One Pair of Hands

by Monica Dickens

  Chapter Fourteen

  ONE DAY, AFTER I had been at the Vaughans’ about a month, the peace of an October Sunday afternoon was broken by a violent pealing of the bell, and hammerings of fists on the front door. I left the crumpets, which I had just put under the grill, and flew to open it. A distraught figure there – Clare, with her hair standing on end, and her eyes wild and red with weeping. She rushed past me into the drawing-room, screaming, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’ and, flinging herself into her mother’s arms, burst into floods of tears.

  I wasn’t going to miss a scene like this, so I took up a strategic position behind the half-open door, and waited, while Clare was gradually calmed by her mother into a state fit for speech.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ she said, when the sobs had been choked back into isolated hiccoughs. ‘Tell me what it’s all about.’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, it’s Alec. They’ve taken him to a Nursing Home. Mummy, he’s got to have an operation – tonight!’

  ‘An operation?’ said her father. ‘What d’you mean? What for?’

  ‘He suddenly had the most awful sort of attack after lunch, and I thought he was going to die, and then the doctor came, and they took him away – oh, it was awful – in an ambulance! They wouldn’t let me go in it. He looked all peculiar, he –’ she burst into tears again, burying her head in her mother’s lap, from the smothered sound of the sobs that I heard.

  ‘Yes, but for heaven’s sake, Clare, what for?’

  ‘Appendicitis!’ came a muffled wail.

  Her father, who had been holding his breath in his agitation, let it all out on a sigh of relief. ‘Is that all? Why, that’s nothing these days, darling.’

  ‘Nothing, you call it? I think it’s g-ghastly. Oh, poor Alec! Oh, Mummy, suppose something goes wrong, he’s never been ill before, what if he can’t take gas properly or something? Oh –’

  ‘Now, Clare, darling, don’t be hysterical. People have their appendixes out every day of the week. It’s sure to be all right; especially as they’ve caught it at once.’ Her mother was being wonderfully calm, as she undoubtedly always would be in any crisis. ‘When are they going to operate?’

  ‘Six o’clock. Can we go there, d’you suppose?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Where is he? Wimpole Street? We’ll go along at once.’

  ‘Who’s doing the operation?’ asked Mr Vaughan.

  ‘Some butcher called Wilson-Stokes. Have you ever heard of him?’

  ‘Old Stokey? I should think I had. Why, we were at Cambridge together. Grand lad, Stokey, he’ll look after Alec all right, don’t you worry. Most amusing devil; I remember he and I once had a terrific row about a girl in a draper’s shop. She –’

  ‘John, dear, stop reminiscing, and go and ring up a taxi. And get Clare some brandy, that’s what she needs.’

  I had been so engrossed in this human drama, that it was not until I skipped out of the way before Mr Vaughan should come out, that my nose told me what to expect in the kitchen. At first sight, I thought the whole stove was on fire, but then I saw that it was only my crumpets blazing merrily away under the grill. I dashed water on to them, to quench the flames, and went out to the dustbin to throw away the blackened remains before anyone could see what I had done. I couldn’t think what the faint roaring noise was, and it was not until the kitchen began to smell like an air-raid that I realized that I had forgotten to turn off the taps, after putting out the flames.

  I opened the window wide, but Mrs Vaughan came in, and nearly fainted as the atmosphere hit her.

  ‘Goodness, Monica, what have you been doing?’

  ‘Cooking crumpets, madam.’

  ‘Well, they smell rather funny. Never mind, we shan’t be wanting any tea anyway; we all have to go out. Poor Mr Chesterton has to have an operation for appendicitis, isn’t that bad luck?’

  ‘Well, I am sorry to hear that. Who’d have thought it?’ I said, feigning great surprise at the news; ‘I hope everything’ll go off all right, madam, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, we don’t expect any trouble. I thought it would be a good thing for Mrs Chesterton to stay here for a bit, though, it’s so much nearer the Home. Would you make up the bed in the little spare room before you go? – and lay supper for three – I don’t know when we’ll be back. Then tomorrow Miss Clare is going to fetch little Peter and his nurse over; they can go into the big spare room, if they bring his cot. It’ll be nice to have the little boy here – won’t it? –’ She gazed at me anxiously, as my jaw was dropping a bit at the thought of all the extra work. She was afraid I was going to say: ‘I’ve only got one pair of hands’, or, ‘It’s not my work,’ so I pulled myself together, and struggled to appear the old family servant, the rock – equal to any crisis.

  ‘I’ll try and get Maud to stay on for the whole day,’ she went on, ‘then we ought to be able to manage all right.’ Wails of, ‘Mummy, do let’s go!’ came from the hall, so she hurried off, throwing a few injunctions, such as ‘Cold beef,’ and ‘Hot bottle,’ at me over her shoulder.

  When ‘in service’ one has a rather cold-blooded tendency to regard the emotions and hazards of one’s employers’ lives with a certain detachment – almost as if they were people in a play, and the kitchen was the back row of the pit. I was surprised, therefore, to find that the thought of the nice blond Alec Chesterton being slit open at six o’clock quite worried me.

  When I arrived at the flat next morning, I didn’t have to wait till I called Mrs Vaughan, to hear the news. The sight of the dining-room reassured me. They would not have made such a hearty meal, and washed it down with a bottle of champagne, if all had not gone well. I was able to greet Mrs Vaughan with a bright and appropriate smile, when she woke, as usual, as I put down the tea-tray.

  ‘I’m so glad the operation went off all right, madam,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it splendid? But however did you know?’

  ‘I just knew, madam,’ I said mysteriously, ‘I have a feeling about things sometimes.’ I gave her a penetrating look, charged with psychic meaning, and went out, leaving her sitting bolt upright, staring after me in great astonishment.

  I had been told not to wake Clare, and she slept on until long after Maud had arrived. She was fascinated by the whole story, and pressed me for medical details of the operation, which I was unable to supply, though I made a few up to keep her going. When Clare woke up, and yelled for her breakfast (none of this family ever rang bells – they had got so used to them not being answered), Maud insisted on taking in her tray. She was in there quite a quarter of an hour, and came out bursting with information. She was retailing it to me, when Mrs Vaughan came in, to ask her if she would be able to put in more time at the flat.

  Maud sucked her teeth. ‘I’d be very pleased to, ’m, I’m sure, but I’ll have to ask Mum. She gets a funny head, you know, and doesn’t like to be left. I think it’ll be O.K. though, as a matter of fact, because my sister Ivy’s at home for a bit now. She’s theatrical, you know, resting before the Panto season. Principal Boy at Nottingham – Babes in the Wood, it is, ’m.’ I had heard a lot about this Ivy, famed in the Theatre Royal or Hippodrome of many a provincial town as ‘Gloria May, the Sweetheart of Bradford’ (or Huddersfield, or Kidderminster, as the case might be).

  ‘Shall I pop over at lunch-time, ’m, and see what Mum says?’

  ‘Thank you so much, Maud. I do hope it’ll be all right. It would be such a help to have you.’

  Clare went off later on to fetch her nurse and child, and Maud and I put in some good work, making the spare rooms a home from home. We had the same ideas about house-work, both favouring the dust-under-the-bed method, our motto being: ‘What the eye don’t see, etc.’ We got on very well together, especially when Mrs Vaughan was not hovering round us, making suggestions, and giving us the moral support of her conversation.

  Maud ‘popped’ just before one, and soon afterwards the Chesterton ménage arrived, complete with all the etceteras that make a small child as
bulky to travel with as an American heiress. I went down to help unload the car, and Mrs Vaughan and I had quite a tussle with a spring mattress, until we discovered that it came out quite easily if one pushed and the other pulled, instead of both tugging from opposite sides.

  Peter sat up in a high chair at lunch, and pulled my apron strings undone every time I passed his corner of the table. He kept it dark from his nurse, for whom he seemed to have no very great affection. I didn’t know her as well as he did, but from the look of her I didn’t blame him. I should have thought the sight of her horse-face alone would have been enough to give any child inhibitions, apart from the fact that she exuded a most unpleasant smell of mothballs. She didn’t seem to take much to me, either, and I wondered if we were fated to be mortal enemies. Sure enough, it was written by the hand of fate in my teacup that very afternoon.

  Mrs Vaughan and her daughter went back to the Nursing Home soon after lunch, and the horse went for a trot with the pram. Maud arrived while I was washing up, with the glad news that her mother had given her consent, and, furthermore, as Aunt Maggie was coming to keep her company that afternoon, Gloria May had promised to shed the radiance of her presence on us, by coming to tea in the kitchen. I was thrilled at the idea of seeing a Principal Boy without tights and ostrich feathers; I had never met one off-stage, and Maud could hardly wait for me to meet her. She was terrifically proud of this sister, whom she regarded as a being from quite another world, as far removed from us in station as our employers.

  Nurse was back by the time Gloria arrived, and she popped out of her room to see what she was like. She sniffed at what she saw, and went disdainfully back to her stable. I think she was jealous of Ivy’s teeth, which had rushed to the front of her mouth in an even more dazzling profusion than hers.

  The fame and adoration of the Provinces had not turned Ivy’s head at all. She was just a very colourful edition of Maud, with the same jolly simplicity of heart. Her hair was curled in many sausages of brassy-gold, and jingling bracelets stretched from wrist to elbow over her dress of brightest emerald green – but then, you’ve got to have a bit of style if you’re on the stage. She made a good tea.

  ‘It’s a good thing Mr Mosei likes a few curves in the right places,’ she remarked, accepting a second slice of cake. ‘Wouldn’t suit me to have to watch my diet, I can tell you. Anyway, who wants to be skin and bone? Look at Sylvia Farrar, forty if she’s a day, and looks fifty without her make-up.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ asked Maud, hanging on her words, with rapt adoration.

  ‘Principal Girl in The Babes. Lord, what a cat, and sour! My dear, don’t speak of it. There’ll be plenty of fights between her and Yours Truly before this season’s over, or my name’s not Gloria May.’

  When we had finished tea, Maud said, ‘Shall we tell the cups, Ive?’

  ‘Not me,’ said her sister, with a superstitious shudder. ‘You don’t catch me telling my fortune before the first night. Worst thing out for luck. You do yours though, go on.’

  Maud peered into my cup, breathing heavily. ‘Can’t make head nor tail of this, dear. I believe this is a common quality tea. Ooh, whatever’s this, though? A snake, look! Enemies and treachery. That’s not a bit nice. Have another go, I should. Fill your cup up again, dear.’

  ‘No, this is all right,’ I said, ‘I’d call this a horse at the bottom, wouldn’t you, Maud?’

  ‘I would, and kicking too.’

  I was quite moved by this unmistakable sign from the beyond. It gave me a good excuse not to waste energy being friendly to Nurse, if fate had willed it otherwise.

  Maud made a wish on hers, and there was quite a nice little crescent moon in her cup. ‘Ooh, I say!’ she breathed. ‘Romance!’

  ‘What did you wish about, Maud?’

  ‘Ah, that’s tellin’. Ask me no questions, I tell no lies.’

  ‘Come off it, ducks,’ said Gloria May, convulsed with toothy laughter. ‘If you want to keep anything dark, you shouldn’t let Mum know. She told me all about the postman looking sideways at you in Edgware Road. Lord! That reminds me, I promised I’d get home before Aunt Maggie goes; I must be toddling along.’ She got up, drawing her fur-collared coat round her. ‘Good-bye, all! It’s been ever so nice to have met you, Miss Dixon.’ She went off, with a flash of teeth, and a jingling wave of the hand, leaving us feeling very flat and dissatisfied with a life which made it possible for Nurse to summon one to the dining-room, by ringing the bell for more milk. I took it in with a glower of simmering hatred, quite worthy of the Demon King himself, in one of Ivy’s pantomimes.

  According to the voluble bulletins that Mrs Vaughan gave us every morning, while ordering the meals, Clare’s husband was continuing to make good progress, and no anxiety was felt about him. There was no reason, therefore, why a dinner party, which had been brewing for some time, should not be held.

  ‘Are you sure you and Maud can manage all right by yourselves?’ Mrs Vaughan asked me. ‘We shall be ten, I think, but I can easily get someone in to help with the waiting.’

  I said, ‘No, no,’ proudly, and assured her that it would be a mere nothing to us. I didn’t want to miss the amusing part, which was the handing round, and listening to scraps of conversation; also, we two fell over each other enough, as it was, without having another body to add to the confusion.

  Confusion is the right word for the state we were in on the evening of the party. In contrast to the first dinner I had cooked at the Vaughans’, this time, everything was going wrong.

  It started by my dropping a milk bottle on the floor, leaving myself with nothing to make a White Sauce for the cauliflower.

  ‘I’ll pop out for some,’ said Maud amiably, but by the time she got back, I had discovered that, though there would be White Sauce, there was no cauliflower to put in it.

  ‘That greengrocer hasn’t sent one,’ said Maud, ‘I know his sort, I’ll give him What For.’ She was just going to pop again, when Clare came shouting that they wanted tea for three in the drawing-room, with Anchovy toast and Plum Cake. (How typical of Miss Nitchin to be here again today.) Would we also mind hurrying-up with the nursery tea, as Peter was screaming with hunger. Maud had to stay and help get the teas, as I was too busy cooking to be able to do more than watch the toast. I rang up the greengrocer as soon as I had a spare moment, and reviled him.

  ‘Haven’t got a boy in the shop,’ he said, unabashed. ‘Nor shall have before six, if then.’

  ‘Maud, you’ll have to go, we want potatoes, and onions, too.’

  ‘O.K., dear, just wait till I take in this tea. What a to-do, eh?’ She went out again, into the rain, and while she was gone, one or two bells kept me rushing about; once for more hot water, once for more jam sandwiches (Nurse), and once to open the door to a man selling tickets for the Fireman’s Ball. All this meant that my Jugged Hare, which ought to have been put into the oven long ago, was making no progress at all. I couldn’t find half the things to put in it, either.

  ‘Maud, Maud!’ when she came back laden with vegetables, and dripping rain-water on to the floor. ‘Where’s that Cooking Port we had left over from last week?’ We started a frenzied searching.

  ‘Can’t see for looking,’ said Maud, standing on a chair to look on the top shelf of the cupboard. ‘Oh, my Gordon!’ she cried, losing her balance, and staggering to the ground. ‘Don’t you remember, dear? We drank it that evening when I had the blues and you had the collywobbles.’

  This was ghastly. I saw myself having to jug the hare with water and cochineal, and leaving the rest to the imagination of the diners. There was only one thing to do.

  ‘We’ll have to get a bottle out of the wine cupboard. The key’s in the hall table. Maud, you do it, quick, while they’re at tea.’

  ‘Not me, I daren’t. You go, dear.’

  ‘No, you.’

  We tossed for it in the end, and Maud lost.

  ‘I’ll take the cheapest-looking,’ she whispered, tiptoeing into the hall with heavy thud
s. Needless to say, Nurse chose this moment to finish her tea, and come out of the dining-room.

  ‘Tra-la-la!’ sang Maud with artificial unconcern, pretending to be sorting letters on the table, until Nurse and Peter had passed into the drawing-room.

  ‘Here,’ said Maud, rushing back a minute later, and waving a bottle triumphantly, ‘this is Port, isn’t it?’

  After a lot of hacking and delving, she got the cork out, and it was not till then that I took a closer look at the bottle, and saw the film of dust and age that clothed it, and the tell-tale bits of crusted black seal still clinging to the neck.

  ‘I took one of the shabbiest I could find,’ said Maud cheerfully. ‘Phew! You should have heard my heart beat. Haven’t had such a bit of excitement since father died.’

  Quite exciting for the hare, too, to be jugged in rare old Vintage Port. I used it liberally, and poured the rest into a jug, so that I could bury the evidence of that bottle deep in the dustbin.

  We washed up the tea, so as to get it out of the way, and I shook a careless soapy hand in the air, and deposited a few suds in the soup. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the taste, and, ‘What the eye don’t see –’ said Maud.

  She laid the table, and then came back to help me with the last stages of cooking. You wouldn’t have thought two people in one room could possibly get in one another’s way so much, or make quite such a commotion and mess. Even Mrs Vaughan who, having at last got rid of the Nitchin by offering to pay her taxi, came in to see how things were going, retreated before the clamour of battle. There simply was no room for her; Maud and I had developed into about twenty people, with outsize feet.