Greg Baxter did not stand in awe of many people, but he was in awe of his mother.
Frances Baxter was an icon of the culinary world. She created an indelible impression wherever she went and whenever she spoke. Over the past few decades she’d become a byword in the hospitality business, owning a series of internationally famous restaurants. Her current establishment in Sydney was a destination for fine-diners from Japan to Paris to New York. Her cookery books were all bestsellers, and at least two were mandatory for any aspiring hosts of a truly memorable dinner party.
Over the years, Frances had visited nearly every country that could boast of an authentic cuisine. It didn’t matter if the meat was lamb, pork, beef, fish, chicken, kangaroo or alpaca, she knew more ways to present it than just about anyone anywhere.
Baxter was very proud of his mother’s achievements. He’d never sought the kind of publicity that had characterised her life, but he understood why it was meat and drink to her. It brought people to her restaurants, created a demand for her books and helped to make her fabulously wealthy.
And beneath the gloss of her persona, Frances was a decent woman. She treated her employees well and donated money to several charities. Her decency was what had always awed and inspired her son most of all.
•
Frances had been born with two essential traits for success: the first was a love of cooking and the second was entrepreneurial ability of a high order.
As a small child she spent hours with her mother in the kitchen. She started with simple things like cupcakes and pikelets, and gradually moved on to more difficult recipes. By the age of ten she could make sponges and fruit cakes that won at the local shows, and the name Frances Reid soon became known around the district. Whenever she had a spare moment, the teenage Frances had her head in a cookery book.
When the local café came on the market, Frances’ parents bought it and with it the opportunity for their daughter to widen her scope. She helped her father and mother prepare meals, and was soon doing much of the cooking. The café was also materially helped by the fact that Frances was very attractive in looks and personality.
When her parents were killed in a car accident, Frances carried on running the café. It grew extremely popular with trawlermen, as she purchased the best fish and seafood. A meal at the café became a ritual for many people, both local and visiting.
One man, in particular, never failed to have one or two meals a week at Frances’ café. He was a moderately wealthy man who played the stock exchange and lived in Moondilla because he spent most of his spare time fishing.
Richard Baxter had lost his first wife and was ten years older than Frances, but she married him. She could tell he thought she was something special—he didn’t try to change her. And he purchased the building adjoining the café, which allowed her to cater for more diners and for wedding functions.
Having a baby hardly caused Frances to miss a beat, and she carried on supervising the café almost to the day of Greg’s birth. She’d hoped for a girl but she wasn’t at all disappointed with her ten-pound baby son—Richard was the one who felt overwhelmed by parenthood.
Greg was six when Frances and Richard made the decision to sell the café and move to Sydney. Business at their new restaurant was helped by some well-chosen TV segments, and before long they were receiving more bookings than they could handle.
When Richard died suddenly of a heart attack, Frances’ way of handling her grief was to sell her restaurant and purchase another. It was here that she came up with an inexpensive but nutritious lunch for nine-to-fivers, which attracted a lot of attention on television. In one of many interviews at this time, she was first referred to as the Great Woman: ‘Yes, viewers, the Great Woman herself is here with us today.’
Chuffed at the popularity of her lunches, Frances tried something new. She incorporated a semi-luxury dining unit into her restaurant that could be utilised by government and business VIPs for special meetings. There was a special back entrance for private admittance, and the unit could be rented for an hour or a day. If you were especially famous, you might be attended by Frances herself, but otherwise by discreet employees whom she’d personally trained. After a meal, the VIPs could relax in super-comfortable lounge chairs while carrying on their business.
Suffice to say that a great many important ‘deals’ were discussed and agreed to in this unit. It was expensive, but it was what the top people wanted and were used to—and a legitimate tax deduction. Clearly, Frances was a great lateral thinker.
She became a guest on countless TV and radio talk shows, and was soon one of Australia’s most recognisable women. It wasn’t difficult to understand her popularity in this arena. Some called it a sparkling personality, some called it charisma—whatever it was, the handsome woman with warm brown eyes and gleaming auburn hair had it. When the Great Woman spoke about a dish, people everywhere wanted a taste.
•
Despite her success and the busy nature of her life, Frances spent as much time as possible with young Greg. She’d very much wanted a daughter, but there were no more babies—this wasn’t her fault, but her husband’s—so all her motherly love had been channelled into her son. Baxter never for one moment in his life had felt neglected, and he’d never entertained any doubt that his mother loved him.
Just like his mother, he learned to cook early, although it never became an obsession with him. Instead his interest in gymnastics blossomed, followed by a devotion to martial arts. Despite not understanding this—or why her son felt he had to travel to Japan and Korea to hone his skill in the latter field—Frances fully supported him. Subsequently she watched him demolish three crims who tried to rob her restaurant—it was a big night and there was quite a lot of money in the till. After that performance, Frances felt that her support of her son was well worthwhile.
And when Baxter told her he was leaving Sydney to live in Moondilla, Frances may not have thought it a wise move, but she still helped him buy the riverfront property he’d set his heart on acquiring. Not only was it a good investment, she told him, but she could see that he had to either get the writing bug out of his system or succeed at it before he would contemplate marriage.
Baxter had several friends who’d made disastrous marriages and he had no intention of following suit: he reckoned the old adage ‘Marry in haste and repent in leisure’ was absolutely true. Ideally, he favoured another two or three years on his own before thinking about wedded bliss. That would give him the time to get his first book published and a second one well on the way.
He knew his mother wasn’t on board with these plans. She would always love to cook, but in recent years a new obsession had developed: grandchildren. Everything depended on her only child, so she did everything she could to hasten his progress. Baxter couldn’t have been more aware of this, as he’d told Julie.
What he hadn’t told Julie was that his mother had ‘unearthed’ several potential daughters-in-law, all of whom he’d rejected as ‘unsuitable’. This had been particularly disappointing to Frances, because the young women in question dined at her restaurant on a regular basis and were regarded as belonging to ‘the cream of the crop’.
Despite the fact that Greg had a mind of his own, Frances never failed to let her son know that she was very proud of him. He’d presented her with most of his trophies and plaques when he moved to Moondilla, and she’d told him on the phone that these were now displayed prominently in her Killara home and shown off to guests.
While she freely acknowledged that Greg developed peculiar ideas at times—like going off to Moondilla to write—Frances often told him that if this was the worst thing he ever did, she felt she’d never have reason to complain. She was glad he didn’t smoke, drink or take drugs, and she not-so-secretly believed that she’d raised the most handsome and charming man in the world.
•
Frances had been aware that her son liked Julie Rankin ever since he’d been down in the dumps when she left his class for postgraduate study in London. In turn, Baxter was aware that his mother was aware of this. Whenever he turned down one of the young ladies she’d ‘unearthed’, she would bring up Elaine and Julie as the only women he’d ever really liked—and remind him that because both were out of his reach, he might just need to settle for someone else.
Now that Julie had surfaced in Moondilla, Frances’ tune had changed—particularly when she’d learned that Greg was seeing the doctor quite frequently. They even fished together, she’d heard from an old friend in town.
In one of her many phone calls, the Great Woman told her son that she was quite disappointed he himself hadn’t informed her of this state of affairs. She then asked if he was serious about Julie. Baxter hadn’t known what to say.
‘Well, are you or are you not serious about that woman?’
‘It’s not me, Mum. It seems Julie has a thing about men,’ he tried to explain.
‘A thing? What do you mean “a thing”?’
‘It seems she prefers fishing to cuddling.’
‘Good heavens. And have you cuddled her at all?’
‘No, I don’t want to spoil what we have. It’s not a relationship—we’re just good friends—but it’s all right. I enjoy her company and she appears to enjoy mine.’
Of course Baxter knew—and Frances made it plain—that this was a setback to his mother’s hopes. And it was soon after this conversation that she proposed her visit, an unmistakably optimistic tilt to her voice. Baxter was keen to see his mother, so the knowledge that she had an ulterior motive didn’t bother him too much. He also believed that one meal with Julie would be enough to show Frances, once and for all, that there was no hope of grandchildren from that corner.