We all went up to change and there was much giggling and shrieking and running in and out of each other’s rooms to lend a hand with pins and give gasping admiration. My pink concoction had quite a success. ‘Sweetly pretty’ was the verdict. I had to keep away from Nellie, as it clashed horribly with her red. She had gone very festive about the hair. She had curled it tightly with the tongs and then brushed it out into a stiff frizz, into which artificial poppies were stuck at random. I thought I would like to give myself a new coiffure, so I rashly chopped some off the front with nail scissors, and, borrowing Nellie’s tongs, gave myself a fringe like a pantomime juvenile. We all collected in the kitchen, pushing and nudging, and much too shy to take the plunge through the green baize door.
Polly was wearing a trailing black dress that was too big for her and hung on her skinny frame as if it would fall off at any moment. I think it must have once belonged to Lady W— for it was certainly not a dress for anyone under seventy, but Polly had added glamour to it by spilling a bottle of vile-smelling Ashes of Roses over herself. She was scared stiff and clutched me in a panic when Dawkes swished into the room, resplendent and Mephistophelian in white tie and tails, and said: ‘Get a move on, the beauty chorus; the Bish wants to open the ball with Miss Biggs.’
He led us giggling and jostling into the hall, where the Happy Harmonists were in full swing, and a terrifying number of rather blasé-looking people in evening dress were standing about in a tired way. We clustered by the stairs like sheep, wondering what to do with our hands, and were joined by the nurses, self-conscious but fearfully genteel in lace or art crêpe, with a great many scarves and handkerchiefs trailing about. Etiquette demanded that Sir Harold should open the ball with Mrs Lewis, while Dawkes seized the eldest daughter of the house, a stout matron in black velvet, and trundled her deferentially round the room. Once these two couples were started, anyone else could dance. A few staff guests had arrived and were coming through from the back regions, pushing us forward into the room. Teddy made for Mildred, and though Nellie hypnotized the curate with her eye, he was much too nervous to attempt anything just yet, so she accepted a sun-dried colonel from Chittagong, and bounced off with him. Would it be me for the bishop? I wondered, but then a young man with protruding teeth and no chin bore down on me and said, ‘Will you tread a measure?’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ I said, wondering whether I had to call him ‘Sir’ or not. He was not a very good dancer and we fell over each other’s feet rather a lot. Afterwards he got me some lemonade and obviously felt that he had done his duty by me. He stood fingering his tie for a little, but could not bring out any conversation from behind those rabbit teeth, so hastily disappeared into the crowd leaving me still wearing my fixed social smile.
A footman from Birching Manor approached and whirled me efficiently into a waltz. He danced perfectly, and I thought he was probably an ex-night-club gigolo. We got on rather well together, and he called me ‘Toots’. We had another dance, and then he suddenly spied a rather lovely expensive-looking woman standing by herself; so he left me hurriedly to grab her while he had the chance. After this I danced with a small boy of sixteen whose mother made him ask me, and then one or two old buffers who thought they were being very gay and devilish. A rather forced gaiety had been established, and the dance might be said to be going with a swing. Nellie had lost most of the poppies from her hair, and Polly’s stockings were round her ankles. I was really quite enjoying myself, when suddenly everything turned upside down and my heart missed about twenty beats. There in the doorway, more attractive than ever, stood an all too familiar figure. He had evidently got his car mended earlier, and had just arrived, for he was not wearing evening dress.
My ancient dancing partner was asking me a question which I couldn’t answer, as I was too busy feeling sick and wondering how to escape. Would Robin recognize me? I saw his eye travel over the assembly, looking for his host. I buried my face in my old man’s shirt front, but I saw out of one eye that Robin was staring at me with an expression of dawning amazement.
‘Excuse me,’ I gasped, and releasing myself from my partner’s clutch, I bolted through the crowd like a rabbit, burrowing for the safety of the baize door. I didn’t care what anyone thought, my one idea was to get away. There was someone on the back stairs, and I couldn’t go up there, so I shot into the kitchen and flattened myself behind the door. It was not long before I heard the clatter of running feet on the stone passage, and Robin rushed into the kitchen, and, not seeing me, went across the room and through the door that led into the pantry. He would see me if he came back the same way, so I escaped and rushed along the passage to the servants’ hall. All the rooms in the kitchen quarters led into each other, they made three sides of a rectangle, with the long passage as the fourth side, and as I went in at one end of the room, Robin appeared from the pantry at the other end. ‘Hi!’ he shouted, as I retreated hastily, ‘Hi, stop!’
I heard a crashing of chairs, as he bounded after me, and I came to a skidding stop at the end of the passage, and popped into a larder before he could see where I’d gone. I heard his feet in hot pursuit, and he opened a few doors, but I risked it and stayed where I was. Eventually he panted into my larder and I just had time to escape through the other door into the kitchen before he could grab me.
‘Stop!’ he shouted again, as I raced for the pantry. ‘Monty! Stop! What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ Round we went again, through pantry and servants’ hall, down the passage, into the kitchen, and round again, and I was getting exhausted.
Desperately I pounded down the passage on the last lap, turned a corner beyond the kitchen, and went to ground in the coal cellar.
Robin fell through the door and down the steps after me, and the rest was a confused delirium of tweed coat, gasps, and coal dust.
Chapter Eleven
THE REST OF the weekend was rather a strain on my nerves, as I had to cope with Robin, who didn’t seem to take kitchen etiquette half seriously enough. I had to speak to him severely about penetrating through the green baize door, and finally beg and implore him to consider my reputation.
He came prancing in one day, when Polly was with me in the kitchen, and said: ‘Good morning, Cook. I wish to lodge a complaint about the food; there was a slug in my spinach at lunch, and the horse we had for dinner last night was high.’
Polly goggled and gasped, and I did a lot of shushing and pointing, and said out of the side of my mouth: ‘Shut up! She’s not as crazy as all that; she thinks it all most peculiar.’
‘What do you do on your evenings out?’ continued Robin, unabashed. I threatened him with a carving knife, dripping blood from the corpse of a rabbit, and at that moment Mrs Lewis walked in and stopped in her tracks, scandalized. She had been unreasonably annoyed about the Teddy episode, but this made the chains and crosses on her bosom rise and sink with real fury. She had an almost feudal sense of propriety and class consciousness, and she apparently thought I was ‘making free’ with the Gentry, which to her was the ultimate offence. It would not have been proper for her to have ticked me off in front of one of the guests, and equally well she could not turn him out, so she held her ground, a repressed mass of rage, still heaving with a sort of ‘Jingle Bells’ rhythm. Robin just stood grinning sheepishly, and didn’t help me out at all. It was left to me to do something to break up the petrified silence.
‘The gentleman wants some lard for his fishing line,’ I said wildly, inventing the first thing I could think of. It didn’t sound any more plausible to Mrs Lewis than it did to me, however, and she turned to Robin with an ironical smile.
‘Indeed? And how are the fish rising, Mr Burke? I didn’t know Sir Harold had restocked the lake, since all the fish died last year when the drains leaked in.’
My unfortunate excuse had exhausted my inventive powers, so I winked at Robin with the side of my face farthest away from Mrs Lewis, and he suddenly came up to the scratch most unexpectedly.
�
��Oh, well, you know, I wasn’t thinking of doing any fishing here, unless I have a try for the gold-fish in the lily pond, ha, ha, what?’ he said heartily, rubbing his hands. ‘I’m going up to stay on the Tay tomorrow, you see, so I just wanted to get my rod ready.’
‘One of the men could easily have done that for you, sir. If you’ll tell me where it is I’ll get Joseph to see to it at once.’ She was suspiciously anxious to see the mythical rod, and kept turning her searching gaze from me to Robin in her effort to discover whether we were deceiving her.
‘Oh, no, Mrs Lewis, please don’t bother,’ he said hastily, ‘you see, it’s a very special rod, my grandfather gave it me last year, and I don’t really like anyone else to handle it, thanks awfully all the same – er – yes – er – well – thanks again –’ He sidled to the door and bolted out, having done his bit, even if he did forget to take the lard. Mrs Lewis was still slightly dubious, but she left it at that and reverted to the other little bone that she had come down to the kitchen to pick with me. It was only a small matter of removing the fat from soup before sending it into the dining-room, but she elaborated it into quite a criminal offence, and left me crushed and apologetic.
The house party broke up on the evening of Whit-Monday, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I got rid of the embarrassment of Robin. He managed to drive away when Mrs Lewis wasn’t about, so that she wouldn’t notice the absence of the fishing rod, and I really thought that nobody suspected anything, except perhaps Polly, and she didn’t count. A rude shock was in store for me, however.
One day at lunch Nellie started to talk about a book she had got out of the twopenny library. ‘Ever so lovely, it is, makes me cry buckets.’
‘What’s it about?’ asked Mrs Coombe, the charlady, who couldn’t read or write her own name, but nevertheless took a deep interest in literature.
‘It’s all about a Dook hoo falls in love with one of his mother’s maids. Her pride is her barrier, and she turns him down, but he wears her down with obstinate persistence, and they elope. Mind you, he does the right thing by her, it’s that sort of book.’
‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ said Mrs Coombe, gazing round the table with moist eyes. ‘Wish I was educated like you, Nell. My Will’s a rare one for books, though; he sometimes reads me the comical pieces in the papers – ’Itler and that. What do they call your tale?’
‘Flames of Desire.’
Dawkes gave a scornful guffaw. ‘Fancy you stuffing yourself with that rot. You’ll get ideas above your station, my girl. No toff ever did right by a skivvy yet, in my experience. The other thing perhaps, and not a ’undred miles from this spot neither.’
‘Why, whatever do you mean, Mr Dawkes?’ said the charlady, and Nellie said, ‘’Ere, ’ere, ’ere, what you getting at, you nasty old man?’
‘Oh, no offence, no offence,’ he said, and they calmed down, thinking that this was just another of his usual incidental coarsenesses, but I suddenly realized with a shock of horror that he was having a dig at me. His narrowed eyes were fixed on me and said, as clearly as if he had spoken, ‘I got something on you, my girl.’
He had evidently discovered the harmless truth of my little secret, and had characteristically inferred the worst. Why is it that one always blushes when one is innocent? Nobody else noticed my loss of composure, but Dawkes obviously thought it was an indication of guilt. The bell rang from the library, and he treated me to a slow and extremely sinister wink before rising and leaving the room. I felt quite sick at the thought of the ideas that were churning in the slime of his filthy mind. I decided that I would tackle him and vindicate my honour at the earliest possible opportunity.
He purposely avoided seeing me alone for a day or two, until he considered that he had got me sufficiently worked up by suggestive glances and odd words thrown here and there, unnoticed by the others, but most unnerving for me.
One afternoon, however, as I was going down through the shrubbery for a moody stroll in the park, he suddenly slid out from behind a laurel bush and fell into step beside me.
‘Well?’ I said, walking on without turning my head.
‘Well – Monty –?’ he replied insinuatingly. ‘I’ve got a pretty tale stored up inside here,’ tapping his head. ‘Who am I goin’ to tell it to, eh? Mrs Lewis, she might be amused, and why not Sir ’arold himself? He always appreciates my funny stories.’
‘Why, you dirty, double-crossing rat!’ I said, having spent my last half-day seeing a gangster film at the local cinema, ‘there’s not a bit of truth in your filthy insinuations, and you can’t prove a thing.’
‘Oho! So I suppose you and Mr Burke are total strangers, eh? Nothing between you at all?’
‘More or less.’
‘Well, I seen what I seen, and I’m damned if I’m going to keep it to meself. Unless –’
‘Unless what?’
‘You know what. You gotter make it worth my while, see?’
We had come to the gate into the park by now, and I opened it, trying to keep calm, and went through, leaving him to shut it and follow me over the long grass.
‘I’m still not scared,’ I said, when he had caught me up. ‘I’ve got a perfectly clear conscience in spite of you trying to make me nervous. I’ll tell you the whole truth, as I’ve really got nothing to hide. Mr Burke and I were friends not so very long ago, and he recognized me and wanted to talk to me. There’s nothing in that. It’s all perfectly normal.’
‘Go on laughed Dawkes derisively. ‘Tell that to someone else. Who’s going to believe that Mr Burke had a platonic and social acquaintance with a cook? Them things don’t happen outside of Nellie’s books.’
‘But don’t you see –?’ I began, but stopped, as it was hopeless to try and explain. I was all confused, and couldn’t cope with the situation. One’s education doesn’t provide for dealing with things like blackmail. The safest way was to be thoroughly up-stage, so I said icily: ‘I refuse to discuss the matter any further,’ quickened my steps to get away from him, and, tripping over a mole-hill, sat down heavily on the wet grass.
‘Well, dearie,’ said Dawkes, when he had recovered from his transports of mirth. ‘I’ll give you a little time to think it over. We’ll come to terms tomorrow. Meanwhile, I got me work to do. Ta-ta! Sweet dreams!’ He strode away on his long legs, looking like a man-eating spider, and I remained where I was, getting damper and damper while I grappled with a desire to yell and scream with rage.
That night I slept on it, as the saying is, and, waking early, found the solution crystal-clear in my brain. I would pack up my tin suitcase and go. Once I had given notice, it would not really be worth Dawkes’ while to broadcast his bit of dirt, and even if he did, I should not be there long enough for it to affect me. I had put aside quite a tidy little nest-egg out of my wages, as the pink creation had been almost my only expenditure, and I was not going to be blackmailed into parting with it. Although I had had a highly diverting and illuminating time at Chilford House, I felt I could do with a sight of my home again; there was so much to tell everyone, and I really was getting very sick of my clothes.
When Mrs Lewis came into the kitchen that morning, I took a deep breath and said: ‘I’m afraid I must give notice. We have sickness at home; my sister’s been taken with Pneumonia. Double, it is.’
‘Well, that is aggravating,’ she said. ‘I don’t like having to make changes all the time. Are you sure you must go?’
‘Of course I must,’ I said, as deeply affronted as if my sister really were lying at death’s door and calling for me. ‘People don’t have Double Pneumonia every day, you know.’
‘Oh, dear, it really is too trying. I suppose you’ll stay until I can get someone to fill your place?’
‘Oh, yes, of course, if you get someone quite soon,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you try locally, in Exeter or somewhere? It would save a lot of time.’ I marvelled at the way I was actually daring to dictate to her. Now that I was soon going to be out of her power, her domination didn’t
impress me at all, and when she said: ‘That will do, I know my own business, thank you,’ I merely laughed vulgarly as she went out of the room.
That know-all, Dawkes, knew almost as soon as I did that I had given notice, and I was careful to keep out of his way until I could get some intimation from Mrs Lewis of when I would be able to go. His face was black with rage at lunch-time and he hardly spoke a word. Once or twice he opened his mouth as if he were going to denounce me publicly, but thought better of it, and evidently decided to wait and see whether he couldn’t, after all, get something out of me.
Jim Driver was told to take Mrs Lewis into Exeter in the afternoon, so she had evidently taken my suggestion, and when she got back, I had the honour and distinction of being summoned to her room. It was rather a nuisance, as I was very involved at the moment with a Dressed Crab, about which Mrs Beeton and my French cookery book were contradicting each other. However, the opportunity of seeing the temple of prayer was not to be missed, so I sped upstairs, wiping my hands on my apron. I knocked at the door and went in, to find Mrs Lewis sitting at her desk, still wearing an unsociable black hat of shiny straw, perched high on her head. I had expected to find a mass of religious pictures, effigies, prie-dieus, and so forth, but, if Mrs Lewis prayed to any images, it must have been to the unflattering portraits of a host of fearsome relatives which covered the walls and furniture. The men were mostly whiskered, or walrus-moustached, with hair en brosse, and the women large, black, and forbidding. They were the sort of photographs that always give the impression that the people in them have departed this life, not so much from the age of the picture, but from the general air of the improbability of their being human; and if this lot weren’t dead, they certainly ought to have been. I detached my gaze from Uncle Hugo on the mantelpiece, in the full-dress uniform of an undertaker’s mute, as Mrs Lewis was addressing me.
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