Bread and Chocolate. Philippa Gregory
and a small crane and track and a mobile generator.
‘When you have finished hanging out of the window like a coach-load of schoolgirls I should be glad to see you in chapel,’ the choirmaster observed sourly from the door of the noviciates’ dormitory. ‘And if I catch one, just one, young man looking towards the camera or behaving in any way as if his mind were not on the words of his service then there will be a choir practice which lasts until the middle of next week. You are to behave as if they are not there. And any man of any sense would be wishing they were not.’
Brother James, torn between vanity and embarrassment, could not behave as if they were not there. They crept behind him with a huge camera in a nightmarish game of grandmother’s footsteps. Every time he paused and looked around, the great square dark eye would be peering at him, looking over his shoulder into the mixing bowl, flinching back from the splash of breaking eggs, dollying forward to catch the gleam of water drops on a toast-brown crust, a duster wildly polishing away the glaze of steam from a loaf newly emerged from the oven.
‘This is just actuality, lovey,’ the director assured him.
Brother James cast one furious look at the young vegetable chef who had never heard one of the brotherhood called ‘lovey’ before.
‘When we get you in studio we’ll get in much closer. Some really luscious close-ups. This is just to show you in your natural environment. Tomorrow we’ll have you all to ourselves.’
The vegetable chef kept his head down and sliced with devotion.
‘D’you have another – er – gown?’ the director asked. ‘As a bit of a change? One for best?’
Brother James looked down at the brown habit and the white rope belt, the white apron overall. ‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘We could run you one up. You’d suit blue.’
Brother James hesitated, unsure how to express revulsion. ‘No,’ he said simply.
The director took him familiarly by the sleeve. ‘Don’t get me wrong, you look terrific. But we have a natural wood set, very nice, built just for you, very Gothic you know? And I thought you’d look wonderful behind the pine wood table in blue. I saw you in blue.’
Brother James unclasped the fingers and stepped away. ‘This is the colour of my order,’ he said gently. ‘It is part of my vow of obedience to wear it. I could not wear anything else.’
‘Oh.’ The director was taken aback. ‘Can’t they let you off, just for once?’
‘I have made a vow, a solemn vow, of poverty, obedience and celibacy,’ Brother James told him firmly. ‘There is no ‘‘let-off ‘‘.’
The director looked at him in amazement. ‘You’ve promised to be poor? To be obedient? And don’t tell me you never –’
It was too much for the vegetable chef. With a wail he dropped his knife and fled from the kitchen.
They took Brother James to the television studio in a long limousine. He sat awkwardly in the back hugging a big box of bread ingredients and his favourite mixing bowl, spoons, and bread tins. He did not release the box until they showed him to the table in the corner of the studio which they had dressed as a monastery kitchen.
‘Is this absolutely right?’ asked the assistant director, a waif-like girl swathed completely in black, peering through her glasses. ‘Just like the monastery?’
‘I don’t have a crucifix hanging over the cooker,’ Brother James remarked.
‘No? OK.’ She turned her head. ‘Kill the crucifix – I mean – sorry, er, Mr James – take the crucifix down.’
‘You call me Brother James,’ he said mildly.
She looked pleased. ‘I’m Liz. Can I leave the Bible in shot?’
‘I don’t read the Bible in the kitchen,’ he said.
‘OK. OK. But we wanted something to show the spiritual element. You say in your book that you bless the bread before you start baking. Would that be with holy water? Or an incense burner – one of those, whatd’youcallit, censers – or something?’
Brother James felt unaccountably weary. ‘I just ask for a blessing on the work,’ he said. ‘This is bread that is going to feed my brothers. It should be made with love and respect.’
That stopped her for a moment. ‘That’s really neat,’ she said. ‘Really neat. And I guess you don’t need incense to do that?’
‘No.’
She glanced at her clipboard. ‘You’re a segment,’ she told him. ‘We’ll do you, and the rising dough, and then we’ll cut away to Caroline. She’s going to do sensual puddings. She’s doing Devil’s Food Cake – a sort of a joke, you see – holy bread and sinful puddings. Then we’ll come back to you for the final kneading and putting the dough in. Then at the end of the programme we’ll see you take the bread out of the oven and break it and say grace. You do say grace, don’t you?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll introduce you to Caroline,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘She can be a little – a little difficult sometimes. But I’m sure you’ll get on wonderfully well.’
He put on his apron and tied the straps around his waist. He felt safer with the armour of stiff white linen around him, and the familiar scent of the clean cloth.
A woman was threading through the confusion of the studio, coming towards them. Unlike everyone else she was not wearing blue denim or washed-out black. She was wearing a deep purple suit, dark as a Victoria plum. The skirt dropped, slim as a spatula, to her knees; the matching jacket swung like an archbishop’s cape as she strode towards him, her hips swaying, her paces long. Her hair was thick: dark and lustrous as liquorice; her eyes brown as chocolate, her mouth a sulky kissable bud, stained as if she had been eating blackcurrant jam.
She had come to complain to the assistant director about a slight, about an oversight, about something wrong with the layout of her table, of the preparation of the Devil’s Food Cake, but when she raised her long eyelashes and saw Brother James she paused.
‘Oh,’ she said.
And Brother James, holding tight to his mixing bowl and his wooden spoon, for the first time in his life looked desire in the face and longed to taste.
‘Oh,’ he replied.
Caroline Davis put out a manicured hand to Brother James. ‘How do you do?’
Her voice was warm and smooth, as if she had been drinking the chocolate she so liberally applied to her famous puddings.
‘You must think this place is a mad house.’
‘It’s very different from the monastery,’ he said shortly.
‘I bet. What sort of bread are you making?’
It was the first time that anyone had asked him about his work. He could not help but warm to her.
‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I brought the ingredients for everything. I bake plain bread and bread rolls every day for the brothers, and I thought it might be simple and honest to start with a white bread. But we have some wonderful celebration breads with fruit and nuts, and I wanted to share them too. We have corn breads, and sourdough breads…’
‘Show me the recipes,’ she commanded. Suddenly she was brisk and helpful and businesslike. He opened his looseleaf folder and watched her read.
‘This is a treasury,’ she remarked.
‘It matters to me,’ he volunteered. ‘It’s a staple food, of course. But it’s more than that. Our Lord named himself as bread. He ordered us to pray for our daily bread. I serve my brothers when I bake for them.’
‘How did you