To the Manor Drawn

by Leslie Ann Bosher

  For the more adventuresome connoisseur, we offered a dish of warm shrimp and grits with cheese. Had this sustenance been discovered by the French rather than the American Indians, it might have survived with the more aristocratic name semoule de mais and created a culinary history of its own. This rib-sticking recipe served so elegantly in a chafing dish was, after repeated descriptions of content, eventually embraced with enthusiasm, eaten with interest and enjoyed by our buffeting guests.

  Parties are a joy to give and an even greater joy to reminisce over. The anticipation of what could go right, should anything go right, are what dreams are made of. From the first glass of champagne to the last of the evening, we delighted in entertaining nearly one hundred guests in our home. As Walter, the final reveller, safely negotiated the long staircase to the front door of the Hall, thanking us for the evening on each step, we knew our efforts had contributed to the spirit of the season. There was nothing left for us to do other than to sit down, kick off our shoes, fill two flutes with the remaining champagne and snuggle up in the fading candlelight.

  On reflection we’ve enjoyed many memorable evenings thanks to that social invention—the dinner party. Subtle differences do exist between the two countries so it’s helpful to get them right before guests arrive. A well stocked bar should always contain plenty of sherry, champagne and gin and tonic, no matter what the season. There should be a minimum of two fresh vegetables plus at least one, if not more, potato dishes. A gooey dessert or fruit tart followed by a selection of cheeses, biscuits or celery and a decanter of vintage port will bring the meal to a proper finale.

  Invitations also need to be carefully worded and must be very specific. The phrases ‘open house’, ‘pot luck’ or ‘cocktail party’ could have your guests scratching their heads in befuddlement as we found out to our chagrin at one impromptu event we hosted. Suggesting that each couple bring something they ‘would be proud to share’ we ended up with nine bottles of wine and one chocolate layer cake. Not a balanced diet, but it did provide the essential ingredients for a raucous party. For more formal affairs it’s helpful to get right to the point. Asking your guests to arrive at 7 pm for 8 pm indicates there will be a rather convivial drinks hour prior to dinner. The invitation, if proper, should then suggest the time for ‘carriages’ to be brought forth. This is the kindest way, so we have been told, to say a polite goodnight. The English are known for their unquestioning acceptance of instructions. That is why they form orderly queues.

  As an uninvited guest to many of my parents’ adult evening soirées, I can still remember my mother’s attention to detail both in and out of the kitchen. No toilet seat went uninspected, no room escaped the sanitizing odour of Glade Air Freshener, and nothing short of perfectly formed, baby-bottom pink shrimp ever made it to the table. With cha-cha music playing on the hi-fi, Dad would mix the most wonderful cocktails from behind the oakpanelled bar in the den. He was a wizard with a blender or a shaker and could pour the most drinkable frosty gimlets and jewel-coloured Manhattans.

  If the old adage ‘You are what you eat’ has a ring of truth to it then so do the words embroidered on my pink gingham pillow which hangs by a silk ribbon from our bedroom door handle. It reads, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, I have become my Mother after all.’ So it is not surprising that these rituals come naturally to me. Dressing up in my own home to prepare dinner while tottering about in heels as I genuflect over a hot stove is second nature to me. I love to lay a table with garish amounts of cutlery, individual knife racks and salt and pepper cellars, oversized linen napkins, silver chargers and apple-shaped place card holders. Actually, it is easier for me to go over the top than to pare down; not always the best attribute in the casual countryside. I have discovered that miniature vegetables tied up with scallion raffia and little pearls of vinaigrette strategically dropped around rocket leaves appeal to some but not all.

  My culinary skills were first honed at a YWCA Cooking for Two class which my mother insisted I attend prior to getting engaged to my former husband. It was here that I flourished in creating starchy tuna casseroles, wobbly jelly moulds and sticky macaroni and cheese soufflés. Once married, I bought a copy of Julia Child’s French Chef Cookbook, followed by Henri Paul Pellaprat’s 1203 page turner The Great Book of French Cuisine that contained recipes for anything that could be sliced, diced, jointed, minced or flayed. With no less than sixty pages of sauces from which to choose, I was busy in the kitchen for years. My Cuisinart food processor became my new best friend.

  French cooking, with all the associated finer points of social etiquette, wine snobbery and table decoration is very much out of fashion these days. This is possibly due to the Anglo obsession with dieting or maybe it is just comes down to a simple lack of time to spend in the kitchen. Either way, my bookshelves now hold dusty cookbooks with recipes no one has ever heard of or wants to sample.

  Delia Smith, a decidedly unglamorous English version of Martha Stewart, eventually filled the void. Considered the modern mother of today’s English cuisine, she had an agenda to improve the reputation of British cooking. Now an immensely wealthy woman, she has succeeded year after year in having one of the most popular culinary series on the telly. I too have fallen under her spell, for this is a woman who can inspire you to salt, cook and press an ox tongue or to excitedly fetch a pair of kitchen scissors in order to cut out the tubes and dividing wall of a lamb’s heart.

  Today there is a new breed of chefs leading the Brit pack to international fame. These testosterone driven alpha-males love ‘whizzing’ up new marinades, ‘bashing’ together herbs and ‘bunging’ pasta into cool new salad concoctions. Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Raymond Blanc and, of course, Jamie Oliver have put England on the gastronomic map with their f … ing language, television personas and molecular cookery.

  The current food vogue created by these scientific chefs collaborating with chemists, psychologists and artists is too complicated for me. I am still reeling from past cooking disasters to add any more to my list. Some of my dinner party memories are so horrible only a shrink could pry them out of the dark recesses of my mind, but there is one lingering embarrassment that is worth its weight in gold to me in self-deprecating laughter. It occurred during an anniversary party we hosted for a dozen of our closest friends. Dear old Martha Stewart suggested I astound our guests with individual pyramids of hand dipped, syrup glazed, plump strawberries and red grape clusters. The recipe suggested the sticky glaze would hold the cone-shaped mounds of fruit together long enough to give our guests the ‘wow’ effect. However, my fifteen minutes of fame was short lived.

  The first person brave enough to tackle my dessert attempted to insert her fork into what looked like a miniature version of Disneyland’s Matterhorn. With great dignity she struggled to remove her utensil only to find the entire plate lifted off the table. Our guests watched in quiet disbelief. The grapes were so firmly stuck together the only way to separate them was for one person to hold down the plate while another attempted to chip away at the pyramid of solid boulders. As this dessert was individually served, people who had just met hours earlier over cocktails became the closest of friends, and in one circumstance, eventually intimate. Frankly, I look back on that evening with fondness for several reasons. First, I learned that friends will remember the laughter long after the folly. Second, personal disasters and embarrassments bring people closer together and third, and most importantly, your husband is your best guinea pig for any new party recipe. Use him as often as you can.

  Chapter 35

  Freezing for the Lord

  Email To: All our friends

  From: Leslie Ann and Bill

  Date: 24 December

  Subject: Happy Holidays

  Dear Friends,

  To those of you adventurous enough to have visited us in Stocken Hall we thank you. To those who have kept in contact with us through emails and phone calls, smoothing our transition, we appreciate your support. Because of these friendships,
Bill and I have seldom felt lonely, although there were a few moments when we doubted our wisdom.

  On reflection, this past year vaguely reminds me of my favourite Christmas joke. You all remember Agnes McHolstein who lived at 69 Happiness Lane? She was the woman who lost her mind when John, her lover, showered her with ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ presents. It all began when the postman delivered her first gift, one partridge in a pear tree. Then two turtledoves arrived followed by three French hens, four calling birds and five gold rings. When she opened the door to find six geese a-laying on her doorstep, she began to lose control. Seven swans a-swimming made her a nervous wreck not to mention the problem with the bird poo all over her house. Eight maids a-milking caused the neighbours to complain.

  Then John, now a sadist in Agnes’s book, delivered nine pipers piping. The neighbours finally started a petition to evict her. When the ten ladies, if you could call them ladies, arrived the next day, the pipers had their way with them. The cows got diarrhoea on her lawn and began stepping on the screeching birds. The arrival of eleven lords a-leaping was catastrophic. Once they had sodomized the cows, they compromised the maids and ladies while the birds got trampled to death in the orgy. The final nail in Agnes’s coffin was the gift of twelve fiddlers a-fiddling. This provoked a letter to John, now regarded as a dirty rotten prick, saying he would be shot on sight if he tried to contact her again. Sadly, Agnes had to be sedated and sectioned for life to the Happy Dale Sanatorium.

  So how does this funny tale relate to our lives? Well for starters, Bill and I, almost on a daily basis, come across one or more of the abovementioned birds and animals. We even have first-hand knowledge of partridges and cows. Although we can’t claim to have any pipers in the area, a total stranger standing in a field once serenaded us with a tuba. As for leaping lords, we’ve met a few. We have had a constant stream of horses and hounds, deer and hares jumping over fences, hedges, and on one occasion our car. Dancing ladies, well the jury is still out on Morris Men, but we think they qualify.

  Unlike ill-fated Agnes, Bill and I are still here to testify to the pleasures of country life. We hope you will come over for the first time or again to experience it for yourselves next year.

  We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

  Leslie Ann and Bill

  Two activities remained to complete our village holiday dance card. Both involved singing and freezing. How comforting to know that our neighbours considered not showing up for an event to be a cowardly act and that no amount of persuasion was out of bounds in order to achieve the desired result. I happen to love Christmas carols and find myself humming them almost twelve months of the year. I don’t need a calendar to know how many shopping days are left or when to empty the attic of tinsel and garlands. I’m a sitting duck for the season, but tell me I have to go to church wearing long johns, moon boots, heavy socks, a winter wool coat, gloves, scarf and a hat and I will manacle myself to our bedpost for protection.

  Carols by candlelight really wasn’t so bad. The blocks of ice called pews were warm when compared to the paving stone floor. Dangling my feet above the permafrost was the only way to ward off approaching gangrene. Canon Michael surprisingly conducted the service without a shiver until it was later revealed he had several layers of well-disguised insulated underpinnings. Struggling to keep warm, my mind flashed to a picture of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind when, as a young widow, she could not keep her feet from tapping to the music at a fund-raising ball for the Confederate Army. With that same lack of control my deadened toes danced to ‘Bennie and the Jets’ in my head while my lips moved to the slow recantation of ‘When the Shepherd Came Over the Hill’, or some other monotonously titled song. I discovered that with each breath I expelled in rhythm to the music, I could create frosty smoke rings in the air. Fortunately, this was enough of a diversion to get me though eight lessons, nine hymns and one sermon. Sadly, it was the last carol that finally finished me off. Six verses of fun-filled sentiment about more shepherds punctuated with a death-march chorus between each one. Now I know why they put pubs next to churches.

  Having survived this ordeal, walking through the village in a crocodile chain disturbing every man, woman and child while singing Christmas carols on their front lawn in total darkness was child’s play. If we were fortunate enough to intimidate people to come to their door we would threaten them with additional songs unless some token of charity was tossed into the cloth begging bag. After disarming the house burglar alarm, unbolting the door and choke-chaining the dog, most were agreeable to give something to the church fund. All this was made more festive, not to mention tolerable, by a little tincture called Whiskey-Mac, a combination of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine and scotch poured in equal measure from a hip flask. With the cockles of our hearts warmed, we also acquired enough false courage to continue harassing more of our neighbours in the name of peace and love.

  The reward theory is taken very seriously in Stretton, and so it was that sweet cakes and warm mince pies, cheeses and biscuits, smoked salmon and piping hot mulled wine were offered to the walking wounded carol troopers at our final destination. Each year Suzanne and Graham graciously extend their hospitality to all, preserving a Christmas custom still enjoyed throughout many English villages and towns. It certainly worked for us and assured our attendance at next year’s sing-along. When Christmas finally did arrive, I don’t know whether we were relieved or too exhausted to care. Either way, Bill and I had photographic memories for our scrapbook, neighbours who were willing to call us friends and best of all another year to look forward to.

  We’ve enjoyed learning about the traditions and rituals associated with our village and the countryside. There is a certain comfort that comes from the knowledge that seasonal activities will appear with regularity on our social calendar, not dissimilar to the reassuring feelings one gets from life’s little routines.

  As Bill and I are both only children of older parents, we compared notes years ago and discovered our upbringing was shockingly similar. From an early age, neither of us felt the noose of restriction, as we were raised with our parents’ firm but open hands. So, unsurprisingly we have followed the same patterns of protocol in our own home. What few rituals we do have are of our choosing and, more importantly, remain an option never a rule.

  I’m not sure if turning on the television technically falls under the category of rituals, but a signed contract between the two of us in September 1981 guaranteed that we would never be the victims of the television boogie man. At the time we were living in Los Angeles. Cable facilities had just been introduced to the community, offering the viewer a staggering selection of sixty channels. Bill, having come from a country where three channels was considered a luxury, became overwhelmed, so much so that the TV remote control miraculously attached itself to his right hand.

  One evening in a mutual fit of anger we confronted the problem. I took out my fury on Bill while Bill took his out on the wires connecting the television to the power source. There we sat, night after night in silence, starring at the cords dangling from the wall socket until we finally discovered—gin. Not the juniper-scented liquid of a thousand headaches, but the card game of the same name. Soon it became a nightly pastime as we enjoyed our pre-dinner cocktails which, I have to say, often included the above alcoholic beverage poured chilled from the freezer into our martini glasses.

  Eventually, it was time to bury the hatchet. A contract was drafted, approved and signed. It stipulated that two people were required to turn the television set on. More importantly, and here was the rub, no surfing was allowed even with the mute button engaged. Twenty-five years later we still laugh at our genius in avoiding the divorce court at the first fence out of the marital gate.

  Our rituals are simple but loving and have developed over time. Living at Stocken Hall has given us an opportunity to introduce one more. Each night just before Bill arrives home from the office, I light a tall candle in our drawing room. It i
s visible down the long drive and acts as a beacon calling him home, to me and to the life we have chosen in the countryside. Then we break out the gin.

  Come January, the days will be at their darkest, my candle in the window will be at its brightest and our hope for the coming year will be at its fullest. Our once standoffish group of neighbours has bonded into a cohesive family. Each person has found a way to share their time and talent for the greater good of the Hall whether it is by offering to hedge the driveway, feed the fish in the pond, mow the lawn, keep the accounts, plant spring bulbs, or catch the mice. This is the essence of communal living. This is life in England in its most natural state.

  The months have sped by so quickly we’ve hardly noticed one aspect of our life was completely missing, that of travel. With the exception of a short trip to the United States, Bill and I have had our feet firmly planted on British soil. This is totally out of character for us as shareholders in Eurostar as well as on-line subscribers to all European low-cost airlines. It does on the other hand answer the question, ‘won’t you get bored?’ in capital letters. Certainly, we don’t expect this trend to continue forever. After all, even cows can get tiresome.

  Sandwiched between three international airports, we can already feel the tug of the traveller’s hallowed ground. They are places unlike any other, suspended between heaven and earth, work and pleasure, tedium and adventure. We long to be squeezed once again, like toothpaste, out of a cramped departure lounge into the belly of an Airbus 320, and to sniff jet fuel, as heady as a whiff of fine French perfume. Speaking of which, I think it’s time we made another visit to Paris. I believe Bill and I have some unfinished business to attend to.