Saffron's Surprise

The Cheery Kettle café was part of the furniture on the market square. Like a comfortable, slightly shabby, familiar armchair. For as long as anyone could remember, it had been offering the breakfast sausage or bacon bun, the lunchtime specials (and no-one could say they were narrow-minded, there was a pasta bake at least once a week, and even an occasional curry) and the teatime treats, consisting of a cup of tea or coffee and your choice of a buttered scone, a toasted crumpet, and a slice of Victoria Sponge Cake. Just occasionally, there was the luxury of jam and cream instead of butter, a teacake instead of a crumpet, or Lemon Drizzle Cake instead of Victoria Sponge Cake. And nobody could say they didn’t offer a choice on the tea and coffee. You could have them black or white, weak or strong, with or without sugar. There was even a jar of decaf and a few sachets of peppermint tea in the kitchen, but they didn’t advertise the fact.

     As the staff there were proud to point out, it was no greasy spoon. It was kept beautifully clean, and there was always a glass vase of fresh flowers on the broad windowsill, flanked by china dogs and ladies. The owner, Mrs Patterson, who was due her telegram (except they didn’t send telegrams any more) from the Queen next year, might not be quite as hands on as she used to be, but she had all her wits about her, and was still given to popping in to have a word. Nobody accused her of checking up, though they supposed she had a right to.

     The manager, Sarah Potts, (what an appropriate name, as folks often said) wasn’t nearly so venerable as Mrs Patterson, and quite a few of the townsfolk could remember a time without her, but she still seemed like a permanent fixture. Otherwise it was generally staffed by students and Mums (or in some cases, the two combined) wanting to earn a bit of money on the side. But most of them were local girls, or occasionally boys, and there was still a feeling of permanence and homeliness about the Cheery Kettle. True, just occasionally there were mutters that the place could do with a McDonalds, or even a Greggs, but nothing had ever come of them. 

     It wasn’t quite like a thunderbolt when Sarah said that she was moving on to work at her daughter’s hotel, but it was most certainly a mild rumble. And it called for a momentous event. Mrs Patterson didn’t make one of her intermittent trips to the café, but invited the current staff, Jodie, Karen, and Leah round to her house!

     Despite some of the more colourful rumours, most of the townsfolk knew that Mrs Patterson didn’t live in some Gothic mansion, but in a very nice detached house on the edge of town, called, perfectly accurately, as there was a conifer hedge, The Pines.  She had what she called “live in company” called Teresa, who seemed to be a cross between a carer (though Mrs Patterson wouldn’t have taken kindly to that expression) a companion (for that calling was not solely restricted to historical novels about headstrong young heroines, even in the 21^st century) a somewhat superannuated au pair and, simply, a friend. She was certainly fiercely protective of Mrs Patterson, but had evidently been told that the callers were harmless and well-intentioned, and she greeted them with courtesy.

     Mrs Patterson was living proof of the notion that people reach a certain age and stop ageing. She could easily have passed for someone in her seventies, and was dressed in the style that generations call smart casual in well-cut blue trousers and an ivory blouse with a little floral print. Her lounge was light and airy, looking out to a walled garden that was well-tended, but still with the toys that testified that her beloved great-grandchildren had recently been playing there. A little bright blue budgie was chirping away in a spacious bamboo cage in a corner. “Now sit down, all of you,” she said. “I expect you’re wondering what’s going to happen now Sarah is leaving. I’ll admit it came as a shock to me, but I think she’s made the right decision. I’ve seen her daughter’s hotel, and it’s a lovely place, wonderful sea view, but needs someone who can organise things without folk necessarily realising they’re being organised.” She had summed up one of Sarah’s key skills so well, that they had to chuckle, and the ice was broken, as she served them tea and passed round a plate of biscuits. “I would be more than happy to promote one of you up to manager, but you’ve all made it plain that you don’t want to be permanent fixtures, and I don’t for one minute blame you. So I’ve engaged a lady called Saffron Holmes. My grandson has met her in his own business dealings, and she has a background in catering. She’ll be coming along to meet you later on in the week.” She paused. “I want to be frank with you, my dears. He says that she’s not always immediately the easiest person to get on with, but bear with her, and you’ll be getting on fine soon enough.”

     Though Mrs Patterson couldn’t have been more friendly and approachable, they were enough in awe of her to keep their own counsel until they had left the building. Then they vented their feelings!

     “Saffron Holmes!” Jodie exclaimed. “It sounds like some pretentious new housing development where they ban clothes lines and expect everyone’s Christmas lights to match.”

     “Or the sister of a famous detective!” Karen chipped in. “I mean, I ask you, Saffron! That’s a herb, not a name!”

     “Well, I suppose you can’t judge a person by their name,” Leah said. She liked to try to be fair. Anyway, her own middle name was Rosemary, so she was on shaky ground when it came to herbal names.

     “But even Mrs Patterson says she’s not always the easiest person to get on with, and she always sees the best in people, though she’s nobody’s fool,” Jodie pointed out.

     “Actually, technically, no,” Leah, who was inclined to be pedantic, said, “Her grandson says that.”

     “But if she’s talking about Jason – and I presume she is, because Chris is a teacher, not in business,” Jodie said, “Then you know he’s a pushov – a very nice person.”

     “Not that that necessarily signifies,” Karen mused. “Remember Daphne.”

     The others knew exactly what she meant, though Leah and Daphne had only briefly overlapped. 

     Daphne Marsden had been one of those people who made everyone say, when they first met her, “Oh, what a nice person!” And in her way she was, there was no denying it. But her colleagues also learnt about the flipside of chronic niceness. There was an unwritten rule at the Cheery Kettle, filtered down from Mrs Patterson via Sarah, that if anyone was obviously lonely and obviously on their uppers (and in a small town, generally speaking, you knew) then you let them linger over their drink, especially if it wasn’t a busy time. You even made a point of having a word with them, and an extra top-up, free of charge, was entirely in order. But there were those who were neither lonely nor lacking in money, and thought it was their positive entitlement to “table-hog”, as Sarah called it, even at the busiest times, often with their shopping occupying the other seats at the table, long after their drink or meal had been consumed. And Sarah had mastered the art of so very politely, but with an undeniable firmness, excavating them. Daphne had barely been working there for a couple of days when she remarked that that didn’t seem very nice. It also wasn’t very nice to ask someone to fold up a push chair. This was another matter on which there was some flexibility – if they were fairly quiet, then blind eyes were turned. But if they were packed, then it just wasn’t either practical or safe to allow it totally unchecked. But of course, so far as Daphne was concerned, one of Sarah’s quiet words (hardly, if ever, resented by the person it was addressed to) wasn’t nice. There was something uncomfortably haughty about her humility

     So it was possible, just, that Jason was reacting in the same way to someone who was merely firm when she needed to be. But somehow they doubted it. And the minute they met Saffron Holmes, they decided that they were right to doubt. Her hair was styled and tinted to within a millimetre of its life, and she was wearing a business suit. She had a velvety veneer of surface civility, but the girls were beginning to feel like specimens on a microscope. She didn’t wait long, either. The day after Sarah had left, with hugs and a huge bunch of flowers and promises to keep in touch that would probably be kept, Saffron decided to make changes. “I don’t want to be rude,” she said, in the unmistakeable, no matter how silky tones of someone who is about to be just that. “But talk about a time warp! Jason did hint at it, but of course he’s loyal to his grandmother, speaks well for him. All this gingham!” She pointed at the blue and white gingham curtains with an air of disdain and disbelief. “And those ludicrous knick-knacks!”

     “Nobody has ever complained about them,” Karen said.

     “My dear, people get used to things. But that doesn’t mean they should be set in stone. I mean, it’s a dear little café, the kind my grandmother used to take me to on days out to the seaside, but frankly I never liked them much, even then.”

     So she plainly had her sights on the curtains, but, somewhat to the girls’ relief, decided that there were other more urgent concerns – and probably also suspected that Mrs Patterson might not so easily acquiesce, though she was no doubt planning how to “work on” the old lady. At one of her “team meetings” – a custom she instituted more or less straight away, and which basically meant that they had to get in an hour early to hear her express her opinion – she said, “It’s autumn.” That was indisputable, but they didn’t really know where it was going. “And what are we doing about it? Nothing!” 

     “Well, short of moving to the Southern hemisphere or learning the art of time travel, I don’t see what we can,” said Jodie. She had a nice line in deadpan, and the kind of wide blue eyes that meant she could sometimes get away with it, though whether it worked with Saffron was open to debate. “Very droll, Jodie,” she said, and it was hard to tell if there was a note of begrudging approval. “But what autumn lines are we carrying? None!”

     This was a tad puzzling. Christmas lines, Easter lines, they could understand. When relevant, slices of Christmas cake or even, if they were being very daring and cosmopolitan, Stollen, were offered, and Sarah had once made some very cute little Easter Egg nests, though she admitted herself that they looked better than they tasted. 

     “I suppose we could do something about Halloween,” Leah said, often being the one to meet someone halfway. “But they sell cakes specially for it in the cakeshop over the road, and in the Supermarket, somehow they’re not really the kind of thing folks eat in cafes.”

     “You’re underestimating our clientele, I fear. But though cakes aren’t a bad idea, nor some Jack O’Lanterns, come to that, I wasn’t just thinking about Halloween. I was thinking about autumn, and about a new drinks range. Leave it to me. I know what I’m doing, here.”

     “Well, she certainly thinks she does,” said Jodie, when Saffron had slipped out to go to the bank. “But it just isn’t us. Anyway, I think they’re overrated. The other day I went to visit a friend in,” (she named the nearest, slightly bigger town) “and decided to have a spiced pumpkin latte in Greggs instead of my usual cappuccino – and I wished I hadn’t. It was one of those things that taste fine for the first few sips and then – like the kind of milkshake you always pester for when you’re a kid and then find they make you feel a bit sick.”

     “I know what you mean,” Leah nodded. “I mean, I like pumpkin soup, but otherwise I think it’s definitely best reserved for decorative purposes.”

     It turned out that pumpkin latte was far too unimaginative for Saffron’s taste, and heaven preserve they should be seen as imitating Greggs. In any case, she didn’t necessarily take things too literally and she also had a taste for alliteration.

     The trouble was, that often her ideas, in themselves, were by no means bad. Take Berry Brilliant. Even Mrs Patterson had already toyed with the idea of extending their herbal and fruit teas range, certainly bringing the peppermint tea out of the kitchen and perhaps adding on chamomile or ginger. And the mixed berry tea itself was very tasty and quite thirst-quenching. But Saffron decided to fancy it up with a crusting of brown sugar. Which, even for people who took sugar, wasn’t necessarily that appealing. Harvest Home was basically Ovaltine, which was one of those things folk generally loved or hated, but the girls were of the opinion that adding “cereal flakes” was more likely to persuade those who were undecided the latter way rather than the former. And as for Nutty Nuances, that was acorn coffee, and the least said the better. Even with a free oatmeal cookie. 

     Still, curiosity and an intriguing name can get the better of people, and Stella Hart was one of their more adventurous customers, and had even professed herself a fan of Berry Brilliant, though she surreptitiously (as the thought!) scraped most of the sugar off. And she decided that she was going to have a cup of Nutty Nuance. She was with her son, four year old Toby, whom Sarah had always called a real little gentleman. This was true, at any rate, he had good table manners and didn’t hurtle around the café, and he always said please and thank you. But there was a little mischievous glint in those puppy-dog eyes that made you realise Toby was no cherub, and the girls certainly didn’t think the worse of him for it! Anyway, it was possible to give him the benefit of the doubt that calling his Mum’s drink Nutty Nuisance was a slip of the tongue with an unfamiliar word. He had his usual orange squash. They hadn’t got round to a children’s speciality autumn range. Which was probably as well. Intent on both setting a good example to her child and on being polite herself, Amy genuinely did her best with the beige beverage. She went through an almost convincing charade of pretending to be engrossed in her newspaper (which was the local one, and even its staff weren’t deluded that reports of car boots sales and council meetings were that fascinating) and let it go cold. At this point, Toby’s curiosity got the better of him. His own drink finished, he was on the brink of having a sip of his Mum’s, but decided better of it at the last minute – or more specifically, after he had taken a sniff at it. His face wrinkled up and he exclaimed, “It smells like squirrel sick!” Now Toby had an intermittent lisp, which his mum wisely didn’t make an issue of, and it came out as It thmells like thquirrel thick. At the precise moment when Saffron was passing. And Toby’s voice wasn’t exactly quiet.

     “Oh, my Lord,” muttered Karen, “We’re about to be witnesses to infanticide!”

     They couldn’t help giggling as they admired Toby’s way with words. And then they realised that they weren’t the only ones who were laughing – and they heard laughter that was unfamiliar, though its source wasn’t. Saffron had burst into a great guffaw of laughter that even seemed to dislodge her neatly coiffeured hair. Rather than committing infanticide on Toby, she ruffled his hair (which he probably regarded as almost as bad!) and said, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings – and I think that might be the first time in my life I’ve actually used that saying. So far as I know I’ve never smelt squirrel sick, but I imagine it might be a bit like that.”

     “I like thquirrels!” Toby said, by way of consolation.

    The Cheery Kettle didn’t abandon all its new ranges and plans. But brown sugar was left on the counter in a dish, as an optional extra, and Harvest Home came with only chocolate flakes as the trimming, which even Ovaltine haters had to admit made it more palatable, though why not just order hot chocolate in the first place?

     The seasons ran their course, and the Christmas ranges were, by and large, a success. Spring came, and the crocuses were in bloom. 

     “Now, there’s a possibility,” Saffron said, “How could I miss that one? Time for Saffron Surprise.”

     The girls (Jodie had been moved on and replaced by Heather, but Leah and Karen were still there) exchanged slightly nervous looks – and Saffron burst into that laugh again. “That got you going!”

     Oh – and the gingham curtains and china ornaments survived.