Every Woman for Herself (31 page)

‘Yes – keep your attic rooms here – share you out,’ agreed Anne. ‘Come and go as you please.’

Caitlin, who’d been nodding off into her trifle, her lap full of mice, said, ‘Daddy? Where am
I
going to be?’

‘Here, of course, with me and Charlie, and everyone.’

‘Oh, good! So you’re going to marry Charlie? And I can be a bridesmaid again?’

I said ‘No!’ just as Mace said, ‘Yes.’ We looked at each other.

‘You better had, Charlie,’ Ran said, ‘after all this swapping over and stuff. The man’s gone to a lot of trouble for you.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Haven’t you told Mace your news yet?’ demanded Em.

‘Can we get down now?’ interrupted Clo. ‘We’re all full, and we think there are some mice we haven’t found.’

The children vanished, while everyone looked at me like I was about to produce a rabbit out of a hat.

This was not an announcement I ever expected to make – and especially not while dressed as a reindeer.

‘I’m – well,
Mace
and I are—’

‘Charlie’s having my baby,’ Mace announced proudly, like I’d just accepted a particularly lavish gift (which I suppose, in a way, I had).

Even Bran was staring at me, the string tail of a sugar mouse dangling from his lips.

‘Em and Gloria don’t think I’ll lose it this time.’

‘You certainly won’t, my chicken!’ Gloria said from the end of the table.

‘Freya said she saw you with a baby ages ago, in the crystal, but she didn’t like to say anything,’ Em added.

‘Yes,’ agreed Anne. ‘And you said Lilith predicted happy outcomes to old issues in the cards, didn’t you? She’s certainly having an issue!’

‘Did anyone happen to see
me
with Charlie and the baby?’ enquired Mace with suspicious meekness. ‘Or don’t I come into it?’

‘You already came into it – nothing but trouble, you are!’ Gloria said. ‘It said so in the leaves all along.’

‘It must have said something else, too. Like: “they lived happily ever after”?’

‘Yes – bound to have,’ enthused Anne. ‘Jane Austen said a large income was the best recipe for happiness she ever heard of, and Mace is bloody rich! So didn’t it mention that in the leaves, Gloria?’

She sniffed. ‘It might have: but I didn’t want my Charlie taken away from Upvale again, with her child that should be born here.’

‘I’m not going to take her away, or not for more than a couple of weeks at a time, anyway. You know she can’t stay away for long – she wouldn’t be happy: I understand that.’

Gloria sniffed, and gave him a dour look; but she was starting to like him, I could see.

‘In fact,’ Mace went on, ‘the only trouble
I
seem to have caused is through you trying to avoid the trouble
you
think I might cause.’

We all looked at him: and actually, when you thought about it, he was quite right.

‘Isn’t it all in the interpretation of what you see? I hope Charlie was troubled by me – she certainly drove me mad. And I went to a lot of trouble to win her. Isn’t that trouble enough, Gloria? Aren’t there any “happy ever afters” in there?’

‘There might have been,’ she conceded reluctantly, then got up. ‘You’d better have a nice cup of tea. And Charlie.’

‘I’ve suddenly gone off it,’ I told her firmly.

‘Champagne!’ announced Ran. ‘Walter, fetch it in, there’s a good man. And we haven’t had the fortune cookies or Snapdragon yet!’

Mace and Chris exchanged a startled look across the table. ‘You don’t think we’ve had enough excitement for one day?’ suggested Chris tentatively.

‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ Father said, as if that were an answer. ‘We always have fortune cookies and Snapdragon. The champagne was for toasting the house exchange, but we can toast the baby too.’

‘Time for Snapdragon?’ asked Bran hopefully.

‘Bran, take that string out of your mouth before you swallow it,’ Em said. ‘And save the rest of the mice for tomorrow, or you’ll be sick, like last year.’

‘Have you Rhymers ever thought of doing things the same way as everyone else?’ Chris asked despairingly.

‘No, what would be the fun in that?’ Em said, astonished. ‘This is our way – and yours, now, too. After all,’ she added, ‘you and Mace and Father have worked out what
you
want, and now you’ll just have to go along with the family way of doing things.’

My fortune cookie said that my
chi
was flowing in a creative direction, but it’s a bit late with the message, because it’s already done that.

When the lights went out and the raisins in brandy were lit, I missed my turn, because Mace took the opportunity of pulling me to the back of the room and kissing me until I was breathless. But then, I’d been burned already.

We found Caitlin asleep on the bottom step of the stairs, and Em went to find a soft blanket so that Mace could carry her home without waking her.

‘So what happens on Christmas Day?’ he asked me, looking slightly apprehensive.

‘We get up, have breakfast, and open our presents. Then you and Caitlin come up and we play Hunt the Thimble for an hour or so, to work up an appetite for Christmas dinner, which is at about two. And we have the works, with a flaming pudding afterwards, and home-made crackers. Then we take the dogs out for a walk, and come home, and play some quiet games. Then it’s a sort of tea-cum-supper, and by then we’re all usually exhausted and go to bed early. Only Gloria and Walter go home after Christmas dinner and have another Christmas dinner at their house and watch TV.’

‘It might take me a year to recover from all that – and
you
shouldn’t get too tired either.’

‘Tired? I’m not tired in the least!’ I said indignantly.

He smiled, and hoisted Caitlin into his arms. ‘I am and I’ve still got a Christmas stocking to stuff.’

‘At least she’s asleep,’ I consoled him. ‘I’ll let you out downstairs.’

I kissed her flushed cheek, tucking the soft blanket around her.

‘Good night, you devious actor, you,’ I said, giving him a kiss over Caitlin’s head.

‘I’ll tell you something, darling,’ whispered Mace confidentially on the doorstep. ‘I prefer you as a reindeer!’

And he strode off, laughing, into the night.

I’d forgotten I was still wearing the headband and fluffy tail.

After he’d gone I went and looked Undine up in the dictionary, and apparently I am a water spirit that has obtained a human soul by bearing a child to a human husband. (Either that, or I have a preoccupation with running water, especially urine – but I think not.)

Next morning Caitlin ran past me into the house squealing with excitement and trailing a pillowcase full of presents behind her: not that there weren’t a sackful more waiting for her.

She thundered off up the stairs to the Parsonage, while I closed the veranda door before letting Invasion of the Infidels sweep me into his arms.

‘Mace, if I marry you, you must promise me one thing,’ I told him seriously.

‘Anything,’ he agreed, with one of those devastating smiles.

‘Then just don’t turn into an alien, like my first husband did.’

‘Did he do that? Must have been a defence mechanism.’

‘What do you mean? Are you insinuating that I—’

‘You’re an impossible woman, but I’m not turning into anything except a devoted – and probably jealous – husband. If that’s alien, you’ll just have to get used to it.’

‘I think I can live with that.’

‘I’m not giving you an alternative, darling,’ he said, pulling me even closer and kissing me again.

What could I do? I’d done my best to resist, but clearly in a situation like this it was every woman for herself!

With a sudden staccato rattle, a cascade of rose quartz hit the flagged floor and ricocheted against the windows like hailstones.

‘What the hell was that?’ he exclaimed, raising his head.

‘Oh, nothing important,’ I told him dreamily. ‘Just my love beads exploding again.’

Treacle Tart

When I was growing up my mother made treacle tart by simply spreading treacle, sometimes mixed with breadcrumbs, over a shortcrust pastry base. This was served with either condensed milk or custard, and you could make brown treacly swirls in it with your spoon.

Imagine my surprise (and disgust) the first time I was served treacle tart away from home and it proved to be a sweet, pallid object made from golden syrup!

So here is my recipe for the real thing, though you can always educate your tastebuds slowly by replacing first one, then two tablespoons of golden syrup with treacle …

Ingredients

6oz/175g plain flour

3oz/75g lard or cooking margarine (you can use butter, but it does make the pastry crumbly and difficult to roll)

Cold water

A pinch of powdered ginger

2oz/50g fresh white breadcrumbs

3 tablespoons treacle

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/400ºF/200ºC and grease a shallow enamel plate, tart tin or pie tin, eight or nine inches across.

Rub the fat into the flour to a breadcrumb consistency and add a little cold water to make shortcrust pastry.

Roll out the pastry on a floured board and line the plate or pie dish with it. Trim the edge, keeping the offcuts for decorating the top. (I like to pinch the edges of mine into a wavy pattern, but it’s not compulsory.)

Warm the treacle gently in a pan, stir in a pinch of ground ginger, and then mix in the breadcrumbs.

Spread this mixture over the shortcrust base and then make a lattice of crisscrossed strips of leftover pastry over the top.

Bake for about thirty minutes until the edges are a pale golden brown.

Can be served hot or cold, with custard, cream or ice cream.

Treacle Scones

While we are on the Treacle Trail, try this variation of the traditional scone – lovely eaten warm with butter in winter.

Ingredients

8oz/225g plain flour

1½oz/38g butter

½ level teaspoon of each of the following:

Baking soda

Ground ginger

Ground mixed spice

Salt

Cream of tartar

Cinnamon

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 rounded tablespoon treacle

Milk to mix

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 8/220ºC/450ºF and grease a baking tray.

Rub the butter into the flour, and then sift in all the remaining dry ingredients to make a mixture with a fine breadcrumb consistency.

Gently warm the treacle with two tablespoons of milk and then pour onto the dry ingredients, bringing the mixture together to make a soft dough, adding more milk if necessary.

Knead a little and then roll out on a floured board to about three-quarters of an inch thick.

Cut out circles (I like to use a cutter with a fluted edge), making about eight small scones. Reform any leftover dough to make a final one.

Put on the baking tray and bake for ten to fifteen minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

Old English Jumbolls

Variations of this simple recipe (sometimes called Jumbles or Jumbells), go back to ancient times and were included in the very first British cookbooks, sometimes as a drop biscuit or, as here, a slightly firmer dough that can be shaped.

Ingredients

2½oz/62g caster sugar

2½oz/62g butter

1 egg, well beaten

5oz/150g plain flour

1oz/25g ground almonds.

Grated zest of an unwaxed lemon

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180ºC/350ºF and grease a large baking tray.

Beat the butter and sugar till soft and fluffy and then beat in the egg.

Sift in the flour and stir in the ground almonds and lemon zest. Mix well to a soft dough.

Divide the dough into small balls and press flat onto the baking tray with two fingers, which makes a sort of ‘wave’ pattern. (This recipe also works if you press the dough into small madeleine moulds.)

Bake in the oven for 15–20 minutes, until pale golden brown at the edges.

Cool on a wire rack and then store in an airtight tin.

Sugar Mice

I’m sure the sugar mice for the Rhymers’ annual Mouse Hunt were made by Em the traditional way, using uncooked egg white for the fondant, but for this recipe I’ve simply combined icing sugar and Carnation evaporated milk. Add a little liquid glycerine for a slightly softer fondant. I just form my mice by hand, but plastic and silicone mouse-shaped moulds are available.

Ingredients

6oz/175g icing sugar

A small tin of evaporated milk

Sugar balls for the eyes

Thin string for the tails

Food colouring, if desired

½ teaspoon of glycerine (optional)

Method

Put the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in the evaporated milk a spoonful at a time until you can form a fondant dough. If you overdo the milk, just add more sugar till you get the right consistency.

Divide up the dough and add a tiny drop of food colouring to each batch, kneading in well. I like to leave half my mice white and colour the rest pink.

On a board sprinkled with icing sugar, form the fondant into little pear shapes, pinching one end into a pointy nose and two small rounded ears. Press in little silver sugar balls for eyes.

For a traditional tail, pierce the back of the mouse with a skewer and then push in the end of a short piece of thin string.

Allow to dry and harden, then store in a box or tin lined with greaseproof paper till needed.

The perfect man can be the perfect pain …