Ravenscliffe (3 page)

‘Here,’ she said, handing over the document. ‘Look at it now. It’s fascinating.’

He flipped it open and held it out at arm’s length, which was the only way he seemed to be able to read anything these days. ‘The West Riding Colliery Centre for Training Men in Mines Rescue – bit of a mouthful,’ he said. He looked at his daughter. ‘And who is this chap, did you say?’

‘Mr Garforth. The safety-lamp man. He’s quite local. We could meet him, visit the centre. People do, you see. Mining engineers and whatnot.’

‘Whoa, now,’ said the earl, as if steadying his hunter. ‘Let’s not run ahead.’

‘Daddy, what possible argument could you have against making our mines safer?’

None, of course, when she put it like that. But life was never as simple as Henrietta liked to make out. First of all, the king’s visit was imminent and, while the earl baulked at using that as an excuse to his principled daughter for postponing this particular issue, it was nevertheless a consideration, and a major one at that. Second, he doubted if any of the miners at his collieries would take kindly to going back to school and in their own time, too. Third, he was in any case sceptical about the need for any kind of extra training for his
men when all they really needed to know was how to extract coal. In this they were expert practitioners.

‘Thank you, Henry,’ he said, reining her in firmly. ‘Please don’t begin one of your moral monologues. I will read this, but in my own time, if you please, because just at this moment I have other more urgent business to attend to.’

She made as if to speak, then thought better of it. She knew her father well: no progress would be made if he felt harried. But this fellow, this Garforth, he sounded simply splendid. It seemed to Henrietta a foolish, backwards-looking thing to resist innovation in their own field of industry.

Behind her and with a decisive clunk, the oak door of her father’s study swung shut and Henrietta, taking her cue, strode through the hallway, seized her riding crop from the umbrella stand, and left the house for the uncomplicated pleasures of the saddle.

Downstairs in the kitchens, the hubbub caused by the preparation of breakfast had subsided. All that remained were the mingled smells – grilled meat, poached haddock, fried tomatoes, coddled eggs – and the dirty skillets, crockery and cutlery now piled high on the board by the sink. These, however, were no concern of Mary Adams, who had years ago done with tedious jobs such as dishwashing. As cook, it was now her perfect right to take the weight off her swollen legs and sit down on the carver – her throne, the scullery maids called it, out of range of her hearing – and eke out what little gossip there was with the nearest available body. Unfortunately for Mrs Adams, this morning it was Elizabeth Powell-Hughes, who had a habit of nipping an opening gambit smartly in the bud. The cook’s defensive tone and thwarted expression suggested that this frustrating process was already under way.

‘Well ’islop never made a moment’s trouble, that’s all I can say. Nob’dy easier to please than ’im,’

‘Now, Mary. Hislop could be a cantankerous old devil, and well you know it.’

Mrs Powell-Hughes regarded the cook sternly over the top of her gold-rimmed spectacles; she was a cut above Mrs Adams in breeding and status and was the only person in the household – other than the family, though they rarely used the privilege – who got away with calling her Mary. She herself, however, was Mrs Powell-Hughes to everyone – had no memory, in fact, of the last time anyone called her Elizabeth, as these last thirty years had been spent in service at Netherwood. There was no Mr Powell-Hughes, of course. Never had been. But Miss wouldn’t do for a housekeeper, so Mrs Powell-Hughes she was. Mrs P-H to the family and, very occasionally, to Parkinson the butler, but only when he’d had a sherry at Christmas, and even then he felt he was probably overstepping a line.

‘Aye, but that was out there, on ’is own territory.’ Mrs Adams swung a fat arm towards the garden. ‘In ’ere, ’e was as quiet as a mouse.’

The cook was rewriting history again, thought Mrs Powell-Hughes. She did this when it suited her story. No matter what the evidence was to the contrary, she would concoct her own version of events and present it as gospel. In fact, Hislop, the retired head gardener, had been – and still was, no doubt – a sharp-tongued, ill-mannered gnome of a man, too easily rattled and too ready to curse. His replacement, a tall, good-looking fellow with a Scots burr and an easy manner, was a more than satisfactory exchange. And the newcomer’s crime, in Mary Adams’s book of kitchen law, had been to reject the cup of tea he’d been given because he preferred to drink it without milk.

‘Pushed it away, like it was poison,’ said the cook, working
herself up all over again, though it was two weeks, now, since the atrocity took place.

Mrs Powell-Hughes said: ‘Mary, I was there at the time, so think on,’ and Mrs Adams, while determined to cherish and nurture the offence, nevertheless held her tongue. She would save her indignation for a more receptive audience, since it was clearly wasted on the housekeeper. Still, she huffed a little, inwardly. Tea without milk. Who could trust such a man?

Mrs Powell-Hughes reached for her fob, checked the time, let it drop. She wore it like a medal on her chest, with a black grosgrain ribbon to hide the pin.

‘Linens,’ she said, standing up. Always the first to finish a sit-down, thought Mrs Adams, truly out of humour now with her colleague. Always leaping to her feet as if she was the only one with work to do. The kitchen door swung open and a pink-cheeked housemaid entered, carrying the now-empty china cup and saucer she had taken upstairs, full of tea, to the countess ten minutes ago.

‘Slowly, Agnes,’ said the housekeeper. ‘The next cup you chip through carelessness comes out of your wages, remember.’

The girl said: ‘Sorry Mrs Powell-’ughes. Mrs Powell-’ughes?’

‘Yes?’

‘’er ladyship gave me this, for Mr Motson.’

She passed a note to the housekeeper, a sheet of thick vellum paper, folded in half but without an envelope. There was no doubting for whose eyes it was intended, since it had ‘Mr Motson’ written on it quite clearly in Lady Hoyland’s distinctive hand, but who wouldn’t sneak a look, in those circumstances? Certainly Agnes had, in the privacy of the back stairs, and now she and the cook watched as Mrs Powell-Hughes flicked open the writing paper and quickly scanned its contents. Her expression was inscrutable. She folded it back, and placed it in the pocket of her skirt.

‘Well?’ said Mrs Adams. ‘What is it?’

‘More work for my girls, that’s what,’ she said, tight-lipped, and left it at that. Mrs Adams watched in deep umbrage as the housekeeper swept from the room, all dignified restraint and self-importance. The cook turned to the girl.

‘Well?’ she said, again.

‘All t’bathrooms are coming out. Before t’king comes,’ she said.

Mrs Adams smiled. Comeuppance, she thought to herself with immense satisfaction. Comeuppance. That’s what that was.

‘R
unners, peas, lettuce, caulis, onions, plums, raspberries and goosegogs. Where do you want ’em?’

Amos Sykes stood in the open doorway of the kitchen, bearing in his arms with visible effort a large, muddy box of newly harvested produce. His handsome, craggy face, ruddy from the sun, had rivulets of sweat running in lines from under the brim of his cap, and he blinked in an effort to redirect them away from his eyes. It was a long walk from the allotment, and hot enough outside to crack the flagstones. A drink wouldn’t go amiss, he thought, and flashed a bright, winning smile at Nellie Kay. She was chopping onions as if she bore them a personal grudge, and she didn’t look up from the task but said, ‘Somewhere folk won’t fall over ’em.’

She said this grimly, as if it happened all the time, as if Amos carelessly depositing his veg boxes in people’s paths was a regular occurrence. He rolled his eyes at Alice Buckle, who blushed and looked away, afraid of taking anyone’s side against the formidable Nellie. Alice was stationed this morning at the sink, peeling potatoes with the swift efficiency that came from years of practice, and Amos walked over to leave the vegetables on her side of the room.

‘Eve in?’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said Alice. ‘Upstairs.’ She tilted her head upwards, to underline the point, but she didn’t look at him or stop peeling. The big sink was full of potatoes, and there was another sack on the floor. Leek and potato soup on the menu today, though they were calling it by a strange foreign name she couldn’t remember and serving it cold, which seemed like an odd business to Alice. The weather would never be so hot that the Buckles didn’t warm their soup on the stove, but Eve had come back from her spell in London with new ideas, and not just chilled soup, though that was probably the most outlandish. You could still order it warm if you wanted to, though, and Alice was comforted by this nod to normality. There were fishcakes today too, new for the summer menu but reassuringly familiar. The cod was waiting for her in the cold store, wrapped in the fishmonger’s blue and white paper; when the potatoes were done, the fish had to be skinned and pin-boned and Alice’s nimble fingers seemed better suited than anyone else’s to this delicate task. She would work like a blind woman, gazing ahead while her fingertips ran swiftly up and down the fish fillet feeling for the tiny bones, thin and flimsy as eyelashes, and whipping them out with a surgeon’s precision. These jobs – the peeling, the skinning, the boning – were always performed with a single-minded dedication that left no room for chitchat. She knew, for instance, that everything in the dinnertime service would be skewed if the present job wasn’t done by half-past ten and she would rather plunge the paring knife into her heart than fail at the task. Alice, plucked last year from domestic obscurity and placed here, in the working hub of Eve’s Puddings & Pies at Mitchell’s old flour mill, would do anything for Eve Williams, and would rather die than let her down. True, in coming to work for her she had simply swapped one kind of drudgery for another, but here, in this professional kitchen, Alice felt more valued than
she ever had at home, where her taciturn husband Jonas was king and her own place in the family hierarchy was some way beneath the children, the dog and the racing pigeons that Jonas kept in the back yard. More than that though, Alice somehow felt that Eve had made her part of a great venture, a new chapter in Netherwood’s history. This wonderful idea – too grandiose and self-regarding ever to be shared with anyone else – was what sustained her as she peeled her way through the potato mountain.

Amos knew he’d get no small talk out of Alice Buckle. In any case, it was Eve he was after, so he climbed the stairs, puffing in the heat. The summer, which everyone had thought was done, had come once again to Netherwood, its fierce, debilitating heat hitting the town with a heavyweight punch, so that people in the street went about their business with stunned expressions and a lead-limbed lethargy, all the time longing for shade. In the upstairs dining room at the mill, all the windows were open, but the muslin curtains, drawn against the glare, were absolutely still and Eve, sitting at one of the tables with Ginger Timpson, fanned herself with a menu as they spoke. She had her back to Amos, so it was Ginger who saw him first.

‘Amos Sykes, as I live and breathe,’ she said. ‘Never too warm to leave your cap at ’ome, is it?’

He winked at her and pulled it off. His hair was damp and flattened, and he ran a hand through it so it stuck up in spikes. ‘Nice bit o’ shade under this brim,’ he said.

Eve turned, and smiled with pleasure. He was a rare sight at the mill these days.

‘You’re a good man, to bring us a delivery in this ’eat,’ she said.

‘Some beautiful produce down there,’ he said. ‘Raspberries like this.’ He made an oval with his thumb and index finger. The fruit cage had been his own idea, and he and Seth had
built it themselves out of canes and chicken wire. It sagged here and there, but kept the birds off the berries, and had distracted Seth, for the time being, from building a melon pit. ‘And gooseberries like this.’ He made another shape with the other hand, a circle this time, and implausibly large. Ginger raised an eyebrow, but kept her mouth shut. Fresh produce was fresh produce. No point offending the gardener. She looked at Eve.

‘Crumbles, then? Or pies?’ she said.

‘Meringues, I’d say. For t’raspberries anyroad. Serve ’em with whipped cream. And gooseberry fool. Or set some aside for jam, if there’s plenty.’

Ginger nodded and stood up. ‘I’ll go an’ get cracking,’ she said. ‘Twenty booked in for dinner, and who knows who’ll drop in unannounced.’ She nodded at Amos as she left, and he returned the compliment then turned to Eve. She was a fine-looking woman, he thought: warm smile, dark eyes. But he had taught himself not to care.

‘Busy as ever then?’ he said, casual, neutral.

‘Busier, if anything. We’ve been run off our feet this week and next month that Fortnum’s order starts. I shall need more staff at this rate. ’ow’s things with you?’

‘Champion,’ he said.

‘Work all right?’