Ravenscliffe (65 page)

Anna looked at Eve: there were shadows under her eyes. Her hands were laced protectively across the sleeping child, but Eve looked like the one in need of sleep.

‘Should I take her?’ Anna said. ‘Is she heavy?’

Eve shook her head. ‘She’s keeping me warm.’

‘You could wait at our house, though. It’d be more comfortable.’ She was full of concern for her friend; this seemed no place for a pregnant woman.

‘Not likely,’ Eve said. ‘And miss t’moment? Anyway, I’m right as rain, as long as I can sit down.’

Anna nodded. Then she said: ‘Daniel tells me you might be looking for new waitress.’

‘Aye, that’s right. Do you know one?’

‘Well, yes and no,’ she said. ‘Does it have to be girl?’

Eve considered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it does. Are you thinking of summat for Amos, if tonight doesn’t go ’is way?’

Anna laughed. ‘No, but I know someone who needs work.’ The boy your brother sacked, she thought, and though she didn’t say it, Eve understood immediately.

‘Edward Wakefield,’ she said, and Anna nodded.

‘And if I took ’im on, might Amos bury t’atchet?’

Anna didn’t answer directly. ‘I just want to him to make amends with Morten, truth be told,’ she said. ‘They’ll be missing that boy’s pay packet.’

‘Nice of you,’ Eve said. ‘Morten Wakefield made a right mess of Amos’s face.’

Anna shrugged. ‘He’s forgiven,’ she said, ‘but Edward is still out of work.’

‘Well,’ Eve said, ‘Sarah Kaye was all fingers and thumbs when she first started, and now she’s a grand little waitress. If Nellie lets ’er go to Barnsley, there’s no reason why we couldn’t give Edward a chance, if you think ’e’d like it.’ She smiled. ‘We could get ’im a frock coat. Put ’im on t’door, like at Fortnum & Mason.’

At the front of the room there was a significant hubbub, a scraping of chairs and a clearing of throats. Someone called Anna’s name and she looked at Eve with something akin to panic in her eyes. Eve took her hand and squeezed it.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

Anna lifted Maya into her own arms. The child stirred, but didn’t wake.

‘Anna! Up ’ere.’

This was Seth’s voice, carrying across the hall from the makeshift stage at the front. He was there with Enoch and Amos, and they all three mimed at her to get a move on, which she did, pushing her way through the melée. Eve followed in the path she created.

‘Mam!’ Eliza shouted. ‘Mam!’

The child’s face glowed with the thrill of it all. She reached for Eve’s arm and pulled her in to the middle of the family huddle, to keep the bump safe from other people’s elbows. Seth had jumped down to join them too; he chewed his thumbnail and watched the men on the platform with anxious intensity. If Amos lost, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. Anna handed
him the sleeping Maya as she passed, and Seth, having taken her, immediately gave her to Daniel, who already had Ellen on his shoulders. She leaned down and tapped Maya smartly on the head so that the younger girl awoke and opened her eyes in surprise. Daniel, fearing noisy tears at the crucial moment, kissed her on her hot plump cheek, and she yawned at him, then smiled. In front of them, Anna had made it to the platform and though there were wooden steps on either side, Amos reached down with one arm and hoiked her up.

‘Are you all right?’ she said and he said, ‘I am now,’ though he looked, to her, to be taut with nerves, unlike Webster Thorne, who occupied his space on the platform with the unruffled, worldly air of a man whose attendance here was a mere formality. If anything, he seemed a little bored. He arranged his face into a genial smile and offered a hand, which Amos shook, mistaking the gesture for cordiality.

‘Prepare yourself for disappointment, Sykes,’ Thorne said,
sotto voce
. ‘My man’s been on the door all day, and his estimation is a solid Liberal victory.’

Amos opened his mouth to reply but the returning officer had stepped forwards and the crowd, suddenly silent, turned avid eyes upon him. Anxiety churned in Amos’s gut. He looked away from Thorne and ahead into the crowd and his eyes found Eve, who sent him a smile so replete with warmth and faith that Amos felt suddenly steadier. He smiled back. Ellen, from her perch, waved at him flamboyantly with both arms and cheered as if he’d already won. Beside him, Anna reached for his hand.

‘Here are the results of the election contest in the constituency of Ardington.’

The returning officer was Lester Moorhouse, chairman of the parish council; a Liberal, Amos thought resentfully, though there was no clue in his neutral expression as to what was written on the piece of paper in his hand. He was milking the
moment, though: his pause was a little long, a little theatrical and his voice, when he spoke again, was loaded with self-importance.

‘Mr Webster Thorne, Liberal Party: two thousand, seven hundred and eighty-five votes.’

A hum of urgent conversation waxed and then waned. Amos and Enoch looked at each other, knowing without speaking that they shared the same thought: Thorne had polled well. Their anxiety had been well-founded.

‘Mr Vincent Camberley-Brook, Conservative Party. Eighty-three votes.’

Someone sent up an ironic hurrah and earned a ripple of laughter, but it was of the nervous, distracted variety, and offered no real release from the tension.

‘Mr Amos Sykes, Independent Labour Party.’

In the pause, Amos heard only the pounding of his own heart. His hand, in Anna’s, was cold and his mouth was bone dry. He felt he stood on the edge of a precipice; he hadn’t realised, until now, how very much he wanted to win.

‘Two thousand, nine hundred and forty-two votes. Mr Amos Sykes is duly elected as the Member of Parliament for Ardington.’

These last words in Mr Moorhouse’s moment in the spotlight were lost in the animal roar of victory from Amos’s supporters. Thorne and his agent exchanged stunned looks of abject confusion. They stood immobile, trying to comprehend the loss while pandemonium broke out all about them. Like a shot, Seth was back on the platform, hooting with ecstatic triumph. Eliza clambered up too and threw herself joyfully into the mayhem. Enoch, tears streaming down his face, joined Amos and Anna in a tight embrace and the three of them swayed there, heads together, quite undone by emotion, unsteady with relief and disbelief. When they finally pulled apart, Thorne was gone from the platform and the Liberal
supporters were trailing out of the hall like guests ejected from a party. Vincent Camberley-Brook, entirely unsupported in the crowd but gentlemanly in defeat, waited politely for the victory speech; when there is no hope of winning, neither is there disappointment at losing. And in front of the platform an expectant, jubilant, giddy crowd of Labour voters shouted for their man. He stepped forwards and they hollered their approval, clapping and clapping, stamping their boots on the wooden boards. Amos waited, let them settle, and then he spoke.

‘Today, my loyal friends, you have put your trust in me, and I make this pledge to you now: I shall not let you down. There is much work to be done, but I shall not rest until there is no child hungry in Ardington, no working man without fair pay, no widow without t’means to support ’erself and ’er family. It’s an honour, a privilege, to represent you and I shall endeavour always to justify your faith in me.’ Here his voice cracked and faltered and he looked down at his boots. A swell of cheering rose to fill the moment, giving him time to collect himself. Anna moved closer and he reached for her, pulling her tight to his side. Someone shouted, ‘Three cheers for Amos and Anna Sykes,’ and Amos looked at her, and then out across the hall and he laughed out loud, warm and flushed with happiness. This was his world, and it was a place where anything was possible.

Ingredients

16 fluid oz warm milk

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon yeast

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon salt

1½ lb flour

Half a cabbage, finely chopped

6 hardboiled eggs, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Pour a little of the warm milk into a bowl and add the sugar and yeast. Set aside until it foams – about ten minutes. Pour the rest of the milk into another bowl and to this add the melted butter, the egg, the salt and 4oz of flour. Stir, adding the yeast mixture. Then continue to mix in the flour, about 4oz at a time, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and doesn’t feel sticky on
your hands. Cover with a linen cloth and set it in a warm place for about an hour, during which time it should almost triple in size.

While the dough rises cook the cabbage in butter until it wilts then stir in the chopped eggs and cook until the cabbage begins to turn golden brown at the edges. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside to cool.

Tip the risen dough onto a floured surface and form into a long sausage, about two inches wide. Cut into one-inch pieces and roll into balls. Flatten the balls, place a small spoonful of filling in the middle then fold the circle in half to enclose. Pinch the edges together tightly to seal. Brush the upper surface with beaten egg.

Put the pirozkhi on baking sheets, leaving room between them to grow, and bake in a hot oven for about twenty minutes until golden brown and puffed up.

Ingredients

3 oz buckwheat flour

9 oz strong white flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dried yeast

5 fluid oz sour cream

6 fluid oz milk

2 eggs, separated

1 oz butter

Method

Sift the flours and the salt together in a large bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Gently warm the milk and sour cream in a small pan – do not overheat. Add the egg yolks and whisk together then pour this into the flour, whisking again until you have a thick batter. Let the bowl stand, covered, somewhere warm for about an hour, then whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter. Cover again and let stand for another hour.

To cook, melt butter in an iron pan and drop a generous tablespoon of batter into the pan. When the upper surface begins to bubble – after about a minute, perhaps less – flip the blini over and cook on the other side for thirty seconds. Transfer to a cooling rack then repeat the process until all the batter is used up, adding butter to the pan when necessary. This recipe is for about twenty blinis.

Serve warm with thick sour cream and caviar.

Ingredients

1 large onion, peeled and grated

6 potatoes, peeled and grated

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons flour

Salt and pepper to taste.

Method

Mix the grated potatoes and onion together. Add the beaten eggs, the flour and a twist of salt and pepper.

Heat oil in a flat skillet and drop a large spoonful of the mixture into the pan. Fry until browned on one side, then flip over and brown the other side.

Serve warm.

Ingredients

2 pints excellent, gelatinous beef stock (the better the stock, the better the soup)

4 large beetroot, 3 peeled and diced, 1 grated

1 large onion, sliced

1 carrot, diced

1 stick of celery, diced

1 large potato, peeled and diced

1 bay leaf

Half a cabbage, finely shredded

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream and fresh dill to serve

Method

Soften the onion in butter in a large pan for a few minutes then add the diced beetroot, onion, carrot, celery and bay leaf to the pan and stir well to coat everything with butter. Cook for ten minutes over a low heat. Add the grated beetroot, the potato and the cabbage, cook gently for a few minutes then pour in the stock and simmer until the vegetables are meltingly tender. Add the vinegar, honey and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with sour cream and chopped dill.

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