Sunday #2
Marianne Wolvercote cocked her head to one side. “About Jennifer being a bad influence?”
“About a potato pie not being special something, something.” Grace Forsythe was making a rolling-things-back gesture with her hands. “They’ll want it for continuity.”
“A potato pie,” Marianne Wolvercote repeated, any trace of mirth gone from her voice, “will need to be very well-executed indeed if it’s going to reach the quality we expect from this competition.”
And yet again, Grace Forsythe leaned forwards supportively. “Don’t worry about Marianne dear,” she said. And then, with a grin, added, “Somebody poured salt on her cornflakes.”
* * *
Time, the various Audreys from across history agreed, could get fucked.
Four hours had gone like nothing, and while she’d more or less got everything to work, it had been touch-and-go in places.
And it turned out that forbidding yourself from getting distracted was extremely distracting.
While she’d managed not to lose herself in other people’s dramas, Marianne’s admonition about the dangers of potato had been nestling in Audrey’s head like a toad in a bucket.
Which, in turn, had made it all too easy to remember every bad decision she’d ever made.
And then she was called up first for judging.
“So these are a traditional”—she hoped emphasising the word traditional would help, though she wasn’t sure how—“cheese and potato pie savoury. And for my sweet I’ve made blackberry and ginger.”
“Now, I love a potato pie, me,” said Wilfred Honey, cutting into it with gusto and a carving knife. “Though I know it’s a bit rustic for Marianne.”
“I don’t have a problem with rustic,” Marianne Wolvercote lied, “as long as it’s well baked and the flavours come through properly.”
Audrey held her breath and bit her lip in that order. The flavours, she suspected, were not going to come through properly.
“You see, I like it,” Wilfred Honey said after he’d finished his mouthful. And the way he emphasised I didn’t exactly fill Audrey with confidence. “But I’m not sure it’s to Marianne’s tastes.”
All eyes turned to Marianne Wolvercote. “Actually, I’m pleasantly surprised.”
Audrey let out the breath she completely knew she’d been holding. “Oh, good.”
“It’s not my favourite, and I do think you could have done more in the time.”
The part of Audrey that was still in jizz cornflakes mode wanted to say “Really, because I felt pretty fucking rushed as it happens.” But she didn’t because it would be a total dick move and require a reshoot.
“I can taste the rosemary,” Marianne Wolvercote went on. “The cheese isn’t overwhelming, and the potatoes have a good texture.”
Wilfred Honey, by this stage, had moved on to the blackberry and ginger. “I like this, too,” he said. “The first one was summery, but the ginger makes this one a bit more warming, and I like a warming pudding.”
Leaning in from just behind the judges, Grace Forsythe put up a hand. “Translator’s note, pudding in this context is regional slang for dessert in general as opposed to the puddings we sometimes ask contestants to make in this competition, which are dessert in particular.”
“Yes, thank you Grace.” Wilfred Honey did not look especially thankful.
Marianne, who had been sampling the blackberry and ginger while all this had been going on, agreed that the flavours were good but, with her usual attention to detail, noted the uneven latticework on the lid.
Still sorting through that jumble of mixed feedback and faint praise, Audrey thanked the judges, collected her pies, and went back to her spot.
Doris was next, followed by Joshua, and they’d both done fine. Their bakes were well chosen but not spectacular, and their feedback had ultimately been similar to Audrey’s, albeit with less emphasis on potato.
Next up was Meera, and from where Audrey was standing she seemed notably confident. Having done well on the blind bake she clearly knew her way around pastry, and the judges were apparently expecting something interesting.
“So this,” she said, “is a sweet rhubarb and strawberry pie with balsamic vinegar and thyme.” The judges made acknowledging noises. “And this is a chicken jalfrezi pie for savoury.”
This time Wilfred and Marianne went for the sweet pie first, which Marianne enjoyed and Wilfred appreciated on its technical merits, although his famous disapproval of putting savoury flavours in sweet dishes kicked in just slightly. When they were done with that, they moved on to the savoury.
“By ’eck,” Wilfred Honey said, all thoughts of misplaced vinegar forgotten, “it’s gorgeous.”
“It is good,” Marianne Wolvercote agreed. “I think this was a really interesting way to use Asian flavours. There’s—there’s something in the pastry, isn’t there?”
Meera nodded. “It’s made with a lime pickle.”
“Very clever choice.” Marianne Wolvercote sounded more approving than Audrey had heard all season. “Well done.”
The rest of the contestants came and went quickly.
Reggie had designed his pies to stack on top of each other, but for that to work he’d needed to make the bottom one—a sausage and leek pie with hot water crust pastry—extremely dense, which had worked structurally but which Marianne Wolvercote felt harmed the eating experience.
Wilfred Honey had disagreed, insisting that he enjoyed having something to sink his teeth into, and between the two of them Audrey judged that he was safe but not quite in a position to win it.
After that was Jim, whose job Audrey kept forgetting but who seemed to be filling the blue-collar-worker-you-wouldn’t-expect-to-bake role, like the carpenter lady from the last season or the electrician from the one before that.
He’d done okay, and Audrey was beginning to feel distinctly bottom-of-the-packish.
Even Linda, who earlier had been convinced that she’d screwed everything up beyond recognition, had received good feedback for her venison-and-stout savoury, though her apple, pear, and hazelnut sweet had come out just a touch overdone.
“Which is a shame,” Marianne Wolvercote had said, “because with just a little more attention to detail it could have been excellent.”
Linda, being this season’s one-who-took-everything-incredibly-to-heart, took that feedback like a drawing pin to the paw, but she nodded gratefully, made a well-intentioned stab at mastering her emotions, and returned to her place looking only slightly like she thought she was garbage.
That left Alanis for last. Though she’d seemed fairly happy earlier in the day, as she came forward now with her pies she looked a lot more, well, a lot more sixteen than Audrey remembered her looking.
“This,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice, “is a beef bourguignon savoury pie, and a summer apple sweet pie.”
“Puff pastry was a risk in the time,” Marianne Wolvercote told her, cracking the pastry lid of the beef bourguignon and then peering at it like a coroner at an autopsy. “And I don’t think it’s entirely worked. I’d have expected better lamination and it’s a little underbaked.”
Audrey didn’t have the best view from her bench, but from the tone she suspected that “a little underbaked” was an understatement.
With an unerring instinct for the right time to good-cop, Wilfred Honey dug in and chewed. “Although I think Marianne is right about your pastry,” he said gently, “your filling has cooked well, and it’s got a real richness of flavour to it that I like a lot.”
“And the apple pie is much better executed,” Marianne Wolvercote added. “Although it is very simple, it’s well baked and”—she took a forkful—“it has a pleasing tartness, but we are looking for a little more from you, even this early.”
“I think it caught a bit,” Alanis admitted, looking shamefacedly at a corner of singed crust that she’d made an obvious-now-she-pointed-it-out attempt to cover up with icing sugar.
“Word to the wise, darling,” volunteered Grace Forsythe from the sidelines. “They already know, and if they’ve not mentioned it, you probably shouldn’t either.”
Alanis nodded, by now visibly shaky.
Wilfred Honey had gone full grandfather-to-the-nation. “Well, I think they’re both smashing. There’s a couple of mistakes, but I’m a straightforward man and a beef and mushroom pie followed by an apple pie is my idea of a proper dinner.”
His tone was gentle but reading between the lines—and also, for that matter, reading a few of the actual lines—it was pretty clear that Alanis hadn’t done well that week, and she walked back to her bench looking somewhere between downcast and devastated.
When the judges retired to deliberate, the contestants gathered around to share their congratulations, commiserations, and fears.
“You’ll be okay,” Linda was saying to Alanis. “I did badly, too, and, well”—she glanced up at Audrey—“I think she’s right about them wanting you for the final.”
This, Audrey felt, had dropped her right in it. Everybody was turning to her now with looks of nervous confusion.
“What do you know?” asked Jim, a little warily.
“Nothing.”
This didn’t convince anybody.
“I’ve just”—Audrey made a frantic attempt to de-escalate—“watched a lot of reality TV.”
Alanis was looking at Audrey with unhelpful faith. “She’s in media. She understands how these things work.”
“I’m in local journalism,” explained Audrey. “I’m not an expert.”
“No, but…” Linda looked so sheepish that she was at serious risk of winding up in a traditional roast dinner. “What you said yesterday. It made sense.”
“What made sense?” This was Jim, still more warily.
“It’s not big a deal,” said Audrey. “Obviously a show like this needs characters and arcs, and one of the more obvious arcs they could be going for is oldest contestant versus youngest contestant.”
Meera frowned. “Now you’ve said it, that does make sense. Although it also makes the whole competition feel a bit pointless.”