It left only Winnie. What was the old cook going to do?
Perhaps she’ll stay with one of her sons, Celia thought.
Long before the war, she remembered, Winnie, widowed when young, used to go on her days off to her own mother’s house to see her boys. They were being brought up by their grandmother while Winnie went out to work to earn the money to feed them.
Celia made up her mind that when they had completed packing the contents of the china cupboard, which led off the dining room, she would go down to the kitchen to inquire what the elderly cook’s plans were.
Winnie had been a tremendous help. She had picked out what she considered to be a reasonable set of kitchenware for a small kitchen, and it had been sent by carrier to the new home, together with boxes of food staples from the pantry. Large pieces of coarse crockery, like bread bowls, had been packed for storage, except for a few utensils for use in their final days of residence.
‘Do you know it Winnie has found a position yet, Mama?’
Her mother was lifting a heavy silver basket out of the sideboard drawer. She said, ‘I think we should take the silver out to Meols ourselves.’ Then, in answer to Celia’s question, she replied, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t had time to ask her – I’ve been quite worn out.’
Though Celia answered in her usual gentle way, ‘I know, Mama. The last few weeks have been very stressful,’ Louise sensed a lack of sympathy, and, as she put the heavy basket of cutlery on to the table, she looked hard at her daughter.
Ever since dear Timothy had passed away, Celia had definitely not been herself.
Louise decided that the girl was getting above herself. That was it. Without her mother’s permission, she had authorised all kinds of repairs to the cottage; she would never have dared to do that, if her dear father had been alive. And she had taken Dorothy down to the cottage for days at a time, so that there had been no one to answer her bell when she rang. Eventually – very eventually – she considered bitterly, Ethel or Winnie had come panting upstairs – but it was not the same. She had also been inconvenienced by the fact that Celia herself had not been in the house to do the innumerable small tasks that were required of her, as cupboards and drawers were cleared out. She had even found herself having to reply to late-arriving condolence letters, which had made her cry. It wasn’t fair. And, though she had been told to do it, the girl had done nothing about notifying friends and relations about their change of address.
With the West Derby house not yet sold, the financial worry had been quite appalling – when she had written to Cousin Albert about it, he had replied by return of post that she could probably get a small loan from the bank on the strength of the pending sale of the house.
Ask Mr Carruthers for a loan? It was a shocking thought. Really, Cousin Albert was being no help whatever. What use was he as an executor? Nevertheless, pushed by Celia, she had obtained from Mr Carruthers a loan to help out. Because she trusted him, she had blithely signed for it without first consulting her new solicitor and had never asked about the rate of interest that would be charged.
In her confusion she had no idea that Cousin Albert, terrified of a female invasion of his quiet home, was doing exactly what the law demanded of an executor – attending to the deceased’s estate, or lack of it. He was determined not to become involved in Louise’s financial troubles. As her husband’s cousin, he had, he felt, given her sound advice; it was up to her to take it. He had, out of a sense of duty to his cousin’s wife, set in train for her the sale of her house and would see that she bought an annuity from the proceeds. Other than that, he kept his head down and communicated only with Timothy’s solicitor, Mr Barnett, and with his elderly clerk, whose salary he was temporarily paying himself, since he had to have someone in Liverpool to help him deal with angry creditors.
On top of Cousin Albert’s callousness, here was Celia worrying about servants, thought Louise savagely – when she should have been concerned about her poor mother’s dreadful state.
Her feeling of neglect surfaced, and she snapped, ‘Servants are supposed to look after themselves. She probably has expectations somewhere.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
After seven huge barrels lacking only their tops, which the removal men would nail on, stood in a neat line in front of the divested sideboard and china cupboard, Louise allowed herself to be installed in a chair by the morning-room fire to rest.
A troubled Celia slipped down to the kitchen to see her old friend.
Winnie was preparing dinner and was just putting a chicken into the oven to roast. As Celia edged round the big kitchen table to stand by the fire to warm her hands, grubby from the packing she had done, the cook straightened up and closed the oven door.
‘I’ve got a big beef casserole at the back of the oven,’ Winnie said. Her voice was strained and weary. ‘It can go over to the cottage with the furniture tomorrow and be a good dinner for you. Your mam won’t want to cook on her first day in her new house.’
She turned to the table and sat down by it. Swiftly, she began to peel potatoes which she had already washed.
‘You are very kind, Winnie. That’s most thoughtful of you.’ Inwardly, she wondered if her mother would agree to cook at all. Then she explained the reason for her visit to the kitchen.
‘Well, Miss Celia, I haven’t got nothing yet. But I’m registered with Grey’s Domestic Staff Registry and I’ve answered a couple of ads in The Lady. I’m hoping something will turn up.’ She dropped a potato slowly into a pan of cold water, and then picked up another one.
‘Do you have anywhere to stay while you’re waiting?’
‘Not really, Miss.’
‘I thought you had sons?’
‘Oh, aye, I had two. One emigrated to Canada. He’s a miner in a place called Yellowknife. And the other one went to sea as a ship’s cook.’ She sighed, and her paring knife stopped its rapid run round the potato as she looked up at Celia. ‘He married a Corpus Christi girl – an American – and sailed out of there for years. He seemed to forget about his old mam. Then, one day, I got a letter from his wife saying that he had been drowned when the Jerries torpedoed his ship.’
‘Oh, how terrible! I never knew that,’ Celia exclaimed.
The paring knife was slowly put back to work and another potato plopped into the pan, before Winnie could answer. She said, ‘Your mam knew. It were a dreadful shock. I loved my boys and I always hoped he’d bring his girl over here to settle, and that I could live with them when I couldn’t work no more.
‘A good granny can always make herself useful,’ she finished up a little piteously.
‘Oh, Winnie. I had no idea! You poor thing.’
‘Your mam probably kept it from you, so as not to upset you,’ Winnie replied, putting the kindest interpretation she could on Louise’s lack of communication.
Celia glanced round the kitchen, as if searching for inspiration. The big underground room already seemed deserted, its shelves practically empty. No Ethel at the kitchen sink patiently washing dishes. No sound of Dorothy’s quick feet thudding down the stairs; she was out at the cottage, giving the kitchen a final clean and unpacking kitchenware already sent out. Not even a bell ringing for service upstairs.
‘What are you going to do after you’ve done the final cleaning of the house? Mother said she had asked you and Dorothy to do this. This house’ll be empty by tomorrow night, and she assumes you will have everything tidy by the day after – and be on your way.’
‘I’ll find a room somewhere. The Missus says she’ll tell the removal men not to take the beds from me and Dorothy’s bedroom – she says they can be abandoned – they’re not worth moving. She wants Dorothy and me to clean up down here, after everything that’s supposed to be moved is moved. She said that, if necessary, I can stay over a day or two to finish the cleaning. There’s food left over for us in the pantry, and she’ll pay me by the day.’ She dropped another peeled potato into a saucepan. ‘Is the house sold yet, Miss?’
‘Oh, aye. She can judge better then.’ Winnie’s voice seemed lacking in real interest. Then she roused herself to say, ‘With so many wounded and not having enough hospitals, they got to have places to put them – those as will never get better, I mean.’
‘Yes. It’s very sad.’ Celia paused, and then said wistfully, ‘I wish you could come with us, Winnie. But now that Edna has come home, and one of the bedrooms has been made into a bathroom, the cottage won’t hold anybody else.’
‘I realise that, Miss. Our Dorothy told me all about the cottage.’ She smiled slightly, and said formally, ‘I hope you’ll be happy there, Miss.’
‘Thank you, Winnie. Will you write to tell me how you get on? I do hope you find a place soon.’
‘Thank you, Miss.’ The cook got up and took a small notebook from the mantelpiece. It had a pencil on a piece of string dangling from it. ‘Could you write down your address, Miss?’ she asked shyly. ‘Because I may need to give your mam’s name to a new employer. She’s given me a good written reference to carry with me, but sometimes they like to write direct to your old employer – to make sure the reference is genuine, like.’
‘Of course.’ The address was carefully printed out. Then there did not seem to be anything more to say.
Celia put down the pencil, and turned to the cook. She bent over her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Winnie.’ Then she put her arms round the old woman’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘We’ve been good friends, haven’t we?’
Winnie returned the kiss and the hug. ‘You take good care of yourself, Miss.’
As she reluctantly let Celia go, the cook felt that they both had their problems. She told herself that she wouldn’t, for the world, like to have Miss Celia’s worries. What’s going to be left for her when she’s as old as I am? At least I can cook. Somebody’ll be glad of me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A long empty furniture pantechnicon backed cautiously away from the cottage’s new front gate and, after its wheels had flung up a flurry of sand in all directions, it began its journey back to Liverpool to fetch another load which would, this time, be delivered to Aspen’s Building Contractors in Hoylake.
In the Liverpool house, Louise and Edna were supervising the dispatch of the furniture, and in the Hoylake cottage Celia and Betty were dealing with its reception and the placing of each piece of furniture. By this time, Celia and Betty were fast friends, and Betty had begged a few hours off from her father, in order to help Celia.
All carpets, pictures and mirrors required in the new home had, two days before, been moved in a smaller van, and the carpets laid by the removal men, as directed by Celia. Much to Louise’s horror, Celia had travelled in the van with them to the cottage. Later that day, Louise and Edna had come out to Meols to help to hang curtains and pictures, despite the fact that two men were still working in the bathroom and that the frames of the back windows would not be replaced for another week. A gaping hole where the old kitchen range had been awaited the attention of a plasterer. Such was Celia’s fear, however, of the financial drain of the maintenance of the West Derby house that she pressed her mother ruthlessly to move without delay.
None of the women realised how much effort Betty had made to get the work done quickly. She had persuaded her father to give it priority, and had harried the foreman into putting their two best plumbers on the job. It was these two men who, in the late afternoon, came downstairs to say that everything was connected, and that the ladies could now have the water turned on.
This was solemnly done and the taps allowed to run.
As soon as the men had left, there was a rush to use the lavatory.
The plumbers had tidied up, but both sink and bath needed to be scoured.
‘What shall we do?’ wailed Louise.
‘Clean them,’ snapped Edna. She immediately went down to the kitchen to find rags and scouring powder and then, rather clumsily, went to work. The result was not very good. Her mother complained, and was met with pained silence.
Supervised by an irate Louise, who refused to actually do anything on the grounds that she was too heartbroken, Celia and Edna had spent the rest of the day inexpertly hammering nails into newly painted walls and hanging the pictures and mirrors wherever they saw fit; their mother, when asked, had gloomily refused to be interested in where they were hung, so, where possible, they hung them in the same rooms that they had been in in the Liverpool house.
Celia had remarked to Edna that it was a relief to be rid of most of the dirty old oil paintings that had graced the walls of the Liverpool house, and have only watercolours to look at. ‘Except, of course, for the two oils I’ve just put here in the living room with the Landseer etching; Mother dotes on them.’
‘Well, it’s her home,’ Edna replied. ‘If that’s what she wants …’
A little stab of fear went through Celia. The cottage belonged, indeed, to her mother – not to either Celia or Edna. She felt that, in future, she should never forget that fact.
Now, as the huge pantechnicon bumped safely on to the main road after delivering the furniture, Celia surveyed the little living room they had created, and declared to Betty, ‘I don’t think I would have ever been able to achieve this without your support, Betty. You’ve been such a help.’
Betty was tucking the dining chairs further under the table, to give a little more room for moving about. She made a mock bow. ‘My pleasure,’ she said. ‘It’s been the first fun I’ve had since the war. Even Dad’s got interested in it, and he’ll see the spare furniture properly stored so that it isn’t damaged.’
‘He’s wonderful – so kind. In fact, everybody I’ve met in Hoylake has been so nice to me – and patient with Mother.’
‘You’re a pleasure to deal with – and your mam isn’t any different from other women left in the same predicament – there are thousands of them – they just don’t know things, that’s all. If you can explain simply to them, they usually see the common sense of what you’re suggesting. And your mam is no exception.’
‘Well, you went far beyond the cause of duty, when you came over to Liverpool and went through the house with her to tell her what would fit here and what would not. She would never have accepted my word for it that you can’t get a wardrobe built for crinolines into a cottage!’
Betty laughed. ‘And the old-fashioned night commode that she had in her bedroom?’
It was Celia’s turn to laugh. ‘She only gave in because you could measure that the distance from her new bedroom to her new bathroom was less than walking across her present bedroom to use the awful old thing!’
Her mind turned to the dire need to sell some of the furniture, and she asked, ‘Will your father mind, Betty, if I bring prospective purchasers into his barn to show them the pieces for sale?’
‘Not him. The gates are open from 7 am to 6.30 pm, anyway; and it will be a bit of an advertisement for him.’
‘Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea, while we wait for Mother and Edna,’ Celia urged. ‘They are bringing all the personal luggage that they didn’t want to give to the movers.’
‘Jewellery?’
‘Yes – and furs and silverware.’ She remembered something else for which she had to thank Betty. ‘Remember sending me to see Mrs Jowett, in Liverpool – the lady with the antique shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, once she heard your name, she was really helpful about pricing the furniture. At first, she wanted to come out and buy herself. But I did exactly as you advised me – I told her that I wanted to sell it myself, so that I made the most money. She didn’t make fun of me – just said it was sensible. She’s lent me a pile of magazines, and a list of Victorian furniture and wh
at is a reasonable price for it – if it’s in good condition. And two books on eighteenth-century furniture.’ She patted the well-worn tomes sitting on the table in front of her. ‘She said she was not an expert on eighteenth-century pieces; though since I know their origins – provenance, she called it – she assured me that I can probably get good prices for them.’
She smiled reflectively at the memory of the old Jewess, who had, in the course of an hour, tried to pass on to her a lifetime of experience in the trade. Then she went on, ‘She told me that big pieces take time to sell these days – new houses – and flats – are smaller than pre-war ones – and there isn’t the space for heavy furniture.
‘She also said a lot of well-to-do people are closing their town houses and renting a flat instead, so that’s brought more old furniture on to the market. But, you know, Betty, a lot of Mother’s furniture is early Georgian and quite dainty.’
Betty nodded agreement. ‘She’s right. Dad’s got one or two jobs where he’s making big houses into flats – houses like yours, in Liverpool, and the ones on Meols Drive in Hoylake.’
While the kettle for tea heated on the fire, they went slowly through the lobby and hall, both of which were newly painted cream; and the sunlight caught the glass door which Celia’s grandmother had loved so much, and reflected the pretty design on to the wall.
In the hall hung some of her mother’s favourite watercolours. Under their feet lay part of the good Brussels stair carpet from the West Derby house. The stone floor of the back room, to which they now slowly returned, boasted the Turkey carpet from the old dining room; it had been cut to fit the smaller room. Louise had said crossly that it was pure sacrilege to hack at such a beautiful carpet, but she had insisted on bringing it, so that was what Celia had arranged.
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