Netherwood (37 page)

‘I’m grateful to my children, Seth, Eliza and Ellen’ – she paused for the crowd to admire them, standing bemused and a little over-awed on the chequered tiles of the colonnade – ‘for puttin’ up with my ill-’umour and fittin’ in with so many changes to their lives. To Amos Sykes’ – she found him in the crowd, and spoke directly to him – ‘who grieved for Arthur as I did, and who has been such a rock to me and my little family. To all of you’ – she swept an arm in an arc that encompassed everyone – ‘for coming today to see what’s what, and perhaps ’ave a bit o’ free food’ – she paused for laughter, just like a pro – ‘but finally, and most importantly, I thank from my ’eart my dear friend Anna Rabinovich.’ Eve hesitated
for a beat, feeling an obstruction in her throat that almost overcame her. She breathed, in and out, deep and slow. It was suddenly paramount that she got these words out. ‘My dear friend Anna,’ she repeated, ‘who gave me t’strength and support I needed to endure t’days and weeks after Arthur’s death, and far beyond. I couldn’t have done it without you, Anna. You are as a sister to me.’

Anna, tears streaming, waved a dismissive hand. The small crowd dabbed at their eyes and looked tragic. Eve thought, this is getting maudlin, so she smiled broadly and upped the tempo: ‘Anyroad, this is meant to be day one of Eve’s Puddin’s & Pies, so let’s get down to business.’

There was clapping, cheering and a little whistling. Alice, Ginger and Nellie went inside and took off their hats and coats, and donned clean pinnies, ready to serve the platters of party food. Two footmen from Netherwood Hall had been drafted in to look after the perry, which was being passed around now in crystal flutes. The old mill, scrubbed and restored and full of life, looked magnificent. Eve allowed herself a small gloat at the wonder of it all. No tap dancing, mind, she said to herself. Inside, the earl found her, and pumped her hand up and down as if he was hoping to draw water.

‘Well done, well said, jolly well done – thought you’d dried up back there, what!’

Then Lady Hoyland, in a manoeuvre which somehow combined gentility with great rudeness, pushed Teddy out of the way to get to Eve. Her cloud of cologne enveloped them both, and she took Eve’s hands in her own gloved ones. The kidskin was so beautifully soft that Eve had to fight the impulse to stroke the nap. She’d never beheld the countess at such close range and her legendary beauty, while still in evidence, was a little jaded in the unforgiving light of the October sun, which picked out the tiny, treacherous lines around her eyes. But she was breathtakingly elegant, tiny in every particular,
with a figure so beautifully preserved she could, from behind, have been taken for a girl in woman’s clothing. She held Eve’s eyes in a limpid gaze for a few seconds, then said, ‘Do tell – your outfit, dear. Bond Street, no?’

Eve frowned in consternation. The countess seemed to have jumbled her words into meaningless disorder.

‘I beg your pardon, your ladyship?’ she said.

‘Too, too divine,’ said the countess. ‘Your get-up. Mayfair? Which outfitter?’

The mist cleared a little. ‘Oh, thank you, your ladyship. But—’

‘Looking at you makes me want to dash home and tear up all my silly chiffon.’

‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said Eve, horrified. ‘Your gown is lovely, m’lady.’ She plucked at the fabric of her own skirt. ‘This is just ’ome-made,’ she said. ‘Anna made everythin’. Well, aside from t”ats, they were from Butterwick’s. There was a discount for two. T’offer’s still on.’

It was as if her mouth and voice were functioning without any input from her brain, and she was engulfed by shame. What would the countess care for Butterwick’s and their discounted hats? Eve, pink and mortified, cursed herself for a fool, but she needn’t have worried; the countess didn’t generally listen to what others were saying, and at the moment she was smiling vaguely at her oldest daughter who had bounced up with an outstretched hand.

‘Hello again, Eve. I say, clever you!’ she said. ‘This is just wonderful.’ She swept an elegant arm about her, to encompass the mill, the courtyard and everyone there. ‘I so admire you. So exciting. I do hope it’s a roaring success. I’m sure it will be.’

Eve said, ‘Thank you,’ though she wished she had something more gracious at her disposal, for it seemed an inadequate response to all that enthusiasm.

‘You do look spiffy. Doesn’t she, Ma? Terrific outfit. Very much the Modern Independent Woman!’

She gave a proper, firm, ungloved handshake, being built from sturdier stuff than her mother, who seemed liable to waft away on the breeze. Eve smiled.

‘Very pleased to ’ave you here, and thank you. Again,’ she said. She was starting to feel quite at home with all these Hoylands, though not quite so at home as Anna who seemed to be deep in conversation with Lord Hoyland. Eve hoped she would remember he was an earl and not put him to work.

Ginger waltzed over with a platter of pies. Her curly hair was piled into a riotous topknot and this, with her trademark pillar-box-red lipstick and glamorous pallor, gave her a look of the young Sarah Bernhardt. Lady Hoyland began to feel positively disorientated. Henrietta took a tiny game pie and popped it into her mouth, reaching for another as she chewed.

‘Yum,’ she said thickly. Ginger offered the platter to the countess, who peered at its load then gasped with delight.

‘How utterly charming!’she said. ‘Tiny, tiny pies. Enchanting.’

Eve flashed a triumphant smile at Ginger, who flashed it straight back. Lady Hoyland said: ‘Do you know, I haven’t eaten pastry for years. Such an enemy to the waistline. But what harm can these little darlings do?’ She took a pie, perfect and glossily brown, and popped it into her mouth. It seemed rude to watch her eat, but then again it was impossible to do much else. The countess swallowed delicately. She took the merest sip of perry. Then she smiled.

‘Clever girl!’ she said to Eve. ‘What else have you made?’

T
he countess tried everything twice and was in ecstasies quite out of proportion, Eve felt, to the humble fare she praised. It could only be, she decided, that Lady Hoyland’s palate was so replete with fancy
haute cuisine
that plain Yorkshire cooking came as a revelation. Plain Yorkshire cooking, that is, in countess-sized portions.

Tobias had joined his mother. He had a poker game lined up later and was keen to be off, but since his exile to, and joyous return from, the Scottish seat, he had managed to perform his filial duties to the letter while still by and large pleasing himself. It had been damnably cold at Glendonoch, and there hadn’t been a single girl among the flint-hearted and puritanical staff who’d been willing to warm him up. A smile would’ve been something, but they wouldn’t even look him in the eye to say their name. It had crossed his mind that the earl might have telegraphed ahead with a warning to the household to lock up their daughters. Forced into temporary celibacy, Tobias played golf, fished the loch and furthered his education in the varieties of single malt, resolving all the while to play a cleverer game on his return. That is, he would keep Pater sweet by feigning a new-found, if skin deep, fascination
in the Netherwood estate, leaving himself ample, unsupervised time to pursue his own interests. It was all a matter of balance. So here he was, smiling engagingly at his mother as she spoke, and all the time imagining what Eve Williams would look like naked. She was eyeing him warily, as if she might be able to read his mind. All terribly entertaining, he thought.

‘Don’t you think,’ his mother said, tinkling at him in the oddly flirtatious voice she reserved for her beloved son, ‘these darling pies would be just the thing at Fulton House?’

‘What an absolutely sensational thought,’ said Tobias. He smiled at Eve, a lazy smile that revealed to her just a little of what he was actually thinking. She concentrated furiously on his mother.

‘Such a triumph,’ she was saying. ‘Dainty little working-class canapés.’ She trilled with laughter. ‘So witty. You’ll come, Eve?’

‘Do say you will, Eve?
Come,
that is,’ said Tobias, delighted with himself and his innuendo. Filthy-minded pig, thought Eve.

‘The season can be so dull, every party a replica of the last,’ said the countess. ‘You, my dear, will be Quite The Thing.’ You could hear the capitals in her voice. ‘My secret weapon on the society battlefield.’ She peeled with laughter again, as if she had bells instead of a larynx.

‘Well,’ Eve said. She was unsure how to decline, and, anyway, thought perhaps she wasn’t in a position to. At least Amos wasn’t listening in. Be grateful for small mercies.

‘Such fun!’ said Lady Hoyland. ‘Toby, walk me to the landau. I need half an hour with my diary before dinner. Party planning,’ she said to Eve. ‘My absolutely favourite pastime. Goodbye, dear. Divine outfit.’

And away she drifted on Tobias’s arm. Eve watched her go, wondering quite what she’d been asked to do. Obviously she couldn’t go to London. The idea was beyond barmy. Perhaps the pies and pastries could travel alone, by train. First class,
of course. She smiled. Her head was throbbing gently from the perry. She had no taste for drink, and no head for it either. People were still milling around, enjoying the occasion, sampling the food, but Eve would happily have left them to it. She longed for the simplicity and the comfort of home.

It turned out that Anna had suggested to the earl that the first floor of the mill, currently empty, would make a wonderful restaur-ant, selling the sort of hearty home cooking that Eve did best. Lord Hoyland thought it a marvellous idea.

‘Oh ’e did, did ’e?’ said Eve.

Anna pouted and said, ‘Don’t be cross. At least miners and their mucky britches wouldn’t be in your parlour.’

This was indisputable, but not much of a recommendation as far as Eve could see.

‘It’s t’work involved, Anna,’ she said. ‘We can’t manage it, on top of t’orders I’ve already taken on.’

‘Hire more staff,’ said Anna.

‘Simple as that.’

‘Just so.’

‘Thanks for organising my life for me.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Anna smiled. Sarcasm often eluded her, as if her ear was attuned only to the literal meaning of words, not their nuances.

Eve sighed. It would, she had to admit, make a beautiful dining room upstairs, those arched windows, all that light. But she didn’t fancy running up and down the stairs with one-shilling dinners. She’d sleep on it, she thought. See what the morning made of it. Eve yawned, widely. Anna was ready to leave, and had Maya and Ellen with her. Seth and Eliza were long gone, sloping off back to Beaumont Lane to play in the street with their friends. Seth had a back-door key these
days, a rite of passage the import of which wasn’t lost on him. He barely ever got the chance to use it – if his mother wasn’t in, then Anna usually was – but he loved the weight and the feel of it in the pocket of his trousers. It gave him power over Eliza too. She had to stand and wait while he took his time on the doorstep.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Eve said. ‘Put t’kettle on. I just need five minutes to be sure it’s all straight.’

Anna and the little girls left, making slow progress because Maya liked to walk now, though she was still very much a beginner; you needed the patience of Job just to get her down the stairs in the morning. Now, as they went on their way, Anna chided her in Russian, always her language of choice when tired or irritable. Eve, standing outside to watch them go, heard Anna scold. That child, she thought, will grow up with a dread of her mother’s native tongue.

‘Long day?’

Eve swung round in alarm. Amos appeared from the shadows of the courtyard and stood before her.

‘Oh it’s you!’ Eve said. ‘I would’ve put good money on you ’avin’ gone home to bed by now.’ She sounded cheerful enough, but her heart was inexplicably pounding in her chest, as if it was a stranger creeping up on her. She wished he’d speak, but he stayed silent, watching her with a benign expression as if she was a pleasant view or a beautiful sunset. It was unnerving.

‘Amos?’ she said. Then she thought, with a flash of intuition, oh good God, he’s going to ask me to marry him.

Amos opened his mouth, then closed it again. Her eyes seemed to be issuing some kind of warning but this business could be put off until his dying day, and then where would he be? Cold in the churchyard for all eternity. He looked down at his hands, away from her face. The words he wanted to say slid about in his mind, dodging his grasp. God knows, he’d rehearsed them often enough at home, in the lonely little house that he’d shared
with Julia for so short a time. He loved Eve, and he loved her children, especially the lad, who felt almost like kin. It had taken him a long time, but he’d convinced himself that, if he could but summon the courage and ask, Eve would accept. It would be natural and easy, and he could care for her in the way Arthur would’ve wanted. Then he could, at last, take her in his arms and feel her body against his, kiss her lovely, familiar mouth, take her long hair between his fingers. He yearned for this, like a parched man yearns for water. And even up to the very moment that he made his presence known in the courtyard, he had been confident. But then he saw her eyes, and all certainty left him, as suddenly and completely as the extinguishing of a candle’s flame. A new, miserable future crowded uninvited and unwelcome into his head, but he shook it away, still not prepared to give up hope. He would speak.