Read by Amy Neilson Smith
‘Fuck you, Jack. Merry Christmas.’ That’s what I should have said.
Instead I mutter ‘See you later, then – at home’ with a calculated passive-aggressive cutting edge. It’ll be wasted on the pissed-up arsehole.
We’re in Bermondsey, last Friday before Christmas. Done the Beer Mile. Again. With mates – mostly Jack’s. You know the place – a mile-long strip of craft breweries under the railway arches? If you’re too basic to know it then you’ll never work for my PR agency.
Jack swears virtually all his social media deals are sealed here over a pint of craft IPA on a Friday afternoon. All free-range and fair enough. But the evenings inevitably end with contracts celebrated at someone’s new-build flat in Rotherhithe or Limehouse – the boys in a daze of drugs and videogames and their bored girlfriends bonding over competitive stories of sex and shoes.
Not this time.
‘Charlie, babes, once we hit Druid Street market I’ll make my excuses and we’ll shoot.’
Now we’ve arrived, of course, the only person he’s making bloody excuses to is me.
‘Mega-quick check-in with Josh – Craft House Tower Bridge, babes – about the data lake?’
Data lake? I’d like to drown him in it.
So, I grab my bag and flounce out of the brewery tasting room. I stomp into the market as the stallholders are packing away – crushing empty cardboard boxes and loading their Transit vans.
I wait half-a-minute to see if Jack reacts to my exit and pursues me.
He doesn’t.
The wind’s whipped up and the glorious sunset has been extinguished by oppressive grey cloud. It’s bloody chilly. A single snowflake spirals downwards, landing – and melting – on my nose.
The four pints I’ve downed with the guys are sloshing around in my stomach and I feel a little bit wobbly. Simultaneously, I’m hit by an overpowering hunger, triggered by the pervasive aroma of baking bread. I’m in PR. I have an MA in Marketing. I know how to seduce people. Pumping out bakery smells to subliminally persuade customers to spend is one of hoariest tricks in the book. But it works, especially on half-pissed women who’ve only eaten a vegan falafel flatbread all day. And that was six starving hours ago.
I practically stumble over the source of my temptation. An A-board outside a railway arch unit declares, in a most unlovely design: ‘Artisan bakery’. No branding. Just badly hand-written chalk. These people need professional advice.
The bakery itself is equally unprepossessing. The outside still resembles the dingy lock-up it probably was until six months ago. The boarding is covered in graffiti but that bread-of-heaven smell escapes through the open double doors. It fills my nostrils and drags me inside.
The bakery is spartan. A trestle table with a plastic gingham tablecloth displays a rather miserable selection of bread – and I’m mortified to discover that only crumbs remain of the seasonal panettone and St. Lucia’s buns. I suppose it is past six and the market’s winding down. I’m lucky it’s still open at all. With no prices or product descriptions it’s a binary choice between a chunky, traditional cob and a flour-dusted bloomer.
I wait to be served by the one staff member who’s apparently working here. And I wait. He’s standing to the side, apparently too rapt in concentration over a piece of bloody dough to notice me. This chap definitely needs my marketing mojo – but can he afford me?
I glare at the guy, clear my throat, tap my Converse on the concrete floor. He’s about my age, I imagine. Tall, lean-looking, even when wearing an apron over a Joy Division T-shirt. He has a masculine, angular face, jawline softened with a de-rigueur bushy beard. His dark hair is long and tied back into a pony tail, which I’m not convinced conforms to food safety standards.
A drift of chilly air blows through the doors. Outside it’s a full-on blizzard and there’s that uncanny dampening of sound that accompanies a heavy snowfall. Shit, I must’ve left my umbrella in Brew by Numbers up the road.
Eventually, Mr Baker Man glances up from his kneading and clocks me. I frown in return but he smiles in an honest, apologetic way. I’m immediately disarmed. He washes his hands scrupulously in a sink. Short-staffed. Not his fault. He approaches the table. I’m kind of hoping when he speaks that it’s with a smoky French accent.
He remains silent, staring at me expectantly.
‘Erm, is that one sourdough?’ I point at a loaf.
‘Wholemeal cob and white sourdough bloomer,’ he replies in an accent that I can merely place as ‘unspecified northern England’. I’m rather devastated he didn’t give me credit for my loaf identification skills.
‘That one, please.’ I indicate the sourdough.
‘Five pounds.’
Fuck, that’s steep, even for a London farmers’ market, I think while murmuring ‘Oh, that’s fine’ and fumbling somewhat drunkenly with my purse. He wraps the loaf in a paper bag. Contactless? Here? No way. I hand over virtually all my cash.
His blue eyes catch mine as he hands me the bread. His gaze drops lower and lingers a second. I like it but turn prudently towards the doorway, only to see a riot of white snowflakes.
‘Mind if I stay and nibble it in here until this blows past?’ I ask. ‘Should only be a few minutes.’
‘Sure.’ He points to a wooden bench in the corner.
I settle down and survey the bakery. A stainless-steel oven and racks of baking trays fill the rear of the arch. A staircase at the side leads to an upper level laid out with what looks like a mattress. I’m so hungry I can’t do anything except sink my teeth into the loaf. It’s sublime. The aromatic crust yields to a chewy-textured, savoury white core.
I check my phone. Surely Jack isn’t going to leave me to struggle home alone in this?
The baker returns to his supple slab of dough. I sit watching, transfixed, as he manipulates, stretches, pummels. He’s completely focused, never once looking in my direction.
I stand up and walk closer.
‘Sorry. Do you mind me watching? My attempts at bread making never rise,’ I say.
‘Never been a problem for me.’
He grabs the dough from the board, tosses it high in the air, catches it as it tumbles and slams it down on the preparation table. Hard. Very hard. His arms are swathed in tattoo sleeves. I’m intrigued. I want to move nearer, assess the designs. Underneath the tats, the sinews stretch from wrist to elbow, veins bulging on his taut forearms. His fingers pinch and massage the dough. He punches it with his fist. Finally, he tosses it into a huge mixing bowl, which he covers with clingfilm.
‘Closing time, I’m afraid,’ he says, crushingly.
‘I’d love it if you could you give me a lesson. I’ll pay,’ I say, over-eagerly.
‘Sure,’ he replies, washing his hands.
I’m ready with my iPhone to book the date – still no notifications from Jack – but he goes outside, brings in the snow-speckled blackboard and bolts the doors closed.
‘Sorry, but I am still here,’ I say.
‘Didn’t you want a lesson?’
‘You’ll do it now?’ I ask, gobsmacked.
‘Weekend afternoon opening’s only for show – for the soak-the-beer-up brigade. The best bread’s made in the early hours. Sets the rhythm of life, doesn’t it? I’m not going anywhere,’ he says.
‘I guess it’s only seven,’ I say.
‘I kip up there for a few hours on Fridays. Tonight, I was going to prep a batch of “festive” Stollen before I put my head down.’
‘Probably better for me to wait until the snow’s settled,’ I say. ‘Funnily enough, I don’t eat much bread. My boyfriend says he’s gluten intolerant but I think that’s just more of his bollocks.’
He raises his eyebrows while bringing me an apron and a selection of organic flour. ‘You seem like someone who values what she puts in her body.’
‘I’m always looking out for the genuine and natural.’
‘The simpler and purer the better. Flour, salt, water, yeast. If your ingredients are top quality and the passion flows through your fingertips, that’s all you ever need. Although I’d be bankrupt if I didn’t chuck in handfuls of sunblush tomatoes and Alfonso fucking olives for the Waitrose wankers.’ He rolls out a long, firm baton of marzipan. ‘To go inside the Stollen,’ he explains.
With him adding water, I stir up a hunk of dough. I massage the ball with my fingers, squeezing and folding but I’m not achieving that essential elasticity. The viscous dough’s sticking to my fingers.
‘More flour?’ I ask.
‘No. Your technique needs more practice. Want me to show you?’
I nod. He stands behind me, reaching around me, placing his large hands over mine.
‘This is how you knead. You have to sense the give and the spring in the dough.’ His bearded chin brushes my shoulder, his fingers gently leading mine. ‘Is this OK?’
‘Carry on.’ I push my back against him.
We knead together. His hands are strong and sensitive, prompting and leading – every touch, every action, every breath a response to mine. Intoxicated, I become heady with the experience, striking out on my own, pummelling, slapping and stretching until he orders me to stop.
’The oven don’t come on until four in the morning. So, you could shape it now, take it with you to rise and cook at home. Or if you pop back tomorrow, I’ll bake it for you. How do you want it? Roll out it into a ball for a cob or extend it out long for a baguette?’
There’s a message on my phone: ‘Brought the boys back to our new place for a blast of Black Ops 4’.
Wanker!
‘I’d like the full experience,’ I reply. ‘My oven’s puny anyhow. You said you sleep over ... I’m really in no hurry to go anywhere.’
‘It’ll take an hour or two to let it properly prove,’ he says.
‘Isn’t quality bread best tasted straight from the oven?’ I reply.
*
Later, looking down from upstairs I see how my dough has risen and swollen, as if it’s alive, as if he’s put that rhythm of life into it, just like he’s putting the rhythm of life into me.
*
I awake to the smell of baking bread and the sun piercing through a small window in the frontage. Diesel engines idle and snow shovels scrape the tarmac as the market’s set up outside. I find him downstairs stripped to the waist, sweat glistening among the loaf tins and baking trays. My loaves emerge scalding hot from the oven. His asbestos fingers pop them into brown paper bags. I clutch the bread to my chest — radiantly warm.
‘Anything I can do to help?’ I ask.
He doesn’t answer – too busy turning out loaves from tins on to cooling racks.
‘I’ll put up the blackboard outside on my way out,’ I suggest.
‘Perfect.’ He smiles broadly.
*
Back at the flat, Jack’s comatose, spread-eagled on the sofa in front of the X-Box. Beer cans, rolled notes and a pack of Rizlas lie by his side – and two passed-out mates.
I sit in the kitchen and devour every crumb of those divine loaves.
Then I open the fridge, remove the crab and avocado spheres, pancetta-wrapped turkey with gravy, and millionaires’ shortbread, and empty the lot over Jack’s head.
‘Merry fucking Christmas, babe.’
Slamming the door behind me, I dash to the Jubilee Line. There’s a baker in Bermondsey who needs his blackboard chalking.
(c) Mike Clarke, 2018
Mike Clarke has a Creative Writing MA from Manchester Metropolitan University and, when not writing filthy short stories, multi-tasks by working on a novel and writing pub reviews in the Sunday papers. He works “in media” in Soho, where he can be spotted writing while observing hipsters in trendy coffee bars (not bakeries).
Amy Neilson Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, by day Creative Director of ‘A Blind Bit of Difference/Tasting Colour’ (Arts Council), creating Sensory Poetry with visually impaired poets, their current anthology glowingly reviewed by Michael Rosen: by night a Poetry Brothel courtesan (Arts Theatre, West End). Credits: Peter Hall Company, National Studio, Hat Trick Comedy Productions and directing immersive choral 3D poetry installations at Richmix.
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