tomorrow, if not enough money was raised to open the campground today, every remaining business would take steps to wind up their businesses, to lose as little money as possible.

  *

  “The Mayor has been,” John said. “He wanted Russian fudge.”

  Nina glanced at the table. “Was there any?”

  “No.” John was short. “In fact, I think that’s exactly why he demanded it. Because he knew we wouldn’t be able to fulfil his request.”

  “Oh well,” Nina said. “Tomorrow will be his day of reckoning. We won’t ever need to lay eyes on him again.”

  She took the papers from beneath her arm, smoothed them out, forced John into a chair. The papers told the story of a man who had nothing, who rose from the ashes it seemed, to become a successful businessman, and finally a county mayor with three villages in his jurisdiction. He was engaged to be married, one of the articles said, and his vehicle of choice was a tractor.

  “Is he married?” Nina said.

  John didn’t know.

  “Bryn!” Nina shouted across the wide path separating them. “Is Laud Mayor married?”

  “Shhh,” Maudie hissed through the din of the generator. “We don’t need the whole village to know who we’re talking about.”

  Bryn had no such inhibitions. “No,” he shouted back. “Engagement was broken. By her.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Guess.”

  “You know?”

  “Only found out this morning. Mum rang.”

  A group of teenagers blocked their conversation for a few minutes, feasting on Bryn’s cheese with no intention of buying. After they’d moved on, Nina crossed the path. “Smoked cheese is the best,” she said.

  “I’m a blue cheese man, myself,” he said.

  “I like that cheese which comes in a round container and they’re all cut into triangles and wrapped in tin foil and they look like cheese which mice eat in pictures.” Maudie had abandoned her stand to pick at Bryn’s cheeses with a little toothpick.

  Bryn and Nina ignored her. It was not intentional. He had just noticed how grey Nina’s eyes were, and she had just noticed how tall he was beside her. “Who was the fiancée?” she asked, and she felt a wobble in her voice when she spoke.

  “Miss Clapham,” Bryn said. “Unbelievable.”

  Chapter 66

  c. AD 1622, UNITED STATES: honeybees from England are introduced to Virginia and spread west faster than the settlers.

  “Listen,” Nina said. “I don’t want to ask you every single question ever asked about these two. I want you to tell me a bit of the nitty gritty – when it all happened, what happened, why it happened.”

  Bryn’s whole face seemed to round out into a big ‘o’. “I don’t know if I can do that,” he said. “I’m a bloke.”

  “Try.”

  “Well, uh, according to the paper they got engaged about fifteen years ago, and they planned a spring wedding, and by the time the winter was at its peak, the wedding bells were no longer pealing. Am I doing alright?”

  Nina nodded, but said not
hing.

  “Ah, uh, Miss Clapham was the only daughter of a sailor. Laud Mayor, or Mr Laud as he was known then, swept into town and knocked the girl off her feet. He wined and dined her, to the great distress of her mother, who wrung her hands and wept every night while she sat waiting for her beloved daughter to be returned home. Mr Laud, she said, would be taken to task for his boldness by her husband, Mr Clapham, on his return from sailing the seven seas.”

  Nina thumped Bryn on the arm. “You are ridiculous,” she said. “I knew you were joking.”