One Pair of Hands

by Monica Dickens

  Today was Nellie’s and Rose’s half-day, and they were discussing what they should do. For my part, when I got time off I used to go and sleep in a hedge somewhere, rejoicing to breathe a little pure air away from the greasy vapours of the kitchen or my smelly bedroom furniture. These two, however, with the energy of town-breds, wanted a whirl of gaiety which was not to be found in sleepy little Birching.

  They generally used to rush off after lunch to catch the Birching bus which stopped at the end of the avenue, and would spend the afternoon strolling round the shops arm in arm and the evening at the small and smelly local cinema. If they couldn’t get their work finished in time to catch the bus they would bicycle madly into the village to gaze into the window of the one general store which sold hardly anything except sweets and matches. Anything to get away from the boredom of rural scenery.

  ‘Mouldy hole this is,’ grumbled Nellie, biting into a huge door-step of bread and butter. ‘Might as well not have a ’alf-day at all. Give me Torquay, that’s more my style. Why, when I was at Torquay –’

  We had all heard enough about Torquay, where Nellie had had her last place, to last us a lifetime – it was one of her pet subjects. Rose cut her short by saying:

  ‘What say we get the bus, Nell? I want to match up some ribbon, and there’s a Clark Gable at the Roxy.’

  ‘It always means coming out before the end to catch the bus back, though. Last time we had to leave before the part where they discover it was all a misunderstanding. I was fed up. Tell you what, I’m fed up with this hole. Don’t think I’ll stay much longer. I’m going to tell that old cow straight out – it’s not good enough I’m going to say.’

  She leaned back, stretching her arms above her head and smiling complacently with the air of one who has made an impressive and startling announcement. Nobody took any notice, however; we all went on chewing as we’d heard all this before, too.

  Nellie really didn’t mean it herself, but she liked to hear herself talk, and she got up soon and went off yawning, to make beds.

  Mildred helped to clear the table. Washing up the kitchen crockery was yet another of poor Polly’s tasks, but when I went to look for her to clamp her to the sink she was nowhere to be found. I hunted everywhere for her, even in the coal cellar, where she always hid if there was a storm getting up or electricity in the air. I eventually discovered her sitting in a sort of coma on a big stone by the side of the back drive that led to the garage and stables.

  ‘Polly! What on earth –?’

  ‘Sh – go away.’ She waved me aside without looking at me, and her fixed gaze became even more rapt as the big black Daimler turned out of the stable yard and swished majestically past us with her hero at the wheel.

  I booted Polly back to the pantry where I left her, scraping egg off plates in an ecstatic trance. I had only time to make my bed in a slapdash way and change the water of my flowers before rushing back to the kitchen in time to be there when Mrs Lewis paid her state visit. It was a field day today for Miss Biggs, and I kept meeting her round corners or on the stairs and it gave her an opportunity to say: ‘More haste less speed,’ or ‘All behind like the cow’s tail,’ each time I flashed by her.

  When I got downstairs there was a strange male in a very dirty pair of grey flannels wandering about the kitchen. I thought at first that it was one of the tradesmen, but then I saw no bicycle clips and realized that it was one of the house party.

  ‘I say,’ he said, putting a handful of toast crusts into his face, ‘could you possibly give me a bit of butter? I’ve practically burned my hand off on the exhaust pipe of my car.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ I said, and he displayed quite a nasty place on the back of his hand. If he wanted butter on it well and good, it was not my place to suggest that he applied to Mrs Lewis who was in charge of a fully equipped medicine chest. She came in as I was holding his hand in mine and dabbing it with the best Unsalted, and was deeply affronted at one of her prerogatives being usurped.

  ‘Hullo, Lulu,’ said my patient, showing dizzy lack of respect, ‘just being treated for burns.’

  ‘You come straight up to my room, Mr Teddy, and have some carron oil on it. Butter indeed! Cook should know better than to risk infection like that. Quite absurd.’

  ‘Oh, but Lulu –’ He was dragged off, protesting, and dripping greasily over Polly’s clean floor. I realized that he must be the eldest grandson. I ought to have known from his broken nose. It had been the subject of much speculation in the servants’ hall. Dawkes had it on good authority that he had come by it in a brawl in an East End brothel. Jim Driver knew for certain that a car smash had caused it, but Nellie was of the opinion that Mrs Lewis had caught him a clout with the largest and heaviest crucifix one day when he tried to make love to her.

  She soon came stalking back to the kitchen and vented her annoyance with me by ordering all the most troublesome dishes she could think of, such as puréed vegetables and consommé. She produced her trump card by saying that I was to make crème brûlée for dinner.

  ‘I presume you know how to make it, Mrs Dixon?’

  ‘Certainly I do, Mrs Lewis.’ I wasn’t going to let on that I had not even the slightest idea what crème brûlée was, and when she had gone I flew to my cookery books and hunted for the simplest description of how to make it. It apparently had to be left for four hours after being made, then coated with caramel and left for another four hours at least before being served. This meant that I would have to start it at once, so I had to abandon my idea of making the weekly batch of plum cakes. My first attempt was a curdled failure, and looked more like scrambled eggs than crème brûlée, so I put it in the dog’s dinner plate and started again. Luckily there was always a huge jug of cream in the larder, sent down each day from the farm, and eggs abounded, so it didn’t matter that yet another unsuccessful attempt found its way into the dog bowl before I got it right. It was now time to start doing things for lunch, and I wanted Polly to come and help me prepare vegetables, but she had disappeared again. I ran her to earth in one of the larders, busily engaged in washing the whole place down and scrubbing the shelves.

  ‘Polly,’ I said sternly, ‘this is a fine time to be doing this sort of thing when I want you in the kitchen.’

  ‘Mrs Lewis said I was to,’ she said, biting her nails and looking at me with scared lunatic eyes.

  I was furious with the housekeeper, but I had to control my wrath before Polly, who was on the verge of a breakdown, so I said:

  ‘Well, never mind, you can leave it now. I’ll make it all right with her. Come along now, Poll dear, and scrape a nice carrot for me. That’s right.’ I jollied her up, and had just got her going quite happily in the kitchen when we both had to knock off work as the rest of the staff came flocking in to the servants’ hall to have their ‘elevenses’.

  It always seemed to me that breakfast was hardly over before everyone wanted to pack more tea and bread and butter inside themselves. It would not have been etiquette for me to absent myself from the gathering, however much I wanted to get on with my cooking, so I had to sit there, fretting at the waste of time. Not that I don’t generally welcome any opportunity to stop work, but under the circumstances it only meant more panic afterwards trying to get things done in time.

  Nellie and Rose were still talking about their plans for the afternoon and were having a rather tedious discussion as to whether Rose should wear her pink silk blouse with or without the coral beads.

  Dawkes had apparently been having a very interesting morning going through the stumps of his employer’s cheque books for the past year.

  ‘That old devil’s up to something,’ he said. ‘Two hundred pounds to the Central Fur Stores. Lady W— never saw a hair of that partickler bit of rabbit, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Be your age, Mr Dawkes,’ said Nellie, shattering his dream of scandal. ‘Everybody knows that was a present he give Miss Dorothy on her twenty-first, so don’t excite yerself.’

  ‘Ah, Miss
Clever, then what about “Mrs Eva Grant twenty pounds”, and, farther on, “Mrs Eva Grant fifty pounds”? He never had a granddaughter by that name. Smells fishy to me. You mark my words, that old b— isn’t above a bit of you know what, even at his age.’

  Everybody drew in their breath and tut-tutted, except Polly, who was busily engaged in picking bits off the heel of her shoe. Miss Biggs always missed the implications of Dawkes’ coarser remarks, so she wasn’t as shocked as she should have been.

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said, rising with difficulty from a low chair, ‘live and let live. It takes all sorts to make a world, you know, Mr Dawkes.’ Licking her fingers she collected a few stray crumbs that she had missed round her plate, and hobbled off saying, ‘Well, I must go and get my lady dressed.’ Polly and I returned to our inferno of heat and bustle. The fire in the range was blazing away and I couldn’t imagine ever having felt cold. By lunch-time I was limp and dripping and couldn’t find the energy to be benign to a very small child who wandered in and walked round and round the kitchen saying, ‘Choccy biccy, choccy biccy,’ with maddening persistence.

  Nellie and Rose fairly bolted their lunch, and didn’t even stay to have a second jam tart, which was all to Miss Biggs’ advantage. While I was shaking the tablecloth out of the back door I caught sight of them hareing across the short cut through the park to where the bus stopped. I couldn’t see whether Rose was wearing the beads or not.

  I generally had a bit of time to myself after lunch to ‘put me feet up’ or go out and get a bit of air, before I had to start making scones for tea.

  Today, however, I had to make the cakes that should have been done in the morning, not to mention putting a caramel top on to the crème brûlée. This was rather fascinating, as all that had to be done was to sprinkle sugar heavily over the top, and put it under a very hot grill. It bubbled and heaved like the crater of a volcano and eventually turned a beautiful glassy brown.

  ‘Sucks to you, Ma Lewis,’ I thought, as I mixed plum cake in an enormous bowl. When I had filled the tins, I put them into the old-fashioned ovens to cook, and made up the fire well.

  Polly had wandered out and I was wondering idly where she had gone, when my blood was frozen by a horrible yelling that grew louder as Polly flashed past the window and hurled herself into the kitchen, screaming: ‘Fire! Fire! Oh, my Gawd! Oh, help! Fire, oh, help! Fire, fire, fire!’

  ‘Where?’ I said calmly, thinking that this was a figment of her disordered brain, but even as I spoke an ominous smell of burning drifted to my nose, and sure enough, a light rain of black ashes was falling outside the window. I rushed out and looking upwards saw that the kitchen chimney was indeed on fire and behaving like Vesuvius. Polly had followed me, still yelping, and before I could stop her, she had seized the rope that hung down outside the back door and was tolling away with desperate strength at the huge bell that was only rung for deaths and real emergencies.

  The effect was dynamic. People appeared from everywhere in various conditions of excitement and horror. The old groom came galloping down the back drive on his bow legs just in time to catch Miss Biggs as she fainted stiffly away.

  My friend with the burnt hand came running up with a gun that he had been cleaning, which added to the nurses’ terror, and Sir Harold W— himself appeared in his braces and camel-hair slippers, having evidently been woken from his after-lunch nap. Nobody did anything; we all stood around and pointed and screamed. Someone hopefully brought out a fire extinguisher, but no one knew how to work it.

  The children were enjoying themselves enormously, but the excitement didn’t last long. As it gradually dawned on us that the smoke and sparks were getting less and less, and that the fire was going out of its own accord, the tension relaxed, and the annoyance which relief often brings set in. Sir Harold suddenly realized that Polly was still pealing the bell, and he sprang at her with a roar of rage.

  ‘Who’s this crazy girl? She’s the cause of all this ridiculous panic. Stop it, for God’s sake, d’you hear me? Get rid of her, somebody, before I go raving mad. Dawkes! Don’t stand there like a fool, man, do something. And then ring up the sweep and tell him to come over at once and see what’s happened to the damned chimney.’ He disappeared into the house, muttering oaths, and somebody plucked Polly off the rope and she stopped screaming, and bursting into hiccupping sobs, flung herself to the ground.

  Nurses now began to slap and shake their various charges, and the bishop was heard to speak quite sharply to a fluttering lady in green, who insisted on clinging to his arm as they wandered away with the rest of the crowd; I went back to the kitchen lugging Polly with me, and the only figure left on the scene was Sir Harold’s black spaniel who was quietly throwing up the curdled crème brûlée on to the drive.

  The fire was of course the chief topic at tea-time in the servants’ hall. Everybody wanted to give an opinion as to the cause of it. Mrs Lewis had apparently told Dawkes that she was certain it was something that I had put on the fire, though what it could have been, short of a can of petrol, I don’t know. Miss Biggs was still a little prostrated and inclined to moan: ‘We shall all be burned in our beds tonight, I know it.’ She would not believe that the fire was really out until the sweep himself came down from his acrobatics on the roof to take a cup of tea with us, and assured her that there was no mortal peril. He had peered down the mouth of the great chimney, and had ascertained that the fire was out, but could not tell the cause or the extent of the damage without climbing up inside it from below.

  ‘Yew’ll have to let this yere fire out in the range tonight,’ he said with his mouth full of sponge cake. ‘I’ll pop over early tomorrow and climb up her with me ladder.’

  ‘Oh, what a nuisance,’ I said, ‘must you really?’

  ‘Well, we must know the whoiy of it, mustn’t us? Might happen again else.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ pleaded Miss Biggs. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with the slight inconvenience, Mrs Dixon. One must suffer, you know, for the cause of many.’

  I saw that there was no help for it. I should just have to get up at the crack of dawn to supervise the sweep and then light the fire when he had finished so that one or two people at least should get baths before breakfast.

  We had to have a clean tablecloth after the sweep had gone, as he was not at all careful with his person, and had leant sooty elbows everywhere in a free and easy way.

  I had to do all the cooking for dinner myself, as Polly was definitely written off for the rest of the day. She had wandered out into the shadows after tea, probably to hang round the garage for a sight of Jim Driver who had taken Lady W— out on an all-day visit. It was a lucky thing that she had missed the Great Fire, it might have upset her health even more than Miss Biggs.

  Even though I started directly after tea, I only just got everything done in time. Mercifully, I didn’t have to cook a hot dinner for the staff. Our main meal was lunch, and we always had cold meat or something in the evening, and chunks of soap-like cheese, washed down with the inevitable tea. The nurses had the same, with cocoa, sitting round the nursery fire with their knitting and their magazines on mothercraft. The dining-room dinner was generally quite an extensive affair, and tonight Mrs Lewis, just to complicate things a little, fancied a mushroom omelette for herself.

  Nellie and Rose came bursting into the servants’ hall as we were finishing our supper, and even the phlegmatic Rose was panting to hear the news.

  ‘Tom told us on the bus that there’d been a fire – part of the roof fell in, he said.’

  ‘Fancy us missing it, y’know,’ said Nellie, regretfully. ‘Just my luck to miss the only bit of excitement we’ve had here since the pipes burst.’

  We disillusioned them about the size of the fire, but Nellie was still upset at having missed it, as they hadn’t even enjoyed the cinema. The projection was dim, and the sound part had broken down half-way through, and even Clark Gable loses glamour when mouthing silently at you out of a thick fog.
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br />   I went upstairs early as I was worn out, and also the thought of the sweep’s early visit was weighing heavily on my mind. Maddeningly enough, when I did get into my high iron bed, I couldn’t sleep. The more I kept thinking that I must get to sleep, the more wakeful I became, and eventually I got sick of the clanging each time I tossed, and decided it was worth the effort of going down to the kitchen to get a hot drink. While the kettle was boiling, I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore the rest of the house, which I had never really seen.

  It was after one o’clock, and all was still and dark on the farther side of the swing door as I crept through in my carpet slippers. I was quite enjoying myself roaming through the rooms pretending I was the family ghost when my phantom glide was turned into the most material somersault as I tripped over a gaitered leg that was protruding unexpectedly from the depths of an easy chair.

  ‘God bless my soul,’ said the astonished bishop, waking with a start from deep slumber. ‘What? Where –?’

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I mean your worship, your reverence, that is,’ I stuttered, picking myself up and backing out of the Presence. I could hear him following me, still mumbling and exclaiming, as he tried to brush pipe ash off his apron. I fled through the swing door to the refuge of my kitchen, drank my drink, and rushed upstairs and into bed as if pursued by a bogey man instead of a bishop.

  Chapter Ten

  AFTER EASTER THE house party began to break up, and by the end of the holidays everybody except a few insignificant female relations and one or two of the younger children had gone. There were always guests at the week-end, but most of the time life was delightfully slack after the turmoil of work to which I had been accustomed. We grew fat and lazy in the kitchen, though Mrs Lewis still chivvied us around to keep us up to the mark. The pretty parlourmaid Mildred went home and the pantry maid ceased to appear every day, which meant that Polly didn’t have any less to do, as she had no one to help her with all the kitchen washing up. I let her off helping me with the cooking, as she really wasn’t much use anyway, and either hard work or unrequited love was making her look pasty and peaky. Jim Driver had got a girl in the village and he used to rush out like a dog every evening after supper and not return till quite late. He often went courting in one of his master’s cars, and if I was still awake I would hear him from my room returning to the garage. He was lucky not to be discovered. Sir Harold’s window was in the front of the house, and so was Mrs Lewis’s, but somehow he always got away with it.