Chapter Text
In the army, one never thinks for too long about the seeming infinity of life, the years that might stretch out ahead. For one thing, the dangerous situations a soldier is thrust into mean there is a fair chance of an early death. For another, the pace is far too rapid – critical tasks present themselves one after the other and any moment taken to stop and think for too long about anything else is a moment wasted.
James glances at his watch and sees that the minute hand has barely moved since he last looked at it. It isn’t broken; as an heirloom he looks after it meticulously. It’s just that, since he left active service, time has taken on a sluggish quality he never experienced before. It’s tremendously frustrating.
He raised this with Alison. Try a hobby, she said, like she was reading from the therapist’s playbook. As well as passing the time, it would help keep his brain flexible. He might make connections with new people. He might even find that life has more meaning.
He’d promise to find a hobby if she promised to be less of a cliché.
He finds himself by his bookshelf and extracts a large volume about tanks. But, like every other time he has tried this, he finds his concentration lapsing after only thirty seconds or so. It’s as though he is unable to relax; his mind seems to think that if he absorbs himself in an activity for too long, then something bad will happen to him. He must stay alert to whatever that bad thing might be, even if it’s only a figment of his imagination. It’s been that way for years now - even before he left the army.
Chores around the house keep him busy. But, looking about him, he really has done everything. There isn’t a speck of dust or dirt left. The lawn is mown, the bird feeders topped up. He even trimmed his moustache this morning. Nothing left to do. The endlessness of nothing.
James slumps onto the sofa and turns the TV on if only to quiet his mind. Most of his exposure to other people these days is through this screen. Meeting people for real seems like a huge effort with very little payoff. They never stick around, and he’s long accepted that he’s just not a likeable person.
It takes him a few moments to properly tune in and realise he’s watching a baking show. Not his usual choice of material, but it’s harmless enough. In fact, there’s something quite relaxing about watching people kneading dough. He leans back into the cushions a little more, observing the way the bakers fold and plait and shape their creations. If only those pesky presenters would stop interrupting. Why does it need to be a competition? Can’t it just be about making bread? And why does he need to know about each baker’s backstory? Agnes in her cottage with her cats, Walter the artist whose bread looks more like sculpture, and Mick the dentistry student who bakes to wind down. And here’s Nigel, the token gay one. James rolls his eyes, urging them to get on with it and show him their finished products already.
The judging annoys him too, the way the contestants exaggerate their nerves, the silly anticipation for a handshake – although he finds himself interested in the precise tips and criticisms the judges offer: this is underproved, that’s overbaked, should have added more salt, needs less chilli. He finds himself making a mental note of all of it, even though he has no need for the information.
The next round begins. The cake Joan makes looks delicious; meanwhile Geoff’s bake is collapsing and looks nothing like the artist’s impression. James himself could do a better job of that, he is sure, if he just knew the recipe. He eyes his phone beside him, hands roving curiously over to it before he can stop himself, and looks it up. And no, he doesn’t have many of the ingredients, only eggs and butter, because he hardly cooks at home, but none of them are hard to come by. Maybe he could have a crack at it: he’d make a decent job of it, he’s sure. After all, it’s a set of orders, and his previous life depended on following those to a tee. Yes, why not?
🥖🥖🥖
He hasn’t become acclimatised to the supermarket yet: the bright lights, the beeping tills, whining children and the bloody canned music whose offensiveness is outdone only by the interruptions for adverts announcing a discounted product or a new meal deal. It’s why he usually orders delivery, but there was nothing available for the next morning and so he’s had to drag himself into this alien world.
He glances at his shopping list. Is he really going to do this? He could just abandon the idea, grab a few of his normal groceries to top himself up and be done. Instead he’s making himself hunt through the store for things he would never buy just to prove himself more worthy than a stranger of the TV - the type of stranger who goes on reality shows, no less.
After locating most of what he needs, he hits a snag: they don't seem to stock golden syrup, or at least he can't find any. Dare he try honey instead? It has a similar consistency, after all. He shoves a jar into his basket and, before he can change his mind, heads for the tills.
🧁🧁🧁
It turns out well – save for the amount of flour that has managed to scatter itself over every surface in his kitchen and will, he estimates, take the rest of the day to fully clean up. He bites into a delicious cake: moist with fruit and honey (a most suitable substitute), yet not soggy, even right at the bottom which, he understands from Bake Off, is where most of the problems occur.
He rewards himself with another episode. Pastry week, and the mere sight of John’s pistachio croissants makes his mouth water. He’ll have to try those next.
🍰🍰🍰
James isn’t a half bad baker.
After a week of cakes, pastries and eclairs – interspersed with a couple more spontaneous trips to the supermarket for specific ingredients – he dares himself to attempt making bread: a simple brown loaf. It takes all day, and he likes that, because even though there’s some waiting around, it gives him a schedule to follow. When it’s ready and has cooled a little, he spreads a layer of softened butter over its springy surface. Its oiliness glistens as it melts just slightly and, popping it into his mouth, it tastes as good as it looks, the bread soft and rich, with a crunchy crust, the silkiness of the butter complementing the malty taste.
It's quite a large loaf, but he can’t see himself having much trouble getting through this, thanks to its deliciousness. Some of his other bakes were not so lucky; large cakes, and pastries that made a baker’s dozen, proved a challenge to fully consume whilst fresh. With no one to share with, some of his creations turned stale and had to be placed on his bird table or thrown away entirely. He didn’t even bring anything to share at his last appointment with Alison, loathe to admit she was right about trying a hobby. But he hadn’t thought of baking, and she had been foolish not to have suggested it – baking was sensible, it was productive. It wasn’t frivolous the way her ideas about poetry or Zumba were.
He tunes into Bake Off every day for inspiration, cycling through old series while he waits for the next episode of the current one. Even though some of the more contrived elements of the show still irk him, he finds himself taken in more and more not only by the bakes, but also by the bakers, specifically their camaraderie. It was something he never quite found in the army, where the ‘friendly’ banter, ‘harmless’ pranks and competitive undercurrent weren’t to his liking, as he was rather an underdog in all domains. The bakers are meant to be in competition, though you wouldn’t know it. There’s a supportiveness underlying it; they offer each other words of encouragement, hug the contestant who’s voted out, cheer when someone else wins.
James has been on his own a year now. He can’t remember the last time someone did any of that for him.
🍪🍪🍪
Towards the end of the current series is an announcement inviting people to apply for next year. He can blame having had two bottles of beer for his resulting actions.
Once he’s filled out the form, he helps himself to another slice of his most recent cake. He allows himself one more drink. He forgets.
🥐🥐🥐
“So, how have you been?”
“Well, thank you,” he answers Alison. His fingers twitch nervously in his lap, as always.
“I was having a think about things after our last session and wanted to come back to hobbies. Have you tried any of the activities we talked about?”
“No. At least… not the ones we talked about…” he adds, seeing her disheartened expression. “I’ve been getting into baking.”
“Baking? That’s great!” She perks up at once, beaming. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad. I’ve been watching that baking programme and trying out things from there.”
“The Great British Bake Off?”
“Yes. The recipes are very good – splendid results every time.”
“Amazing! So can I expect to see you on the TV anytime soon?” she asks, and her tone is mildly teasing.
“Well… I did put in an application.”
Her mouth falls open. “What?!”
“What?”
“Captain I-Can’t-Stand-People has put himself forward to be on a reality TV show?”
“Come now, Alison, it’s hardly Big Brother. All I’ll be doing for the most part is making dough and standing around waiting for it to cook. Not many social skills needed, I shouldn’t have thought. Anyway, they must have thousands of applications. It’s unlikely I’ll even be considered.”
🥧🥧🥧
The announcement on the TV didn’t mention the selection process – there was no small print describing how gruelling it would be. When James receives the email offering him an initial interview via Zoom, it all seems straightforward enough. They’ll be interviewing hundreds of people, and he’ll be one of many, instantly forgettable, and once it’s over he can then put this silly idea behind him and go back to baking for himself. Only, then there’s an in-person meeting to go to in London. With nothing better to do, he goes, shakes hands, passes a tin of Chelsea buns around that are consumed with gusto, while he mumbles answers to the questions put to him about his background and his baking experience. After he’s released from the building with his empty tin under his arm, he's sure that’ll be the end of it. He surely hasn’t got the right personality for TV.
He's invited back for a baking audition – they want him to prove he can make things himself, that he didn’t just buy the buns from a bakery and pass them off as his own – the bally cheek of it! He was a military man – he has integrity, morals. He’s not some fraud who would just walk into a situation faking his accomplishments to win someone over. Despite his haughtiness about it, under the surface the nerves are eating at him. He’s almost certain to fall at this hurdle. Performing under pressure was never his strong suit.
Somehow, he produces a perfect batch of Bakewell tarts. He can’t fault them; there isn’t a crumb out of place.
But then, he’s told the next step is a psychological evaluation. That’s it then: the end of the line. They’ll find out he has a therapist, about his depression and trauma and all the rest of it, and will send him on his way.
Yet this, too, turns out to be painless. All he does is complete some questionnaires, answer a few surface-level questions on the phone, and produce some documentation for a criminal background check. The next thing he knows he’s informed he’s passed everything and then there’s an email with a contract in it.
He sucks in a deep breath. This is it, then. This time, it’s his turn to make a choice. After a moment of deliberation, he decides he has nothing to lose, and goes for it.
A few weeks later, he opens an email with details about the series dates and location.
When it sinks in that this is all about to be real, he opens up his favourite recipe site and saves everything he hasn’t tried making yet, and what the hell was he thinking? There’s so much he hasn’t done, and he’s about to be asked to bake some of it blind? And he’s never made anything that looks remotely like the intricate showstoppers contestants regularly make on the show.
So, he decides to do what he does best – logistics – and fires up a spreadsheet. He sets about entering the data about which recipes and techniques he’s confident with, which he needs more practice at and which he’s yet to try, along with dates leading up to the start of the series. He goes online and orders several notepads (to be organised by theme – cakes, bread and so on); there he will keep crib notes about the more challenging or surprising parts of each as he works, hoping it will help him memorise the trickier details. It ought to be tedious, all of this organisation, but – he will admit to nobody but himself - it’s the most alive he has felt in months.
It keeps him so busy, that only the week before the competition starts does he remember this whole ordeal is not just going to involve him baking alone in his kitchen, but spending several weeks in a stifling tent in the company of other people.
It’ll be okay, he thinks, wringing his hands. People and recipes aren’t so different. Each person has their own quirks, things that will work to win them over, or fall flat. All he has to do, just as in the technical challenge, is work out what ingredients will have which effect. Another spreadsheet should do the job of sorting all of that out. At the end of the day, he’s here for himself, and he’ll likely never see any of these people again once the competition is over. It hardly matters. Whereas the baking, the sense of achievement – that’s for life.
🥨🥨🥨
There is a welcome event for all the contestants to meet each other, as well as the presenters and judges, the day before the competition begins. James would feel nervous, but his idea of cataloguing everyone for his spreadsheet keeps him focused, and as one might expect from this cohort, they’re a nice enough bunch of people, on the whole. Even meeting Paul and Prue, he's not particularly star-struck; yes, Paul's eyes are that piercingly blue, but that was never really James's favourite colour, and Prue's outfit is as chic and fabulous as he'd expected - but they're only people. People he has already determined quite a lot about for his spreadsheet, a known quantity.
The first complete stranger to greet him is Pat, a friendly Yorkshireman who now lives in Reading with his wife and son, and leads a scout club in his spare time. “I didn’t have my baker’s badge yet so decided to give it a go and got the bug!” The archetypal Bake-Off contestant, James thinks. The next, Mary, is also similar to the stereotype he had in his mind; a warm and bubbly character, who lives in a converted barn down in the west country with her wife Annie and two cats: “Annie was the changing of me – she told me I could do anything I put my mind to. Bread’s my favourite to make – served with a good stew.”
There’s Kitty, the youngest of the group, a hairdressing student, and Thomas the jobless literature graduate. Robin, an enigmatic, seemingly ageless man with a ragged mane of hair and an accent James can’t place – the moon, for example, is “moonah” (James can’t remember how they got onto the subject of astronomy in a conversation lasting less than five minutes). On the flipside of Robin is Humphrey, with his much more tamed coif and sophisticated goatee (“I love any dish with cheese – Mr Cheese, my friends call me!”) and Fanny, an older lady whose tight bun seems to pull her face back into constant tension, and James wonders what he would have to do to make her smile (“If there is one thing I can’t abide, it’s carrot cake – it’s simply unladylike,” she tells him, with no explanation about why she believes this).
Julian is a surprising character; a local councillor that doesn’t take his work overly seriously and brags about entering the competition for a bet. Somehow, James thinks there must have been some bribery involved in him reaching the point of actually being selected, or perhaps the producers just thought he’d make for some good telly.
And, last of all, there’s Anthony. Anthony, with his kind, dark eyes; his strong arms; his dulcet voice. Anthony, with the mysterious scarring on his face. Anthony, with his charisma, charming everyone effortlessly, shaking James’s hand with a sparkling smile as he introduces himself. “Major Anthony Havers.”
“M-Major?!” James had been ready to introduce himself, as he has to everyone else, by his own rank (in Pat's case he had got no further than simply 'Captain...' before Pat began gushing excitedly about the competition). With Anthony, it might have given them something to bond over, if James wasn't so taken aback by the fact this younger chap outranks him.
Anthony grimaces, as though the slip of his military association embarrasses him. “God! Sorry – force of habit. It’s just Anthony now. And you are?”
“I – J-James,” he all but stammers out in his bemusement. Bally marvellous.
Anthony asks him how long he’s been baking, and James responds with something vague, itching to extricate himself from the conversation all the more when Anthony reveals his parents owned a bakery when he was a child, “…so, naturally, I joined the army,” he quips, “but I did miss waking up to the smell of baking ever so much, and it’s been very therapeutic, too, ever since my retirement from service. It really brings a sense of purpose; it’s very rewarding.”
“Hmm,” James murmurs, internally seething – that part’s his inspirational backstory, damn it.
The event draws to a close and James could not be more relieved to escape from Anthony.
Anthony, who is everything James isn't. A proper hero. A born-and-bred baker. Faultlessly handsome (the rugged scars must only add to his appeal).
James despises him immediately.