Netherwood (50 page)

‘I know this is probably irregular,’ she said, sounding a good deal more breezy than she felt and lifting her wicker basket up on to his counter. ‘But I run a small business making these.’

She lifted out one of her tiny pies and placed it on the glass top. It looked comical there, being too small for its new surroundings, and she had an absurd protective impulse to whip it back into the basket to be with its siblings.

The shop assistant and Eve both looked at the pie, and then at each other. She smiled brightly and he said, ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a veal-and-’am pie,’ she said. ‘I can do pork too, and game. It’s party food, y’see. Rather than slicin’ a big one.’ She nodded down at the regular-sized specimens under the counter. ‘Try it,’ she said, and pushed it a little further towards him.

He drew back, as if from wickedness. ‘I’m not sure that I should,’ he said, but he did look tempted. It was, after all, a delightful little thing, golden brown, with exactly the right degree of irregularity to its crimped edge. At the centre of the lid was a beautiful, minuscule pastry rose. Polly’s nimble fingers had come in handy there, too.

‘Oh go on,’ Eve said. ‘I’ve more in ’ere.’ She shook the basket at him, and smiled her encouragement. He smiled back, looking more like a great big mischievous child now than an elder statesman. Overcoming his qualms, he snatched the pie and wolfed it down.

‘That,’ he said, impolitely, with his mouth full, ‘is marvellous. Wait here, young woman.’

And he strode off, through a door concealed in the shelving
of fancy tinned goods behind him. It swung shut very slowly behind him, and just as it settled back into place, it was thrust open again and back he came with another man – there were no women, it seemed, in this establishment – who was shorter, thinner and bespectacled, though not bewhiskered. His general appearance was less impressive than his colleague’s, but he was clearly in charge. He held out a thin, dry hand, which Eve shook. He was Mr Paterson, he said, manager in charge of outside catering, and he believed she had something of interest. Eve pulled back the linen cloth covering the rest of the pies and he peered at them through his round lenses, then he clapped his hands rapidly, several times, out of pure joy, and that was before he tasted them. She was whisked behind the scenes, through the same hidden door, to a panelled office where her pies were sampled formally and her answers to a series of questions were scratched in ink by Mr Paterson into a large, leather-bound book, this task carried out with all the import and solemnity of a marriage registration. Name, company name, address. She hesitated at this. Fulton House, Belgravia was home for the time being, she said, which made him sit up a little straighter in his chair until she explained she was employed there, not resident.

‘If I make pies for you, they’d be baked in Netherwood,’ she said. ‘That’s in Yorkshire,’ she added, because his owlish face was blank. ‘And it would have to wait until I’m back.’

‘I see,’ said Mr Paterson, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and making a steeple with his bony fingers. ‘And let’s say we ordered a weekly consignment from, say, the beginning of August. How would you get them to us?’

‘Oh, we deliver,’ Eve said airily.

‘Nationwide?’

‘Mmmm.’ It was a small sound, but definitely in the affirmative.

‘Marvellous,’ said Mr Paterson. And they shook on the deal,
Eve’s mind in turmoil. What had it come to, that she could smilingly commit to a contract she wasn’t even sure she could honour. It was all Anna’s fault, Anna and her blessed ambition. If it came to it, Mrs Rabinovich would have to cycle to London with the pies in a pannier.

T
hey walked back along Piccadilly, a respectable gap between them until a legitimate excuse could be found to be closer. Eve, he remarked, had a spring in her step and she admitted that, yes, she felt brighter and bolder for pulling off a deal with the grocer to the king.

‘What’ll the countess think of you selling fairy pies on the open market?’ he said.

‘She doesn’t own me,’ Eve said, a little tartly. It made her think of Amos, who, in the place he occupied in her head, was saying, ‘Ah but she does,’ in that implacable way of his. And, in fact, she wasn’t at all sure what the countess would think, though she was sure the earl would see the business sense in branching out.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, to convince herself as much as anything, ‘by the time my pies appear in Fortnum’s, they’ll ’ave served their purpose as far as Lady ’oyland is concerned. They’ll be old news by August. She’ll ’ave moved on to summat new.’

Daniel laughed. This was an entirely accurate assessment of their employer’s character. Her whims and enthusiasms changed with the wind. It was only after years of working for
her that he had established a relationship where his own expertise in the garden was acknowledged by the countess as superior to her own, and even now she would sometimes pull rank and insist that something be added to the scheme that offended Daniel’s eye. Her tastes, given full rein, ran to blousy excess.

He changed the subject, all of a sudden.

‘Do you have to go back?’

She was in no hurry to leave his side and there was nobody to miss her at Fulton House. This thought made her feel liberated rather than lonely.

‘No,’ she said. ‘What did you ’ave in mind?’

‘A spot of refreshment, then, if you don’t mind a bit of a walk, there’s a place I’d like to show you.’

She smiled her assent, and it required an effort of will not to skip like Eliza along the busy pavement. Forcing herself to walk sedately beside him, she wondered what it was about this man that made her feel like a girl, breathlessly excited and full of hope. He was handsome, certainly. He was tall. He was kind and funny. But it was something far less definable, something, somehow, to do with the way he looked at her; he turned his eyes upon her and she felt like a part of her was melting. She had never before felt this rush of pleasure under a man’s gaze; not when Amos blurted out his love for her, not even when, as a seventeen-year-old girl, she had happily accepted Arthur.

Meanwhile there was Daniel, his heart beating a little faster than usual, his breath coming fast and shallow, feeling the strain of the continual effort of not kissing her; and each of them, keeping these thoughts to themselves, presenting a sensible, restrained face to the world and each other.

It was a long walk from Piccadilly to the Chelsea Physic Garden, a small triangle of fertile land bordered on its two longer sides by the Thames on the left and the Royal Hospital Road on the right. As they walked, Daniel, like an enthusiastic academic, sketched a history for Eve, conjuring with his words the seventeenth-century apothecaries who founded the garden for their apprentices. There were plants there, he said, from remote corners of the globe, brought back to London by adventuring botanists in the interests of improving the human condition, advancing our knowledge of medicinal plants. It was, he said, his favourite place in London, aside from his own garden.

‘Is it very beautiful?’ Eve said hopefully. Her feet were hot and sore in her boots now, and still they hadn’t arrived.

‘Not in the way you probably mean,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit neglected these days. The Society of Apothecaries fell on hard times. But it’s a special place. There’s nothing grown there that doesn’t have some purpose. It elevates gardening to something akin to science. Left down here.’

He turned into Swan Walk. There was a tall wrought-iron gate set into a high wall built of blond brick, and Daniel lifted the catch, pushed it open and stepped inside, inviting her in after him. It wasn’t a public garden, he said, but to date no one had ever challenged him when he visited. Today, it appeared deserted. Eve looked about her. A series of narrow paths separated small rectangular beds stocked with unremarkable-looking plants. The air was heavy with the scent of rosemary. Ahead, a stone statue towered on its plinth, the contours blunt and weathered. There was a scattering of different trees, and, here and there, slatted metal seats, not designed for lingering. It was a pleasant enough place, and quiet, but Eve was slightly at a loss. She’d expected more.

‘Come on, have a closer look,’ Daniel said. He crouched down by the nearest bed and pointed at the plants growing
there. ‘Creeping cinquefoil, for griefs of the liver; marshmallow, good against bee stings; dwarf elder, to ease a viper bite.’ He looked up. ‘Do you encounter vipers in Netherwood?’

‘Plenty,’ she said. ‘I have two for neighbours.’ She crouched next to him now. ‘Feverfew,’ she read. ‘My mam used to keep that, dried in a pot. And verbena, look.’ She leaned in to read the small sign planted nearby. ‘Good for those that are frantic. Ha! I should keep some in my kitchen.’

‘Culpeper’s notes, these,’ Daniel said. ‘He catalogued hundreds of herbs, their names and uses, like an inventory of nature’s medical chest. But these are all common plants. Over here, look, there are imports.’ He stood and moved over to a neighbouring bed. ‘These didn’t grow here until some botanist on his travels found them and sent them home. Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. Unsurpassed pain relief, but kind of habit forming. Withania somnifera, a tonic for fatigue or nervous exhaustion. Native to India.’

He looked at her, and she smiled.

‘Am I being boring?’ he said.

‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘You just make me smile, that’s all.’

‘Come on, let’s stroll,’ he said, and they meandered up and down the grid of paths in the quiet seclusion, close enough together for their arms to occasionally brush against each other and each time they touched something physical seemed to pass between them which they stoically ignored, though the effort of staying apart was immense, as if they moved side by side in a powerful force field. Eve felt lightheaded. The afternoon sun was hot for so early in the season, and the air in the physic garden was heavy with the mingled fragrances of flowers, leaves and warmed earth. Wherever they turned, they saw no one else and this added to her acute sense of him, of his presence by her side, the sound of his breathing and his footsteps on the gravel. Finally, like a break in the weather and a sudden downpour after sultry heat, something changed. A small
moment of pure understanding passed between them – nothing discernible to an observer, nothing that could be named as the word or the deed that altered everything, simply a glance or a sigh or a fractional movement. Even they couldn’t be sure. But suddenly he was holding her and they were kissing like lovers, slowly, intimately and with intent. He lifted her in his arms and moved her so that her back was cradled and supported by the low boughs of a yew tree, and he covered her face in kisses, murmuring her name. She held his face in her hands, directed his mouth back to hers and kissed him with passionate intensity. His hands roved her body and she welcomed them, shifting to allow him wherever he wanted to be. He lifted her skirts, sliding his hands along the length of her thighs, pushing between them, exploring all of her. She gasped and moaned, clutching his shirt in her fists, beside herself with what she was feeling. It was new to her, this liquid, wanton desire. She helped him in his quest, pulling at laces and loosening her undergarments, all the while kissing him and he her. His fingers met warm, damp flesh and she thought she might die with the ecstasy of his touch. He pulled roughly at the buttons of his trousers and she felt the agony of the wait, a desperate longing, then he was free and, with one hand under her buttocks he lifted her higher into the arms of the tree, and entered her with shuddering relief. She clung to him, moved against him, and was lost.