Babs Horton - Recipes for Cherubs

Babs Horton

Recipes for Cherubs

2008

In the summer of 1960, 13-year-old Catrin Grieve is despatched by her feckless mother to stay with her great aunt Ella at Shrimps Hotel in the sleepy village of Kilvenny on the Welsh coast. On arrival, Catrin is dismayed to find that her reclusive, eccentric aunt is not expecting her and, long closed to visitors, the hotel is nothing like the grand place her mother remembers. Behind the boarded up windows, Ella Grieve still lays the cobwebbed tables for dinner and puts warming pans in the beds of invisible guests. Although a finicky eater, Catrin finds herself fascinated by a 200-year-old, beautifully-illustrated Italian recipe book, Le Ricette per i Cherubini (Recipes for Cherubs ), she discovers on the premises. As she discovers more about the history of the book and grows closer to her frail, lonely aunt, Catrin realises that people from the past can sometimes interlace with the present and point a way forward into the future.

Geniuses are like thunderstorms.

They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.

Kierkegaard, The Journals

SUMMER 1960

K izzy Grieve turned over in bed, opened her eyes and winced. One too many port and lemons at the club last night had left her with a thick head. She got out of bed, wandered over to the window and looked out into Ermington Square. In the communal gardens, the nannies were already out with their young charges. Some pushed cumbersome prams and others held the sticky hands of squirming toddlers.

Kizzy shuddered. How she would hate such a tedious job, being stuck all day with mewling babies and crabby toddlers. The trouble with small children was that they looked so cherubic and peachy-skinned but only when they were sleeping for most of their waking hours they were a pain in the proverbial. A schoolmistress shepherded a crocodile of little girls across the road, and their chattering voices made Kizzy frown and put her hand to her aching head.

Only one more week and her daughter Catrin would be back from her convent school for the summer holiday. The prospect of eight whole weeks with her sourpuss of a daughter was more than she could bear to contemplate. What on earth would they do in London for all that time?

If Catrin were an ordinary sort of child it would probably have been quite fun; they could have gadded about together like sisters, spent hours in the shops trying on clothes and then lunched in the most fashionable places.

She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Sometimes she wondered if Catrin were a changeling. Wasnt it the cuckoo or the magpie that laid its eggs in the nests of other unsuspecting birds? Maybe someone in the private maternity home had deliberately switched babies and shed got the short straw, Catrin.

Someone out there now would have a delightful, pretty daughter full of the joys of living, when by rights they should have been lumbered with bloody Catrin with her baleful looks and nitpicking, fussy ways. Whatever did she have to be so miserable about? She had a nice home to come back to in the school holidays, a lovely bedroom and a generous allowance. She went to a half-decent school Kizzy would have preferred to send her to Benenden or Heathfield but Catrins godfather, Arthur Campbell, had stipulated that as he was paying the fees she had to be educated and brought up as a Roman Catholic.

Catrin wasnt that bad-looking really, not exactly the face to launch a thousand ships but if she just made the best of herself, used a little powder and lipstick, shed be presentable. The trouble was, she wasnt interested in make-up, clothes or boys or any of the usual things that normal thirteen year olds were interested in. Kizzy had never known a girl with such an inability to have any fun at all. Why, if she herself were thirteen again shed be having the time of her life and she wouldnt make the same mistakes shed made the first time round.

It would be better for both of them if Catrin didnt come home, but that bloody Sister Matilde had been most unhelpful when Kizzy rang to ask if Catrin could spend part of the summer holidays at school. Shed said in that oh-so-sanctimonious voice of hers, A little time spent with her mother is well overdue. Time with her mother! That was quite clearly the last thing Catrin wanted, and she made it pretty damned obvious whenever they were together, with her sulks and flounces. If the truth were told, Catrin liked school better than home, loved being among the nuns, and it wouldnt surprise Kizzy if she ended up taking the veil or vows or whatever it was they took. It would suit Catrin down to the ground, the perfect life of fasting and long periods of huffy silence.

Sister Matilde was just being spiteful and interfering. After all, Catrin had stayed at school for an extra week at Easter when Kizzy went to Paris. She knew some of the other girls were staying at school for the summer. For a start the Palfrey twins were because shed met their mother outside the Army and Navy stores. That stuffy-faced bore had said that her husband had a new posting to Khartoum and the girls couldnt possibly spend the summer there.

Kizzy stubbed out her cigarette angrily. It really was most unfair. She sat down at the dressing table and felt the tears of frustration rising. She pulled open a drawer, fished around for a handkerchief, found one at the back of the drawer, yanked it out impatiently, and a crumpled photograph fell into her lap.

It had been taken on the front lawn of Shrimps Hotel at Kilvenny in Wales. There was bossy Aunt Ella staring defiantly out at her with those piercing eyes. Next to her stood dear Aunt Alice smiling sweetly at the camera. Kizzy was next to Aunt Alice; how young she looked in the photograph and positively ravishing, too, even if she said so herself. It was a pity the photograph was black-and-white because the silk dress she was wearing had been the most glorious shade of poppy red. It had cost an absolute fortune, too, but good old Aunt Alice had insisted on buying it for her for the wedding despite Aunt Ellas protestations about wasting hard-earned money on frippery. It had been a divine dress and shed loved the scalloped hemline and the delicate embroidery round the neck. Oh, and those sling? back patent shoes she was wearing were gorgeous. She was sure she still had them somewhere but she hadnt seen the dress in years.

She sighed; if only she could turn the clock back, she would do things so differently and certainly wouldnt lumber herself with a child. There was Gladys Beynon, who used to be the cook at Shrimps Hotel; she used to bake pastries one would cheerfully die for. The afternoon teas at Shrimps Hotel had been wonderful; seed cake and cream horns, scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam. Oh, those were the days, when one could feast on fattening things and never put on an ounce. Kizzys stomach rumbled at the thought of food; she must take one of her little wonder pills in a moment to suppress her appetite. She was creeping alarmingly close to nine stone and that wouldnt do at all.

She was about to stuff the photograph back into the drawer when something caught her attention. Next to Gladys Beynon there was a shadow on the wall of the house, the shadow of someone standing just out of view. There was the unmistakable outline of a boater hat set at a rakish angle and an outstretched hand holding a cigarette.

She put down the photograph with a trembling hand and sat staring into the mirror, watching the tears welling up in her eyes, her mouth crumpling. Then she shook her head, pulled back her shoulders, wiped her eyes and lit another cigarette. It was no good crying over a shadow in a photograph. Shed been just a silly, gullible girl barely five years older than Catrin was now.