We looked everywhere and asked everybody but the Ministry had ommandeered every room in every house, cottage and even shop to house
H.M. Forces, which is why I found myself perched on the kitchen table of the fierce
and furious owner of a cake shop cum café in Devon. The year was 1944 and my
husband together with the M.O. was billeted there (which was another reason
why she was fierce and furious. No way she wanted these intruders).
"How long since you had a holiday?" I asked from my perch.
"Holiday? (Sniff) What's a holiday?"
"Isn't it time you took one?" I allowed a pause, then: "How much clear profit do you make on this café?"
The amount she mentioned was surprisingly small; not much more than the cost of lodgings for myself and my daughter.
"Supposing" I heard myself say "I paid you exactly that and you went away and I took over the cake shop?" (What on earth had I suggested? I was no cook but after a three year separation anything, it seemed, would be worth being a family again.)
So it was that for the last three months of the war until my husband was
demobilised, I found myself the owner of The Green Gazelle Café in Ashburton,
Devon and with it came amongst other things a regular order for home-made cakes to be collected for the well known
Dartington Hall.What you do, I was told, is to make basic mixtures in three different bowls,
then throw dried fruit in one, ginger in the next and chocolate powder in the third.
All these ingredients were allocated to the café but strictly rationed of course. I also
had a limited supply of flour, sugar and powdered egg.
The dusty window needed dusting - so it got dusted and in went some fresh flowers and then some strange little animals which I made out of pipe spills. More was needed so I started painting rabbits. Funny little cottage-loaf rabbits with whiskers. I painted them on anything I could find. Glasses from the bric a brac shop, mats, beakers - even plastic cups and to my delight - everything sold.
The wartime trick of pumping butter and milk together to create a semblance of cream was hugely popular - and all went well until the gas in my little oven which contained six fruit cakes at the time - failed and all that precious fruit sank to the bottom of a gooey, slimy mess. But that fruit was indeed precious and much too precious to waste so, seeking desperately for a solution. I came up with the idea of enclosing it in two layers of pastry and selling the result as " Fruit Slices".
After that the orders never stopped. I was making Fruit Slices until the day I left. Once I was asked to make a wedding cake - a Wedding Cake! Luckily the bride-to-be supplied all the ingredients which took up three w h o l e bowls. I p l o n k e d everything in and what came out were three perfectly respectable large, medium and small fruit cakes ll ready for icing. It was only afterwards that I heard that the pretty white doyleys cut and point to look like a crown and tied with silver ribbon round each layer where the icing wouldn't quite stretch, had all stuck to the cake - and remained sticking there while it was being cut.
But looking back it was a fascinating time and an interesting insight into café ownership. It was more than that too. It was quite profitable. After all the RAF had been paying me to billet two officers. One of which was my own husband.
Margaret Briggs