Feral Park (28 page)

Anna repined greatly over having to lie upon a sofa through the very afternoon in which she was to go to Thistlethorn and say, “Good day, Mrs. Dray. I have been told by my aunt that I am to call you Mamma now, and it pleases me most greatly to do so…
Mamma.
” Anna had also become agitated over the fact that her aunt, before leaving on a solitary walk, had wrapt the injured foot with such profuse swathing that three different servants were prompted to come up to where Anna reclined in the drawing-room and ask with sympathetic looks if the mistress of the house had been stricken with the gout.

“It is not gout, you silly girl!” (This even to the footman, who did not enjoy being designated a girl.) “I shall never get gout for I am not a voluptuary. Nor am I even much of an epicure after all these years of being fed a cottager’s diet of mutton and potatoes rather than turbot with lobster sauce and roast saddle of venison, two dishes I should like to have perhaps once before I die.”

Mrs. Dorchester, hearing her cooking disparaged by the mistress of the house, now entered the room to defend herself against the charge of insipid meal planning. “My dear mistress, perhaps the reason you have not got the gout is because you are not
given
to it. Nor is your father. Lack of a family tendency is an entirely plausible cause for its absence within this house, as I warrant that I feed you better here than do most of the cooks in the parish. I learnt my receipts and kitchen skills from a Frenchman, ma’am. Or at least he had a French name.”

“I know of no
chef de cuisine
, Mrs. Dorchester, who feeds so much pork to her master and mistress. Each week we must have black pudding and brawn and bacon and ham, and I feel sometimes that we live in a grass hut—a grass hut in Pigville. The only thing French to be put upon the Feral Park dining room table is a réchauffé or two or three, for you do enjoy warming up whatever was left from the night before.”

“Your father, mistress, has no objections to an exercise of economy in the kitchen. Indeed, ma’am, he encourages it!” Mrs. Dorchester sat down and proceeded to fan herself. She was distraught and appeared insulted.

Anna softened her tone. She did not know why she had felt it necessary to criticise the cook so harshly—or even at all. Mrs. Dorchester had been employed as the cook of Feral Park—and without even a single complaint from her father—since ere Anna was born. Only the butler, Mr. Maxwell, had served the Park longer. “Do not be mistaken, Mrs. Dorchester, for in spite of all that I have said, I fancy your cooking above everyone else’s.”

Mrs. Dorchester grumbled her reply:“May I say, ma’am, that your previous words indicated nothing of the sort?”

“You may say what you wish but it was not my intention to discredit you, but only to make a tiny amendment or two. I raise the matter of a varied menu because I am worried that you will not prepare the dishes I have requested for the dinner party on Friday night. It should be a special night. There must be not a single réchauffé upon the table.”

“But mistress, I cannot make all the things on the list you have submitted to me, for I have never before cooked the chief of them, and I haven’t time in the interim to test and perfect the unfamiliar dishes. Perhaps you have not noticed, but Miss Pints is a very specific eater and she will keep me between now and then busy by one third at least. Are you aware, in fact, that this very evening, for dessert, I am to prepare her a meringue? And a very special meringue it is to be! For there should be nothing
beneath
the froth or mixed into it—no fruit or pastry or any such thing—only the meringue, sitting alone upon the plate like a little solitary cloud, because Miss Drone believes it will go easily down the tract of her scarecrow companion. You, ma’am, have a delicate tract yourself and yet even
you
would not sit down to a plate of cloud.”

“Then come dinner on Friday we shall have mutton and potatoes and I shall be mortified,” said Anna with a disagreeable sigh. “Mr. Nevers will be there to see me thus, and Mr. Waitwaithe, the clerk from Mr. Scourby’s law offices, and the milliner and tailor as well: Mr. Groves.”

“Mr. Groves has been invited? How curious, ma’am.”

“And why should his invitation strike you as curious? My father has had many tradesmen to dine with us. It is not an odd thing.”

“But Mr. Groves—oh, goodness me—at your table.”

“What of Mr. Groves other than that he be a bit of a coxcomb? His presence is required to add flavour to a dinner that will otherwise go down very dry and dully seasoned. (For what else can a cook do with a potato?) He may bring hats, as well, for us all to try on, yourself included, Mrs. Dorchester, if you watch your manners and do not oversalt the soup.”

“Then you know nothing of his doings with Mrs. Pickler in Smithcoat?”

“Mrs. Dorchester, I do not know what happens in
Smithcoat
, for I spend the chief of my time in
Berryknell
. So you must tell me.”

“I cannot, I’m afraid. I cannot bring myself to say any of it, as I am a Christian woman. You must ask someone who does not fear for her soul as do I. It should not be difficult to find such a person in
this
parish.”

Anna could not keep her anger in check. “You insufferable woman!” She tossed a pillow at Mrs. Dorchester. “I will learn of it from someone else. I will find out from Mr. Groves himself for that matter. This conversation is making me want to take my head and remove it, and turn it upside down and pour ointment inside to soothe my unsettled thoughts.”

“Aye, you are much too worked up, my dear. I will bring you a draught of something to calm you.” Mrs. Dorchester went off and left Anna to think that she had behaved horribly. There was much to rejoice in this day and she was acting petulant for no reason that she could discern other than an occasional throbbing in the ankle. Mrs. Dorchester returned and gave her something to drink. It smelt of anise and was green.

“What is it?” Anna asked. “What is green that one would drink?”

“Something that will soothe your nerves. Take it. I must return to the kitchen before Betsey burns the pudding.”

Anna took a sip and liked the taste. She was drinking the beverage down when Mr. Maxwell, the butler, whom she had not seen for a month, stepped into the room.

“Mr. Maxwell, welcome back to Feral Park. I did not think that I should ever see you again. Does Papa know that you have returned from town?”

“He cannot, miss, for I have just arrived and he is not here. But I will be very glad to see him this evening, as I am most happy to see you
now
, miss, and happy, on the whole, to be home after such a long time away. Did James serve well in my absence?”

“He did, Mr. Maxwell, but he will never be the butler that you are. You are looking well, but the eyes appear even more clouded than ere you left.”

“Alas, miss, I am told by the doctors that there is nothing that can be done. I should be blind, they say, by Christmas. I shall not
see
my figgy pudding, but I should enjoy it nonetheless, unless your father has sacked me.”

“Papa would never dismiss you, Mr. Maxwell—not after all the years you have given to Feral Park. I am sorry to hear that nothing can be done for your sight.”

“I wish to maintain my present duties for as long as I am able. Do you think that Mr. Peppercorn will be amenable to this request?”

“I am most certain that he will.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“I am still over here on the divan, Mr. Maxwell.”

Turning back to the divan: “Yes, miss. Sorry, miss. I thought that you had moved to the other side of the room to find the missing shoe.”

“The missing shoe, Mr. Maxwell?”

“Yes, white and quite large, like the one which you have on the one foot already.”

“It is a bandage, Mr. Maxwell.”

“I am so terribly sorry, miss. Excuse me, miss. I will go and unpack. Oh, yes. I came not only to tell you that I had returned from London, but to announce visitors. Three visitors to be exact: Mrs. Dray and her two daughters. May I admit them?”

“Of course you may!” said Anna with great animation. “Immediately.”

With a bow: “Yes, miss.” Mr. Maxwell then walked into the wall and bumped his shoulder.

“Dear me, are you all right, Mr. Maxwell?”

“I am perfectly all right, miss. It will hardly bruise at all.”

The initial moment of the visit was every thing that Anna anticipated it would be. There were a great many tears and much hugging (with more delicate hugging in the vicinity of the foot), and from the mother: “This is strange, for gouty feet do not run in our family,” and “Gouty feet do not
run
in
any
family, for they are gouty!” from a giggling Gemma, who could not stop squeezing the hand of her half-sister, and kissing her upon the cheek, and regarding her as if she had been on an exotic island for a long period and had just returned, uneaten by cannibals.

“Who told you that I may wish to see you to-day?” Anna enquired of her mother.

“Your Aunt Drone. She said that we were to come at once but she did not give the reason why. I saw the bandage on the foot and immediately I thought that
this
was the reason: that perhaps you had lost your foot, for we Drays are given to losing parts of ourselves, are we not, Gemma?”

“Yes, Mamma,” said Gemma with an indulgent smile.

“But then I saw the look upon your face, my darling daughter, and it was at that very moment that I
knew
. That
you
must know. I have never understood why your father has never told you, especially after you grew older and were of an age to comprehend the truth of your birth, but I would not push him to say that which he was not yet ready to say, and I could not tell you myself, as I had promised him many years ago that I would not. Perhaps, thought I, the reason he does not wish to make the disclosure is because his opinion of me was much lowered by my frisk and frolic upon the bed with my brotherin-law. But then I have thought, as well: who is he to make such a one-sided measurement of another? For did not he and I cavort in like fashion upon the land as my brother-in-law and I cavorted upon the sea?”

“Mamma,
please
,” entreated May, clutching her head, “can we not suspend all talk of cavorting upon both land
and
sea?”

“My dear May, did I not say that neither Gemma nor I planned to speak another word to you until you gave up this foolish scheme of marrying Mr. Shyman? It serves neither your sister nor myself nor now your half-sister Anna well for you to tax our good natures by such utter and provocative foolishness!”

“It is not foolishness, Mamma. I love him and he is very kind to me.”

“You cannot possibly love this man. You say this only to prove to your poor mamma that you are capable of getting yourself into even more trouble than she. It is a ridiculous scheme. We shall find you someone eminently more suitable.”

“But I love
him
, and he is eminent himself.”

“My dear daughter, if you say that infernal word one more time I shall scream.”

“What word, Mamma?”

“Love.
Love
!”

“But you yourself have loved a great many different sorts of men, including Anna’s very own father. This fact puts you on the most intimate terms with the concept, although I will admit that my love for Mr. Shyman may be just the sort of love that you do
not
fathom. It is steady and solid and will endure in constancy, you may depend on it, for I have never loved another man so much as I love Mr. Shyman, who maintains the most ardent feelings for me in return, and who treats me with great tenderness and care, and happens only coincidentally and, I feel, inconsequentially, to be of a different faith.”

Stated Anna, who wished this discussion to end so that all could return to the topic of herself and her newly learnt family connexion: “If you think about this for long enough, May, you will come to see that in spite of the love the two of you feel for one another there are a great many things which conspire against a successful marriage.” The green drink had made Anna feel warm inside and a little light-headed and quite loquacious. The feeling had a familiarity to it from the nights she took a glass or two of fortified wine at her father’s table. But there was something else about the drink which appealed to her and which she could not define. Anna continued her advocacy for her mother’s position: “How, for example, are the children to be raised? Will they be Christian or will they be Jewish?”

“That is an easy answer. Mr. Shyman has agreed to raise them within the Church of England, just as has his friend Mr. D’Israeli, who writes the books about the writers. Mr. D’Israeli has, only this year, baptized each of his own children as Christians. It is the thing to do amongst the Jews these days and should at least give you
some
comfort, Mamma, to think that when most of the Jews of England are dead they shall be in Heaven breaking leavened bread with Jesus.”

“You do not know if Mr. Shyman will do any thing of the sort himself, nor may a Jewish man simply say, ‘Abracadabra! My children are Christian.’ For they may be baptized, but a part of them will always remain Jewish, just as Mr. Shyman, no matter what he chuses to do with his own soul, will always be a Jew. I am not aspersing him, dear me, certainly not! I am only saying that a man born a Jew will fit no more easily into this family than a Negro or a Chinaman or, Heaven forbid, an American, for we are all as different as any individuals can be, and the Lord countenances those differences only so long as we do not attempt to commix them into a gallimaufry of undigestibility.”