Paying Guests (14 page)

And it was true, perhaps. Her memory of their conversation was getting confused now. She had gone over it in her mind so often. What had he actually said? All she now knew for sure was that she had been left with the conviction that the young lord with whom her son was so infatuated wanted Duff to do something he didn’t really want to do. And it was that which worried her. She had considered inviting Lord Patrick to visit Brompton Grove, but the mere suggestion had put Duff into an agony of embarrassment, so she had desisted. And, anyway, she had thought, even if I did meet him, what difference would it make? He would no doubt put on a mannerly show for me, and I’d be none the wiser.

But under pressure from all sides she had agreed that Duff could go to Leicestershire and she could not now renege on her promises; so doggedly she went on with the preparations for his visit and tried to make the best of it.

Strangely enough it came as something of a relief when at last he went. His neat luggage had been packed and he was dressed precisely as he should be to make such a journey, in a light cheviot Chesterfield topcoat, complete with velvet collar and silk facings, and a pair of perfect sponge bag trousers over buttoned patent boots and a rather rakish high hat, and was put into the cab that would carry him to the magnificent new railway terminus at St Pancras.

It was obvious that he was very excited at the drama of it all. His eyes glittered with it as he chattered of how splendid it would be to see the new station and hotel that had just been opened, and how much he would relish the journey, for he was to be met at his destination by one of the duke’s growlers and carried directly to Paton Place. Tilly was touched by that. He seemed so like the small boy he had been, jumping up and down with glee because they were to visit Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea, or the Pantheon in Oxford Street, and that, oddly, made her feel less anxious on his
behalf. No one could possibly hurt so charming a boy, she told herself as she stood on the steps and waved at the back of his departing cab, with Eliza at her side waving even more furiously. How could they?

‘Don’t he look marvellous, Mum?’ Eliza said as the cab at last turned the corner and vanished. ‘Fair brought a lump to my throat, it did, to see him so grown up and all. He’ll be a fine catch for some lucky girl he will, one day.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Just imagine, our Duff a married man with babies of his own, no doubt! Wouldn’t that be something!’

‘My dear Eliza, you’re running far too quickly!’ Tilly said. ‘Will you live our lives in a matter of minutes? Let the years move at their own speed, I do beg of you.’ She led the way back into the house and Eliza followed.

‘Oh, Mum, I wasn’t wishin’ our lives away, course I wasn’t. Just saying, like, how nice it’d be.’

‘We shall start the second batch of preserves, I think, Eliza,’ Tilly said, determined not to follow this line of talk any longer. ‘We have been very lax this past few days, with all the extra work of organizing this visit, so we must get on with it. Did the fruit come this morning?’

‘Oh, yes, Mum. I told him we was ready to put it all up and he said as how he’s had a real glut of stuff in – there’s the last of the raspberries and some lovely magnum-bonum plums that’ll dry a treat he said, or we could bottle ‘em.’

‘I think the bottled will stand us in best stead, don’t you? Have you the bottles ready?’ Tilly went down the stairs into the kitchen and pinned on the apron she kept in the kitchen drawer for such occasions as this as Eliza came clattering down behind her.

‘Indeed I have, Mum, three dozen of them and all with handsome new corks as tight as you like, and a fine big piece of resin to melt for the covers. But, Mum, you don’t need to worry yourself over this. I can get Rosie to lend me a hand and deal with it fine. You go and take a rest.’

‘But you won’t finish in time if you do it with just Rosie’s aid,’ Tilly said. ‘Is it not the meeting of your association tonight?’

Eliza had last year joined a reading circle for young females run at St Paul’s Church in Cottage Place, a little further along the Brompton Road, and seemed to enjoy her weekly forays there, returning always with an armful of new novels to read, for the members ran a lively lending service. Eliza liked nothing better than to spend her free time with her head in a really exciting story, especially one with mad monks and wicked squires and innocent country maidens.

‘Well, it won’t be the end of the world if I miss one, Mum,’ Eliza said. ‘And I’d as soon you put your feet up.’

‘Nonsense, Eliza,’ Tilly said crisply. ‘You concentrate on the dinner, and I shall set to work on the bottling. And I will brook no argument. Now, where is the fruit? In the second larder?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ Eliza sighed, knowing she would be wasting her breath to argue. There were times when Tilly would not be coaxed into the sort of life of leisure that Eliza so strongly urged on her. ‘A big basket of the magnum-bonum plums, another of raspberries and a little punnet o’ peaches. I got out the ones I wants to use fresh tonight for the dessert, and there’s enough there to put up a couple of nice bottles we can save till Christmas – oh, and the very first of the Beauty of Bath apples. I thought to use them for the dessert tonight, too.’

With Eliza chattering busily as usual and Tilly responding with occasional nods and murmurs they set to work. The bottles were standing ready in the back scullery, set on trays, and the copper had been filled, a big jug ready beside it. Rosie had laid the fire beneath the brick container where the copper was fixed and it wanted only a match and Tilly was grateful yet again to Eliza and her forethought. Clearly she had all this prepared some time ago, waiting for the opportunity to do the work.

With Eliza to help her, preparing the fruit didn’t take as long as it might have done. Moving methodically, they checked the fruit for dryness, wiping each plum carefully in a clean white cloth, making sure there were no bruised pieces that might set the whole lot to rot, and packed them carefully into the quart glass bottles, as Tilly weighed out the pounded loaf sugar – something else that Eliza had
ensured was prepared in advance – dropping a quarter pound into each jar. Then all they had to do was cork the bottles, wrap them in wisps of hay and set them neatly in the copper which they filled from the jug up to their necks in cold water. Eliza lit the fire, and when it was drawing nicely, set the wooden cover on the copper and brushed her hands together contentedly.

There, Mum! It’ll take an hour or so to boil up, then once the boilin’ starts, you just need to check the bottles ain’t knocking together, though the hay wisps’ll protect ‘em well enough, you’ll see. I’ll see to it the fire’s doused half an hour after the boilin’ starts, and then we can leave the jars there till tonight. They’ve got to get right cold in there before we takes ‘em out. It’ll not take me above ten minutes to melt the resin and seal the corks when I gets back from my meeting. You don’t need to worry yourself one bit. I’ll put them away tomorrow. We can do the jam, now.’

Making jam was one of Tilly’s most favoured tasks. She loved the detail of picking over the fruit and making sure it was all wholesome and unbruised, of measuring the sugar to match the weight of fruit pound for pound. She loved standing over the broad shallow copper pans, flattening the fruit with a big wooden spoon over a hot fire, releasing the scent of it to wreath around the room and make her drowsy with it, and then stirring the sugar in till it began to bubble and spit a little and the scent became even more intense.

‘I could put in some redcurrant juice, Mum, to sharpen it a little and to make sure it sets,’ Eliza said. ‘But it says in my magazine as the juice of a lemon answers just as well and I must say as I think it tastes better.’

‘As you wish, Eliza,’ Tilly said dreamily, still stirring. She was happier than she had been for some time, now Duff was safely on his way. For good or ill the die was cast, she thought, and that is why I feel so much better. It’s also because I know now how foolish I have been to fret so. He is a sensible, good boy. There is no need for anxiety.

The lemon juice went into the fragrant crimson mass and still she stirred as the boiling went on, and then skimmed busily to ensure
that the jam would be clear. It took a full hour before it showed itself ready to set, which they tested by dropping a little of the jam on to a cold plate Eliza fetched from the dresser and checking it for wrinkles.

And then what for Tilly was the best part: taking the prepared hot jars from the oven and ladling them full and noting that the fruit was well distributed and did not sink to the bottom; a sure sign that they had succeeded with their careful boiling. Then came a tedious but still enjoyable task; each pot had to be covered with a slip of paper over which they had brushed the best olive oil, and after that with larger covers of tissue paper which they brushed over on both sides with white of egg. It was a sticky, tiring job, but satisfying too as one after another the finished pots were set in rows waiting for their labels.

Halfway through this operation Eliza broke away to see to dinner, which tonight was to be a cold collation. She had already dealt with her salmon from Mr Jerryman’s shop, which she had dressed in a chaud-froid, the aspic and mayonnaise mixture setting to a perfect gloss on the poached fish, and garnished with radishes and the last precious cucumber of the summer together with hard-boiled egg wedges, and now she had to prepare a number of salads. A chicken one and another of duck, together with a small array of lobster patties and another of cheese puffs. There was to be a side of good roast beef and a cold raised pie of grouse and mutton which was a concoction of Eliza’s own and much admired by the guests, who had clamoured for more when she had last offered it, so although none of the food might be hot, ‘all will be toothsome’, as Eliza put it. The custom of serving a cold collation one night a month to allow Eliza her evening off was a well established one at Quentin’s and no guest had ever complained about it.

By the time Eliza, Rosie and Lucy had set the dining room ready and arranged the dishes on the table as well as the sideboard, it was almost a quarter before six o’clock. Eliza’s meeting commenced at half past six, and she went off happily to her room alongside the kitchen to get ready. She put on her best bonnet which was in a most handsome Dolly Varden style, a forward tilting ellipse of
yellow straw decorated with flowers which looked, when set over Eliza’s rather red face, a touch incongruous to tell the truth, and her summer mantle, a much fringed garment in a rich yellow faille that made her look somewhat larger than she was. But she clearly admired herself greatly in the ensemble and came out of her room for Tilly’s inspection.

‘You look most elegant, Eliza,’ Tilly said approvingly and, indeed, despite the fact that the fashions were a touch extreme for Eliza’s colouring she had an air about her that made her very pleasant to look at. ‘It seems a pity there are only other females at your association to admire you!’

‘Oh, as to that, I wouldn’t be too sure,’ Eliza said saucily. ‘Several of the meetings are attended by men as guests, you know, for not all men are empty-headed ninnies who never read a word! Not that it is to meet the men that I go there, you understand.’

‘Of course not,’ Tilly said. ‘Well, enjoy yourself – and we shall see you later.’

‘I’ve doused the fire under the copper, now, so there’s no need for you to do anything else there. I’ll see to the waxing of the corks when I get in. As for the peaches, I’ll see to them tomorrow. Give over, Mum, do. You’ve worked hard all afternoon and you should take some rest before dinner, now you know that.’

‘Well, I shall, Eliza, so don’t keep on at me! The raspberry jam looks very fine, does it not?’ And she nodded her head at the dozen or so pots that stood like rubies capped with snow in rows on the kitchen table.

‘They do indeed, Mum. We can label them tomorrow. Now, you be away upstairs, please.’

‘I will,’ Tilly promised and at last Eliza went, taking herself out of the back door and up the area steps in a little wash of parma violet scent and a flurry of her taffeta skirts.

Tilly stretched and sighed and took off her apron and took it out to the scullery to put it in the big hamper which contained the laundry awaiting collection by Mrs Skinner. Then she went back to the comfort of the kitchen and she stood still for a moment on the
rag rug that spread its vivid colours over the stone floor beside the fire, as she pulled down her sleeves and rebuttoned them.

The place breathed warmth and peace at her, from the great dresser and its displays of blue and white china to the brindled cat asleep on the rocker amid Eliza’s crumpled old cushions and she felt her shoulders relax with the sheer comfort of it all as the cat woke, stretched and mewed.

She bent to stroke him and as she did so a bell rang and she peered up at the row of them above the kitchen door. The dozen or so that hung there on their coiled springs were labelled with their source; and it was the front door bell that was dancing madly; she lifted her head to listen and heard footsteps going across the hall upstairs. Good. Rosie or Lucy had heard it. She wondered briefly who it might be, for all the guests had their own keys, and then smiled. Probably Mr Cumming, she thought. He was always forgetting to take his keys to St George’s with him, or left them there when he came home at the end of his day; she really would have to scold him for making so much extra effort necessary for her housemaids.

She bent and stroked the cat again, who purred, rubbed himself against her hand and looked blissful, and then straightened as the door at the top of the stairs swung open, and she looked up.

‘If you please, Ma’am,’ said Rosie, sounding a touch startled. ‘It’s a lady as wants to see you. Says it’s important but wouldn’t give me no name, Ma’am, so I thought I’d set her in the hall and come and –’

‘You need not concern yourself further,’ a voice said and Rosie looked over her shoulder, even more startled, as someone came past her and set her firmly, though not at all roughly or rudely, aside. ‘I know my way here.’

Tilly stood staring upwards, her hand still on the cat’s head as it rubbed itself against her, purring loudly. She couldn’t quite see who was there in the shadows at the top of the stairs. The voice was unfamiliar and yet had a ring about it that she knew, she thought, and then wanted to laugh aloud at such a contradictory notion. Either it was strange or she knew it, she told herself, and peered again into the shadows. It couldn’t be both.