by Nicola Slade
‘Does nobody ever listen to a word I say?’ I filled the kettle and put it on the stove before I turned to her. ‘I just said that we can’t eat them but we’ll have to be prepared to eat the next hens we have. Start asking around for point-of-lay birds, please, it’s urgent.’
She hugged me in apology and was about to leave when I caught at her sleeve.
‘Alix,’ I began, and then paused. She raised an eyebrow so I said, ‘I need to talk to you.’
I hesitated again but she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, looking serious. ‘You were brooding about something all day yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to catch you. Tonight?’
Alix hurried away. She endures her mornings as companion to a fractious old lady because she is paid quite handsomely, and even better than the salary is the luncheon that Alix shares with her employer. This is large and filling and as the cook likes Alix, (indeed, who doesn’t?) she often slips a packet of cold meat or cake or some other delicacy into Alix’s hand as she leaves. There were times in recent months when those kind offerings made all the difference to us, days when none of us could bear to think of food because we were almost paralysed by grief. Only the fear of hurting the cook’s feelings kept Alix from refusing her gifts and only the inertia brought on by grief had us eating them rather than waste good food.
I threw together the ingredients for scones. ‘These should keep the lodgers happy if they return for tea, Granny,’ I said. ‘What do I need to do next?’
‘My new helper and I will carry on here,’ Granny said, with a smile at the eagerly helpful Penny. ‘You’d better tackle your mother.’
I made a face but braced myself and went to see how Mother was coping with Lady Esmerelda and her aristocratic suitor.
My typewriting is fast and accurate. Not long before he departed for America claiming that he was going to make his fortune Papa, who was experiencing a sadly short-lived period of prosperity, purchased a machine and offered to send us all for lessons. I was the only one who took him up on it and very useful it is. Until we embarked on this landlady business I was able to do Mother’s work in the morning and my own in the afternoon, as well as helping Granny run the house. I’ll have to make some adjustments but at present the guest house is my primary concern and it makes sense to continue with Mother’s work in the mornings. None of us wants her to uncover our ingenious plan to keep the family afloat so we have decided to maintain our routine as far as possible. As for my own work, I’ll fit in the typewriting somehow and I can do the writing anywhere as long as I keep an exercise book and a pencil with me. Young Penny was going to be a godsend.
Mother had clearly been inspired to write reams about Lady Esmerelda’s life and troubles in High Society so I was kept busy. She often writes through the night and takes a nap after a light luncheon. This is extremely convenient for the rest of the household so we encourage her to continue this practice. This morning she read through the typewritten pages as I passed them over to her and she was pleased to approve, so I made her a cup of tea on the small spirit stove I keep upstairs for the purpose and ran downstairs to fetch a sandwich for her luncheon.
When I returned to the kitchen the dog greeted me with affection then remembered he had an injured paw, which he held up to me for sympathy.
‘I know, I know,’ I kissed him on the top of his large brown head. ‘You’re a brave boy, Bobs, but I think you should stop milking that sore paw. After all, Granny removed the thorn with tweezers two weeks ago.’
Granny shook her head sternly at the dog and shooed aside the ever-hopeful cat population. ‘Sit down and eat something yourself, Christy; here, cheese-and-pickle like your mother’s. Did she notice what she was eating?’
‘Of course not.’ I grinned my thanks as Granny put a plate in front of me. ‘Thank you. I suppose I’d better take Bobs for a quick walk at some point.’
‘No need.’ Granny was tucking into her own sandwich. ‘Young Captain Makepeace called in and offered to take Bobs out for a bit. He said you suggested that?’
‘That was kind of him. I hope it didn’t tire him out.’
‘I gave him a cup of cocoa and a biscuit when they returned. He’s a nice lad, he was telling me about being at school with Bertie.’ She tightened her lips. ‘He’s very young to be a captain, but I suppose…’
She had no need to quote “dead men’s shoes” and I nodded silently.
‘He didn’t say much about his own family,’ she said. ‘I told him he can drop in whenever he likes so I wouldn’t be surprised if he reappeared this afternoon. The Hall is no place for a shy, lonely boy, perhaps we can find some other jobs to distract him from his injuries.’
‘Granny! He’s not a child!’ I said, and tackled my own luncheon, after which I told her about the disturbing visitor of the previous night.
‘Dear Lord,’ she closed her eyes. ‘I thought we’d heard the last of your Papa. It’s hard to believe I welcomed him at first.’ She stared out of the window. ‘It may sound harsh but your mother was such a strange little girl – not speaking till she was seven and barely a word even then. And always with her nose in a book. God forgive me, but I thought Percival, who boasted about his connection with the King’s household, would take her off my hands and give her a life. Something I had no chance of doing for her, in all conscience, with your grandpapa just the same.’
She carried her plate over to the sink, looking thoughtfully over her shoulder at me.
‘Did you believe this man, Christy?’
‘I don’t know, it seems impossible, but I suspect he believes it, which means we’ll have him pestering us. I just pray he doesn’t go near the lodgers.’
She sighed, still looking thundery. ‘Next time he bangs on the door, call me. I’ll see to him.’
I welcomed our newest guest, Miss Evershed, when she arrived promptly after luncheon.
‘I hope my box arrived? Though I’ve brought very little with me,’ she explained, as I helped her upstairs with her small dressing-case. ‘I still hope to find a way to escape my fell doom!’
She said she would read in her room for an hour until it was time for the three-fifteen visiting time at the hospital so, after warning her that she might find a cat on her bed – she said she liked cats and not to worry – I left her in peace while I snatched a short time for my own work. When I went back downstairs it was as Granny had predicted and Henry Makepeace had appeared for the second time that day.
While I was upstairs, it seemed he had knocked on the door looking apologetic and soaked because the heavens had burst when he reached the gate on his way into town. It was too wet now for a proper walk, he said, so he wondered whether we could put up with him again. Granny’s response had been to hand him a kitten and a rock cake and to tell him to make himself at home. He looked relaxed now, with a kitten on his lap and the dog leaning hopefully against his leg, while he and Granny chattered away. She is rarely talkative so I could tell she really liked Henry.
It turned out that while at school, Bertie had let him read the wildly exciting adventure yarns we’d sent each other.
‘I recognised the story,’ he told me, taking a copy of Prefects on Picket Duty out of his pocket. ‘A lot of it’s what you sent to Bertie, isn’t it?’
He offered to read my latest outpouring, so I swore him to secrecy about my writing in general and ran upstairs to collect my typewritten pages and my notebook.
Gun Emplacements on the Cricket Pitch was due out very shortly and I was sitting at the kitchen table while I wrote the next instalment of St Chad’s at War. Now and again I asked him for details.
‘Tell me about the smell of a dressing station at the front,’ I said, chewing the end of my pencil.
‘It stinks,’ he said briefly, going back to his reading. ‘Rats, too. Lice. And maggots. Infernal noise all the time, it never stops.’
I blinked at that and returned to my story though I felt vaguely aware of something wrong in the quiet kitchen. I couldn’t place it so I raise
d my head and gazed round.
Henry kept chuckling as he read the early chapters of St Chad’s, marking typewriting mistakes. ‘I keep recognising things from school,’ he explained.
Granny was rolling out pastry. I’d taken down a couple of jars of bottled gooseberries from the top shelf in the larder for tonight’s supper; one pie for us and one for the lodgers. Addy was lavishly spreading dripping on a doorstep she’d cut from the loaf.
‘Addy?’ I exclaimed as I realised that she was what was out of place. Like the cats, she has an uncanny knack of melting into the background when she doesn’t want to be observed. ‘It’s Tuesday afternoon. What on earth are you doing home so early?’
‘I’ve been sent home from school for the rest of the week,’ Addy said casually, her voice muffled as she ate.
‘What was it this time?’ I heaved a sigh but if she didn’t look very contrite, at least she wasn’t unhappy. I needn’t worry that she’d been stricken by one of the overwhelming attacks of grief that wash over all of us at unexpected moments.
‘What is it always?’ She cut and spread a second doorstep, frowning at the dripping basin as she scraped it clean. ‘Impertinence and insubordination, and before you ask, it was all Miss Hereford’s fault anyway.’
I waited, knowing that you can’t hurry Addy. Granny cast a thoughtful glance at her youngest granddaughter and returned to her gooseberry pies, while Henry shifted along the bench as though seeking shelter before the storm. The idea of being suspended for impertinence was clearly giving him the shivers and I remembered what Bertie had told us – that Henry’s late father had been a martinet. One of the cats sensed his unease and climbed on to his lap while the kitten ran up on to his shoulder and promptly fell asleep like a small fur collar. Bobs the Dog flopped on to Henry’s feet and leaned heavily against him, which is his way of showing affection. Henry stroked the cat and smiled at me, comforted.
Addy, who can be maddeningly slow when it comes to eating, finally finished her light snack. ‘Miss Hereford,’ she said, ‘informed me that she finds my vocabulary far too extensive and to contain many words and phrases that are quite unsuited to a young schoolgirl. Oh yes, and would I, therefore, kindly modify my language, both written and spoken, forthwith.’
‘That’s torn it.’ I heard Henry murmur under his breath at the same time as I caught Granny concealing a grin.
‘And?’
‘I was perfectly polite, Christy,’ Addy bridled. ‘Honestly, you’d have been proud of me. I said I was sorry she felt that way but that I’d been privileged always to live among intelligent and articulate people who habitually use words like “serendipity” and “reforming zeal” and “malcontent”, which were a few of the things she considered unsuitable. She didn’t like my use of medical terminology either, saying it was unladylike, despite my telling her I intend to become a doctor. That’s unladylike too, she says.’
She brushed an indignant hand across her untidy brow. ‘Oh yes, and she didn’t at all approve of my essay in which I said I agreed with Darwin that no one but an imbecile would believe the world was created in only seven days.’
‘I’m sure Darwin didn’t put it quite like that,’ I objected, but she brushed aside my interruption.
‘Naturally,’ she continued loftily, ‘I would, I said, tailor my essays and my conversation from now on to accommodate her limited level of understanding.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t give you a whipping on the spot,’ Henry was grinning now. During the short time he had spent at our house he’d clearly worked out already that the Fyttleton view of misdemeanours differed somewhat from that of his own family.
Addy gave him a chilly, pitying smile and fished a letter out of her school bag. ‘Here, Christy, this is a letter for Mother from the Head.’
‘Oh Lord,’ I sighed. ‘I’d better hurry up and reply. Mother mustn’t know.’
‘No need.’ A triumphant grin spread across her face. ‘I’ve already typewritten the answer on the school machine. I sneaked in to the secretary’s study when she was out.’
She handed me the usual complaint from Miss Hereford. When I’d read it, Addy passed a neatly typewritten letter across the table. I was impressed by the artistically forged signature but tried to look stern. It never does to encourage her, but Henry was intrigued.
‘Here let me have a look?’ He read it aloud,
‘Dear Miss Hereford,
I am in receipt of your letter of today’s date informing me that Adelaide has once more been impertinent. I must, yet again, apologise for her rudeness.
However, I am astonished that you should seek to restrict her vocabulary and I am sure that His Majesty the King would prefer his goddaughter’s conversation to be that of an intelligent gentlewoman, rather than that of a tradesman’s daughter.
As to your allegedly hurt feelings at Adelaide’s dismissal of the Biblical theory of Creation, I will only say that my daughter has been brought up to value rational thought.
Yours, etc…’
He snorted with laughter. ‘You can’t send that, Christy, she’ll demand to see your mother at once. It’s impossibly rude.’
I caught Addy’s eye and she made a face. ‘You tell him,’ she said.
‘The thing is, Henry, that’s exactly how Mother would have written. Addy’s copied her style perfectly.’ He re-read the letter in disbelief. ‘I’m serious. Mother has a reputation as an intellectual, you see, which seems to mean she can be as rude and snobbish as she likes. People know she’s clever and she gets away with it. Although she has a lot of noble ideas about the necessity of education for poor working-class young women, she hasn’t actually met any apart from our own maid. It has never occurred to her that poor middle-class girls need educating too, so she pays very little attention to us. For instance, there is a perfectly good high school in town but she insisted we would have to mix with the wrong sort of girls, which is nonsense. It would be perfect for Addy. Mother has never actually noticed that Miss Hereford’s school is dreadful and that none of the girls ever learns anything other than flower-arranging, water colours, and drawing-room conversation.’
‘You two aren’t like that,’ he protested. He didn’t mention Alix who rarely picks up a book and then only romances like those of Mabel de Rochforde.
‘Of course we’re not,’ Addy snapped. ‘We’ve brought ourselves up, with Granny and Grandpapa’s help, despite Miss Hereford and despite Mother’s lofty principles.’
‘That’s enough about the letter, it’ll have to do,’ I shrugged. ‘I haven’t time to fiddle about and it’s Addy’s problem if Mother finds out. Make sure you deliver it today, Addy.’
As Addy wandered past me I reached out and gave her a hug because I understand how frustrating she finds her school. She leaned against me for a moment.
‘You smell of ink, Christy,’ she said, sniffing at me. ‘Ink and cats and cooking.’
I laughed at her and laughed again at Henry’s bewildered expression. Addy noticed and grinned at him. ‘You smell of really nice soap,’ she offered and to spare his blushes I asked, ‘What about the rest of the family?’
‘Alix smells of the lily of the valley scent she had for her birthday, Mother smells of old books and eau de cologne, Papa smelled of brandy and his bay rum hair stuff,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘What about me?’ Granny raised an eyebrow.
‘That’s easy,’ Addy went to lay her head on Granny’s shoulder. ‘You smell of home.’
I bit my lip and I could see that Granny was moved. Addy very rarely allows us into her inner emotions. Henry broke the sudden silence by changing the subject.
‘Is the King really your godfather?’ He glanced at Addy, looking understandably sceptical as he took in the untidy brown hair that was unravelling from its plait, the ink stain on the cuff of her blouse, and her scuffed and muddy boots with knotted laces.
‘Of course,’ she said, with a lordly toss of her head. He looked at me.
‘We
ll, he was still the Duke of York at the time. Did you know the old king and queen were godparents to Bertie and Alix, hence their names?’ He shook his head. ‘I had to make do with Princess Maud, because she owed Papa a favour, though she became Queen of Norway when I was about six, so I could boast about her if I wished. Maud is my middle name. When Addy arrived, Papa was at a shooting party in Norfolk. He heard the Duke was at York Cottage at Sandringham, so he charmed his way in and suggested that his new daughter needed a godfather. It worked too, because Papa knew a thing or two about the late Duke of Clarence, you see, and he hinted that the newspapers would be interested.’
‘You mean he blackmailed King George about his dead brother?’ Henry’s eyes were round with astonishment.
‘Yes of course,’ I said impatiently. ‘I told you the other day that Papa was a scoundrel. He was a gambler and a cardsharp, and he made sure he knew all kinds of secrets that influential people would hate to have made public. From something I overheard once I think he may have procured other things for gentlemen in high society that would have put them under an obligation to him, but I don’t know any details.
‘It was a relief, in lots of ways, when he died. It meant we didn’t have to worry any more about him gambling away all our worldly goods.’ I shivered at the thought that he might not, after all, be safely dead, but we had heard no more from our unwelcome American visitor so I put the worry to the back of my mind.
‘That’s right,’ Addy joined in. ‘I know Papa stood proxy at my christening and had high hopes of a handsome present but the Duchess, Queen Mary as she is now, beat Papa in the end. She wrote to him saying she was enclosing a large piece of coral as a christening present, one that the Duke brought home when he was a sailor. He had intended to give me a diamond brooch, she said, but she felt it was more suited to a mature woman of rank than a young child.’ Addy’s eyes sparkled. ‘She pinched it for herself, you see!’
‘Papa always felt let down by our godparents.’ I shrugged. ‘None of them attended our christenings, of course but he did expect them to give us handsome presents and find us noble husbands. They’ve been a sad disappointment so far. King Edward did give Bertie a watch for his christening, which – in a novel – would have stopped a bullet and saved his life, of course. Unfortunately, it proved no match…’ I blinked. ‘Queen Alexandra gave Alix a black feather fan studded with diamonds which would have been extremely useful, if only Papa hadn’t painstakingly removed all the diamonds years ago.’ I smiled as I remembered Alix’s fury when we discovered the theft.
