Maggie’s Kitchen

by Caroline Beecham

  ‘They’re lovely. Thank you, dear.’

  Her aunt offered up her cheek and Maggie stooped forward, obediently planting a kiss, the smell of her aunt’s face powder and scent mingling in a sickly sweet combination.

  ‘You are a clever girl,’ Aunt Mary said, admiring the flowers. ‘Wherever did you manage to find them?’

  Her aunt’s face was a shade darker than usual, and the thick foundation had collected around her jawline, transforming her soft white skin into a stiff mask of beige.

  ‘The florist’s near the station,’ Maggie said, following her into the hallway. ‘They didn’t have too much left, but I know how you love your peonies. How are you?’

  ‘Old—but grateful for it. Can’t moan, can I?’ Her aunt sighed.

  ‘Rose here?’

  ‘Locked in the kitchen; been in there all morning. And she won’t let me in. Dread to think what she’s up to, banging around like nobody’s business.’

  It was typical of her aunt to complain when someone was doing something for her. She had been born for wartime, when she could grumble about the food shortages, hoard everything and darn already recycled clothes; to Aunt Mary, even her sandbag was half empty, not half full.

  ‘Would you like me to take a look? I can put those in water for you . . .’

  ‘I suppose so,’ her aunt said, reluctantly relinquishing the flowers.

  Maggie hung her coat over the end of the banisters as she passed and knocked on the kitchen door.

  There was a muffled voice accompanied by crashing and the sound of the oven door being slammed.

  ‘Rose?’ she called.

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘It’s me—Maggie.’

  The door flew open and an arm grabbed her and pulled her inside.

  ‘Thank God you’re here!’

  ‘Why, what’s going on?’

  The kitchen looked worse than hers did the day she found it ransacked; open packets and jars were scattered across the worktop around a large mixing bowl rimmed with an inch of flour, the tiny particles still suspended in the air.

  ‘It’s okay, you don’t need to answer that,’ she said, taking in her cousin’s startling appearance. Rose looked as if she had been wrestling with the ingredients. ‘What are you making now? I thought you had cooked everything yesterday.’

  ‘I changed my mind. I remembered how she always used to make a roast and a jam roly-poly when we were kids, and I thought she’d like it if I made that for her—but now it’s all burnt!’

  Rose opened the oven door.

  Maggie bent down to look and was blasted by a heat that nearly sealed her eyelids shut. She coughed as the acrid smoke hit the back of her throat. ‘Blimey, Rose, I think you’ve got it on a bit high,’ she said.

  ‘You never told me what temperature to put it at!’

  ‘It’s in the recipe!’

  At the back of the middle shelf sat a baking dish with a small brown log in it, shrivelled and burnt.

  ‘Mutton end is really a boiling meat,’ Maggie said. ‘You can also use it for stock . . .’

  ‘Now you tell me! What shall I do?’

  Maggie took the oven gloves from her and retrieved the baking dish, placing it on the stovetop.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, thinking. ‘What vegetables have you got?’

  Rose pointed towards the pan at the back of the stove where green leafy kale had transformed into pale green slivers that floated like lily pads on a pond.

  ‘I was going to use the water for gravy, just like you showed me.’

  ‘Do you have any more?’

  ‘Some boiled potatoes and there’s raw carrots and some red cabbage over there.’

  The vegetable tray next to the back door held a few misshapen carrots, a handful of soil-covered potatoes and a medium-sized marrow with pitted skin.

  ‘Have you got any Bisto?’

  Rose rummaged around in the cupboard and then handed her a packet.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  She looked so desperate that Maggie knew she couldn’t suggest that they should throw it all away and start again. Rose had so wanted to cook her mother’s birthday lunch, but she was sure that this meal would only invite criticism—although it really would take a miracle to salvage something edible from this lot.

  ‘Go and tell her that lunch will be ready in fifteen minutes. And Rose?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go tidy yourself up—you look like Potato Pete!’

  It was a great relief that lunch wasn’t such a disaster after all; Maggie managed to shred a small amount of meat from the joint and was able to make a confit of lamb, and after grating carrots and red cabbage and sautéing them with onion and apple, she assembled the fastest Woolton pie that she had ever made. Even the mashed potato topping she had recycled from Rose’s over-boiled potatoes had crisped up nicely under the grill with the last of the butter and cheese ration.

  ‘Another sherry?’

  ‘No, ducks,’ her aunt replied. She was already listing slightly as she balanced plates in one hand while trying to turn the doorknob with the other. ‘Better not. Want to leave some room for that birthday cake. Rose has been making such a song and dance about it. Besides, I want to hear more about this restaurant of yours and all the wonderful things you are going to make.’

  Hardly, Maggie thought, but she wasn’t about to spoil the celebrations. After her initial excitement over Mr Boyle’s letter she read the paperwork and was surprised by the Ministry of Food’s Allowance of Rationed Foods to British Restaurants; in fact, it had left her feeling decidedly anxious. If she had thought it was hard for an individual to get hold of food, she had been woefully wrong. That was nothing compared to the meagre portions supplied for each patron of a British Restaurant. She’d had to put the papers aside to get ready for her visit to Clapham, but when she got back she would need to think carefully about how they would be able to make the suggested menus with such small portions. With a quarter of an ounce of butter or margarine, an eighth of an ounce of jam and a pennyworth of meat per person, they would hardly be able to make the hearty meals that she’d intended. Even the beans, lentils and split peas she usually bulked the meals out with were rationed now. The specimen menus had also been disappointing; there was far too much sago and tapioca for her liking, and recipes that would not fill the bellies of men who laboured for ten hours a day and then worked as volunteers at night, too.

  With her mother out the room, Rose came and sat on the sofa next to Maggie.

  ‘She loved it. Thank you. She has no idea how close it came to going in the pig bin.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. You did a great job.’ Maggie turned to face her cousin. ‘I was thinking, how about you come and work at the restaurant straight away, not wait like we talked about?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll need kitchen hands and staff for the dining hall.’

  ‘But I’ve no experience of restaurants. You’ll need people that can help you, Maggie, not hinder you.’

  ‘There will be training,’ Maggie replied.

  ‘I don’t want you to choose me just because I’m family—I want to be selected because I can do the job.’

  ‘I’m going to need all the help I can get, Rose. Where on earth I am going to find enough food for the two hundred and fifty meals we’re expected to make? It’s impossible!’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse.’

  Maggie ran her hands down her legs, smoothing out imaginary stockings.

  ‘So what do you plan to do?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Wait and see. What else can I do?’

  ‘Do about what?’ Aunt Mary enquired as she arrived with the tea tray.

  She set the tray down unsteadily, the three bone china teacups rattling on their saucers, the matching floral teapot losing a little of its pale brown liquid.

  ‘Maggie was just talking about the restaurant.’

  ‘Yes, dear, and I want to hear all about it—but first get
yourselves some mending out of the basket over there. There’s never a moment to spare for some industry.’

  Rose rolled her eyes at Maggie. ‘Yes, Mum, idle hands cost lives . . .’

  ‘You can mock, my girl, but our WVS group has made dozens of blankets for the Red Cross. Anyone who can’t knit or sew needs to learn how.’

  ‘As if people aren’t tired enough already, Mum. Everyone needs to rest sometime.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that, but you young ones should have enough energy not to sit idle at night.’

  Maggie knew the conversation could soon escalate into an argument so she took a ball of wool and some knitting needles from the basket and cast on.

  ‘There were a lot of worn-looking faces at work last week, Aunt Mary, but you know we had a charity knit-in for the Motor Ambulance Fund and raised a tidy sum. One shilling and six for tea and biscuits, as well as money from the raffle.’

  ‘That’s good of you, Maggie. See, Rose? You could manage a few of these initiatives if you put your mind to it.’

  Maggie looked over at her cousin and winked, knowing that she must be longing to tell her mother she was leaving the shoe shop where she worked.

  ‘Rose will surprise us all, Aunt Mary, you wait and see.’

  ‘And what’s become of that nice young man who got injured . . . Tom, is it?’

  ‘He’s going to be okay—they had to amputate his arm though.’

  Aunt Mary shook her head and mumbled into the yellow blanket spreading across her lap like a field of ripening corn, growing at a much faster rate than Maggie’s small square.

  ‘I was actually going to see if he wanted to come and help at the restaurant.’

  ‘What?’ her aunt spluttered. ‘How could he help with only one arm?’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of jobs that a one-handed person can do just as well as a two-handed.’

  A few moments of quiet followed with only the clicking of needles and the occasional twitter from the budgerigars, until Aunt Mary looked up from her knitting.

  ‘You know your mother was always very resourceful. She took after Dad that way; always thought of a way round things. Not like me—I’d always get stuck right in the middle, one mess after another.’

  Maggie grimaced, hoping that her aunt would stop and not dig up old wounds but she carried on.

  ‘You’re just like her in that way, Maggie, and a good cook too. Do you still have that enormous cooking encyclopaedia she gave you for your eleventh birthday?’ Her aunt was becoming even more animated. ‘I can’t believe the things you used to make, and you were just a slip of a girl. Do you remember?’

  She didn’t usually mind taking a trip down memory lane with her aunt, but she really didn’t want to think about her mother today.

  ‘Yes I do. It was The Gentle Art of Cookery by Mrs C. F. Leyel & Miss Olga Hartley. I made a treacle tart for Dad’s birthday.’

  ‘Did you? Fancy that, Rose, and you only just learning to cook now.’ Aunt Mary laughed.

  ‘I’m surprised you remember that,’ Maggie said, trying to distract her aunt’s attention from Rose’s supposed shortcomings.

  ‘And what about that ghastly meal you made for us one Christmas, Maggie? Sausages and kidneys with rice, I think it was. Don’t know what possessed you to choose such a thing!’

  ‘I think it was something about the shapes that appealed to me. I certainly didn’t realise how difficult it would be to make.’

  Maggie dropped a stitch and twisted her needle around to pick it up. She’d thought her aunt wanted to talk about the restaurant, not her cooking failures.

  ‘Do you remember helping your mum decorate the birthday cakes? You always had a talent for it. How about that soccer boot you made for Ernest . . .’

  ‘Eliza’s going to do the desserts, Mum,’ Rose said; she knew how Maggie hated to talk about her brother. ‘And trained cooks will do the actual cooking. Maggie will be running the place.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘Actually, Rose will be helping out too,’ Maggie announced.

  A smirk crossed her aunt’s lips. ‘Is this true, Rose?’

  ‘Yes, Maggie said I can help out front on the servery—get some experience before training in the kitchen,’ Rose said hesitantly, glancing at Maggie and then back at her mother. ‘I’m good with the public, you’ve said so yourself.’

  ‘One charity case is quite enough, Maggie; you don’t need to help Rose too, you know.’

  Maggie stood up, winding the wool around the needles and placing the knitting back in the basket.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Maggie lied, ‘I need to go and meet Eliza. We have a few things to talk over . . .’

  ‘Oh, can’t you stay a bit longer? What about the cake?’

  Her aunt looked genuinely disappointed but Maggie needed to get away; she had been so certain that she could do this, that she was the right person to run a restaurant, but now that her aunt had reminded her of her failures, she was having second thoughts.

  She remembered Mr Ferguson’s face when she had given him her letter of resignation, how her explanation had turned into an apology as he read it. But his response had surprised her. Instead of bristling, his manner had softened. ‘I can see that you won’t be satisfied unless you can be making a difference. Good luck to you, lass.’ Now she wondered if she had been too hasty about handing in her notice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, bending to kiss her aunt’s cheek. ‘I really do need to go. Save me a piece for next time.’

  Rose stood too. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  At the door, Maggie gave her a long hug. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, good job I’ve grown a thick skin.’

  ‘I’m sorry I said anything. I would have waited if I’d known she would react like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine. You’ve enough on your plate.’

  How could Rose remain so sweet when her mother undermined her so? Maggie wondered, not for the first time.

  She was about to leave when she remembered something.

  ‘Rose, did you get your mum that new Pan-Cake foundation for her birthday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thought so . . . let’s hope she wears it to her next WVS meeting!’

  When Rose closed the door behind her, they were both still giggling.

  Needing time to clear her head, Maggie crossed the road to the common, walking west towards the sun that was sinking over the rooftops of the Victorian mansion blocks opposite. Night had started to close in and she would need to walk swiftly to beat the curfew or risk being stranded on the other side of London, her gas mask and tin hat still hanging on the coat stand by the front door.

  Following the path that she hoped would take her towards Clapham North and a bus back to the city, she pushed her hands deep into her pockets and picked up her pace.

  Her aunt’s mention of Ernest had made her think of Robbie. They had hoped that Ed’s contacts in the navy might be able to help find the boy’s father, but the past few weeks had sped by and they’d still had no word. And each time she saw Robbie it was like looking at her brother, the same wide brown eyes pleading for any news. She wasn’t sure what to do next; it was getting too dangerous for Robbie to stay at the school, each fresh blast making the foundations even more unstable. And on top of her anxiety about the boy, there was the restaurant. She had been so sure that this was what she wanted, but the task before her seemed overwhelming. If only Peter were here; he could help her with all the documents that needed to be read, the government guidelines that needed to be followed, the paperwork she would have to complete.

  The common was nearly empty now and she began to walk even faster. As she passed a small grove of elm trees she noticed a couple kissing beneath.

  The young man nodded when he noticed her. ‘’Night, miss.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Maggie smiled at the pretty blonde girl, knowing how she must feel; even in the dimming light Maggie could
see the young man’s uniform, the buttons bright and shiny, not yet used.

  Chapter Eleven

  HOW TO MAKE SHORT PASTRY:

  UTENSILS REQUIRED

  A pastry board or any cold smooth surface,

  such as an enamel-topped table or a marble slab;

  a mixing bowl or basin, wide enough to get both

  hands in, for rubbing fat; a flour sifter or sieve;

  kitchen knife; rolling pin; a jug of water and a

  pair of kitchen scales or a half-pint measure.

  Ministry of Food, War Cookery Leaflet No. 26

  The large sinewy organ slithered onto the plate, wobbling for a few seconds before relaxing in porcelain comfort. Maggie looked at the smooth surface of the viscera cocooned in a network of grey and red capillaries and then up at the other girls’ faces; they clearly felt just as queasy.

  Her memory of school domestic science was nothing compared to the experiences of the past few days; she had decapitated a chicken, gutted a fish and boiled for brawn parts of a pig that she hadn’t even known were edible. All their prior knowledge had been challenged when they had been shown how to use every part of an animal’s body and which parts were the most nutritious. Now, standing around the table watching the instructor demonstrate how to make shortcrust pastry, she finally was on more familiar ground.

  ‘Remember, ladies, the most important thing in a large kitchen is to be organised and efficient. Have your utensils ready and your ingredients to hand. For pastry you need a cold smooth surface, a mixing bowl, a flour sifter or sieve, a kitchen knife, a rolling pin, scales and a measuring jug.’

  Miss Barker tapped each of the items named as she spoke.

  Maggie wished that Eliza were here; the two of them would have had a hoot at Miss Barker’s expense. She had all their most hated traits rolled into one and, as far as Maggie could make out, no redeeming features. She had no patience and no sense of humour either, she wasn’t inspiring and even managed to make all the new things that Maggie was learning sound dull. She could just imagine Eliza’s impersonation of her; the annoying mannerisms and habit of fiddling with anything her hands came into contact with. She was nothing like Mrs Stoner, her favourite domestic science teacher from school, who always had an encouraging remark and a smile. Miss Barker may have been at least a decade younger than Mrs Stoner but she hadn’t worked in a proper restaurant her whole life, only taught cookery, and it struck Maggie that she wasn’t necessarily the right person to be giving them advice. Still, Mr Boyle had insisted so here she was, and in only five more hours her training would be complete and she would be free to go.