Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

‘Do you think about Grangely?’ she said. ‘Do you think about t’bairns?’

  Silas shifted slightly, folded his arms. The past was hostile terrain, best left alone; he hadn’t expected the question and didn’t much like it. No, never, would have been the honest answer, but he knew how that would sound.

  ‘Do you?’ he said instead.

  ‘Aye. I wish I could have another chance. Now that I’m not a child myself.’

  ‘You did your best. We both did.’

  She dismissed his platitude with the wave of a hand. ‘We knew nowt,’ she said.

  ‘Evie, we were orphans. We’re lucky to be here to tell the tale ourselves. And it’s gone now, it’s the past.’ Truly, he was bewildered at her train of thought. ‘What’s got into you?’

  She couldn’t say for sure. The sorrows of Grangely were long ago, the wounding sharpness of their memory dulled by the passing of time; she remembered the past, of course she did, but only rarely and not in detail. But then along came Silas, and she saw in his face the faces of the little ones and she recalled the horror, the misplaced faith in their eyes, that she, their big sister, would help them get better. She’d spoken to Daniel about this but she couldn’t, she now found, talk to Silas. She wondered if he found it painful, recalling the past; she wondered if his memories were the same as her own. But there he stood in his natty linen suit and hat, soaked to the skin but caring nothing for it, and he seemed the very image of insouciance. Eve suppressed the stirrings of disappointment and smiled at him: least said, she thought, soonest mended.

  ‘Let’s ’ave a brew. Then I’d best get back to work.’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ he said.

  At five o’ clock Parkinson came downstairs with a request for beef tea for the ladies of the royal party. They were chilled, he said, after the drama of their drenching, and the countess was concerned that they should ward off any ills to which extreme dampness might make them susceptible. The tea was to be served warm, not hot, and in glasses, not cups, and they should be taken upstairs to the ladies’ bedrooms. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, although the kitchen was at full stretch and in something of a panic because Mrs Adams hadn’t been seen for who knew how long. Parkinson had no patience with the garbled explanations of a kitchen maid; she should leave off podding peas, he said, and busy herself with the broth for upstairs. He had too much to be getting on with himself, he said, to worry about what was happening in the kitchen. Mrs Powell-Hughes and five ropes of plaited orchids were waiting for him in the dining room. He left, the soles of his immaculate black shoes clip-clopping briskly up the back stairs. Eve met him at the top, narrowly missing a collision with the baize door, which swung open with violent purpose just as she reached it. He strode past without seeming to see her: it was unlike him. Parkinson, gravely formal as his position demanded, nevertheless usually showed a glimmer of good humour and kindness beneath his butler’s veneer. Not today, however. It boded ill, thought Eve as she descended to the kitchens and, indeed, she was accosted the moment she walked in by the kitchen maid still dithering at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Mrs Adams can’t be found and I’ve them peas to pod but Mr Parkinson said I must make beef tea,’ said the kitchen maid, throwing herself on the mercy of the first available authority figure. Eve knew some of the kitchen staff here, but not this one. The girl had the blank, helpless gaze of a sheep and she held it steadily on Eve as she waited to be told what to do.

  ‘What do they call you?’ Eve said.

  ‘Ivy Ramsbottom, ma’am.’

  ‘Right, Ivy. You’ll find beef tea in a jar at the back of t’cold store and it’s a job of only minutes to warm it through and send it upstairs. Get on with it. T’peas’ll wait while you’re done.’

  Grateful for the direction, Ivy trotted off towards the cold larder. Eve passed through the kitchen to her own corner, which she found as she’d left it, wiped down and orderly, the pudding tins stacked together in a heap, her own beef dripping brought from home in a jug and her apron hanging on a peg alongside the thick white oven cloths. Eve took it down now and put it on and as she did so the kitchen rang out with a spectral wail, an unearthly sound that stopped the busy kitchen like a sorcerer’s spell; under-cooks, kitchen maids and scullions ceased their peeling, chopping and stirring and listened, appalled, to this certain harbinger of tragedy. Into the frozen tableau stumbled Ivy, perhaps of all the staff the least equal to what had now befallen her. Her ovine face was drained of all colour and horrified panic lit her eyes, which darted about the assembled company in search of sympathy, alighting finally on Eve.

  ‘Mrs Adams,’ said Ivy, in a small voice.

  ‘Speak up, Ivy,’ Eve said. ‘And tell us what you mean to say.’

  ‘She’s – I think she’s—’

  ‘Where’s Mrs Adams?’ Eve said, with more patience than she felt. This did not seem, to her, to be a kitchen that was ready to serve the king.

  ‘In t’larder,’ said Ivy, more clearly. ‘But I think she’s dead.’

  Chapter 12

  Mary Adams was down on the stone floor like a felled oak, face up, arms outstretched to the sides, legs straight and modestly covered by her voluminous skirts, which seemed tidily arranged as if she’d been laid out for public viewing. Eve, squeezing in beside her, bent down and gently touched the cook’s cheek: cold. How long had she lain here? Her face, jowly and bloated as it ever was, had lost its crimson complexion and had a ghastly pallor, the colour of wet snow. Ivy’s keening had been joined by that of others, inspired more by duty than emotion, because Mrs Adams had few actual friends below stairs. She was too sharp too often, and always forgot to temper the vinegar with honey. Eve stood. Next in line in the kitchen hierarchy was Sarah Pickersgill, under-cook, who stood at the front of a small crowd at the larder door. She and Eve looked at each other.

  ‘What will we do?’ Sarah said.

  Eve frowned. ‘We?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t manage without Mrs Adams. She did everything.’

  ‘But Sarah, it’s nigh on ’alf-past five. You must be all but ready?’

  Sarah shook her head, sorrowfully, an apology forming in her eyes.

  ‘She never let me do all that much,’ she said.

  This, Eve knew, was true. She’d worked in these kitchens before, had seen how things were; Mrs Adams did the lion’s share, delegating only menial or tedious jobs to her staff. Eve could well imagine that Sarah Pickersgill had spent her years here peeling, blanching and parboiling. It wasn’t so much that Mary Adams had no confidence in anyone else: more that she knew she could always do better. Eve had watched her in action and had recognised the symptoms; relinquishing control was an art she had had to learn herself and it didn’t come easily to capable women, however busy they might be and however much they might stand to benefit by delegating tasks.

  ‘Well, this is a pickle,’ she said. ‘What’s on t’menu?’

  Being there only for the Yorkshire puddings, she hadn’t paid much attention to everything else. Sarah, allowing herself to take enormous hope from Eve’s question, said: ‘It’s ten courses, but nowt too fancy. Mrs Adams said it was a rum do, giving curd tarts and such like to t’king.’

  Eve was feeling a little faint. Ten courses, the king upstairs expecting to sit down at eight for dinner, and no one in the collection of anxious faces before her who seemed willing or capable of taking the helm.

  ‘Right. Mrs Adams must’ve written it down somewhere. Find it and show me. Then we need to find out who’s done what and what’s still to be done.’ She caught the eye of a kitchen lad skulking about the margins of the room. ‘You,’ she said, startling him witless, ‘run to t’coachman with a message from me. Tell ’im Mrs Adams ’as died’ – she paused momentarily and swallowed – ‘and we need Ginger Timpson, Nellie Kay and Alice Buckle. Tell ’im it’s urgent and ’e must fetch ’em as soon as ’e can.’

  The lad darted off. This was drama indeed, and here he was, at the heart of it. Eve, still in th
e cold store with Mrs Adams, reached across her and took up a jar of beef tea, which she passed to Ivy.

  ‘Get on with this, Ivy. Stand it in a pan of ’ot water until it’s warmed through, then find an ’ousemaid to take it up. Step lively.’

  Ivy turned, clutching the jar against her chest with two hands as if she had the cook’s remains in her safekeeping, and the small crowd parted to let her through.

  ‘Mrs Adams, may she rest in peace, is goin’ to ’ave to stay ’ere until we get this dinner on t’table,’ Eve said. ‘I know it’s a bad business, but she of all folk would understand. Now, get back to whatever you were doin’ an’ I’ll be round in a minute with more jobs for you all.’

  They dispersed as one; if Mary Adams had dinned anything into their heads, it was to respond quickly to an authoritative voice. Eve picked up the two large jugs of pudding batter that she’d left there to rest earlier in the day, then she stepped gingerly around the corpse and closed the door on her, as quietly and respectfully as she could.

  Upstairs the family and all the guests were safely in their rooms bathing and dressing: cocktails at half-past six, the countess had said, and no one should dress too formally since this was their home for the next few days and she wanted everyone to be comfortable. No one would pay any heed to her advice and nor would she expect them to: comparing diamonds was as much a country sport as hunting, shooting and fishing. Henrietta explained this quietly to Thea as she accompanied her up the staircase.

  ‘What an absolute gas,’ said Thea. ‘So we all agree to dress down, then go upstairs and do just the opposite?’

  It struck Henry that a handbook should be written in order that innocents like Thea might learn to extrapolate what was meant from what was said on evenings such as the one before them.

  ‘Quite. And ordinarily my mother would sparkle brighter than everyone. But tonight we have the fascinating Mrs Keppel, and who knows with what jewels she’ll be adorned.’ Henrietta lingered outside Thea’s door and lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. ‘Was it just me, or was her wet chiffon transparent?’

  Thea giggled. ‘Put it this way, we saw more of Mrs Keppel than she saw of us,’ she said and they fell together, joined by mutual mirth, shaking with silent laughter.

  News of Mrs Adams’s demise was still not widely known. Parkinson and Mrs Powell-Hughes were blissfully ignorant as they went about their business, which for the time being was applying finishing touches to the dining room; the dinner menu might be old-fashioned Yorkshire fare, but there was nothing plain about the table, which might have been set by forest sprites, such was its sylvan charm. The orchid ropes ran not only down the centre of the table but also around its outside edge in a fragrant abundance of purple and cream. White roses dripped from the fluted lips of slender silver vases and the audacious, surprising blue of delphiniums adorned a central candelabrum. They worked in silence, but the butler and the housekeeper were still able, by the merest occasional twitch of the features, to share with each other their mutual disapproval of the extraordinary arrival of the king and his cohorts – the gentlemen roaring with laughter, water running from the folds of the ladies’ dresses and the little dog Caesar tearing about as if his ambition was to leave footprints on every square inch of the floor. Mrs Powell-Hughes hated Caesar already. He wore a silver tag that declared: ‘I am Caesar. I belong to the king,’ but he barely needed the identification. Here was an animal upon which no discipline had ever been properly imposed. Your home is my home, he seemed to say, and if I wish to cock my leg against your furniture, I shall.

  The disarray had been dealt with, but it was impossible – and unthinkable – to audibly articulate the complex mix of punctured excitement and injured pride felt by the Netherwood staff who had assembled in two respectful lines to greet the king, only to be entirely overlooked in the pandemonium that accompanied his arrival. No hands were shaken, no curtseys acknowledged: the very moment the king burst in, Lord Netherwood began snapping his fingers at the valets and housemaids, urging them to fetch this or take that, until the receiving lines were entirely dismantled and the servants had to hurry about their extra duties in the most disappointing, deflating fashion.

  ‘Staff dinner almost an hour late now,’ was all Mrs Powell-Hughes would allow herself to say to Parkinson as together they left the dining room and took the servants’ staircase down to the kitchen. And then, of course, she learned that a delayed dinner was the least of the difficulties below stairs, because there was Eve Williams where Mrs Adams generally stood, expertly seasoning three five-rib roasts with pepper and thyme, while the cook lay quite dead in the cold store.

  The cavalry arrived in the form of Ginger and Nellie but not Alice; Jonas had forbidden his wife to come – his own tea wasn’t on the table yet and he reckoned that trumped the king’s dinner – so Ginger had the coachman stop at Watson Street for Nellie then hotfoot it back to Netherwood Hall. They were ready for action in their pinnies, Eve’s right-hand women, sitting in one of the earl’s carriages with an aura about them of great importance. In the kitchen they were greeted with a smile and a nod, but there was too much to do to give any time to pleasantries. The beef was in, and there were plum puddings rattling on their trivets on the range. A scribbled menu in Mrs Adams’s near-illegible hand was now in Eve’s possession, though she had made a small alteration to the running order; her Yorkshire puddings would be served as a course in their own right, before the rib of beef and after the pea and bacon soup. It seemed only fair, thought Eve, that they should take centre stage, since they had lured the king to Netherwood in the first place. A good, thick onion gravy would accompany each pudding, served in sweet little individual brass pitchers that Eve had found, dusty and forgotten, stacked in a dresser cupboard. Ivy, shaking slightly and still pasty with shock, was currently preparing them for use, rubbing them with roche alum, buffing them until they shone with the brilliance of solid gold. Nellie was making custard for the plum puddings and had taken over the claret gravy for the beef, too. Ginger was on hollandaise for the salmon fishcakes, and had moved in on the curd tart: Sarah Pickersgill, who had been about to make a start, had been happy to give way, fetching fresh curds from the dairy for Ginger then busying herself soaking currants in rum, the sort of simple task she enjoyed most. No wonder Mary Adams had dropped down dead, thought Eve: the miracle was that it hadn’t happened sooner. There wasn’t a dish of food left this kitchen that Mrs Adams hadn’t had a hand in. Perhaps the strain of performing this feat day in, day out – and, ultimately, terrifyingly, for the reigning monarch – had in the end proved fatal.

  ‘Do you think a woman could cook ’erself to death?’ Eve asked Nellie, who had just enveloped them both in meaty steam by adding wine to a pan of bubbling beef juices.

  Nellie sniffed judgmentally. ‘It were fat killed Mary Adams, you mark my words,’ she said. ‘She fair fills that larder floor. I ’ope t’undertaker ’as plenty ’o timber because she’ll take some boxing.’

  ‘Always a good spread here. House of plenty, this one.’

  The Duke of Knightwick, sitting next to Thea Stirling, patted his pot belly with both hands as if to show her where the food was going.

  ‘Y’see, you can’t always rely on these great houses,’ he continued. Thea, not very fascinated, glanced at Tobias to see if he was still watching her. He was. ‘At Chatsworth one year’ – the duke lowered his voice now as if the Devonshires, who were safely at home in their Derbyshire pile, might be straining to eavesdrop – ‘the snipe ran short and there were no apologies. None at all. I was given half a bird. Imagine!’

  Thea smiled, shook her head in a parody of astonishment and tried to imagine half a snipe but found she couldn’t even picture a whole one. She added snipe to her mental list of things to look up in the English dictionary back in her room.

  ‘I mean to say,’ said the duke, ‘I’ll share most things with any man, even my wife, but I won’t be made to share a snipe!’ He roared with laughter at his own wit
while opposite and along, the Duchess of Knightwick raised a knowing, saucy eyebrow at Sir Wally Goldman. Extraordinary, thought Thea. She cut another glance at Tobias, who caught it and smiled at her. He would be accused of neglecting his neighbours at this rate. She was pleased, though, even as she looked away.

  Parkinson stepped into the room, followed by a slick procession of footmen bearing in each of their hands a silver-domed platter. The king sat up in his chair with a boyish enthusiasm for what was to come and conversation, while not entirely ceasing, dropped to a few murmured exchanges. The footmen slid soundlessly around the table, sharing themselves one between two, and then in perfect synchronicity they placed the platters in a precise and measured fashion onto the table before the diners. A barely discernible tilt of the head from Parkinson, and the domes were raised in beautiful unison, revealing small tureens of the sort of pea and bacon soup that was commonplace all over Netherwood town, but an extraordinary novelty here.

  The monarch, watched in varying degrees of fondness by the whole table, dipped his great head like an inquisitive bear and took a deep, impolite, appreciative sniff of the vapours that rose from the bowl. His face registered great pleasure and the countess allowed herself a small frisson of satisfaction: triumph was in the air. The king smiled at Clarissa, lifted his spoon, and began to eat.

  Chapter 13

  Anna regarded Silas coolly. He wasn’t looking at her, but was reading the newspaper she’d bought earlier, scouring the business pages for, he said, news of his investments. He whistled as he read, the implication being that his shares were high or – perhaps – that high or low, it was all the same to him. Anna didn’t ask. There was a quality about Silas that she found hard to define but which made her determined to resist him. It was late, and she wished he would go. She sat at the sewing machine and concentrated on the fabric in her hands; it was a new bolt of cloth, a jacquard weave, richly patterned in shades of blue from cornflower through to dove grey, the different colours of the summer sky. Anna spent more time in the draper’s than in any other shop in Netherwood. The smell of new fabric lured her just as surely as others were drawn to the aroma of baking bread. She loved the possibilities, the potential, of the cloth: the linens, silks, chintzes, brocades, velvets and damasks. In the shady privacy between the shelves of fabric rolls she imagined Ravenscliffe draped and upholstered, enhanced and embellished by the curtains and covers she planned to make. The cloth she held now was destined for a large window on a half-landing where the staircase turned an elegant forty-five-degree angle before making its final flight. Anna raised a corner of the cloth to her face and inhaled surreptitiously, smelling its newness, feeling the texture of the weave against her cheek, and when she lowered it Silas was watching her with a smirk on his face.