The Summer Sunshine
Somehow you get the feeling that Daphne Summer—celebrity chef, newspaper columnist, and cookbook author—doesn’t like the spotlight. In fact, she seems to positively hate it. If she could let the food speak for itself, she would, she says.
Unlike other chefs of our time, she doesn’t have an urgent need to reinvent the wheel, or change the way our nation eats; she just wants to make good food, and she wants to make it using ingredients from close to home. Oh, and she wants the rest of us to do that too.
Even this desire is punctuated by her characteristic self-deprecating cackle, and as we sit in the garden outside her eponymously named restaurant Summer House, she blows her fringe out of her eyes and says, “Well, maybe I do want to change the way people eat after all.” She is on a break between a hectic lunch service packed with day-trippers and local diners, who she says are her mainstay, and a full house expecting dinner that evening. On the lawn in front of us, her three children frolic, the picture of health and happiness, only calling to their mother to watch the occasional handstand or cartwheel.
Her Australian accent, barely recognizable on her television program, is stronger in real life, and she says if not for Max Summer, who she romantically met and married within a week in the late nineties, she would be back in the Sydney she still misses. Lucky for us she did meet him, because the food I’ve just eaten in the Summer House was like nothing else I’ve experienced in this part of the world.
The flavours are delicate without being fussy, and it seems as if the ingredients have had very little done to them, which usually means a very great deal has been done. The provenance of each dish is listed on the handwritten menu: the seafood comes from local fishermen, whose tiny vessels I could watch bobbing in the cove as I ate; the lamb from the farm attached to Barnsley House, and also run by the Summer family for generations; and the herbs which enliven every dish are picked the same morning from the extensive kitchen gardens bordering the house, where Daphne has invited us to wander as we chat.
Not formally trained, Daphne learned her skills at the high-end restaurants that used to be attached to every five-star hotel in London. At first, as a young and poor Aussie backpacker, she washed dishes, and then she worked her way up through the kitchen, finally cooking under some of the more well-known enfants terribles of the nineties restaurant scene. It was outside one of these kitchens that she met her husband.
Sneaking out for a post-shift cigarette, she ran into Max, who was doing the same, trying to escape from an unsuccessful date in the dining room.
As we talk, Daphne frequently interrupts to point out things in her garden. “It’s a far cry from the old veggie patch I grew up with,” she says, gathering broad beans into an enamel colander along the way. “My dad worked at the bank, but he loved his garden, and he had a small plot for vegetables. Nothing like this, though: half the time we had enormous gluts of silverbeet and rhubarb and the rest of the time the snails got to things before we could. It made me realize, though, just how much work goes into growing one carrot, so now, as a cook, I make certain I treat that carrot with some respect.”
Daphne seems to make a point of never calling herself a chef, instead referring to herself as a cook. Despite the awards she has received, she says she still feels more comfortable with it that way. “I’m not a chef. I’m just someone who loves food, and wants to share it with as many people as possible. There’s only so much my family can eat, so it became a job. That’s all.” It’s a typical remark from this humble woman, whose cookbook My Summer House was one of the best selling of the last year.
Still striking in her mid-forties, I imagine she must have been quite a stunner when she met Max. When I mention this, the cackle comes again, before she fixes me with a beady eye. “Max likes signs of great character, and deplores weakness. Too often a pretty face can be misinterpreted as either.” She refuses to elaborate, instead refilling my glass of rosé as we arrive back on the terrace.
And what of the rumours that a problem with alcohol shut down production of her first series last year? She only occasionally sips wine, and she chooses her words carefully. “It’s a common thing in this industry. The stress of service, combined with the blissful relief of a drink afterwards, and one can trigger the other. There was an incident, and it was blown completely out of proportion. I’ve cut back since then, but for me, as a cook, a meal without wine is no meal at all.”
The remote location of Barnsley House, set on a spectacular coastline above a series of rocky beaches, is greatly appealing to the people who come here to escape the world. Its end-of-the-earth charm is nice to visit, but living here must be lonely. Daphne doesn’t think so, though. “I could stay here forever. People are always asking me to come up to London, to consult on this one or cook at this thing, but I’m happy here. I have everything I need.”
With that, she bites the end off a broad bean and spits it out in the garden, squeezing out the glorious green buds within for me to examine. “You see? What else could I want?” She’s right: Barnsley House is as close to paradise as you can get.
For more information, visit barnsleyhousehotel.co.uk. The author was a guest of the West Country Tourist Board.
I was sitting thinking about what I had just read when I heard a car pull up out front. Hurriedly, I erased my search history and closed down the tabs. From the window I could see my father getting out of the Uber, smiling at the driver, and then holding the door open for Fleur. His smile quickly disappeared as he caught sight of his car parked under the tree. Even from the house, I could see that the sticky sap he so despised had already made a mess of his roof, and I immediately regretted my impulsive decision to leave the car there.
My father, who had helped me through the last year. He had supported me when everyone else in the world was calling me a liar, and rightfully so. He had moved heaven and earth to get me a job with some old friends, a job in which, if I was really honest, I’d be lucky to see out the three-month probation.
Something told me that tonight was not the time to bring up the letter; in fact, my deepest instinct was not to mention it at all.
On an impulse—what else?—I dashed back to my father’s desk and opened the small safe underneath the chair. The code, despite everything, was my mother’s birthday. It always had been. I just hadn’t had to use it before.
Nineteen sixty-eight. The Summer of Love. Student protests in Paris. And my mother, landing on the earth, in the middle of nowhere. Barnsley House. I wondered if her life might have turned out differently had she been born somewhere else.
It was dark inside the safe, and I was in too much of a rush to turn the light on. My father and Fleur were on the front steps now.
“How hard is it to put the car in the garage?”
“She was probably distracted.” Fleur must be tired of sticking up for me.
“She does it on purpose. So bloody ungrateful.”
“‘After all I’ve done for her,’” I said to myself, thrusting my hand deep inside the safe, just as my father said those exact words outside the window.
The doorbell rang loudly. Dad’s keys were on the table in the hall. Unsurprisingly, there were no sounds of my stepsisters. Ophelia was probably asleep on the sofa by now, Juliet still outside on her phone. My fingers finally wrapped around the small blue book, almost new and hard around the edges from lack of use. I slammed the safe shut and pushed the chair back into position.
“Miranda!” He sounded angry now. Racing towards the door, I half tripped over the side of his rug, at the same time as my phone started to buzz on the desk where I had left it.
My father had hidden my passport from me in the depths of my misery. He thought I was a flight risk. I’d known where it was all along, I just didn’t have anywhere to go. I jammed it down the front of my leggings as I unlatched the front door. Just in case. At the last moment, I tucked the letter in there as well.