I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,41
‘He was just a man employed in a bakery who had an idea that he could make more money selling the baker’s products on markets for a cut of the profits. Then he realised that if he produced the scones himself and sold them, his profits would be even bigger. So he taught himself to bake in my great-grandmother’s kitchen, set on some of the family as bakers, then bought premises, then a factory. Then Dad took over, then me… That’s about it, really. What I’ve done with the business isn’t anything like as impressive as you setting one up from scratch.’
‘But you must have expanded it? Or did it always produce two million scones per day?’
‘Yes, I expanded it. I’ve trebled production in four years. And extended the lines. My father wouldn’t have even entertained the thought of vegan scones, he thought veganism was a “flash in the pan” that would peter out in no time.’
‘Ha,’ exclaimed Luke.
The success of that product had encouraged Jack to break away from the long-held company policy of keeping it simple, and in doing so, he’d made himself an extremely rich man. He didn’t want to think how much he owed to the Butterly Buttery Vegan Scone.
‘You’ve got a good team working for you?’ Luke enquired of him.
‘Yes, they’re… all very efficient. At least they are now,’ answered Jack. ‘I had to get some new blood in when I took over.’
‘Oh?’
‘Dad was…’ Oh, how to put it delicately – there wasn’t really a way. ‘He… wasn’t a great businessman. He thought he was, because he was lucky: the basic product was first-rate and he had excellent salesmen, but he also had too much chaff in with the wheat. Most of the management did as little as possible for their inflated salaries and the product development chef hadn’t developed a single thing in years. Dad hadn’t wanted anything developed, though; that was the problem. So the chef sat in his office, picked horses from a newspaper and smoked.’
‘Tell me you got rid of him,’ said Luke.
‘Oh yes, he was first to go.’
‘Let me guess that there weren’t any women in senior positions.’
‘No.’
Jack thought it best not to elaborate on his father’s attitude to women, it felt disloyal to his memory. He remembered then his father describing Mary as being ‘surprisingly good at her job for a silly young thing’. Just because she was a woman under thirty, she was automatically dizzy. And just because people like the company chauffeur Fred were men, they were robotically to be respected. Mary was the best at what she did and Fred was a lazy old goat, but his father would have refused to see that.
‘Men were good, women were bad. That was the prism through which my dad saw the world.’ Jack hadn’t realised he’d spoken that aloud until Luke answered him.
‘That’s not how you think about them though, surely?’
‘Dad had a bad divorce. He used to call women “bullets in make-up”.’
‘Ooh, that’s bitter.’
‘And no, to answer your question. That’s not how I think about all men and all women.’
Luke grinned at him. ‘You must be the most eligible bachelor in town. I bet women are all over you like a heat rash.’
‘Do you know what, Luke? I think I’m…’ Jack waved the rest of the sentence away.
‘What I was going to say is pathetic.’ Jack sliced down hard on the cucumber.
‘Let me be the judge of that.’
Jack blew the air out of his cheeks. ‘Okay’ – here goes – ‘I think I’m slightly scared of women. There.’ It was too easy to talk to this man while they were making vegetarian stuffed pitta breads. He hadn’t even discussed this with his old friends.
Luke hooted. ‘Join the club, mate.’ Then he curbed his laughter, respecting Jack’s confession. ‘Okay, I’ll kill the flippancy. Why?’
Jack hunted around in his brain for a starting point. ‘Dad was very much a man’s man, didn’t want his wife going out to work, wanted his tea on the table when he got in, shirts ironed, that sort of thing. He couldn’t understand how my mother could be completely bored of being trapped in a six-bedroomed domestic box with a swimming pool, even less that she saw fit to disobey him, got a part-time job… and then ended up leaving him for someone she met there. Dad was justifiably upset, in fact I’d go so far as to say that it warped him. It didn’t help