I try to explain all this to Mrs Scott-Pym but it isn’t easy. I can feel her growing disapproval as I go on. Poor Arthur. I feel like I’m dobbing in a friend at school. ‘And now it looks as if she’ll stay forever,’ I say.
‘Hmm, what a bally mess,’ replies Mrs Scott-Pym, shaking her head.
‘I know. It’s horrible. Actually, Mrs Scott-Pym,’ I go on, ‘I’ve got something to confess.’
‘Confess?’ She smiles. ‘Whatever have you been doing?’
‘Well. It’s to do with Christine.’
I pause and take a deep breath.
Here goes.
‘It was bad enough before when she was around the house all day working,’ I say, ‘but now she’s moved in with us it’s awful. Really awful. She’s everywhere, day and night, nagging. With her horrible music and ugly whatnots.’
Mrs Scott-Pym grimaces.
‘I really don’t like her,’ I go on, glad to finally get the words out.
‘I see,’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, sitting down. ‘But, Evie, dear, whatever’s happened to your father? Surely he can see what she’s like?’
‘Well, it’s difficult,’ I explain. ‘She’s quite tricksy. One minute she’s super lovey-dovey and being nice and fluttering her eyes and pretending to be interested in tractors and rubbing his shoulders and laughing at his bad jokes and telling him how handsome he is. And the next she’s horrible. Like a big pink witch. A big, grumpy, bossy pink witch. I think she’s cast a spell on him,’ I add, waving my hands around in dramatic spell-casting way, hoping to look scary and magical but probably appearing about as spine-chilling as Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
‘What’s that, dear?’ says Mrs Scott-Pym, I think momentarily bumfuzzled (adjective – confused and distracted) by my sudden burst of am-dram witchcraft.
‘I said Christine’s tricksy, Mrs Scott-Pym. She can be really horrible to him but then he just forgets all about it the moment she’s nice to him. It’s like she’s using some kind of magic.’ I try another quick blast of magic finger-waving. ‘Black magic probably, given the amount of chocolate she gets through.’
Mrs Scott-Pym fails to acknowledge my brilliant joke. ‘Mmmm,’ she says, looking over at the bookcase. ‘Christine sounds a real scarlet woman to me.’
I have no idea what Mrs Scott-Pym is going on about. Christine is definitely more pink than scarlet.
‘Yes, a scarlet woman,’ she repeats, standing up and wrapping a malt loaf in some greaseproof paper. ‘Definitely. Now, let’s get you a few things, dear, and then you can get going. I’m sure you’ve got plenty to be getting on with.’ And she thrusts the malt loaf and a still-warm bloomer into my hands and ushers me towards the door.
I have the distinct feeling I’m being got rid of.
*
As I walk back down Mrs Scott-Pym’s gravelly drive, the smell of baking bread hangs like honeyed mist around me. I’m desperate, of course, to have a proper look at my mother’s recipe book. It’s singing – throbbing, fizzing – noisily in my hand and it takes every ounce of patience I have not to sit down in Mrs Scott-Pym’s front garden and start flicking though the pages immediately.
Instead I head for the stream that winds through our fields. There’s a particularly nice spot on a bend, complete with weeping willow and a stepping stone. On a sunny day, I often come and sit here because:
1. It’s usually nice and quiet.
2. I can rest my feet in the water, letting the cool liquid lap against my ankles and pretend I’m paddling on a beach somewhere charming and urbane, like Saint-Tropez or Filey.
As I nestle down into the grassy bank and dip my feet in the stream, I open my mother’s recipe book. I immediately feel like I’ve landed in a foreign country. Poule au Pot. Sauerkraut. Duck à l’Orange. Pitcaithly Bannock. Esqueixada. Baked Gurnet. Iles Flottante. I have no idea what virtually any of it means (did my mother never have chips, egg and beans?), but it’s not just the recipe names that leave me flummoxed; the actual recipes themselves do too. Most of them are written in English but it’s not exactly an English I recognise – it’s a bit like the Chaucer we did at school where you can have a good guess at some words but definitely need a dictionary (or Margaret) for big chunks of the rest of it. For example, there are a few nice easy verbs (chop, melt, pour), but lots of others (coddle, bard, ream) that you really need to be Mrs Beaton to make any sense of. And then there’s all the French, flamboyantly scattered around everywhere. Some of it I recognise (pomme, pêche, petit pois), but a lot of it is beyond me (I would have no idea what to do with a bouillon or velouté let alone how to buleter flour or mortifer a rabbit).
And then I see a recipe that catches my eye. Tomate tout-en-un. Well, it’s not exactly the recipe that catches my eye but what my mother has written next to it in big capital letters: S.E.S. And underneath ‘Super Easy Supper!’ (another small piece of my mother’s jigsaw drops into place: a love of acronyms and exclamation marks).
That’s more like it. I’m all for anything that’s super easy. I scan through the recipe and am very pleased to see that it’s not entirely gobbledegook. Basically, it looks like you fry an onion and some garlic in olive oil (I’m not sure about this – everyone knows that you fry with lard and put olive oil in your ears). Then you empty a tin of tomatoes into the pan plus some spinach leaves and simmer for ten minutes. When it’s almost done drop two eggs into it all and let them poach. Then sprinkle on some cheese (‘any will do’) and stick it under a grill until the cheese is brown. Serve with ‘a baguette’ (a type of pointy French bread that featured quite heavily in our textbooks at school – the French always seem to be buying them or eating them or losing them).
My stomach lets out a rumble, so I tear off a piece of Mrs Scott-Pym’s still-warm malt loaf and tuck in. At the bottom of the page, my mother, in her beautiful looping writing, has written ‘from Daphne, 1936, Deauville’ and drawn a little doodle of a woman wearing a very stylish hat. I have no idea who Daphne was but I’m sure I’d like her.
I put the book down and tear off another piece of malt loaf. Lying on the grassy bank with my feet in the stream and my head in Deauville (wherever that is), I feel I may have just glimpsed a new world. A new Future.
FIVE
Friday 13 July 1962
‘Can you put your foot down, Arthur, love? I’m almost dropping anchor back here.’
That’s Mrs Swithenbank. Her imminent bowel movement has been the main topic of conversation for the past five minutes. She started having problems as we drove through Scalby and we’ve had a running commentary ever since.
I am crammed in the back of Arthur’s Land Rover between Mrs Swithenbank and Vera. I don’t know what’s worse: the sharp protrusions of Vera’s skeletal body or the jelly-like folds of Mrs Swithenbank and her spreading flesh. Arthur and Christine sit regally up front, immune to our discomfort and a safe distance from the threat of Mrs Swithenbank’s tummy troubles.
‘Ooooh, come on. Get a move on,’ says Mrs Swithenbank.
Christine spins round. She doesn’t look happy. Mrs Swithenbank’s bowels are spoiling her plans. We are on our way to the Royal Hotel in Beverley for dinner, or luncheon as the hotel insists on calling it. Apparently we’re having a slap-up meal to celebrate some good news. Christine, wanting to share the good news with as many people as could be crammed in the Land Rover, invited Mrs Swithenbank along, but she’s clearly regretting it now.
‘Leave Arthur alone, Doris,’ she snaps. ‘He’s doing a great job. Could you just try and have a little more . . .’ Christine pauses, obviously searching for the right word . . . ‘decorum, please?’
‘Decorum!’ says Mrs Swithenbank. ‘You try having decorum when you’ve got the Bombay bloody trots.’
Vera leans forward and, stretching out straight across me like a bony accident waiting to happen, grabs Mrs Swithenbank’s hand. ‘Try to keep your mind off it, Doris,’ she says. ‘Think of something else. Look at the view,’ and she points out of the window.
The view i
s hardly distracting. We are bang smack in the middle of farming country and the view consists of field after very flat field of cauliflowers.
‘Keep my mind off it!’ exclaims Mrs Swithenbank. ‘Vera, King Kong couldn’t keep my mind off it at the moment,’ she goes on, holding her belly with one hand and the car door with the other. A menacing gurgle reverberates around the back of the car. ‘Oh, it’s no good. We’re going to have to pull over.’
‘Almost there, Doris,’ says Arthur, glancing nervously in the driver’s mirror. In the reflection, I can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. It’s a very sunny day, the type of day that would normally be classed as glorious. It doesn’t feel particularly glorious at the moment, though. The Land Rover is boiling, more cooker than car. Christine has banned the opening of any windows because she doesn’t want to have her hair blown around and arrive at the Royal Hotel looking as if she’s been ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’. Arthur wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Just another couple of minutes to go. Hold on.’
‘Just think how nice the toilets will be at the hotel,’ says Christine, more to Vera than Mrs Swithenbank. ‘I bet they’re proper posh.’
‘Oh yes, I bet they’re lovely,’ replies Vera. ‘I wonder if they have their own towels, you know, with a nice motif on. Do you think I could get one in my bag?’
‘Never mind the bleeding towels,’ shouts Mrs Swithenbank. ‘Can we just stop beggaring around and get to the hotel. Ooooh.’
‘Let’s sing something to keep your mind off it, Doris,’ says Vera (rather optimistically to my mind).
‘Do I look like I’m in the Sally bloody Army, Vera?’ says Mrs Swithenbank, now clutching her belly with both hands.
‘Come on. It’ll distract you. What about, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”?’
Mrs Swithenbank gives Vera a Look that Christine would be proud of. ‘What about Arthur putting his foot down and getting us to the bloody hotel?’
‘Arthur’s doing his best, Doris,’ snaps Christine, fixing her eyes on the road and decidedly not looking back. ‘For goodness sake. It’s not all about you, you know.’
This is rich coming from Christine.
‘Just another minute and we’ll be there, Doris,’ shouts Arthur in a forced happy voice.
Vera, though, is not going to be beaten by Mrs Swithenbank’s dicky tum. If Vera has decided that a sing-along will help, then a sing-along we shall have.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,’ starts Vera, waving her arms in front of her as if conducting the Hallé Orchestra.
‘Britons never never never shall be slaves,’ the rest of the car joins in. Perhaps it’s all a bad hallucination brought on by the multi-coloured pills the doctor gave me.
Unfortunately, it very soon becomes clear that:
1. It isn’t a hallucination.
2. Nobody knows any of the verses of ‘Rule Britannia’, only the chorus.
We are stuck, then, repeating the same words over and over again.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never never never shall be slaves.
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never never never shall be slaves.’
(This must be what hell feels like).
Everyone, except Mrs Swithenbank, is looking quite jolly and Vera even starts clapping. I decide on the path of least resistance and join in. I hope Adam Faith never finds out about this.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never never never shall be slaves.’
Mrs Swithenbank is half singing, half moaning. I can feel her flesh shaking as she fights to keep control. Sitting next to her is like being forced to sit next to a geyser and hoping it doesn’t erupt.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never never never shall be slaves.’
We turn a corner and see a sign for the Royal Hotel. It feels like a religious vision.
‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never never never shall be slaves.’
Arthur (still using his forced happy voice) tells Mrs Swithenbank that we’ll be at the hotel in two ticks. This might be one tick too many. A deep rumbling bass, like someone playing the very low notes on a contrabassoon, emerges from Mrs Swithenbank and so begins the most extended bout of wind that I have ever heard. We all start singing more loudly, looking out the windows and pretending we can’t hear. Mrs Swithenbank’s wind stretches continuously across two and half choruses of Rule Britannia. It is very impressive.
The car finally turns into the driveway of the Royal Hotel, sending the gravel scattering as Arthur speeds to get to the parking area. Mrs Swithenbank has gone very pale.
Arthur starts to pull up in front of the hotel’s main entrance but before the car has come to a complete stop, Mrs Swithenbank shoots out the door, her huge frame going this way and that like a load of barrels falling off a moving lorry. It is the fastest I have ever seen her move. ‘See you inside,’ she shouts, looking straight ahead as she charges up the stairs and into the hotel.
Finally, we have silence. I feel like I need an ear transplant.
‘Well,’ says Christine. ‘Some people.’ She shakes her head and tuts.
‘Poor Doris,’ says Vera. ‘She’s always had a very sensitive tum.’
Arthur looks through the driving mirror, smiles, and asks me if I’m all right. I nod. I have survived Mrs Swithenbank’s Delhi belly relatively unscathed. He winks at me and then turns to Christine and Vera.
‘Well, ladies. Welcome to the Royal Hotel. Are you ready to dine in style?’
Vera giggles coquettishly (the stuff of nightmares) but Christine already has the car door open. ‘Come on, let’s get in,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And she swings her legs out of the car and onto the gravel. ‘I’m starving.’
*
The Royal Hotel Beverley feels a considerable number of steps up from the Selby Berni Inn, Arthur’s usual venue of choice when he wants to push the boat out a bit. From the driveway, an imposing portico (complete with stone lions) guides you up to a large double door, each side of which is tastefully dressed with imposing brass embellishments (noun – something intended to add beauty or interest). The doors open up onto an enormous marble-floored entrance lobby. There is not a fake Tudor beam or maroon paisley carpet in site. It all feels more Castle Howard than Berni Inn. Flanking the entrance doors are two of the most extravagant arrangements of flowers I have ever seen, taller than me and wider than Mrs Swithenbank. Down one side of the room stands a swanky reception desk (more flowers) manned by an extremely well-tailored lady with grey hair, and down the other is a huge fireplace and a very impressive assemblage of chairs. In the centre of the lobby, a staircase rises up and then twists round to the left and the right (just in case you don’t know which way to go). The lobby even smells expensive. Does Arthur really know what he’s doing bringing us here?
We are doing our best to live up to the surroundings. We had very clear orders from Christine to get dressed up for the occasion. Arthur is in a navy blue suit and looks surprisingly handsome. I’m used to seeing him in a shirt and tie (usually with a pullover, like every other farmer in Yorkshire), but it is strange seeing him out of his brown chords and brogues. I didn’t realise he scrubbed up so well. Christine, Vera and Mrs Swithenbank, meanwhile, with their array of matching accessories, look like they’ve just stepped out of a clothes catalogue. Shoes, hats and gloves are all colour-coded to the exact shade, as if they’d been dipped in a big vat of the same dye. Such eye for detail is obviously another important part of being a Woman. (Will the list never end?)
And me? I am a vision in green tulle and red polka dots. I’m wearing a sticky-out dress that Arthur got me last year. This is only the second time I’ve worn the dress. The first time was at Margaret’s New Year’s Eve party and I felt like a Hollywood star. Now, though, seven long months later,
I have a feeling that the dress makes me look like a Christmas tree.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ says the extremely well-tailored lady with grey hair on reception. She has the welcoming demeanour of Mrs Danvers.
‘Yes, we’ve got a table booked for lunch. It’s Mr Epworth,’ says Arthur. ‘We’re a little early, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s quite all right, sir,’ she replies, sounding like she’s speaking to the butcher’s boy. ‘The table is ready for you. Would you like to come through to the dining room, Mr Epworth, mesdames?’ Christine almost purrs with pleasure at being referred to in French but I can see that it has put Vera on her guard.
‘Well,’ says Arthur, glancing round, ‘we’re just waiting for someone actually. I’m sure she won’t be long.’
‘Oh, would that be that the lady who came in just before you, sir?’ Her tone suggests that Mrs Swithenbank made quite an entrance.
‘Yes,’ says Arthur, looking rather sheepish, ‘that’s right.’
There’s an awkward silence.
She looks down at her desk and then back up at Arthur.
We all smile nicely at each other.
Mid smiles, Mrs Swithenbank comes walking back into the room, moving considerably more slowly than the last time I saw her. ‘Ay, Vera,’ she shouts over the polished marble, ‘you should see the lavs. They’re lovely.’
The extremely well-tailored lady with grey hair holds out her hand in the direction of what must be the dining room. ‘Shall we proceed to the table now, sir?’ she asks Arthur, and we all traipse off in her wake, already slightly deflated.
*
If anything, the dining room is even more impressive than the hotel entrance. Tables are spread out at a discreet distance from each other, like highly starched little islands on a parquet sea, and each table has a king-sized flower arrangement holding court in the middle. A wall of French windows leads out onto a pebbled terrace and beyond that lies a lawn any cricket team would be proud of. We walk past a large photograph of the Queen (thankfully this doesn’t lead to more ‘Rule Britannia’) and then past a long table loaded with assorted silver banquet dishes and tureens. The smell is incredible, a mix of flowers, meat, lemons and money.
The Miseducation of Evie Epworth Page 5