I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin

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       10

      Friday came in clear and blue and bright, so that Tilda didn’t grumble overmuch at leaving her bed an hour earlier to clear the oven flues of soot, and when Mrs Shaw made her sleepy-eyed appearance, the kitchen range shone with blacklead polish, the fire glowed red, and a kettle puffed lazy steam from its spout.

      ‘Good girl, Tilda,’ Cook approved. ‘You’d best mash a sup of tea and make us a couple of toasts. And them as lies in their beds till the dot of six are going to miss out on it, aren’t they? Think we might open a jar of the strawberry,’ she added comfortably, knowing the kitchenmaid’s fondness for her ladyship’s special conserve, and knowing too that so small a reward would be repaid in extra effort during the day ahead; the hot, hectic, dinner-party day just beginning.

      William called, ‘Hup!’ and the horses broke into a canter. On the carriage floor lay the ice, collected from the fishmonger in Creesby, and, atop it, to keep it cool, a parcel of lobster meat for Mrs Shaw’s thick fish soup.

      Fuss and bother, that’s what dinner parties were, the coachman brooded. All coming and going and do this, William, do that. He brought down the reins with a slap. Best get a move on or Miss Clitherow would glare and he’d be in trouble with Cook an’ all. She could be a bit of a battleaxe when the mood was on her, none knew it better than William Stubbs, though she was usually good for a sup of tea and a slice of cake when it wasn’t. But all thoughts of fruit cake were quickly dismissed from William’s mind when there were matters of greater importance to think on. The carry-on in Brattocks, for one, and the to-do it had caused at Pendenys. He’d got it from the under-gardener there, so it was fact – Elliot Sutton with a badly face; his father going on something awful, and Mrs Clementina throwing a fit of the vapours so that Doctor James had to be brought in the motor.

      Mind, you couldn’t expect much else from the likes of Elliot Sutton. Not real gentry, the Place Suttons. Not like Rowangarth, so you couldn’t entirely blame Pendenys for their lack of refinement, them being half trade, so to speak, and liable because of it to throw a wrong ‘un from time to time. But the atmosphere over at the Place was cold as charity if talk was to be believed. Something was going on there, or why had the laundrymaid been ordered to wash all Mr Elliot’s linen and boil and starch his shirts – every last one of them? Taking himself off, was he? Away to London again, out of the reach of his mother’s tongue? And a fair wind to his backside if it were true, thought William with grimmest pleasure. A good riddance, and no mistake.

      There had better, warned Mrs Shaw, getting things straight right from the start, be no idling this morning. Indeed, they should all count themselves lucky there had been time for breakfast, so pushed were they going to be. True, the soup was well in hand, two salmon lay cooling on the cold slab in the meat cellar, and the four ribs of beef – any less would have seemed penny-pinching – had been quickly browned in a hot oven to seal in the juices, and now cooked in slow contentment on the bottom shelf.

      The ice-cream and sorbet were Cook’s biggest worry, though both were safely packed with fresh ice now, and should turn out right, as they almost always did.

      ‘That’s the soup and salmon seen to, the beef doing nicely, and the savoury part-prepared …’ Cook was in the habit of thinking aloud on such occasions. ‘And the meringues for the pudding done yesterday, and please God that dratted ice-cream is going to behave itself. Tilda!’

      ‘Yes’m.’ Tilda gazed mesmerized at the pile of vegetables brought in by the under-gardener at seven that morning; a pile so enormous it had set her longing for the day she would rise to the heights of assistant cook – or even under-housemaid would do – and so be able to watch some other unfortunate scrape carrots, peel potatoes, slice cucumbers and pod peas. Yet, she conceded, as the scent of strawberries – the first of the season and straight from the hotbed in the kitchen garden – teased her nostrils, being a kitchenmaid did have its compensations, for no one would miss the plump half dozen that would find their way to her mouth when no one was looking.

      ‘Think we can manage a breather,’ Cook murmured, hands to her burning cheeks. ‘Might as well have a sup of tea.’ Heaven only knew when there’d be time for another. ‘Put the kettle on, Tilda, then pop upstairs and fetch Mary and Bess and Ellen …’

      Mrs Shaw’s long, dramatic sigh masked the excitement that churned inside her. Dinner parties at Rowangarth again! Oh, the joy of it, and herself thinking she would never live to see another. Goodness gracious, what a hustle and bustle and delight this day would be.

      Ellen had arrived early that morning, leaving her children in the care of her mother-in-law, walking the half-mile to Rowangarth with a lightness of step. In the brown paper parcel she carried were her carefully folded frock – her best one, in navy – and a stiffly-starched cap with ribbon trailers and a bibbed apron, wrapped carefully around a rolled newspaper to prevent creasing. It would be grand to be with them all again, and tomorrow there would be a knock on her front door – her ladyship was always prompt with her thanks – and William would deliver a letter marked By Hand in the top, left-hand corner; a letter signed Helen M. Sutton and containing five shillings for her pains.

      Five beautiful shillings. Ellen’s step had quickened, just to think of it. It would buy material for a Sunday-best dress and tobacco for her man, and a bag of jujubes for the bairns.

      Now, in what had been her second-best uniform, and which still fitted her even after two pregnancies, she and Mary and the head gardener, his feet in felt slippers so as not to leave marks on the carpet, were setting a table splendid to see, with sweeps of fern looped around the table edges and, at each corner, a ribboned posy of carnations – carnations being known to keep fresh the longest. And thank goodness for Rowangarth’s heated glasshouses: peaches and nectarines, ready long before nature intended, made up part of a magnificent, two-feet-tall centrepiece of fruit, roses, lilies-of-the-valley and maidenhair fern. Already she had checked the fingerbowls, laid ready to be filled with water and sprinkled with rose petals later in the afternoon, and now, menu in hand, she checked the cutlery for correctness, walking round the table unspeaking.

      ‘Will it do?’ Nervously, Mary moved glasses a fraction of an inch, wondering if she had folded the table napkins into anything СКАЧАТЬ