a retreat

So we got away. Right away. Every­one in my house­hold was in some sort of state or oth­er of anx­i­ety, pres­sure, fran­tic-ness of some kind. So on Fri­day morn­ing, when John appeared from his mys­te­ri­ous trav­els, we sim­ply… left. We packed the Mini with­in an inch of its life, to the gills, and yet we did­n’t take any­thing: Wellies, hot water bot­tles, books, but not real­ly ANY­THING. And we just drove.

For the first 20 miles or so, we pre­tend­ed to lis­ten to a book on tape, but it was clear­ly putting John to sleep, so we turned it off and opened the win­dows. Avery asked what was up with the econ­o­my, and that took some explain­ing. Strange­ly it did not seem an upset­ting task, to explain the dis­as­ters, so I let him go on. Final­ly we hit dead coun­try­side and made a quick stop for sup­plies (but for future ref­er­ence, any­one going to the Goth­ic Tem­ple should bypass Bices­ter alto­geth­er and head straight to Buck­ing­ham, where there is a per­fect­ly love­ly butch­er (more on that lat­er), a Wait­rose, and for emer­gen­cies, a tiny Tesco. But I digress.

We drove along accord­ing to our direc­tions (I was in such a state of nerves that even my own unre­li­able sense of direc­tion was seem­ing to take on pen­i­ten­tiary-bound pro­por­tions), and then… we entered the gates of Stowe School, land­lords of the Goth­ic Tem­ple, and as we passed fol­ly after fol­ly, a tru­ly roman­tic stone bridge over a lake bor­dered by cows (all nice­ly var­ie­gat­ed as the paint­ing styles would dic­tate), we felt an unruly sort of calm descend: the sort of calm that says: this won’t be easy, you’ll have to strug­gle for it, but calm will prevail.

We passed a field of net­tles and low-lying ancient trees and there, in the dis­tance, was the place. Ridicu­lous­ly majes­tic, windswept and seem­ing­ly aban­doned, it was like a fic­tion­al build­ing come to life, wait­ing for us. The very front door, as we pulled up, showed itself to be cov­ered sym­met­ri­cal­ly with heads of gods: in bronze, pati­naed, sim­ply crazy.

We pushed our way in and car­ried our clob­ber up into the house and then could­n’t resist explor­ing: the low­er floor, every­thing ROUND because the whole build­ing is round, so a lit­tle round bath­room, a lit­tle round kitchen (a very bad, bad kitchen as it turned out), and a round liv­ing room in which to read old log books, guide books, Jane Austen, play soli­taire or dou­ble soli­taire as the fan­cy took one. But upwards into the round (!) gallery, lined with win­dow seats set over var­i­ous­ly per­form­ing radi­a­tors (John snagged, nat­u­ral­ly, the one work­ing most vocif­er­ous­ly right away), and on either end of the cir­cle, bed­rooms: just two, both… you guessed it… round!

The domed ceil­ing of the house is mosa­ic and tile, with lit­tle hid­den trea­sures, like the owl one can see only from one bed­room and the fig­ure of Nep­tune vis­i­ble only from anoth­er. Win­dows looked out onto fields and fol­lies and trees shaped like flo­rets of broc­coli, so ancient and enor­mous were their trunks, for such small trees. We all armed our­selves with things to read and to write, but truth to tell we suf­fered what we will always call “The Brooks House Syn­drome,” after a house we rent­ed for sev­er­al sum­mers in Maine, where the porch view was so love­ly as to pre­vent any­one’s being able to read ANY­THING with­out look­ing up every two min­utes and say­ing some­thing tire­some about the view.

Mac­a­roni and cheese the first night! Of course. With fair­ly decent Wilt­shire bacon and sauteed red pep­pers, although… the hob could not have been worse. Pre­pare your­self, should you go. You can eas­i­ly rest the palm of your intre­pid hand on the sur­face of the hob when it is at its finest. The pep­pers took some cook­ing, I can assure you. But it was worth it for a deli­cious, dare I say it, din­ner that first night. It was all we could do to stay up until the sun had def­i­nite­ly set.

On Sat­ur­day we explored. A huge­ly long and mud­dy walk among the 23 (I think) fol­lies set in the grounds of the prop­er­ty known as Stowe School, a real live work­ing school which bought the exten­sive prop­er­ties left when a seri­ous­ly mas­sive­ly wealthy Eng­lish fam­i­ly sort of went under (sor­ry, an igno­rant Amer­i­can’s take on the sit­u­a­tion that took sev­er­al cen­turies to devel­op). In the inter­im between being mas­sive­ly wealthy and NOT (that must real­ly suck), the fam­i­ly build a whole host of out­build­ings to show their alle­giance to British lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. I wish I were mak­ing this up, but I’m not. That’s why they did it. AND the show gar­dens designed by Capa­bil­i­ty (“please tell me his par­ents did not name him that?” Avery begged) Brown, of course chris­tened “Lancelot,” not all that much eas­i­er to swal­low than “Capa­bil­i­ty,” but these are British peo­ple we’re talk­ing about.

And very capa­ble gar­dens they were. I could see a lot, if not all, of the strain John has been under melt away under the weight of the mar­bles, the down of the swans, a water­fall. Home for creamy mush­room soup, a nap for John, an after­noon of read­ing on the curv­ing win­dowseats on the first floor for Avery and me. She is, typ­i­cal­ly, at a Land­mark Trust house, obsessed with read­ing all the entries in all the green leather log­books stacked in the book­shelves. To her delight last win­ter she found my entry from 1990 in the house we stayed in in Wales. I held a book and pre­tend­ed to read while look­ing up con­stant­ly at the chang­ing land­scape. Bun­nies in the dis­tance hop­ping around an enor­mous war­ren, shift­ing clouds, set­ting sun, hordes of tourists walk­ing the ground, press­ing their faces against the win­dows of our Tem­ple and remind­ing us to pull the shades in the bath­room before tak­ing a bath! Roast chick­en sur­round­ed by car­rots and parsnips, cov­ered with good slabs of bacon… It was that sort of day.

On Sun­day we walked again in the spit­ting rain until time for a spot of shop­ping, so into Buck­ing­ham we went. The first thing I noticed on leav­ing the car was the over­whelm­ing sound of bells. Live, change-ring­ing bells. And if ever there was any­thing to make me love Eng­land, it is the sound of real live bells. Not for noth­ing did I name my cat Lord Peter Wim­sey: what about those “Nine Tai­lors”. I made my fam­i­ly fol­low me through the driz­zle toward the sound of them, kick­ing through fall­en red and orange leaves, smelling woodsmoke from some­one’s illic­it fire… I was as hap­py as I could pos­si­bly be. We went into the church (of St Peter and St Paul) and looked for the bellcham­ber, but it was locked. But I got to hear actu­al Eng­lish­man call­ing out actu­al changes. I was HAPPY.

And then? Straight into the mis­ery of a street fair. Seri­ous­ly, boun­cy cas­tles, hor­rid high-fly­ing acts, and mer­ci­ful­ly a pair of minia­ture ponies to make Avery hap­py. We stopped in at Clays Fam­i­ly Butch­ers in the high street for a leg of indis­putably high-qual­i­ty lamb, a jar of goose fat. From there to the Buck­ing­ham Del­i­catessen where I looked long­ing­ly at the mas­sive selec­tion of cheeses and cured meats, forewent all the glo­ri­ous ingre­di­ents because we had just the one din­ner left… and that was to be Orlan­do’s sev­en-hour lamb. I can­not rec­om­mend this recipe high­ly enough: get the very best lamb you can, the very best veg­eta­bles, home­made chick­en stock and good wine. Then let the dish cook itself. Kudos to John for pulling this recipe out of the air on his iPhone (I had for­got­ten the cookbook).

Orlan­do’s Sev­en-Hour Leg of Lamb
(serves six)

1 large leg of lamb, about 3 kg
4 onions, sliced
4 car­rots, sliced
8 gar­lic cloves, peeled but left whole
300 ml white wine
300 ml stock
2 tbsp Arma­gnac, to finish

Sea­son the lamb and heat a brais­ing pan on the hob. Brown the lamb on all sides thor­ough­ly so it is nice­ly scorched — about ten min­utes. It will not brown dur­ing brais­ing, so this is your only chance. Lamb varies, so add a lit­tle oil if the pan seems dry, and pour away most of the fat if a lot has col­lect­ed in the pan dur­ing the brownin.

Lift out the lamb and set aside. Add the onions and car­rots and brown those — about 5 min­utes — then add the gar­lic, lamb, wine and stock. Sea­son and bring to the boil. Cut out a piece of bak­ing paper [I had none and used alu­mini­um foil, which was fine] and lay over the lamb to keep it moist.

Trans­fer to an oven heat­ed to 120C (100C fan) and cook for sev­en hours, turn­ing twice. After 5 hours the meat will be cooked; you can serve it now, or stick with tra­di­tion and give it a cou­ple of hours more.

There is no need to rest the meat when it is cooked this way, but you need to fin­ish the sauce. If you are plan­ning to serve the meat on a dish, put it on the dish now. Use wide spat­u­las and arrange your serv­ing dish in the most con­ve­nient spot before attempt­ing to lift the extreme­ly ten­der lamb out of its cook­ing pot. If you are plan­ning to serve it in the cook­ing pot, drain all the cook­ing juices into a bowl.

Strain the juices — I dis­card the veg­eta­bles now but you can serve them — [we did and they were lus­cious, the car­rots sur­pris­ing­ly hold­ing their shape] and defat them (I use my gravy sep­a­ra­tor). Put the juices into a pot and boil quick­ly to a saucy con­sis­ten­cy. Stir in the Arma­gnac, if you wish. Pour over the lamb or serve alongside.

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Orlan­do tells us the lamb is often called “Lamb with a spoon” in France because it is so “melt­ing­ly ten­der,” and I can attest to this. I was scep­ti­cal about the sauce because it was very dull-look­ing and quite thin, for the sim­ple rea­son that I could not ade­quate­ly heat up my hob to boil it down in time. How­ev­er, once poured over the lamb, it was a rev­e­la­tion: deeply fla­vored and almost instant­ly absorbed by the meat. A true delight.

We spent the after­noon on anoth­er mas­sive walk, leav­ing the path in the Deer Park and there­by giv­ing the sheep and cows a great deal to talk about. Avery was ter­ri­fied of being tram­pled, although it was clear they were a lot more afraid of us than we were of them.

Mon­day morn­ing dawned all too soon, and we were off home. Ful­ly recov­ered from stress? Near­ly so. It’s good to know that while you should­n’t ever let your hus­band get that tied up in knots, if it hap­pens off your watch in an office thou­sands of miles away, you can fix it all by a long week­end, some long walks, and a leg of lamb.