Bread! and lots of it folks!

Well, this is defiantly the most interesting thing that’s going on right now, so I return to the Arthur saga.

After a few days the island air got to me again and I returned to my state of pre-church confrontation euphoria. Living in such a beautiful place, in such an old-fashioned way, and with a group of men depending on me for food; I started to feel the need to embrace the long forgotten domestic arts. I began to bake cakes of all descriptions, coffee and walnut, lemon drizzle and strawberry stacks, some even survived the demands of the campers to make it down the hill to Pam and the other people at coffee morning. After a while I began to get rather bored with simple recipes and scoured my three cookbooks for some more challenging things to fill my empty time. Having already made mass quantities of jam at home, it seemed silly to make more, so I moved to the next logical step, Bread.
According to my cookery book, it is one of the easiest things to make, having only a handful of ingredients and taking very little actual work and lots of waiting. So I heat up the water to the right temperature, mix the yeast with the warmed flour and some salt, then dump the whole lot onto the table for kneading. This actually takes a lot of effort, so by the time my dough has developed “a nice sheen”; my arms feel stringy with aching muscle. I drop the ball of dough back into the bowl, cover it up with cling film (that’s a whole separate battle) then leave it on the tiled windowsill to rise in the sun. The book says this will take two whole hours, so I tidy everything up and lie down on my bed to read another, less floury, book.
After two hours I’ve read nearly half of my book and am feeling impatient. The whole room smells of slightly warmed dough and yeast, so I open a window to let some fresh air in, then I go to uncover my dough.
Well....at least it’s risen.
This is actually an understatement; instead of doubling in size as the recipe book said it would, my bread has quadrupled, then doubled. It has risen nearly four whole inches above the rim of the bowl, and when I prod it, it hisses with trapped air and neatly heals the impression of my finger. I’m actually quite afraid that it is going to eat me.
I only have one, two pound, loaf tin. So I have no choice but to heap the whole swollen monstrosity into it and hope for the best. Optimistically I sprinkle the top with flour and a handful of poppy seeds, ok so it isn’t perfect, but home cooking is functional, not pretty.
I somehow manage to get it into the stove’s oven compartment, and then set my chicken shaped oven timer to fifty minutes. Instead of waiting inside for my bread to cook (and maybe throwing in a few Hail Marys for good measure) I decide to have a potter in the garden, if only to watch the caterpillars slowly munching their way through it. I’ve been settled on the wall for quite a while, drinking some tea and flicking to the best articles in one of my old magazines, when I notice Arthur struggling with the gate whilst holding a lumpy pile of stuff.
For a moment I’m a little thrown, I haven’t actually seen him around since he came to apologise and then nearly kissed me. Not that I’m keeping track or anything.
I pick my way through the lines of vegetables and take the things from him, recognising the tins and plates which I had taken cake to Pam with. The problem with stress cooking being that if it isn’t coupled with stress eating then it’s really just a waste.
“Hi” I say, depositing the heap of tins and plates onto the wall, “You didn’t have to bring all those up, I was going to collect them tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t going to; it’s just that I was coming up here anyway”
“Really and why’s that?” It is only in situations like this that I realise how much I suck at flirting.
“To see if you knew about all the smoke coming from your chimney.” He says with a touch of amusement.
I whip round. “Shit! The bread” I yelp, running back into the house. There is indeed a column of dark smoke pouring from the chimney. Arthur follows behind me, carrying the heap of things with an amused little smirk on his face.
I duck inside and grab my oven mitts, yanking open the oven door and trying to heft the loaf tin out. I feel a kind of tremor along my arms and the tin gives, but the top half of the mammoth loaf is left stuck to the roof of the oven. I dump the tin on the table, realising too late that it will burn the wood, leaving a large oblong of seared black. Arthur, in an attempt to be helpful rather than just lean in the doorway watching me in amusement, gets a spatula and makes a move to start scraping the remains of the loaf out of the oven; only I’m still in the way. We collide as I straighten up from the stove, having pulled all the shelves out to dislodge the bread. At first we both just clash and apologise repeatedly, disentangling limbs and spatula respectively. But after a second we both seem to realise our proximity to each other. My face is turned upwards towards his, which is tilted down. His hand brushes my side as it falls back to his and my heart hitches. The kitchen is silent and for a moment our breathing, loud and irregular, is the only thing I can hear. Then Arthur blinks and ducks down to the stove, working briskly.
I shake off my daze and go back to my loaf. Powdery traces of bread reduced to charcoal skitter across the floor as I wrangle the loaf, still as hot as a flame heated stone, out of the tin and onto a cooling rack.
Once Arthur has finished clearing out the oven and thrown the broken pieces of bread into the bin, he comes to look at the remains of my loaf, keep a cautious distance between us as if I’m a crazed nymphomaniac.
“I knew I shouldn’t have added more yeast. You just don’t argue with Delia, the universe can’t take it.” I laugh, trying not to feel hurt at his rejection.
He leans over and rips a piece off, popping it into his mouth.
“It’s not that bad” he mumbles through a mouthful.
“Really?” I ask, hopefully.
“Its bloody awful.” he says, and then splutters with laughter as I swat him with the spatula. After a second he seems to collect himself enough to reassert the barrier between us. These lapses into familiarity, as though there isn’t a day’s difference in age between us, somehow make it harder to go back to the prescribed elder-younger relationship.
“I should probably…”
“Yeah” I gesture to the door, giving him leave to go.
“Don’t burn the house down.” he calls, as he goes down the path.
Still chuckling I begin to measure out a fresh lot of ingredients, practice makes perfect after all.
When the second batch of slightly ill-fated bread is safely rising in its bowl, I decide to take a walk around the island, I always think better when I can walk around, and the whole Arthur thing was starting to give me a headache. I set off, the wind tangling my skirt around my legs and throwing my hair across my face. I round the edge of the cliff and look out across the vast expanse of wind tussled grass. It’s quite cold and I’m really starting to wish I brought a jumper when I catch sight of someone a few yards ahead of me. Arthur. He’s hunched against the wind, collar turned up and a cigarette smoking viciously against the blasts of sea air. As I get closer I spot a pile of spent cigarette ends balanced on top of an empty packet.
“Avoiding you would be easier if this island wasn’t so bloody small” He calls out against the shrill wind. I smile and sit down on the rock beside him.
“And we’re avoiding because?”
His face twists into an expression that’s half playful and half serious.
“Because you are growing on me and I am too old to entertain the notion of…”
“Gardening?”
He smiles weakly.
“And old is relative, I mean mentally I’m a forty year old nag”
I look up, smiling, and for a second our eyes meet. I can honestly say that up until just then I had never, ever felt as attracted to anyone as I did to him. He reaches a hand up and brushes it over my hair, before letting it fall back to his side. He sighs deeply and I let my eyes find the horizon again, wondering if maybe, just maybe we would have been happy in another universe.
“I’ll try to get better at the avoiding thing, I promise.” I whisper.
“I’ve got to…” he motions towards the village and I nod
I stay up there for hours, and it’s weird, but I feel as if I’ve lost a relationship that had lasted years, rather than the mere possibility of one a paltry hour long. The only person who I have liked, who ever liked me back, thinks he can’t have anything to do with me. The terrible thing is, deep down, I know it too.
God I feel so bad going on about this like a nauseating adolescent, but that’s what I am, so it’s difficult to tell it any other way.