The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

  “I can use the factory kitchen for the contest.”

  Hands on hips, Audrey was trenchant. “It simply won’t do. Look, I’ll show you the room. You can see for yourself what a mess the house is in. I’m quite certain you’ll see my point.”

  She headed up the path to the back of the house and yanked open the back door, not even holding it open for the newcomer as she strode through the cluttered kitchen. The three boys filtered behind, and Zelda sensed their nudging and giggles. The children would be a drudge, but the kitchen looked well stocked, if unspeakably disorganized. Her mind kept flitting back to the pigsty in the corner, pork recipes springing irrepressibly to mind.

  “What a good-sized kitchen,” she said, eyeing the sink piled high with dishes. “All it needs is a little, well, tidying.”

  Audrey spun around. “No one has any time to tidy around here. If you think I’m going to clean up—”

  “No, I only meant that I could help.” Zelda was trying her utmost to be nice. It went against the grain, but she was a dab hand at putting on a good act. She needed that room and was willing to curry favor if necessary.

  Audrey snapped, “I don’t need any help.” It was said sharply, like a slap across the face.

  She hurried on through to the hallway, avoiding the various muddy boots and debris on the floor, and then tramped up the stairs to the bedrooms. A wet towel lay on the floor on the landing, along with an old teddy. Audrey scooped it up, loosened the string that was tight around its neck, and threw it into a bedroom.

  “That’s the bathroom,” Audrey pointed into the bare room with a bath down one side. “It’s freezing cold. But not as damp as the outside toilet.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” Zelda said, thinking that the place could do with a good tidying. Frankly, it was a miracle anyone could find anything.

  “This is the spare room.” Audrey pushed the door open, and the smell of damp almost knocked her out.

  Breathing through her mouth, Zelda pressed on into the room, feigning enthusiasm. It was bare except for an old double bed, the thin horsehair mattress gray and lumpy. A pair of worn beige curtains hung limply from either side of the cobwebbed window, and the strong whiff of must made the place smell like a haunted mansion. A patch of the wall in the far corner bore the large shadow of mold, and a dull green sprout showed that something was trying to grow out of the crumbling old floorboards. Two tin buckets were placed under small leaks in the roof, and a big chipped enamel chamber pot sat right in the middle of the bed below a gaping hole in the ceiling the size of a pudding basin.

  “This is why I told the Fenley billeting officer that we couldn’t have people staying.” Audrey stood, hands on hips, as if the point had been well and truly proven.

  But Zelda put her suitcase down and began brushing some of the cobwebs away from around the window. “All it needs is a bit of a spring clean.”

  Audrey’s eyes hardened, her voice rising to a screech. “It needs far more than a clean. There’s a whopping great hole in the ceiling. The roof is leaking. You can’t possibly stay here.”

  Zelda peered nervously up through the hole. “There must be a way to mend the roof.”

  “All the handymen in the village have left for war. Nobody can mend it, even if I had any money to pay someone,” Audrey continued, adding brusquely, “which I don’t.”

  “I can find someone from Middleton, and I’ll pay for it, too. I just got a pay rise.”

  Audrey handed the suitcase back to Zelda and stormed back to the door. “I’m afraid you can’t possibly stay here. It simply isn’t inhabitable. I’m sorry that you have been misled, but now you’ll have to go back to where you were before.”

  At this thought, Zelda upped her game, staying resolute in the bedroom. “If you’re worried about the baby, you won’t hear a peep.” She decided not to tell her that there wouldn’t be a baby. Zelda somehow knew that the adoption she was planning would not go down well. The woman was one of those family sorts who would force her to marry the child’s father or find a caring relative to bring up the baby, no doubt. These people didn’t have a clue what real life was like.

  “It’s not that,” Audrey replied, angry in spite of herself. “Frankly, I’m enormously busy and haven’t any time to spend on”—she paused, looking Zelda over—“on strangers in our home.” A blush fell over her face, and she looked at the floor, ashamed that she’d had to be so rude.

  “I’ll stay out of your way. You’ll never know I’m here. If you don’t take me, they’ll send me back to my old landlady, and I’d rather sleep in your chicken coop than go back there.”

  Audrey grimaced. “How bad could she be that she’s worse than this?” Her hand gestured the mold, the hole in the ceiling.

  “She treats me like a servant, getting me to scrub and clean. But it isn’t that. It’s the names, the shouting. The things she calls my poor unborn baby!”

  “What kind of names?”

  “I may as well come clean. You’ll find out sooner or later. You see, I’m not married. The baby’s illegitimate.” She took a deep breath. “No respectable household will have me, once they find out.”

  The moment hung in the air. Zelda watched as Audrey’s face panicked at the prospect of making a choice between protecting her home and denying her sense of justice, of helping those in distress.

  Within moments, it became apparent by the hands on the hips, the upright stance of a woman with higher principles, and the way she took back Zelda’s suitcase, that justice had won.

  “How dare she? How dare anyone put you down because—” Audrey waved a hand in the direction of Zelda’s stomach. “Because you’re going to have a baby. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or not.”

  Zelda stared at the floor, letting out a practiced sniff. “People can be so very critical and unfeeling. You’re not like them. I can tell.” She looked up at Audrey, her eyes big, beseeching. “Please don’t tell anyone, will you? I’d lose my job in the factory if they knew I was pregnant.” She didn’t mention that she’d probably lose her place in the cooking contest, too. Since when did the BBC employ unmarried mothers?

  Audrey glanced around at her children, hovering by the door, the younger two scruffy and blond, the older boy tall with glasses. “We won’t tell anyone, will we?”

  A murmur of agreement came from the boys.

  “Please will you let me stay?” Zelda pleaded. “Even if it’s only until they find another place for me?” Zelda knew it would be a while before they could find her another billet, potentially not until after the baby had come and gone, in which case she could simply move back to London and leave this past behind her.

  Audrey took a deep breath, clenching her hands together with fraught indecision. After a moment of silence, she grudgingly, almost angrily said, “Well, I suppose you’d better stay then.”

  “Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Landon. You won’t regret this, I promise.”

  “Oh, call me Audrey,” she said with a sigh.

  Nell

  It was a bright, fresh morning, birds singing their little hearts out, as Nell trod cautiously into the yard at Fenley Farm. She was breathing heavily, having run all the way over the hill, basket on arm. The contest was in two days’ time, and today she was hoping to find a hare.

  Speed was essential. Luncheon and then dinner needed to be prepared and served. She was living on borrowed time even being here.

  But as Nell made her way into the sunny farmyard, she felt a new spring in her step. This competition had given her a new optimism, a hope. She knew she had a good chance. And even if she didn’t win, at least she would prove her worth among the finest cooks in Kent. Maybe someone would offer her a job as head cook. She could escape the Stricklands for good.

  Fenley Farm was part of the Fenley Hall estate. Every day an old farmhand or stable lad would deliver milk, eggs, and meat t
o the kitchen, so she rarely went there herself, only when Sir Strickland wanted something specific at short notice, such as pheasant or goose.

  Today, in the sunshine, the place looked different. A clutter of old farm machinery sat uneasily alongside a sparkling new tractor. The Ministry of Agriculture was giving loans to help farmers buy tractors, especially with the scarcity of young men to bring the harvest home.

  The farm manager had extra help from other sources, too. Nell had heard rumors about it while queuing at the butcher’s the previous week. A group of Italian prisoners of war had been sent to work on the farm, living in an outbuilding. Other farms in the area were taking POWs, too, either Germans or Italians.

  “They’d better keep them guarded properly,” a large, older woman outside the shop had said. “We don’t want those Itals running loose around the village, sabotaging bridges and letting off bombs.”

  The other, shorter one tutted briskly. “No, no, dear. They say the Italians aren’t like that. They’re just boys. None of them wanted to fight in the first place. No, what they want is something quite different.” She sniffed, pulling her blouse closer around her chest, indicating that a stray Italian might have his eye on her.

  The large, older woman looked her up and down and stifled a giggle. “Oh no, Phyllis. I don’t think you’d have anything to worry about.”

  Nell quelled a giggle.

  But now, as she stood looking around the yard, she wondered where they were. What were they like? Did they look the same as English people?

  Her questions were answered sooner than she thought, as three young men came out of the stables, laughing and speaking fast in a foreign language.

  Then they spotted her.

  She stepped back into the shadow of the tractor.

  A short discussion in Italian passed between them, with plenty of hand gesticulations. They seemed to be arguing, but then they would laugh and slap one another playfully. After a few minutes, one of them walked up to her.

  “Hallo,” he said with a wide, friendly smile that revealed white, even teeth. “You are very beautiful!”

  Nell took a step back. No one had ever called her beautiful. She wasn’t. She was plain and skinny, too mousy. She pulled her shirt closed across her chest and neck. These men were enemies of the state.

  The man just stood there grinning, speaking to her in soft Italian that she couldn’t understand. Her back was pinned against the tractor, and she began to panic.

  But then one of the other Italians came over and pulled the taller one away, talking quickly in Italian.

  He stepped forward. “I am sorry for my friend. He is far from home and has not seen a woman in a long time.” He smiled very slightly, but on the whole his manner was apologetic and serious. His eyes glanced up and down, taking in her maid’s uniform. “Why are you here? Shall I get the farm manager?”

  “Y-yes, if you could.”

  The man made a curt bow with his head and went back to the others for a brief conversation in Italian before striding into one of the farm buildings.

  A minute later, Mr. Barlow, the farm manager, came out, gave a perfunctory smile, and smoothed down his tufty gray-brown hair.

  “What can I do for you, Nell?” A tired-looking middle-aged man, he wore a brown suit that looked old and misshapen on his large form. There was a redness about his eyes and complexion, denoting a man who enjoyed his ale.

  Barlow was usually deferential to Fenley Hall staff, so she plunged in, trying to sound normal, a usual order for a special dinner party and not a sneaky ingredient for a cooking contest.

  “I-I need a hare for the k-kitchen.”

  With a hand at his poorly shaven chin, Barlow pondered. “I’ve never had much luck with hares. It’s not that they’re not about—I saw some over in one of the fields by Rosebury Wood the other day—but it’s how to get one that’s the trouble. They’re too fast, you see. One shot, and they’d be off. You need dogs really, but we got rid of ours at the beginning of the war.” He paused, deep in thought. “Although some of these Italians are good at catching game.”

  He called the more serious Italian back over. “Hey you. Morelli, isn’t it? Do you catch hare?”

  “Yes,” he replied. His English seemed good, even though he spoke with a thick accent. “I can catch with my hands.”

  Barlow looked dubious, but muttered, “Can you get one for Nell? I saw some in the meadow by Rosebury Wood. That is the field—” He began spelling it out, but the man put up a hand to stop him.

  “I know where they are.” He looked at Nell. “You want the hare now?”

  Nell glanced from one to the other, nervously. “Yes, if you can.”

  Barlow smoothed his hair, which had already began separating into tufts again. “Go with this Italian,” he told her. “Let me know if he doesn’t get one for you. We have rabbits if need be.” He looked at the Italian severely. “Come straight back.” He glared at the others, annoyed. One of them was rolling a cigarette and another was whistling beneath his breath. “That’s if we get anything done at all with this lot.” He turned to Nell. “Can’t get them to do a ruddy thing. Sometimes I’d rather have had the Germans. At least they work hard.”

  With that, he strode back into the barn, beckoning the Italian POWs to follow him, leaving Nell with the more serious one.

  “It is this way,” he said politely, his hand gesturing to guide her out of the farmyard.

  She nodded and went ahead, relieved that it was this quieter Italian and not the amorous one. That wouldn’t have worked out well at all.

  The sun blazed as she headed up the hill. On either side of the narrow path, wheat fields shone a brilliant gold-green, the heat giving off a hazy fuzz as insects buzzed about, making the most of the summer.

  “It is a beautiful day, yes?” he said, trying to make conversation.

  She hesitated, then said, “Y-yes.”

  “This is a good place to live, with the hills and wood.” He looked around as if genuinely pleased with the countryside.

  “Y-your English is good,” she said quietly. “How come you know it?”

  “My family, we have a restaurant in the Alps, where rich people come to ski. I work as a waiter since I was young, and we have to speak English—German, too.” He walked on. “Are you the cook in the big house up there?” He gestured toward Fenley Hall.

  “No, I’m the kitchen maid, but I do most of the cooking. Did you ever cook at your restaurant?”

  The frown seemed to clear from his face, and a faraway look came into his eyes as he gazed out to the hills, as if he were seeing another horizon, another world. “I did. My grandmother, she teach me everything.” He turned to her, his dark eyes piercing into hers. “It is what I miss, those beautiful flavors of Italy. The tomatoes, the herbs, the red wine…”

  Suddenly he laughed, and she saw a different, younger man, free and busy in his home.

  “Is your home like here, with woods and hills?”

  “A little. Some of the woods are the same, but high on the mountains there are great forests with pine trees. The peaks, they are covered in snow all winter. In the summer, when the sun is out, it is magnificent—like heaven on earth.”

  “You must miss it.”

  “I never wanted to be in a war.” He opened his hands and looked at them. “These hands are for cooking, for serving, not for fighting. I wish I was home, but I prefer to be here than in battle. It was very bad to see what men could do to each other.”

  “I hope the Germans don’t invade here.”

  “I hope not, too.”

  They walked in silence for a moment, and then he asked, “And you? Where do you come from?”

  A familiar flutter of nerves shot through her. She stared at the ground in front of them, unable to speak.

  “Don’t be scared. I won’t ask you if you
don’t want to say,” he said gently.

  She relaxed a little. “I-I don’t really come from anywhere, I suppose.”

  “The beautiful girl who came from nowhere.” He gave her a playful nudge. “You like to cook hare?”

  “I’ve never cooked it before. Don’t tell Barlow, but I’m in a cooking contest. I’m cooking it for my starter.”

  He looked at her, intrigued. “And what is the prize? Money?”

  She laughed. “No, something better. A job on the radio as an expert in wartime cooking. It would get me away from Fenley Hall. The rich people I work for treat me dreadfully.” She hadn’t meant to say this, but it just came tumbling out, all angry and upset like it had been coiled up inside for years.

  He didn’t say anything for a while, and she thought he didn’t understand her properly, but then he said, “I hope you win.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  His eyes lit up, as if remembering another time and place. “Before the war, we have a cooking contest in our family, because me and my sister and brothers are always fighting. Each one says he or she is the best, so my grandmother, she said for her birthday we each had to make our best dish and she would be the judge.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  He laughed. “It was, even though my youngest brother was cheating, adding odd ingredients to other people’s dishes, capers and anchovies and paprika. We didn’t know until the night of the contest, and all the family were there—I have a very big family—and some friends from the village, too.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, my brother won, of course. When my grandmother found out, she kicked him out of the contest and said we all won together. It was very funny, and there was a big feast.” His face beamed with the memory. “My family, we are good at making music, you see, and there is always dancing. My sister and oldest brother, they sing very well. Not the opera, just songs from our area, about life and love.”

  She blushed at the word.