by Faith Martin
*
At that particular moment in time, Jenny Starling was also smiling like the cat that got the cream. And found a canary in it to boot.
She was standing in the large kitchen of Wainscott House, going over every item the butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer had brought in their smart little refrigerated vans.
The butcher had arrived first, bearing lean cuts of venison, marbled steaks, prime lamb, fresh pork and smoked bacon. Not even Jenny had been able to find a single fault with the tender meat.
The fishmonger had arrived just as she’d finished carefully storing the meat in the large fridge at Wainscott House. She would only remove the food to the Stillwater Swan first thing in the morning.
The fishmonger had fared rather less well than the butcher, for Jenny had insisted that he take away his mussels and return with a batch that suited her fastidious tastes better. She’d compounded his misery by rejecting two of his trout, which, she insisted, after a beady-eyed look at their gills, could be chucked in the bin, thank you very much. But she was happy with the prawns, crab, salmon and whitebait, although she did reject his oysters.
Jenny disliked cooking oysters, ever since that very distressing incident concerning the Russian ambassador’s wife, and the six bottles of vodka.
The greengrocer, last of all to arrive, had to watch and wince as she minutely inspected every vegetable and piece of fruit that he laid out for her, from the leeks to the quinces, the asparagus to the grapes. He left with only a few bruised apples, some unwholesome-looking bananas and a dented kiwi.
All in all, not a bad haul, Jenny thought, looking at her list of goodies. Already her heart was thumping. Breakfast was easy enough, of course, for a full English breakfast was a must. She could make some fresh sausages with the pork and the herbs she’d already gathered from the kitchen garden, served with smoked bacon, grilled tomatoes and of course, plenty of fried eggs, which always went down a treat with the men.
For the ladies, though, and especially Dorothy Leigh, Jenny would include the options of delicately flavoured omelettes, porridge and perhaps a little French toast.
Lunches, too, would be a snap, with plenty of salads, a cold chicken and ham pie, perhaps even a huge fruit salad, to help keep the guests cool and refreshed on a hot summer’s day.
But the evening meal . . .
Jenny sat down eagerly, pulling the list of goodies towards her and letting her imagination run riot.
There would have to be hors d’oeuvres, of course — smoked salmon blinis, asparagus wrapped in pancetta, mini bruschettas . . . She sighed in bliss. Then, for a second course, perhaps some lobster cocktails — and she mustn’t forget soup, of course. A rich game soup, or, no, perhaps something lighter . . . pea and mint, or lettuce and spring onion. Yes, very nice on a sultry summer evening.
And for the main course . . . Jenny’s heart very nearly sang a song. Well, Lucas Finch had promised her she could go wild. Perhaps eels. No, perhaps not. Not with a pregnant woman seated at table. Veal fricassee, perhaps, or venison à la royale.
Hmm . . .
And desserts that looked as beautiful as they tasted. They’d have to be cold, of course. A pity that, but it was high summer. Almond cream with greengage jam would go lovely with a variety of things. Apple gateau, or apricot soufflé . . . yes, especially for Dorothy Leigh. Or maybe a baked Alaska.
Someone coughed.
Jenny looked up ferociously. She’d just begun to elevate herself into the lofty heights of foodie nirvana and she wasn’t too pleased to be brought down to earth with such an unkind bump.
‘Yes?’ she snapped. To a perfect stranger. Jenny blinked, and immediately apologized. ‘I do beg your pardon. I was miles away.’
The stranger inclined his head. And in that instant, Jenny was forever to believe that this man did everything silently. She had certainly not heard him come in, and since the kitchen was tiled, she should have heard him. And when he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Starling, but Mr Finch wondered if you would care to prepare this evening’s meal, or would you prefer for Mrs Jessop to do so?’
That this was the famous ‘manservant’ of Lucas Finch, Jenny was in no doubt. He was dressed in a white houseboy’s jacket that reminded the cook of all those films set in India, where the pukka sahib was waited on by expressionless Indians with round, soulful eyes.
But Francis Grey didn’t have round, soulful eyes. He was about fifty, she supposed, slim, and had an air of being so neat and tidy he hardly looked human. Not a hair was out of place. On this hot July afternoon, not a bead of perspiration dared quiver on his forehead.
‘Oh, I’d be delighted to cook the evening meal,’ Jenny said quickly, and with some considerable relief. She knew that Mrs Jessop could make a decent bed and arrange a mean gladioli floral display, but Jenny believed — quite rightly — that nobody could cook like she could cook.
‘How many are going to dine?’
Francis Grey blinked. ‘Just Mr Finch. Mrs Jessop and myself eat in here.’ He indicated the kitchen, and at the same time, and in some mysterious way that not even the perspicacious Jenny Starling was quite able to fathom, indicated that she also was to dine in the kitchen. Not that Jenny had ever intended to do anything else. Still, it rankled to have a ‘manservant’ make it quite so plain. She inclined her head somewhat stiffly. ‘And the captain and . . . er . . . Mr O’Keefe?’
Francis smiled. His face, Jenny noticed in disconcerted surprise, was so bland, so nondescript, that even though she was looking right at him, she’d have been hard pressed to actually describe what he looked like.
‘The crew see to their own meals,’ Francis said, somehow relegating the Stillwater Swan and her servants to another planet.
Jenny nodded. ‘Very well. What time would Mr Finch like to dine?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Eight-thirty is the usual time,’ Francis said, then he bowed and left. Or rather, not so much left as somehow floated away.
Jenny watched him go, and then, for some strange reason, shivered. Hard.
CHAPTER THREE
Jenny arose, somewhat reluctantly it had to be said, with the dawn chorus. She tiptoed stealthily down to the kitchen, not wishing to disturb either Lucas or Mrs Jessop, and yawningly made herself a cup of tea. This she sipped for a moment before deciding to take it out onto the lawn.
All around her, the cool early-morning air resonated with birdsong. The grass was still moist with dew, and far in the distance she could see a farmer, riding a red piece of farm equipment to the slope of a hill, no doubt in order to turn the hay. She sipped her delicious hot brew and watched the bees disappearing up the fluted bells of the foxglove flowers.
It was going to be another glorious day, as Captain Lester had so ably predicted yesterday. Already the sun was promising to blast its furnace-like heat down on her head as she made her way to her by now favourite spot under the plum tree. It looked, to her experienced eye, to be an old-fashioned Victoria plum, and she wished she could be here in the autumn to sample its fruit. Victorias made perfect plum tarts.
The very rustic-looking wooden bench groaned just slightly in protest as she sat down on it, and a thrush, who was in the process of whacking a snail against a stone, paused to eye her with rather dubious interest. He needn’t have worried — she was not that interested in sharing his breakfast. A nasty French habit, that. Snails. She could cook anything, but snails were the exception.
Jenny ignored the bird and continued to sip blissfully away at her tea. It was so nice to be on holiday, after all. She was just down to the final mouthful when she heard a cheerful whistle (of the non-avian kind) coming from the direction of the river. The tune was ‘Messing About On The River’ — a rather apt title under the circumstances, she mused with a smile.
Curious, Jenny strolled to the gate and stood leaning against what had probably once been a chicken coop to watch a dark young man step lithely aboard the Stillwater Swan. As he did s
o, he hefted a large bag of coal under one arm as if it were nothing more than a feather pillow. No doubt, the impressed cook surmised, this was Captain Lester’s neighbour and fellow worker, the engineer Brian O’Keefe.
She wondered idly whether his name could be put down to Irish or Scottish ancestry, but when he disappeared into the Swan’s boiler room, she shrugged and glanced at her watch. It was still only a quarter to six. She had plenty of time.
She returned to the kitchen and began the task of moving her precious food packages to the Swan. Although from time to time she still caught snatches of ‘Messing About On The River’ issuing from the boiler room, Brian O’Keefe never stuck his head out to ask who was about, although he must have heard her.
Perhaps, she thought rather dourly, he was one of those obstinate individuals who did nothing more than what was strictly their job, and resented doing even that. She hoped not. She was looking forward to this cruise, and didn’t want anything to spoil the ambience.
By seven, her galley was fully stocked. She’d added plenty of herbs and some more fresh vegetables from the kitchen garden to the final tally, and her last act was to place her knives and assorted instruments reverently into a drawer. She gave the oven another look over, although she’d already tested it thoroughly yesterday afternoon. One of the disadvantages of being a travelling cook was that you were always using ovens that you didn’t know. And, as every cook knew, sometimes to their cost, all ovens had their own idiosyncrasies and funny little ways that could trip you up. Flat soufflés and burnt duck were amongst the worst that could happen. But Jenny was confident that the specimen on the Swan didn’t have too many surprises in store for her now.
One of Jenny’s worst nightmares was the thought of an oven giving up the ghost altogether. Although she was perfectly capable of producing a good meal using rings and grill alone, she didn’t much care to have her ingenuity put to the test. (Using microwaves didn’t even cross her mind.) But the gas bottles were full and the cooker was a relatively new and trustworthy brand. She nodded, gave the boiler room a passing look as she left, and returned to the house.
Mrs Jessop looked surprised to see her, and then looked faintly approving as she realized that the cook must have already been hard at work for some time. The younger generation didn’t know they’d been born, Mrs Jessop was wont to say. Not that she’d say it to this Miss Starling. She had infinitely better sense than that!
The two women were cosily drinking tea together when the parrot, in a flurry of scarlet and blue excitement, fluttered by and landed squarely on the teapot lid. Apparently the creature had little feeling in its scaly feet, for instead of squawking and hopping off the hot ceramic rather smartly, it merely turned, cocked its head to one side, and fixed Jenny with a curious, pale eye.
‘Wotcha,’ the parrot said amiably.
Jenny blinked. ‘Good morning,’ she replied.
Lucas Finch came in at that moment, yawning mightily. It was an experience somewhat similar, Jenny mused, to that of peering down the Mersey tunnel on a smoggy day.
‘Mornin’, ladies,’ Lucas said, and scratched himself vigorously under his left armpit before fixing the teapot with an avaricious stare.
Mrs Jessop quickly and competently shooed the bird off, and poured him a cup.
Jenny wondered what the oh-so-correct Francis would make of this cosy little domestic scene. She somehow doubted that he would approve.
Lucas pulled out a chair and sat amicably next to his temporary cook, took a hearty slurp of tea, and then sighed blissfully. ‘The gannets will be arriving in another half an hour or so, love,’ he warned her cheerfully. ‘David and Dot only live down the road, and old Gab and Jasmine like to be on time. He’s an ex-soldier, you know,’ he informed her a trifle glumly, then rolled his eyes. There was something about the way he spoke that roused the cook’s instinct for trouble.
Jenny glanced at him curiously. ‘Were you once in the army, Mr Finch?’ She fished for information gently and was somehow not surprised to find that she had hit some kind of nail right on the head.
Lucas jumped as if he’d just been goosed, and Mrs Jessop began to study her teacup. She stared at it so hard that Jenny wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been attempting to read the tea leaves, which was definitely a fine art in this day of the ubiquitous teabag. So long as there were no tall, dark, handsome strangers lurking about in the bottom of her cup, Jenny wished her luck. Tall, dark, handsome strangers, in her opinion, were far more trouble than they were worth.
‘Yeah, I was in the army a lifetime ago,’ Lucas finally and rather reluctantly admitted. ‘A soldier, too. Saw action in the Falklands.’ He sounded definitely defensive about it — a strange reaction for a man most people would automatically call a hero. He slurped another great mouthful of tea. ‘Well, I’d better make sure Brian and Toby are on the ball. Er . . . you all set then, love?’
Jenny nodded, and promptly outlined the varied and substantial breakfast menu she had planned. ‘When would you like it served?’ she added, and watched him swallow the last of his tea, before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Far from finding his coarse mannerisms off-putting, they roused in her a sort of amused affection.
‘About nine will do,’ he said, after thinking about it for a moment or so. ‘We don’t want too early a start. We’ll take an hour, have a leisurely breakfast on board, and then set off about ten. I don’t like to eat and cruise at the same time — you miss too much, stuck in the main salon.’
Jenny, who didn’t like anything to compete with her food (including a paddle steamer), smiled happily. ‘I quite agree. That sounds like a very good idea.’
She watched him leave, looking rather better for his morning slurp of tea, and smiled wistfully. For all his uncouth ways, she rather liked Lucas Finch. She would bet a fairly substantial amount of her wages that he was not half as bad as he’d like people to think. Or maybe not, she added mentally, after another moment’s thought.
‘If you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice,’ Mrs Jessop’s tentative voice broke in, and Jenny quickly turned back to her.
‘I’m always willing to listen to advice,’ she said, quite truthfully. Whether or not she took it was an entirely different matter, of course.
‘I shouldn’t talk about the Falklands War too much in front of Mr Finch, if I were you. He’s apt to be a bit sensitive about it.’
‘Oh?’ she said mildly — and craftily. It had been her experience that the less you seemed to want to gossip, the more gossip came your way.
Mrs Jessop’s genteel face took on a look of mild distress. ‘People can be so . . . unkind, sometimes,’ she said, her hands fluttering over her cup. ‘There are all sorts of nasty rumours going around that . . . well, I really don’t know how they start. But in a village . . . people can be so spiteful, can’t they? And I’m sure there’s nothing in it, really. Just because Mr Finch was a Londoner, you see. And, well, sort of very aggressively working class, so to speak.’ She gulped out the last words in a slightly embarrassed rush. ‘And just because he grew up in a neighbourhood with some rather, well, shall we say undesirable men, people will take on so,’ she finished firmly, looking faintly relieved to come to the end of her somewhat rambling sentence.
Jenny had no difficulty in interpreting this rather obtuse explanation. It was quite obvious that people in these parts believed Lucas Finch to have been one of those parasites who had somehow profited from war. The kind of man who’d made a fortune from other people’s misery, in fact.
Jenny sighed. She thought that the locals probably had it right. Men of Lucas Finch’s ilk could turn a war into a goldmine, and regularly did. So had he been an arms dealer in the not so distant past? Or simply one of those men who could supply whatever was needed cheaper than anyone else, and thus raked in the readies? It was, she supposed grimly, just as well that she wasn’t a gambler by nature. Lucas Finch probably was just as bad — or worse — as he made out. And liking him just showe
d spectacularly bad judgment on her part!
But she smiled kindly at Mrs Jessop — who obviously needed to consider her employer more in the light of being a rough diamond, rather than an out-and-out crook — and agreed that, yes, people could indeed be very spiteful when they wanted to be.
*
At half past eight, a rather impressive-looking Jaguar XJS pulled up on the gravelled entrance at the front of the house with just a little jaunty spurt of gravel. Jenny, who was just walking back to the boat, found herself curious, and paused to watch the couple who emerged.
In spite of the sports car being what she considered to be a young man’s toy, it was a silver-haired man who climbed out from behind the wheel. From the ramrod-straight way in which he marched to the passenger’s side and held open the door, she had no trouble in recognizing an ex-soldier.
This then was Gabriel Olney.
Expecting a similarly silver-haired, genteel officer’s wife to make up a matching set, the cook was faintly surprised by the woman who stepped very elegantly from the car. She was, Jenny saw at once, extremely stylish. Everything about her fairly screamed it. Her hair was dark and shaped into a short, very chic geometric cut, and when she turned and smiled rather perfunctorily at her husband, Jenny caught a glimpse of liquid chocolate eyes as dark as her hair. But she wasn’t quite as young, perhaps, as she was trying to make out. Jenny put her somewhere in her mid-forties, but her figure was as smart as that of a twenty-year-old and her clothes must have cost the earth. She wondered, without so much as a single pang of envy, how many times Jasmine Olney did her shopping in Paris.
Then the pair passed on into the house, and the curvaceous cook returned to the Stillwater Swan to tend to her tomato and herb omelettes and the nicely sizzling bacon.
Ten minutes later, Jenny glanced with satisfaction at the browning sausages and checked her watch. It was nearly nine.
She didn’t like to prompt her employers, but food should be enjoyed when at its premium. She turned down the heat on the stove and, wiping her hands on a pristine towel, made her way out to the open decking at the Swan’s stern. She could see at once that the planking had been freshly marked for quoits. So Brian O’Keefe had been busy after all.