Netherwood (35 page)

In a roundabout way, Barry Stevens did Amos a favour. He and Eve had patched up their friendship since their argument – it was months ago now – but still, it wasn’t the comfortable, easy thing it had been. Amos had told Seth he mustn’t side against his mother, but at the same time he himself had privately nursed a grievance against Eve, keeping his disappointment and sense of betrayal alive, quietly hating Lord Hoyland for his ability to give Eve what she seemed to want. But suddenly, today, the picture looked different. Eve was vulnerable to harm from folk who didn’t wish her well. She needed Amos, whether she knew it or not. He walked home that day with a spring in his step and a lightness in the general area of his heart that made him almost take a detour to Beaumont Lane. Instead, he counselled himself to be cautious. A man couldn’t declare himself to the woman he loved with blood on his knuckles and coal dust on his face. Amos didn’t know a lot about romance, but he knew that much.

T
he day of the opening dawned fair and bright, one of those crisp, late gifts of a day that England has made its speciality, a last, joyful hurrah before we’re all forced to remember the arduous trudge of winter ahead. At Netherwood Hall, Lady Hoyland was up early; Flytton, arriving to assist with her lengthy morning toilet, was alarmed to find her out of bed and gazing out of the window. This was most irregular.

‘Well, thank goodness,’ Clarissa said, without turning. ‘I thought you’d never come.’ It was habit, not irritation, which compelled her to speak so brusquely.

Flytton bridled. She looked at her fob. It was seven-thirty; to her certain knowledge, Lady Hoyland hadn’t asked her to be any earlier today.

‘I’m here at the same time as always,’ she said tartly. The countess gave her a reproving look, which Flytton staunchly returned.

Their partnership was ten years old, and, like a marriage of the same length, the relationship had settled into entirely predictable patterns of behaviour. Flytton was a formidably efficient lady’s maid who had once had an offer from the Duchess of Devonshire, and although she had chosen to remain
in post at Netherwood, the interest from Chatsworth had raised her further still in both her own esteem and the household hierarchy, with the effect that any deference she might have once displayed was quite evaporated. For her part, Lady Hoyland met Flytton’s occasional insubordination with often unreasonable behaviour and appalling rudeness. She saw no conflict between this and the great value she placed on her maid’s judgement and opinions. It was a finely tuned act, perfectly understood by each, and a cause of concern to neither.

Flytton crossed the room, barely disturbing the immaculate line of her skirt as she moved. She gave the impression, Tobias once said, of having casters for feet.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ she added pointedly, as if to remind Lady Hoyland of her manners.

‘Don’t be petulant, Flytton,’ said Lady Hoyland. ‘The dovegrey chiffon, I thought?’

‘Certainly, ma’am. If you think so,’ said Flytton, with the inflection she used when she disagreed.

Lady Hoyland sighed. ‘Why not?’

‘Wigmore Hall, ma’am?’

Lady Hoyland blanched and brought her hand to her lovely mouth at the unwelcome reminder. She’d forgotten, though she didn’t quite know how, that it was indeed the dove-grey, with its modish train, that had been responsible for a most humiliating public come-down. In the very same gown, just this season past, Clarissa had swept into an afternoon recital carrying a banana skin and the stubs of two cigarettes in the folds of her trailing skirts. More unfortunately still, the famously spiteful Lady Aldney had been first witness to this.

‘Clarissa, dear,’ she had boomed in her carrying voice, her bosom already heaving with mirth. ‘How very public-spirited of you to clean the streets of detritus as you promenade.’

She had flicked the offending items out of the chiffon and on to the floor of Wigmore Hall as she spoke, so that they
skittered across the marble foyer and had to be collected by a menial. The assembled company laughed gaily at Lady Aldney’s great wit, and Lady Hoyland had been obliged to join in.

It was an unwelcome memory but Clarissa, recovering her composure and still keen on the dove-grey, said, ‘Yes, but does anyone eat bananas in Netherwood?’

‘It’s not banana skins you need to worry about here,’ Flytton said, expertly lifting out of the wardrobe a selection of alternatives to the dove-grey. ‘It’s the blessed coal dust.’

‘Well I hope you’re not suggesting the black silk. That wouldn’t do at all. It’s super fun, this little pie-shop venture. I’m rather pleased with Teddy for getting involved.’

She rifled through the dresses, which now lay on the bed. Her tiny nose, a Benbury family trait and a great asset to the girls who inherited it though not so fetching on the men, wrinkled charmingly as she sifted, and rejected, the
eau-de-nil,
the French blue and the moss green.

‘The ashes of roses, I think, Flytton,’ she said. ‘And please don’t bother telling me why I shouldn’t.’

Flytton pursed her lips but held her peace. Averting another dove-grey disaster had been her only objective, and that, she felt, had been very satisfactorily achieved. The ashes of roses had no trailing train and was eminently suitable, which was why it had been among her selection. The countess would be lost without her; as long as both of them understood that, Flytton was content.

Anna had started reading newspapers to improve her English and her knowledge of the world; not the Barnsley
Chronicle,
which she found – unfairly, given its remit – too narrow and parochial, but the London
Times
or the
Telegraph,
whichever she could get hold of. These were publications of sufficient weight and import, she believed, to properly enhance her
programme of self-improvement. She felt wiser and more learned simply by opening them up. She would struggle through the leader columns and the international pages, scouring the difficult words for news from Kiev or any part of the Ukraine. She found a thrilling reference to the presence in London of one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and imagined jumping on a train bound for the capital and seeking him out, not because she liked the sound of him but just for the relief of speaking Russian.

‘Would you spot ’im?’ Eve said. ‘London’s not like Netherwood, you know – they say it’s teemin’ wi’ folk.’

Anna had seen London. She had never seen Lenin, however, or even heard of him before, but she was confident she would be able to pick him out in a crowd.

‘Of course I spot him,’ she said, passing the paper over to show Eve his unsmiling face, bald dome and natty beard. ‘See?’

Eve looked at Lenin and sniffed. ‘Odd lookin’ bloke, ’e’d do well to wear a flat cap,’ she said. ‘Anyroad, never mind ’im. We’ve work to do. Fairy pies.’

Anna rolled her eyes. Eve, having heard that the countess was to attend the opening on Monday, had taken the extraordinary decision – in Anna’s view – that all the food they prepared for the gathering would be in elegant one- or two-bite sizes. Not pies and puddings and pastries cut into morsels, but whole pies and puddings and pastries no bigger than morsels themselves.

‘I’m not ’aving Lady ’oyland wrestling wi’ a wedge o’ game pie,’ she said. ‘I doubt she could open ’er mouth wide enough. It’s grand for t’likes o’ you an’ me, but she’s used to summat different.’ Eve remembered the food she’d seen leaving the kitchen for dinner at Netherwood Hall the night before the party. Slices of chicken breast the size of florins; potatoes peeled away until most of their flesh was in the compost bin and the pale white spheres remaining weren’t much bigger than a knur; carrots peeled and cut into identical, tiny matchsticks. ‘She’s used to fairy food,’ Eve said.

So fairy food it was, and though Eve had stuck to her guns, she’d had plenty of occasion to rue the idea once they got started. She roped in Ginger, Alice and Nellie to help, and they worked up at the new kitchen to give themselves some elbow room. The meat for the pies had to be minced, not chopped, and the hot-water pastry raised into thimble-sized cases. The toll it took on their fingers! Nellie, who was known for her remedies, came in with a poultice the day after their first session, a mixture of dried rose petals and rotten apple, which she promised them would ease the ache in the knuckles. It was curiously soothing but the cloying smell wasn’t easy to bear. Eve gave up after ten minutes; anyway, she found her aching fingers were more than compensated for by the sight of four trays of raised game pies, none of them bigger than a button mushroom. They also made miniature chicken-and-gravy pies, Anna’s pig parcels – they were tricky – and an old recipe of Ginger’s called potato pudding-pie, which called for mashed potato, whisked eggs and a splash of brandy – Ginger had some at home, to no one’s surprise – baked in puff-pastry cases. Alice, shy and pink-cheeked, brought in a recipe of her grandmother’s for a savoury pudding made with stale bread soaked in milk and water then baked with mixed herbs and eggs. It sounded unappetising, but the one they tried tasted just like a good sage stuffing; it came out of the oven a nice even brown, and turned out of the dish as obligingly as a sandcastle from a bucket. They added it to the repertoire, cooled and cut into delicate rounds.

Nellie said they should have something sweet, to counter all the savoury, and Anna said it had to be Eve’s Puddings, but they didn’t work in miniature without a pudding bowl to bake them in, so they improvised by mincing the apple and stirring it into a sponge mix, then making tiny apple cakes in cases made from baking parchment and snipped around the edges to give them a frill. They waved in the heat of the oven like the fronds of sea anemones.

All the dainties were ready and waiting up at the mill on the morning of the opening, arranged on silver platters borrowed from the Netherwood Hall kitchens. There were no formal invitations – it wasn’t a party, after all – but the people Eve wanted there had been asked and the whole Hoyland clan was attending, so there’d be a nice little crowd. The earl was to say a few words, the food would be handed around, those who wanted to have a nosey inside would be welcome to, then everyone would clear off and the real business would begin. That at least was what Eve hoped. Personally, she’d have gone about things with a lot less fanfare. It was Lord Hoyland who was all for the launch, picking the date to suit his diary and sending up crates of Netherwood Hall perry to toast the venture on the day. Eve hadn’t liked to point out that Monday was usually wash day in Beaumont Lane. She supposed the world wouldn’t end if it all got done on Tuesday, just this once.