The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

  “Are you all right?” Nell asked. The old woman was looking so pale these days, ill almost.

  “I’ll be fine, dear. Just need to take my time.”

  She shuffled to the dresser and pulled out the list of ingredients they had requested from the farm. “They must be in cahoots with a butcher, a cheesemonger, and probably various black marketeers in order to get all these ingredients.”

  “I wondered where they were getting all the cheese from as it’s—”

  Suddenly, the old woman let out a faint cry. She put her hand to her brow, closing her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Nell rushed across the room to her.

  “Oh, it’s just a bit hot in here. I don’t feel well at all…”

  Nell helped her back toward her chair, feeling the old lady wobble on her feet.

  “Mrs. Quince?”

  But it was too late. Nell tried desperately to hold her up as the old cook collapsed onto the stone floor, lying motionlessly in a crumpled heap.

  “Mrs. Quince! Wake up!” Frantically, Nell tried to pull her up.

  Why isn’t she coming around?

  “Help! Is there anyone there?” Nell found herself shouting louder and louder.

  “Help!”

  A noise came from the stairs, footsteps coming down, and then a cross face appeared at the door.

  “What is it?” It was Brackett, the butler.

  “She just collapsed.” Nell let out a small sob. “I’m not even sure she’s still alive.”

  Brackett knelt down beside her, his fingertips feeling for a pulse, his ear going to her mouth, her heart. “Yes, but we must get help.” Without another word, he went back up the stairs, leaving the girl alone.

  “Mrs. Quince,” she began to cry. “Wake up! Come on, wake up!”

  Within minutes, Brackett was back, putting a small bottle of smelling salts under Mrs. Quince’s nose. “I telephoned Middleton Hospital for an ambulance. They’ll come as soon as they can.”

  It seemed like eternity as they waited for the ambulance, but finally the clang of the doorbell echoed from upstairs.

  Two ambulance women efficiently moved Mrs. Quince onto a stretcher and then carried her out through the servant’s side door and up to the ambulance.

  They couldn’t tell Nell what had happened.

  “There are a lot of reasons why people faint,” one of them said. “The doctors will be able to work out more once she’s in hospital.”

  “We’ll take good care of her,” the other one said with a reassuring smile. “Hopefully she’ll regain consciousness soon.”

  As Nell stood in the drive, watching the ambulance disappear into the lane, she felt a chill of helplessness. The air, so fraught and busy just a moment ago, was suddenly still, almost airless. The sky was packed with gray clouds, like a blanket stifling her. Was Mrs. Quince going to be all right? How was she to get on without her teacher—her friend? There were so many meals, so many dinner parties. There was the contest—who would stand on the stage with her?

  Who was going to stand alongside her every other day?

  With a shiver, she felt suddenly and utterly alone.

  Lady Gwendoline

  No problem is so big that you can’t throw a large quantity of money at it. At least, that was Lady Gwendoline’s vision of the world. After telephoning a few of her acquaintances in London to inquire about a chef, one was found and contacted. She liked the way the wealthy and well-to-do were disposed to passing along useful people. It suited both her notions of self-importance plus the need for pawns on her chessboard of life.

  Although this pawn turned out to be more of a knight in shining armor.

  Sir Strickland, upon hearing that Mrs. Quince had refused to help Lady Gwendoline, blamed his wife. “I know you have difficulties with the easiest of things, darling. Let me go through this in simple terms for your simple brain: The point of paying staff is that we tell them what to do, not the other way around.”

  Lady Gwendoline put on her pacifying smile. She’d learned to ignore the barbed remarks. It was easier that way. “She’s gone into hospital now, darling, so she wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. In any case, I had another, far better idea. I telephoned Lady Morton and explained that we needed a top London chef for a special function or two, and would you believe it! She gave me the name of a man who helps her out with her grand banquets. His experience is perfect: head chef at one of the top London seafood restaurants, no less.”

  Sir Strickland thought it over. “Is he expensive?”

  “Well, naturally, his price is high, but money means quality, don’t you always say?” She gave a hopeful smile.

  He pondered, then got up, bored with the conversation, and strode toward the door. “That’s fine, darling. Just make sure you ruddy well win this time.” His eyes lingered on her, a sudden coldness in them. “And there’s an important dinner party tonight. I want you there, on best behavior. None of your ridiculous small talk.”

  “Yes, darling,” she said, again the appeasing smile.

  Without another word, he strode out, leaving the door open behind him, either because he felt she neither needed nor deserved privacy or simply because closing doors was something a servant should do.

  She slowly went upstairs to her bedroom. She’d got what she wanted without a fight, and yet she felt degraded somehow, as if the personal cost of the victory—the remonstrations—had been too great.

  They had started within days of their wedding, the put-downs and dismissals. It had been one of the most extravagant events of the year, naturally, after which they’d had a very short honeymoon due to Sir Strickland’s business. When she moved into her new home at Fenley Hall, he had shown her to her very own bedroom.

  “But aren’t we supposed to share a bedroom, now that we’re married?”

  “Of course not,” he jeered. “That’s for poor people who don’t have enough bedrooms or servants. We, darling, live in luxury.”

  Luxury. Her bedroom, like her reception room, was decorated in ivory, a room designed for a lady. It overlooked the back of the house, the fountain in the center of the rose garden, the valley and wood beyond.

  She had everything she could ever have wanted. At the shake of a little silver bell, a servant would appear. If they were not able to help, then Sir Strickland’s team of business assistants, a stream of frosty, suited men, could step in. They let her know what duties she had to perform for the week. Otherwise, her life was her own.

  As he constantly reminded her, he was busy with business and, since the war began, his role in the Ministry of Agriculture. He was often in London, where he would stay at his gentlemen’s club. At first, she had found it lonely without him, but now it was easier when he wasn’t there.

  Loneliness was less antagonistic, less hurtful.

  Lady Gwendoline didn’t want to think about it, so she briskly perched on the stool before her dressing table and tidied her hair. The new chef was coming for a meeting at eleven that morning. She had to be ready, on her very best form.

  Some might consider it cheating, bringing in an outside professional. Yet there was nothing in the rules stipulating that help could not be sought—not that any rules had been properly published.

  “Surely,” she mused, “it’s only natural that a busy woman like me should seek assistance.”

  Which was why, when he was late, she glanced impatiently at the carriage clock in her private reception room, pacing in front of the great terrace windows. One of the doors was open, the white curtain billowing out in the breeze, and she suddenly felt a strange yearning to run home to the raw nature of her childhood home, chasing through the wood with Audrey, leaping from stone to stone across the trickling stream, not caring if she got wet.

  The sound of the butler’s soft knock came from the door, and as he showed in the new chef,
she took an intake of breath.

  Before her was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

  He was tall with dark blond hair and a smiling, manly face as smooth and broad as a Hollywood actor’s. His face was clean-shaven, slightly olive in complexion, giving him a health and vitality that only served to improve his look of physical—and sexual—mastery. As he walked, he exuded an animal elegance. She found her eyes flickering between his magnificent form and his dark eyes, asking herself, And this god of a man can cook, too?

  “Lady Strickland? Chef James, at your service.” He took her hand, a relaxed half smile on his mouth. He knew he was good-looking—there was no doubt about that!

  “Oh, call me Lady Gwendoline.” She couldn’t help batting her eyelids. Something about him made her feel coquettish.

  “What a delightful place you have. How do you keep everything up?”

  The butler rolled his eyes and backed out of the room, hesitating before closing it completely as if unsure if it were wise to leave this man alone with the master’s wife.

  “I explained on the telephone how the contest works, so let’s get down to business,” she said, offering him a chair at her table. It was already prepared with notebooks, pens, a small pile of recipe books, and her demonstration recipes. “We need to decide what we’re cooking and work out where to get the ingredients.”

  “I quite agree,” he pronounced, and took a seat beside her.

  Together they dove quickly into the recipe books. He spoke lengthily and eloquently about various suggestions, his French accent flawless and his manner amiable, and if she wasn’t mistaken, subtly flirtatious.

  “I can see that you’ll want the very best, won’t you, Lady Gwendoline?” He smiled, his eyes lingering on her eyes, her lips.

  Lady Gwendoline had never felt anything akin to romantic love, regarding the state in others as a kind of insanity. In particular, Audrey’s inexplicable passion for the impoverished Matthew had always felt to Gwendoline like a lot of put-on theatrics meant to butter up a man into proposing. Her own selection of Sir Strickland as her best possible marital partner had been based on reason and calculation, not some kind of irrational romantic ideal.

  Yet now, as she regarded this charming, handsome chef, she felt blood race around her body, producing tiny electrical currents that made little tingling sensations. His words drifted in and out as she watched his large, manicured hands, his languorous dark eyes, his soft lips. An urge grew within her, expanding quickly into a painful longing.

  “I think what you need for this next round is a dish that defines you as an haute cuisine chef. It needs to be delicate, cooked to perfection, with a sauce of subtle yet balanced flavors, and a range of textures and colors. We have to step away from the food meant for the masses, the food you create for the Ministry of Food. It has to be a high-class restaurant style, only with wartime ingredients.” He smiled that delectable half smile.

  Does he know the effect he’s having on me?

  “I agree.” She half smiled back, hoping to provide a similar allure. She was older than he was—thirty-eight to his thirty-three or thirty-four—but she knew she was a striking woman, regardless of her long face. Her skin had fared well for her age, and with her fine figure and tailored clothes, she presented the picture of elegance.

  “But what meat or fish should we base the dish upon?” He began thumbing through recipe leaflets. “It’s so hard to get good meat these days, especially if we have to stick to rations.”

  “We’ll be penalized if we don’t,” Lady Gwendoline said.

  His eyes suddenly glowed with enthusiasm. “Will we get bonus points for using ingredients that the Ministry of Food is promoting? We could do something with salt cod. There’s plenty of that coming over from Iceland, although Ambrose might be fed up with it by now.” He grinned with a new idea. “What about whale meat?”

  Lady Gwendoline grimaced with disgust. “Everyone loathes whale meat. The smell is supposed to be enough to put anyone off. Surely it’s last-resort food.”

  “And that’s precisely why we’ll use it. It’s incredibly nourishing, and the government is pushing it. Ambrose Hart is always talking about whale meat on The Kitchen Front. Have you ever tasted it?”

  “No,” she said pointedly.

  “It’s meaty, not unlike beef.”

  She scrunched her nose up. “But more fishy?”

  “Whales are mammals, and the meat is, well, probably more like horse or deer than fish. The closest animal would be, say, a hippopotamus.” He let out a short laugh, and she joined in.

  “And you can really mask the taste?”

  “We’ll make a dish that everyone adores.”

  “But how will we make it palatable?”

  He lay his hand, soft and manicured, over her own slim one, his eyes glinting into hers. “I will come up with something delectable. You have to trust me.”

  In any other situation, with any other man—including her husband—Lady Gwendoline would have snatched her hand away.

  But as it nestled, warm and safe under the handsome chef’s dexterous hand, she silently prayed that he would keep it there for as long as manners allowed. After a few moments, she raised her eyes to meet his, holding them there. And in that moment, she felt as if he were her lifesaver, their eye contact the rope she needed to safety.

  Perhaps this was what she had been waiting for all these years, what she needed. Perhaps Providence had sent Chef James Denton to rescue her from the abyss.

  Perhaps this would change everything.

  Nell

  After luncheon was served at Fenley Hall, Nell grabbed her hat, coat, and gas mask box and made for the village bus stop on the green. She only had a few hours to spare before starting dinner.

  But she had to see her.

  Middleton Hospital was situated in a large Victorian building on the outskirts of the town. A young woman at the desk told Nell where to find Mrs. Quince, and she soon found herself tiptoeing down a long ward. Every bed held a woman—sometimes too bandaged to tell—with various limbs and arms in plaster. The smell of burned hair and flesh lingered.

  “They’re from the Baedeker raids in Canterbury,” the nurse said. “They were overrun, so they had to send out the wounded to other county hospitals.”

  The raids were named after the German tourist guide from which the Nazis gruesomely picked their targets, historic cities with cultural treasures. Nell had heard that Canterbury had suffered horrific bombings, but she hadn’t been prepared for the dreadful aftermath.

  A nurse came up behind her. “Mrs. Quince is in the bed at the end. I’m sure she’ll be better in no time.” She guided her to the bed and gave Nell a perfunctory smile before heading back down the ward.

  Mrs. Quince did not look as if she would be better in no time. Pale, covered in bruises, with a bulky plaster cast around one leg, she was fast asleep. Her hair, which Nell had only ever seen tucked neatly into a bun, lay long and thin around her shoulders, a fan so white and transparent that it made Nell gasp. She’d never thought about Mrs. Quince’s age, and she swallowed hard at the reality that she was older, frailer than she appeared.

  There was a chair beside the bed, so she sat down, wondering what to do, until the nurse bustled back, pressed Mrs. Quince’s hand until she opened her eyes, and said, “You’ve got a visitor.”

  Startled out of sleep, Mrs. Quince looked even more feeble, but as soon as her eyes focused on Nell, she smiled weakly and relaxed. “Lovely to see you, my dear. Could you ask the nurse to get some aspirin? My hip hurts something rotten.”

  Nell felt tears come to her eyes as she watched the older woman take the pills as if they were better than her favorite chocolates.

  “Do they know what it is?” Nell asked tentatively.

  “My hip’s gone. It was fractured, but it’ll all be right as rain in no
time,” she said in a weak imitation of her normal cheery self. She patted Nell’s hand, as if their roles were reversed: Nell the patient and Mrs. Quince the concerned friend.

  “But how long will you be away?”

  “It’ll only be a few weeks or so. They’re doing a few tests on me, as the doctor thinks I might have a few other things, but I’m sure it’s nothing—”

  “A few other things,” Nell repeated. “What kind of other things?”

  “I’ve got a bit of diabetes, the doctors say. They gave me an injection. They also said my heart’s not as strong as it once was, but we all get old, don’t we, dear.”

  “Your heart?” Nell felt her own heart fall. “Are you going to be all right?”

  But Mrs. Quince calmed her. “I’ll be fine, just you see, and it’ll be good for you to be on your own for a while. You’ll rise to the challenge. I’m sure you’ll find it easier than you think. The Stricklands always like the same dishes, and when they have their special dinners, ask Audrey to help you out. You saw how Ambrose devoured her mushroom soup. She’ll do you well, I’m sure. Take some extra money for her from the housekeeping.”

  Nell sat back down, calmed, looking desolately at the floor. “What about the competition? I suppose we’ll have to pull out.” She gave a small sigh. “I wasn’t too keen on winning, you know. I’d never be able to speak on the radio. I’d just clam up. They’d get rid of me before I’d even begun. It was just a bit of a dream, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Quince let out an exasperated huff. “Don’t be silly, Nell. With a spot of practice, you’ll be wonderful on the radio. Just think what tips and tales you could tell everyone. It’s such an opportunity for you, pet. You’ll get a bit of fame, and I bet it’ll bring you some excellent job offers, too. Now promise me you’ll stay in the competition, Nell. I need you to win for both of us.”

  A queasiness took hold of Nell even thinking about speaking on her own. “But I won’t have time, what with the Stricklands’ dinners and all the extra work at the hall.”