The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

  During the last air raid, Nell had sat awake on the uncomfortable floor imagining herself on one of the Stricklands’ soft new beds that had been carried down at the beginning of the war. Apparently, they deemed it “too uncivilized, like dogs” to sleep on the floor.

  Yet it’s all right for us servants!

  As she fiercely shoved the vegetables around the pan, the bitterness of the burning garlic filled the kitchen in a harsh, hot swirl.

  “It’s all pointless.” She flustered, suddenly exasperated. “They think we’re nothing more than animals.”

  Mrs. Quince trotted over briskly, hands waving in the air. “Nell! You’re ruining it!” She took the spoon away from her, patting her aside. “Go and sit down. Did you sleep the wrong-way-round last night?”

  Plonking herself down on the window seat, Nell gazed out at the fresh green valley. Beyond, in the morning mist, lay London. “There has to be more to life than this.” She sighed. “Everyone’s talking about the new opportunities for us women with the war. No one cares where you came from anymore, or even if you were born on the wrong side of the blanket, like me. Women are getting real jobs, living free, meeting young men, marrying…” Her voice was becoming softer, more forlorn.

  Mrs. Quince looked over to her. “Don’t listen to all those stories, dear. I’m sure they don’t all have happy endings. In any case, you’re far too shy to put yourself forward like that. It’s best that you stick to cooking. You know what I always say, there’s nothing like a good day’s work to get over the glums. Now, you’re a first-class cook, and in another year or two you’ll have half the county aristocrats at your feet.”

  Nell made a small laugh. “Wanting to employ me, not marry me.”

  But how could she explain? Mrs. Quince had never been married herself, her title simply following the convention for senior staff to be known as “Mrs.” regardless that most of them remained single, wedded to their work whether they liked it or not. Nell sometimes wondered if Mrs. Quince had ever had that yearning for another person’s arms around her, a home of her own. A little hand in hers.

  Mrs. Quince was sipping the stock. “Taste this, Nell.” She beckoned her over. “Your sadness, my dear child—you’ve let it affect your cooking. All that upset inside you, it can’t be good. You have to try to be content, not to let those thoughts in.”

  Blood rushed to her face. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, tears in her eyes. “I-I can do it again.”

  Mrs. Quince smiled and shook her head. “You don’t need to do that, dear. We’ll add a few things to balance it out. But how are we going to sort you out, eh? I won’t be here forever, you know. We need to train you up so that you can stand on your own two feet.”

  Nell eyed her anxiously. She wanted things to change, but not like this—not without Mrs. Quince. Her gnawing fear of the outside world, the way she stumbled over her words every time she was scared. How would she ever get over it?

  With a troubled brow, she glanced wistfully back out of the window. Tomorrow was going to be just like today: more meals, more cleaning, more obedience.

  She swallowed hard.

  There has to be more to life than this.

  Miss Zelda Dupont

  The Kitchen at the Fenley Pie Factory

  “The Cordon Bleu school teaches a refined form of French cooking, Doris. Not a good stir of everything in sight.” Zelda Dupont pulled the edges of her lips down with revulsion as she handed the oversized wooden spoon to her young assistant.

  “But that’s what we’ve always done, Miss Dupont.” The girl took the spoon and churned the soup vigorously. “I don’t know nothing about this cordon-blueuch stuff you’re talking about. The women in the factory, well, they don’t want none of that foreign nonsense. They like their pies and stews, like we’ve always done here.”

  Zelda Dupont, head chef of the staff canteen at the Fenley Pie Factory, raised one penciled eyebrow into a dramatic point. She watched the assistant evenly with narrowing green eyes, which were surrounded by mascaraed eyelashes and green eyeshadow. Her rich blond curls—dyed by the best hairdresser in Middleton—lay flattened under a regulation headscarf. Her full lips, painted a shade of red just a touch too bright for a woman of thirty-two, drew together into a reproving pout.

  How she loathed being here.

  She didn’t belong in the country with these simpletons. She had been the deputy head chef of London’s prestigious Dartington Hotel, no less. It was a position she’d only just attained after years of struggling against the hoteliers’ bias toward male chefs. The job had come to abrupt end when four hundred pounds of Nazi cordite smashed through the Dartington’s lobby, rendering the hotel a demolition site. Chefs were on the list of reserved occupations, exempt from having to do war work, but without a job, she was forced to go to the local conscription office. The woman there had chivvied Zelda into taking the job at the army pie factory, and she, reluctantly, had taken it.

  But now she was stuck in a khaki-camouflaged factory, cooking for workers who were only interested in sausages so full of bread that they’d been renamed “bangers,” spitting and even exploding when cooked. They caused wind problems, too, giving “banger” an extra meaning. If those weren’t bad enough, the government was insisting canteens take on board other cheap forms of protein, like salt cod, which was salted on board the large fishing ships to preserve it. To Zelda, it was just plain disgusting, the texture tough and the flavor hidden by the saltiness, even after prolific soaking. Today she was trying to mask it with a curry sauce—another Ministry of Food favorite.

  She couldn’t wait to be away from here, back to a real chef’s job. Every day felt as if a small, sharp paring knife were being inched into her stomach, silently and slowly killing her from the inside.

  But that, unfortunately, wasn’t the only thing inside her.

  She was pregnant.

  Ridiculous as it was for a woman of her age and ambition to allow such a mishap, that was the truth of the matter.

  In some respects, the hotel’s bombing and her new location in the countryside had made her situation easier. As she became larger, her pregnancy would be more difficult to hide—but at least her London reputation would be spared. Her new shape was currently being held in check by a corset, although she had begun to wear it loosely. No, no one need know about the baby. She’d quietly let nature take its course, have it adopted, and then move back to London, ready to take a London restaurant by storm.

  The only thing she needed now was new lodging. Her godly gray-haired landlady in Middleton had noticed the pregnancy and was being increasingly uncivil about it. Names for her and the unborn child seemed to pour irrepressibly from the old woman’s lips, as well as mounting demands for cleaning, scrubbing, and bible reading to make up for her fall from grace.

  Zelda had begun pestering the Middleton billeting officer daily to find a new place—now utilizing her pregnancy to get an urgent evacuee spot. They’d have to find a bed for her somewhere, and the sooner the better.

  Far from having the professional air of a proper restaurant, the factory kitchen was chaos, the untrained staff chattering and dallying. One of the worst culprits, Doris could be seen randomly throwing in herbs, not realizing the bottom of the pan was burning. Zelda grabbed the spoon from her and began to stir vigorously.

  “Cooking is like life,” she said, trying to recall the spirit of her top London restaurant. “You need to feel your way through, on guard at any moment to heighten the pleasure—make its memory last.”

  “On guard for what?” Doris pulled one side of her lip up uncouthly.

  “Your tongue must be forever imagining a wealth of flavors, as if they’re passing through your mouth for you to select. Ingredients must be at the top of your head, a memory bank of mixtures, blended spices, and flavors exploding with power.”

  The girl let out a callous giggle. “Well,
this salt cod curry is certainly exploding today! And not in a good way!”

  Zelda grimaced. She couldn’t believe what her life had become, cooking for the likes of these women, with their vulgar ways and distinctly lower-class accents.

  Unlike hers. She’d trained every day to remove the South London cockney from her voice, to pronounce the Ts, as in “little” and “misfit,” and to shorten her vowels, say “ectually” instead of “actually.” She even added a hint of a French accent—it went along nicely with a story she put around that her mother was French.

  “From Dieppe, you understand,” she’d add with a little smile. “She taught me everything I know about French cuisine.”

  And her real mother? Well, the only thing she had taught Zelda was how to get on with life by herself, by hook or by crook.

  And that’s precisely what she’d done.

  No one needed to know she was really Mary Doon from Deptford.

  Doris yelped. “I’ll redo it right now, Miss Dupont! Hold yer horses!”

  “It had better be good,” Zelda snarled.

  The kitchen, which was not unlike a factory itself, was to feed 250 workers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. Most of the unskilled women worked ten or twelve hours, some overnight, the silent, round-faced clock on the wall marching the minutes till the end of each shift.

  The machinery never stopped.

  The kitchen never stopped.

  The war never stopped.

  As she stalked around the staff, debating who to deride next, Doris came up beside her. “The manager wants to see you in his office. Important.”

  By the manager, she meant Mr. Forbes, and by his office, she meant a sparse room on the second floor of an administration building alongside the factory.

  Zelda took off her apron and reached for her jacket and hat. She always felt herself straighten up with confidence when she had a good hat on her head, especially an expensive one like the maroon felt one she had bought at a sale in Selfridges. Positioned correctly, the wide rim just above the eye, it could add a real sense of class to a woman.

  It showed that Zelda was a force to be reckoned with.

  She walked smartly up the stairs and into the corridor outside the manager’s office. Voices were coming from inside, and she paused, listening.

  “It’s not for you to decide, Forbes.” A man’s deep baritone boomed at the manager. She recognized it instantly as belonging to Sir Strickland, the factory owner. His weekly visits were renowned for the levels of shouting involved.

  “But, Sir—” Mr. Forbes could be heard begging. “It was simply a short-term measure. The women like the music while they work.”

  “This is a factory, man, not a village dance! Sort it out before next week, or you’ll have to find a new job yourself.”

  With that, the door was flung open, and Sir Strickland came stalking out, glancing up and down at Zelda, focusing on her hat.

  “Do you call that a work uniform?” he raged at her; then, drawing a deep, angry snarl, he strode to the stairs.

  Mr. Forbes scurried out after him and then, spotting Zelda, put on a wavering smile, smoothing down his hair. Since Zelda joined the factory last month, it had been obvious to all that the manager had succumbed to her obvious female charms.

  “Miss Dupont!” he said, sounding more like a needy child than the upper-class twit that he was. Forbes wasn’t a natural worker, but he had to do something for the war effort, unwilling as he was to involve himself with any of that dangerous business on the front line. His wealthy father had got in touch with an old chum, Sir Strickland, to place him somewhere suitable. That’s how it worked in these circles. You scratch my back (employ my otherwise unemployable son, thus keeping him off the front line), and I’ll scratch yours (ensure that the military takes your food contracts).

  Zelda strode past him into his office. Forbes may be a toff, but he was also a wimp, and she was far too clever to let perceived advantage dictate the course of any meeting.

  “How can I help you?” he began nervously.

  “I believe it was you who wanted to see me,” she replied with a careful pause for him to contemplate his oversight.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” He blanched, putting his spectacles back on and returning to his place behind the great desk. “Do take a seat.”

  Zelda went to sit down opposite him, scooping up a local newspaper that had been left on the chair by Sir Strickland. Forbes was looking through the scattering of papers on his desk, trying to remember why she was there, so she glanced down at the newspaper.

  Since the war began, the press had been obsessed with frippery—today it was all about a choir competition in Middleton. They were trying to make up for the dismal progress of the war, a lot of which couldn’t be printed because it was simply too depressing, and the Ministry of Information had banned it anyway.

  The Middleton Echo was folded over to one of the inside pages, a small cross in pen beside a lower column.

  Fenley dignitary, Lady Gwendoline Strickland, talks about her duty as a home economist, helping housewives across the nation.

  There was a photograph of Lady Gwendoline, Sir Strickland’s wife, looking especially haughty. It was no use, the woman looked like a horse. She was smiling politely, as if meeting the king, her fingers lightly touching the pearls at her smooth, pale throat.

  “I hope to help housewives everywhere tackle the difficult problem of putting healthy, appetizing food on the table in these times of rationing,” she said.

  Healthy food, how dull! If it were me, I’d be conjuring up tricks that would make every dinner an experience.

  Everyone at the factory knew about the boss’s wife. Only a few days ago, Zelda had been to watch Lady Gwendoline in a wartime cooking demonstration in Fenley Village Hall, where her Woolton pie had been spectacularly bland, wanting of color, texture, and taste. She could tell in an instant that Lady Gwendoline embodied everything that Zelda loathed: a distaste for indulgence, a disastrously dull personal style, and a mistaken sense of self-importance. That kind of woman was always stealing the show in the press.

  Lady Gwendoline’s new goal is to win the BBC’s Kitchen Front Cooking Contest, which is to be held in the coming months, open only to trained and professional cooks. The winner will be named Ambrose Hart’s co-presenter on The Kitchen Front.

  Zelda’s eyes opened wide. Could this be true? Had Lady Gwendoline unintentionally provided her, Zelda Dupont, with a gateway to better things?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Forbes, who was passing a sheet of typed paper over the desk to her. “Oh, yes, Miss Dupont. I have this for you.” He uttered a small cough to cover his embarrassment. “I’m afraid we have refused your request for a higher salary.”

  Zelda remained calm, her hands firmly on her lap, leaving him holding the paper in midair. His long-fingered hand began to shake, so he decided to put the letter down in front of her.

  “What on earth can you mean?” she asked.

  “We don’t think your, er, style of food merits a raise.” He smiled weakly.

  “What are you saying about my food, Mr. Forbes?”

  “Well, I’ve been told that the workers aren’t used to such dishes as”—he looked down at the sheet of paper—“Boeuf bourguignon and penne al dente. And what, in heaven’s name, is ‘quitch’?”

  She leaned forward across the desk, daintily snapped the paper up, and read it. “Quiche,” she uttered elegantly. “It’s an everyday French dish perfect for today’s rations, although we did have to use dried egg powder and more vegetables than I would have liked.”

  “Well, it appears that our staff prefer the usual British food. You know, pies and rissoles, that kind of thing.”

  Zelda handed back the paper, as if it were totally unacceptable. From skimming the contents, it appeared that
the entire kitchen staff had complained about her bossiness and the fact that she blamed everyone else for her own mistakes. Fuming, she silently vowed to get even, but said calmly, “I’ll agree to provide British food, if you raise my pay.”

  The man dithered. “I’m afraid you misunderstand—”

  “And I’m afraid that if you don’t agree to my very reasonable offer, then I could make things terribly difficult for you.”

  He fidgeted uncomfortably. “Oh, well, I’m not sure if—”

  She got up, adjusting her hat as if it had already been agreed. “You wouldn’t want me to alert the newspapers to the fact that some of the women had to take time off after contracting food poisoning here last month?”

  “No, no, absolutely not,” the man said, fluttering the papers on his desk with fear. “But a raise?”

  “Absolutely. I want an extra two shillings a week.” She proffered a hand to shake his.

  He frowned. “But?”

  “You wouldn’t want to lose your job, would you? They might have found a place for you in the army by now. I’ve heard they’re desperate for new cannon fodder in North Africa, and—”

  “All right,” he said, nervously picking up a pen to make a note. “I’ll organize it.”

  She folded the newspaper in her hand. “I’ll wait for the check in your secretary’s office.”

  And with a sharp thwack of the folded newspaper into her open palm, she began to formulate her next plan: to find out more about this Kitchen Front Cooking Contest.