A Christmas or two ago at luncheon, with the table stretching from end to end of the big dining-room Phyllis had secured the coveted place by his side; a pink sugar-coated sweet was being handed round bearing the words ‘Bonne Année’ in white letters. He had said to her, “Look! that’s Boney Annie,” and she had chuckled with delight, particularly because at that time she was not too sure what ‘Bonne Année’ meant when she saw it written; and after it had been some way round the table he had said, “Annie looks more boney than ever now.”
There came a sudden burst of laughter from the group round the fire. One of the new arrivals, a young man named Clive in his second year at Oxford, was the cause of it. With cries of “Come on now, hand it over,” Piers and Harry flung themselves upon him. There was a short scuffle and the thing in question was snatched from his breast-pocket. Triumphantly, Piers held it aloft for all to see—a glossy picture-postcard bearing the head of Miss Gabrielle Ray. But smiling and unperturbed Clive, an unusual young man, clearly enjoyed being the cynosure of all eyes, even though the laughter was more at than with him. Adroitly deflecting attention from the picture-postcard, he launched into an account of the latest romance of stage and society, one so fresh and new that the press gossip-writers had not yet got their teeth into it. A man at his college, the eldest son of a peer, had just engaged himself to one of the Gaiety girls. He had all the details, the girl’s name and the reported family reaction to it. They were making a virtue of necessity. “Oh, how furious his mother must be! I know who she wanted him to marry—— What’s she like?” the deeply interested Lettice questioned eagerly. But here Clive failed badly. He had to admit that he had not even seen, much less met, the girl. Anyhow at this point he was robbed of his audience.
The door opened once more and this time it was Truelove coming to announce to Lady Vayne that the men were ready and waiting downstairs. This was the signal for the ritual which took place at Vyne every Christmas Eve, and instantly Lady Vayne rose, beckoned her children and, followed by those members of the house party who wished to attend, left the saloon.
They paused at the door of the library to collect Sir Thomas, who was there talking to Mr. Blunt and Lord Belgrave, a political friend who had just arrived; and thus augmented, the party descended to the hall level, filed through a door at the head of the pantry stairs and down them to the kitchen. This was situated in the south-east corner of the cloisters where the pavement took a gradual downward slope and the fourth wall of the courtyard became a vaulted passage connecting the kitchen with the servants’ hall. Off this again ran another subterranean passage with brushing rooms opening off it, where Withers and the footmen did the valeting and cleaned the boots. Still beyond, running at right angles to it, was the cavernous tunnel leading to the brew house and wine cellars and the steep flight of steps which at last emerged into the light of day, nearly two hundred yards from the centre of the house. No one knew how old these passages were; some said they dated from Edward VI or even earlier and that still further under the hillside ran another tunnel which emerged at last at the old square tower known as the Cage. Within living memory coal had been dug from these caverns until it became unsafe to continue doing so. Now the family used the tunnel on wet days to get to the stables, where Sir Thomas had converted some of the loose boxes into a squash-racquet court.
To-night a double row of waiting figures stood facing each other in the vaulted passage between the kitchen and the servants’ hall, extending down its entire length.
In the kitchen there was a scene of orderly bustle, Pérez and his maids passing to and fro across the stone-flagged floor preparing dinner, chopping, stirring, mixing, pounding, without heeding the influx from above stairs. Cotton, the bailiff, and Mottram, the shepherd, in one of Pérez’s white aprons, were waiting, and Lady Vayne took her place at a small table, her family ranging themselves behind her. Along the shelves of the huge dresser in front of the rows of gleaming copper, innumerable joints of raw beef, each bearing a label, were laid out. Truelove by the door held a list in his hand from which, just as he did at the Christmas tree party, he proceeded to read out names. Then, one after another, each man employed on the estate entered, advanced to the table and spread out a huge cotton handkerchief, the shepherd dumped a joint of beef upon it and Lady Vayne, gathering up the corners, just, but only just, succeeded in knotting them over the joint. Having done this, she wished the recipient a happy Christmas and received his good wishes in return. The business took about an hour.
They came in strict order of precedence. The coachman, the head gardener, the clerk of the works, the head keeper: this last a very striking figure.
He came in rather slowly on his rheumaticky old legs, a bearded giant in a green tail coat and corduroy breeches and gaiters, the garb of the Vyne gamekeepers. Jesse Ardern was one of the old guard, just due to retire on a pension, but for all that poachers still kept clear of his preserves. Nevertheless, despite his vigilance and the formidable size of all the keepers, outlying coverts suffered from the periodic maraudings of gangs of poachers. Coming from quite far afield, they took a steady toll of pheasants, black-cock, rabbits and any other available game throughout the year. Many were the hampers despatched by rail to London which found their way to the West End poulterers, who had come to regard these consignments as a valuable source of supply.
Jesse was ‘no scholar,’ in other words could neither read nor write, and therefore had some difficulty in counting the heads of game at a shoot, but a prodigious memory and powers of observation (there was little that escaped his notice) served him instead. His only drawback was extreme taciturnity. When Lady Vayne visited Mrs. Ardern, as she did periodically the wives of all the employees, Jesse would sometimes put in an appearance, but as Mrs. Ardern was as sparing of words as himself, Lady Vayne had either to sit with them in silence or conduct a monologue.
When Richard was born, Sir Thomas’s sister, meeting Jesse near the kennels, had stopped to comment on the joyful event.
“Well, Jesse, this is splendid news, isn’t it?”
“Ah.”
“We’ve wanted this for a long time, haven’t we?”
“Ah.”
“It’s a fine baby, too.”
“Ah.”
“And the little girl, Miss Lettice, is growing fast.”
“Aye.”
At this point she gave up.
Victor Emanuel Sidebottom, another gamekeeper, also of huge stature, followed his chief.
Three families, the Arderns, the Gaskells and the Sidebottoms, might be said to form the aristocracy of the Vyne employees, for though many of them held subordinate posts, all had the distinction of having lived and served at Vyne for many generations. The Sidebottoms, including several variations on the name, amounted almost to a clan. Sidebottoms, Ramsbottoms, Rowbottoms, Shuffle-bottoms were to be found in almost every department of the estate. Victor Emanuel’s son, Albert Edward, was one of the younger gamekeepers, and his son, Albert the second, was the kennel boy. A cousin was the blacksmith, another worked on the farm, and another, a distant connection, was employed in the house as odd-man, where amongst his other duties he brewed the beer and cured the hams, but he by decree of Truelove, possibly for brevity’s sake, was known as ‘Shuffle.’ It was the rule of the house that every chance comer, every tradesman, messenger or casual visitor must always be given a drink of this home-brewed beer, one glass of which Mr. Blunt declared was strong enough to put one to sleep for the afternoon.
There were red deer on the moors behind the house and sometimes in the early autumn someone would be sent out to try to kill a stag, Victor Emanuel Sidebottom acting as stalker. But even the best shots were often unsuccessful. When Victor Emanuel moved it was like a small landslide, and too often the marksman crawling behind his mammoth guide was unable to get within range. But the red deer were not confined to the moors. In the hills and valleys of the park, at the edges of the drives, sometimes almost up to the railings of the forecourt, great an
tlered stags with their numerous wives and families roamed and grazed. In October the sound of their roaring filled the park, and to meet a solitary stag just routed in combat over hinds and fawns was not a pleasant experience. Jock Whittle, a small man with very bowed legs, who walked like a ship in a gale, was said to have spent the whole of one autumn night in a small railed enclosure surrounding a young tree, an angry stag mounting guard over him. He worked on the farm and lived with his wife and son in a tall old house on the edge of the moors. It looked large from the outside but contained only two rooms, one above the other, with the remains of very old mural decoration and a hooded chimney-piece in one. This building appeared in a seventeenth-century picture of Vyne. So also did the Cage. The origin of this strange building was rather obscure. It was believed to have been built in Tudor times by the Sir Piers Vayne who had so transformed the house, but from its size and solidity must have been something more than a watch-tower—probably a place of detention for law-breakers awaiting trial at the county assize. Turner, the park-keeper, lived in this isolated and exposed place, so isolated and exposed that it was not easy to find anyone willing to do so, especially as in addition all the water had to be drawn from a well halfway down the hill. From the roof of the Cage one could see the surrounding country for miles around; on one side the level plain with here and there a distant factory chimney, on the other the wild hill country on the verge of which Vyne was situated, chequered by the grey, dry-stone walls which in those parts took the place of hedges.
The Cage
On Bank Holidays the Cage was a rallying point for ‘trippers,’ for the park was open to the public and riddled with rights of way. On fine days they swarmed round the old building like bees, and though it was strictly forbidden (for trippers were not to be encouraged) no doubt Turner and his family compensated themselves for their lonely life by providing light refreshment for the visitors.
Vyne was practically self-supporting, for there was almost nothing pertaining to its upkeep which the estate employees could not do. A new entrance lodge had just been built of stone from the Vyne quarries, hewn, shaped and laid by the Vyne masons. The estate carpenters had fashioned the interior woodwork from timber grown, seasoned and sawn on the place, and Vyne painters and plasterers had completed the job. Hawkins, the clerk of the works, was a man of parts who could draw to scale and execute the plans for Lady Vayne’s new rose garden and correct the perspective in Phyllis’s sketches of the house. Jim Bowden, though not exactly a cabinet-maker, was certainly a skilled joiner and could be trusted to repair a Chippendale chair or a settee as well as any London expert. He could upholster too. Should Phyllis break a window whilst bowling yorkers to Piers in his bedroom (it was better than nothing whilst shut up after measles), then Gregory, the plumber and glazier, would come with his diamond-headed cutter and replace the pane. Mace, the electrician, in his great roaring and throbbing engine-room beside the mill-stream, generated the electricity which filled the house with brilliant light as well as supplying power for the laundry so that the maids no longer had to stand scrubbing and mangling the sheets and tablecloths by hand. Gardeners, gamekeepers, stablemen, road-menders, carters, farmworkers, here they all were assembled, each man proficient in his individual job, each a necessary part of the whole.
By the standards of a later generation their working hours were long and their wages low. They lived in cottages with no modern amenities yet came into daily contact with conditions of extreme comfort. They ministered to people whose lives must have appeared to them to be one continuous round of pleasure, whilst their own were lit only by occasional high days and holidays—the Wakes week, the flower show, the Christmas festival and perhaps once or twice in a lifetime the special glory of a coming of age or wedding anniversary. Yet it was more than doubtful if any of them envied their employer or wished him anything but good.
They were about halfway through the beef distribution, and the younger unmarried men were coming in now. Here was dark, sprightly Bob Wood with his flashing eyes and curly hair who worked in the blacksmith’s shop and obviously had gipsy forbears. Bob was the crack batsman in the Vyne eleven and could always be counted upon to knock up some runs against the visiting teams who came on Saturday afternoons throughout the summer to play Vyne. One of these visiting teams with their offensive habit of calling “How’s that?” much too often when Bob and Richard were batting was very unpopular with the younger Vaynes.
After him came Albert Whittle, Jock Whittle’s delicate painter son. He had been very useful to Phyllis on one occasion. She also was supposed to be delicate and the doctor had prescribed raw beef sandwiches with milk at eleven. One morning, with Fräulein out of the way, Phyllis, seizing the plate of nauseous sandwiches, darted to the small bedroom at the foot of the tower which Albert and his mate were repainting and which was near the schoolroom. Opening the door just wide enough to insert her hand bearing the plate, in an assumed voice she invited Albert to eat the sandwiches. Then on the other side of the door she and Hilda listened, stifling their laughter whilst he obligingly did so, apparently with enjoyment.
Unfortunately, it had only been possible to do this once, but mercifully the raw beef sandwiches were now things of the past.
Hilda, who liked helping people, was relieving her mother in the knotting up of the handkerchiefs, Lord Belgrave was talking to Lettice, Mr. Blunt had slipped away via the scullery, and the boys, followed by the two little girls, were roaming about the kitchen.
Apart from its immense size it had some curious and interesting features. Confronting the onlookers as they faced the door and the incoming men was a large pitch-pine erection about twelve feet square and eight feet high, a room within a room, its entrance screened by green baize curtains. This was Pérez’s sanctum where he was wont to rest from his labours, sometimes sitting ruminating in solitary state, sometimes with Truelove occupying the other easy chair. Here Hilda and Phyllis would come in the morning to beg for chocolate, and he would always give them a whole packet of Menier which went so well with the milk and biscuits at eleven. Against one wall of the cubicle stood the pestle and mortar, the pestle reaching almost to the ceiling, the mortar as large as a church font. On the opposite wall hung the large pewter dish covers, handy for the serving hatch where the men servants came to fetch the dishes and carry them up the two flights of stairs to the dining-room. At the opposite end of the kitchen stood the huge range only newly installed, as its predecessor was found to be burning a ton of coal a day. A survival of former times was the large, semicircular, fluted lead sink which obviously had once held live fish before they appeared on the table.
The children could only guess at the various uses for the immense number of copper pans, moulds, salamanders and bains-marie which covered the shelves, and marvel at the great array of cook’s knives carefully graded and laid out on the long tables. It never occurred to any of them to speculate as to the amount of time and trouble entailed in keeping all these implements as well as the vast kitchen itself in perfect condition. That it should always look as now, the floor clean and freshly sanded, the tables scrubbed white and the kettles and pans shining like mirrors, they took for granted. Each kitchen maid wore a replica of Pérez’s white cap, a recent innovation which Lady Vayne did not much care for, preferring the more feminine style worn by the housemaids, but the chef had his way. Moody and temperamental, one could never know when his smiles would be replaced by frowns. Sometimes Hilda and Phyllis passing the kitchen windows on their way to feed their rabbits would hear sounds of shrill altercation mingling with Pérez’s rich baritone. If sufficiently interested to stop and peer over the ground glass of the lower panes, Pérez could be seen, a commanding figure in his high cook’s cap, white tunic and apron and scarlet leather top-boots which he always wore when at work. But almost at once, perhaps aware of an audience, when the din to which he was largely contributing was at its height he would let fall a dignified “Assez—assez!” and produce an instantaneous hush. Probably, despit
e his moods and Madame Pérez in the background, a good deal of fun as well as hard work went on in the kitchen.
Poor Pérez, so much of his best work seemed to go unregarded. There were not enough gourmets at Vyne to appreciate him. Though Sir Thomas, despite austerity, very decidedly preferred good cooking to bad, he was just as pleased with a grilled herring as a sole au vin blanc. The timbales de bœuf, the pâtés de lièvre, the truffled galantines, concocted with so much care and sent up with such a desire to please, how often they came down untouched! The boys did their best, but the most artistic efforts were wasted on them, preferring as they did the huge spectacular boar’s head with its pistachio nut tusks which always appeared on the sideboard at Christmas. “Miladi,” he once complained tearfully to Lady Vayne when nothing but cold meat was served at luncheon and she demanded an explanation, “Toute cette belle viande froide! Personne la mangel Il faut bien qu’on la mange!” And of course he was perfectly right.
Pérez and his maids
Piers was questioning Rose, the head kitchen maid, as to what they were having for dinner, and because Piers undoubtedly had ‘a way with him’ she had no objection to replying at length.
“You kids needn’t listen,” he said to Phyllis and Alethea, who were hovering round. “You belong in the schoolroom with Fräulein. Phyllis, I’m seriously considering whether you ought to come down to dinner tomorrow.” His mouth was twitching at the corners and his eyes glinting with mischief for Piers was certainly a born tease and found in Phyllis an ideal subject for his wit. Knowing perfectly where to find the joints in her armour, he would at a well-chosen moment start to bait her, delighting in the furious but rather inarticulate response which he never failed to evoke. Although very good-natured, the idea that he might be overdoing it and causing real distress never seemed to occur to him, and Lady Vayne, who thought Phyllis should learn to take a joke and not mind being laughed at, did nothing to stop him. She was, anyhow, not an impartial judge, as in her eyes her sons could do no wrong. However, to-night, strange to say, even Phyllis perceived Piers’s intention and refused to rise to the fly. Piers could be very amusing in a slightly ribald way. This kind of fooling was rather prevalent at Christmas, Mr. Blunt being a past-master at it. Fräulein sometimes looked down her nose at his jokes and his oft repeated snatch of song: “My sister Ann had a leg like a man.” He also liked teasing Phyllis. Sometimes in London when high hopes of the pantomime had been aroused, he would terrify her with proposals of some other most unwelcome alternative.
A Country House Christmas Page 4