Summer Soap, Part 7: A low... then a heart to heart with Margaret

This year's summer soap, The Lost Recipe, is a summer mystery with a romantic subplot and an underlying theme of food - and involves a search for a long-lost recipe. It was written by Emma Tirlot from the MA in Creative Writing Programme at UCC. Catch up with previous episodes at  echolive.ie.

In the seventh episode, Claire finally decides she can’t juggle everything.

Episode 7: Burnt Currant Buns

I close my laptop and bury my face in my hands. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even have the bare bones of Margaret’s biography. And on top of that, a cookbook I can’t write is looming in the corner of my mind.

A wave of panic rises until I’m incapable of sitting at the desk any longer. I need to get out of here.

I reach for my raincoat just as a screeching sound pierces my eardrums. The smell of something burning quickly invades the cottage. Merde! The currant buns batch! I run into the kitchen and slam the oven open. A thick cloud of smoke escapes the furnace with a heatwave that threatens to burn off my eyebrows. A hazy cloud rises in the kitchen.

“Merde, mais c’est pas possible!” I cry out over the fire alarm.

I stand idle in front of the oven for a second. Tears blur the tray of dark, miserable burnt buns. Back into motion, I rush to open the windows and reach for a magazine to ventilate the room.

I step into the backyard, incapable of holding back my sobs. I never burn anything. Never. What was I thinking? It’s all going wrong.

I only have a couple of weeks left in Ireland and Margaret is still impossible to work with. How could I even let this happen? Why am I incapable of standing my ground in front of her? Why can’t I figure out this recipe? Why can’t I write a simple cookbook?

That’s it. After cleaning the disaster in the kitchen, I head straight to Margaret’s house.

******

“What are you doing here, Claire? We are not supposed to meet today.” Margaret says, lifting her eyes from her Architectural Digest magazine.

“I’m sorry, Margaret.” I head straight to sit across from her, dropping my purse at my feet. “I just can’t do it.”

She raises her brows in question.

“The recipe. I don’t have any more time.” I shake my head. “I won’t do it. I need this biography, Margaret. I need to get back to my cookbook, I cannot afford any more time to run around...”

“Slow down,” she says, placing her magazine on the coffee table between us.

I pause and take a deep breath, then I plead my case.

Once I’m finished, Margaret sends me to the kitchen to prepare tea.

“Do you have your computer?” She asks once I’m back.

“No... but I have a notebook and a pen.”

******

Margaret folds her hands on her lap. “Cork felt… small. I always thought there was more to the world. That there was something out there for me that I wouldn’t find here in Cork.”

“Did you find it?”

“France had the best chefs, the best cuisine. According to whoever made the rules. That was where I wanted to be. I didn’t just want to be like them; I wanted to be one of them.”

I smile. That, she did.

“But in trying to become a model, a perfect image of what I thought success was, I stripped away the best parts of myself. I worked hard against my roots to fit into that French authenticity, so people would see me as one of theirs, as legitimate as all the other French chefs. But without the heart and the soul, no magic can be made.

“My cooking was fine, obviously. I never lacked technique. But it was forgettable. I never shone thought my food. People saw the perfect dishes of Margaret Kelly. But they never saw me. Those dishes never really felt like my own.”

“Did that weigh in your decision to sell the restaurant?”

“It took me a long time to let go of it. Too long, I think. I couldn’t see what was next, so I stuck it out. Until it... stopped making sense altogether.”

“And you came back. To Cork.”

“I’d always seen it that way. If I left the restaurant behind, I’d leave Paris too. I felt like a stranger, returning to Cork after so long. A part of me still does.”

She takes a long pause. “I never knew how to create a home. I never knew I needed a home. I think I do know.” She huffs, “bit late.”

Silence stretches. Maybe this was why she refused to step outside, and why she had all that old furniture sitting in the attic. She was trying to protect the small bit of home she had.

Margaret broke the silence. “They called me many times over the years, for a biography. I never understood the interest.”

“Lots of chefs published biographies. Some were very successful,” I point out.

“How do you explain that your entire career ended up being an act and when you realised it, it was time to retire? Is this a biography you would want about yourself?”

I frown. “Do you regret it then? Your career?” I ask.

She looks at me intensely and I am suddenly worried she will shut down or kick me out.

Instead, she smiles slowly, shaking her head. “How miserable would I be if I regretted the biggest part of my life? These decisions... I am proud of them. It never got old, waking up in a city I idolised.

“Not a day went by that I wasn’t amazed at the life I had built for myself. I only wish I had put a little more of myself in it.”

Margaret puts her mug down on the coffee table and relaxes into her seat. “But no, Claire. I don’t regret it. It will always be part of me.”

******

“Found it!” I sing-song when I finally reach Fionn’s office on campus.

He looks up from his computer and smiles. “Hey, Claire.”

“Ready?”

“Almost. Before we go, I wanted to show you this.” He hands me a document. A long list of businesses and family names.

“I compiled all the bakery owners that participated in the 1913 baking contest. I found most of the pastries submitted, even a few recipes. I thought maybe it could be helpful to you...”

I can’t believe he did all this work. “Fionn...” I look up and give him a small smile. I hesitate.

He frowns. “What’s up?”

I look at him for a second, “I was just going to tell you...” I bite my lip, then blurt out. “I’m giving up the recipe.”

He looks confused, which only magnifies how horrible I feel about wasting his time. 

“I somehow convinced her. Margaret let me off the hook.”

His silence makes it even worse. I push through, “I can finally focus on the biography. I’m really sorry...”

“No, don’t be,” he cuts in, “that’s amazing news for the bio’.” But I see the disappointment in his eyes. “Are you sure you want to drop the recipe?”

I shake my head, “I don’t really have time...”

He nods slowly. “Will you at least have some time to explore Cork with me?”

I nod. “Of course, Fionn. I... I just don’t want to spend all my free time trying to find something that probably doesn’t exist.”

He smiles, pulling his coat off the chair, “fair enough”.