Magic in the Daylight

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> Chief Petty Officer David Avery, 38, of the Royal Navy; brisk, authoritative and more than a little wary. Avery baked the official wedding cake to be served up to 120 guests at the Buckingham Palace wedding "breakfast" (noon to 4 p.m.). The recipe, he says, "is all in my head. It isn't written down anywhere, you understand. No, I will not give you a single detail." Avery and an assistant, Training Officer Lieutenant Motley, journeyed to the palace six weeks ago to give the bride-to-be an approving peek at their design. The batter had gone into the oven a month earlier. "The longer a cake matures, the more it relaxes," Avery says. "If we'd known last year that he was going to get married, we would have baked it last year." Avery hand-picked every cashew, cherry, walnut and currant for the cake in a two-day session code-named "Operation Sultana." He added a little Navy rum ("Just for flavor. You don't want people to get paralytic") and baked the largest layer for 8½ hours. The result, which was stashed behind a locked door at the Royal Navy Cookery School, measured out at 4½ ft. and 224 Ibs., 49 of which go for marzipan and ivory white icing.

> Robert Gooden, 41, owner of Worldwide Butterflies Ltd. and Lullingstone Silk Farm, who projects the somewhat abstract intensity of a man on a perpetual hunt for the perfect specimen. Lullingstone provided the silk for Lady Diana's wedding dress. Nestled in the rolling hills of Dorset, hard by Gooden's mansion, it is the only silk farm in England. Its worms, which dine on mulberry leaves, have provided silk for the wedding dress of Queen Elizabeth and for the cloak Charles wore when he was invested as Prince of Wales. Started by Lady Hart Dyke in the 1930s with encouragement from Queen Mary, Lullingstone almost went under when its founder died in 1975. It was then that Gooden, who had been doing rather well with his butterfly company and who had reeled and woven silk as a boy, stepped in. "My wife and I wanted Lullingstone not only because of our past interest, but because of the royal tradition," he explains. "The royal family set an example of gentility, a way of life none of us could normally aspire to. They have a steadying influence."