Preheat oven to 425°F/220°C. Sieve the flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl. Add the sugar and dried fruit and mix. Cut the butter and margarine into small pieces and rub it in. Mix the egg and milk and slowly add until the dough is a stiff consistency. Roll it out into a thick layer, about 1 inch thick, and use a floured cutter to cut it into circles. Place on a greased baking tray and bake for 10 minutes, or until risen and golden brown.

Nell

Afternoons were Nell’s quietest part of the day. Mostly she used them for special preparations, such as stocks, jams, and pickling, but this afternoon, she and Mrs. Quince had a wedding cake to bake. It was for a local couple eager to tie the knot before he boarded a naval ship for Burma.

“It’s the third wedding this summer!” Mrs. Quince exclaimed. “Let’s hope they know what they’re doing. Plenty a pair found they didn’t get on after the last war. The men came home jaded, and the women, well, we were just exhausted.”

“It’s the romance of it, isn’t it? In any case, you never know what’s going to happen, do you?” Nell came out of the pantry with a large, white, cardboard wedding cake, beautiful false icing adorning its top and sides. It would look almost real when she set it on a plate covering the smaller cake they’d baked for the occasion.

“Such a shame the real cake’s so small the guests don’t get a decent slice,” Mrs. Quince said. “I’ve been baking wedding and christening cakes for the locals for years, and I tell you, it’s an embarrassment to give them such a paltry one.”

Nell took a deep whiff of the rich fruitcake and grinned. “But it’s Mrs. Quince’s Special Occasion Cake! Everyone loves it—even if they only get a small bit each.” She shrugged. “Everyone knows we can’t do any better with the rations. We’ve made it as big as we can with extra shredded carrots and apples, plus some dried blackberries and prunes from last year. And it has soy-flour marzipan, too. They’ll be thrilled.”

    With the cake finished, she put the kettle on for tea and took a chair at the kitchen table, a pile of recipe books beside her. She had set aside a little time to work out her next dish for the contest: the main course.

“Indian, Indonesian, ah, here it is, Italian.” She flipped through to the relevant page. “How to make cacc-i-at-ore.” She pronounced it almost letter by letter.

“Cacciatore,” Mrs. Quince corrected from her rocking chair. “What a wonderful idea! All the sunshine we’ve been having will have made the tomatoes sweet and juicy. I’m sure Audrey has some to spare.”

“I thought I could use marjoram. Paolo told me that it’s like oregano, which they use a lot in Italy.”

“Are you still thinking about that boy?”

She blushed. “He was the one who suggested that I make cacciatore for the next round.”

“Well, dear, it’s a lovely dish, although not easy to make if you don’t have experience with Italian cooking.”

Nell couldn’t help herself. “Paolo’s going to show me how to make it,” she said with excitement. “He gets Sunday afternoon off, and he invited me to meet him in a clearing beside the old shooting hut in the wood.”

Mrs. Quince stopped her rocking chair. “That sounds a bit shady. Are you sure you can trust him, alone in the wood? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

Nell’s face dropped. “But he doesn’t seem the type to take advantage. He’s very respectful.”

“I’m sure Paolo’s a fine young man, but you have to remember he’s the enemy. Maybe it’s better to find an Englishman, someone who speaks the same language.”

    “Paolo speaks good English. I told you, he had to learn it in his family’s restaurant in the Alps.”

“It’s more than just words, though, isn’t it? It’s a shared culture, a shared understanding. Are you certain he means the things he says?”

“Of course he does.” Nell stood up, frowned at her. “Besides, Paolo’s always saying that he doesn’t want to get caught doing anything wrong. He says he likes it at the farm, doesn’t want to be moved anywhere else. He’s risking a lot even asking me to meet up with him. If he did anything to upset me, I could tell Barlow, get him into trouble.”

Mrs. Quince gave her one of her penetrating looks. “Many a man makes a girl feel good so he can get a kiss out of her.”

How does Mrs. Quince know about the kiss? she thought. Nell had never even dreamed of anyone kissing her before. Kitchen maids weren’t allowed to fraternize with men, let alone kiss them. In any case, who would want to kiss her, plain little Nell?

Yet now, with Paolo, it didn’t seem impossible anymore.

“Just because I’m a maid, it doesn’t mean I can’t want normal things. Maybe I’ll even get married one day, have children—”

Mrs. Quince made a heavy sigh, her eyes flickering to the window. “Oh, my love. Perhaps I’m being too scared for you. Maybe you should give him a chance.”

“But I thought you said—”

“Yes, but sometimes in life, you have to take opportunities, enjoy things while you can.” Her eyes gleamed a little. “I can see that look in your eyes, dear. I know what young love looks like.”

Nell turned, blushing. “Oh, Mrs. Quince. I hardly know him. How could it possibly be anything like that?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I remember how it felt.”

Astonished by this confession, Nell moved to a stool beside the old woman’s chair. “Were you in love?” she uttered, incredulous.

“Once,” she said with a small smile. “It was a long time ago now.”

    “Who was it? What happened?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. It was here in this very house, when I had just been made assistant cook. I was about twenty-seven, far beyond romantic nonsense. I’d had one or two fancies for some of the footmen when I’d been younger, but nothing like this. He was brought in as an undergardener, must have been about my own age. His name was Harrison, and he had a faraway look in his eyes, as if he could see right into the heart of everything. It was just like he was part of the land himself, natural and rugged.” She paused, deep in her memories, as if trying to re-create life from the past.

“What happened between you?”

She shrugged. “Nothing, of course. How could anything happen? It was 1894. Everything was far stricter than it is now. If we were caught even speaking, we would be turned out without pay or a reference. No reference meant no job—assistant cooks were two a penny.”

“But how did you fall in love if you were never alone with him?”

“Every day I would find something or other to speak to him about: the quality of the carrots, the tartness of the berries, the variety of herbs. He would come to the kitchen and we would sit—right here, at the kitchen table—and in front of all the maids and other servants, I would explain to him how I needed the produce, and his eyes would meet mine. We could sit for hours, talking about vegetables, soft fruit, eggs, completely entranced with each other.”

A sigh escaped from her.

“Didn’t you ever meet alone?”

“Only once.” She paused, trying to recapture it in her mind. “Sometimes I had to go out to the walled herb garden to collect herbs, and one day, as I passed through the stone arched gate, he was coming from the other direction. I remember it so well.” She smelled the air as if she were there once again. “He stopped in the narrow gateway, and I had to brush past him to get through. Only I didn’t go through. I stopped, too, right there in the gateway, in front of him, our bodies almost touching.”

    Nell gasped. “What happened?”

“We just looked at each other. I looked up to him, and he bent his head down toward mine, tilted slightly as if to kiss me. And yet we remained apart, something inside us couldn’t bear to do what we both longed for—we didn’t want to know how it felt when it could never happen again. He reached for my hand, his fingers entwining with mine, pulling me gently closer to him, making me long to put my arms around him.” She sat in silence for a moment. “It was as if we were sharing all the love and feelings that we’d had through the years, like we were enclosed inside our own shimmering warm blanket.”

The old woman seemed to be in a trance.

“Did anyone catch you there?” Nell asked.

“No,” she shook her head. “It didn’t last for long—we were too scared. I pulled away from him first, took that first step out of the gateway, into the walled garden. I remember his hand holding mine as I left. It stayed touching mine for as long as it could, before I lost contact, turning to see the sadness in his eyes. We both knew that this was the only moment we would get.”

“What happened next?”

“Someone was at the kitchen door, calling my name. I turned and fled back to the house. When I looked back, he was gone.”