EVIE FORBES MUTTERED, ‘Aye, well, what are we going to do about this kettle of fish?’ She and Mrs Moore, the head cook, stood at the huge deal table in the kitchen of Easterleigh Hall, looking across at the two men who were cluttering up the place. Both women were trying not to cringe at the noise as one man stabbed a knife in and out of the sharpener, while the other stood at the range, scraping a spatula across the frying pan as he flipped onions. It was a kitchen in which Evie had been learning her trade as assistant cook since 1909, and nothing had prepared her for this.
Easterleigh Hall had been a private house, pre-war, but the owner, Lord Brampton, eager to be seen to be supporting the war effort, had ordered his daughter, Lady Veronica, to set up the hospital for the war-wounded on the premises. He and his good lady, however, immediately decamped to their more peaceful homes in London and Leeds, to better oversee his steelworks, coal mines, brickworks, munitions, and the resulting profits. Man and wife were not missed.
Evie felt Mrs Moore’s touch on her shoulder. ‘Well, young Evie, I hear the vegetables calling. They need counting out for luncheon, so I’ll leave you to sort out this little mess. Jack’s your brother, after all.’ She hobbled off, on feet beset with rheumatism, to the vegetable store at the other end of the vast kitchen.
Evie grinned, her hands on her hips. ‘So kind.’ Her mind was still half on Bastard Brampton, as he was known, who had sent a demand for hampers of Home Farm produce to be delivered to his London house post-haste. This had not yet happened, so no doubt they’d receive a telephone call in the near future. At least that was one problem she would not have to deal with, and Lady Veronica had become adept at clicking the receiver rest and complaining of a terrible line, before hanging up on his bellows.
As Mrs Moore joined the cluster of kitchen volunteers in the vegetable store, Jack, Evie’s elder brother, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a pitman’s scars, stabbed ever more savagely in and out, in and out of the sharpener in the corner. How could he not notice that the shrieks were a million times worse than chalk on a board?
But why would he, when he’d spent the last four months playing silly buggers on the front line in Belgium and northern France with God knows what noise and mayhem all around? And what was he really seeing, as he stabbed that knife? Evie shut her mind to it, and instead checked the cooking implements laid out on the table ready for the Christmas luncheon preparations, glancing at the clock, then at Annie, the kitchen assistant, who had just entered with cranberries from the housekeeper’s preserve pantry. She placed the jars on the table, shaking her head at Evie, pointing at the clock and mouthing, ‘Come on, pet, sort it out.’ She hurried out, heading for the preserve pantry again.
At that moment Jack dropped the knife, cursed, recaptured it from the flag-stoned floor, and stabbed once more. Evie knew she must do something but, instead, she found herself staring from her brother to Lieutenant the Honourable Auberon Brampton, the owner’s blond son and Jack’s superior officer, who was stirring, instead of flipping. Her instructions to him had been to leave the onions alone to sauté gently for the turkey and chicken stuffing.
There was a pause as Jack examined the knife. Then Mr Auberon, as they called him, returned to flipping the onions, which had begun to burn. As she looked, the smoke rose ever more black, greasy and acrid. How could he not notice, staring as he was? Both men appeared absorbed, but in what? Evie felt a huge sadness at their hunched shoulders, their old faces, when they were both only twenty-four.
These two, together with Simon, Evie’s sweetheart, and Mr Auberon’s valet, Roger, had arrived last evening on leave. They had come to find a bit of peace. It had eluded them. They couldn’t rest, or concentrate, or talk at length about anything, or so they had informed Evie at nine o’clock this morning, standing like a troop of naughty boys in the doorway of the kitchen. They said that they’d decided to do something useful, and help towards Christmas, just as everyone else seemed to be doing.
So saying, her fiancé, Simon, had promptly deserted and headed into the gardens to reacquaint himself with his under-gardener chores, and these two had inched further into the kitchen to carry out Evie’s hastily invented tasks. Roger, Mr Auberon’s erstwhile valet, proposed to clean his master’s boots, but no one in their right minds would put sixpence on that being true. He’d be more likely cadging cigarettes from any passing idiot, or pressing himself up against one of the young housemaids who knew no better.
‘We must have been mad to agree,’ Mrs Moore muttered, materialising next to Evie again. ‘Good grief, we’ve well over sixty wounded soldiers to feed in less than two hours, not to mention nurses, volunteers, the staff, and visiting relatives. We need to sort this out, it’s a pig’s ear.’
Evie looked at the clock yet again, as though it might magically have slipped back an hour. It hadn’t.
At least the turkeys, geese and hams were roasting, but the Christmas puddings needed boiling for a couple of hours, and the mince pies were stacked in the pastry pantry ready to be shoved into the ovens, once there was room. Much, but not all, of the invalid food had been prepared at 5 a.m. this morning, after Evie, Annie and the two kitchenmaids had shooed the mice from the kitchen, then washed the floor and lit the furnace for the ranges.
Mrs Moore repeated, digging her hands into her hessian-apron pockets, ‘Aye, as I say, a pig’s ear. Come along, Evie, you’ll get through to Jack, and well, you’re friends of a sort with Mr Auberon. He thinks your cakes are grand and you said he asked you to be a friend to Lady Veronica whilst he was away.’
Evie hushed her. ‘I don’t think anyone is to know that.’
Mrs Moore kept her eyes on the two men and laughed quietly. ‘Oh, lass, it’s obvious. You and Lady Veronica are as tight as a drum and run this hospital as though you were both born to be bossy. I put it down to all that suffragette malarkey you have in common but whatever it is, it works. However, wielding responsibility takes practice, so get to it.’ Mrs Moore pursed her lips and rolled her shoulders.
Evie pulled a face. ‘Oh, that’s grand, and who precisely is head cook with shoulders that should accept that responsibility but, dear me, they seem to be too busy being rolled. I presume you’re intent on retreat?’
Mrs Moore smiled. ‘Absolutely, since discretion is quite the better part of valour and you know right well, our Evie, that we share the role of head cook, what with my rheumatics and all what, so you just get on with it. Now, mind, if the wind changes, your face will stay that way, so think on. The girls are still brushing the carrots free of storage sawdust in the vegetable pantry and you need to use your influence on these two wee lost souls, especially the onion expert who is intent on burning the house down. What on earth were you thi—?’
Evie interrupted, watching the spatula flip once again, and the knife stab. ‘I was remembering that our patient, Captain Neave, said all he could smell when he first came here was the stench of blood, mud, and filth. I thought onions might break through that. Clearly not.’
Mrs Moore nodded, leaning against the table, wincing, and Evie knew she needed to sit for a while. ‘Evie, what on earth can they see that we can’t?’ She indicated Jack who was now looking at the floor as he stabbed, and then Mr Auberon who was also staring, but at the white splash-back tiles behind the range, holding the spatula quite still now. The smoke was on the increase and the onions were irredeemably black and blue from ill-treatment. Mrs Moore nudged her. ‘Quick now, get them out of here before the rest of the volunteers return from their break, you know how they talk.’
Evie sighed, for a servant didn’t approach an owner, whatever relationship they might or might not have, but nevertheless stomachs would need filling. She worked her way quietly round the table, bracing herself, and raising her voice. ‘Why not leave this and walk in the fresh air, Mr Auberon. There has been no more snow since your arrival yesterday evening.’
He did not react. Evie touched his arm, flinching as he spun round, the spatula lifted to strike.
‘Sir,’ shouted Jack, leaping forward, the knife in his hand. Evie stayed quite still as Mr Auberon stared at Jack, and then at her, his thoughts visibly clearing, the colour draining from his face. He lowered his arm. ‘Stand easy, Sergeant. Forgive me, Evie. Never would I . . . Not you . . . Never. How absurd . . . And Mrs Moore.’ He placed the spatula in the pan, his hands shaking. He examined the onions. ‘Are they really supposed to look like that?’
The mood was broken. Mrs Moore laughed, before heading for the scullery. Evie laughed too, though her mouth was dry with shock, and her hands trembled. She said, ‘I believe not, or no one would ever have stuffing with their turkey again.’
Jack was placing the razor-sharp knife on the table, looking first at it, and then his sister, and his hands were shaking, and then his whole body. By, they were all at it. Evie wanted to take the war from these two young men who were only three years her senior, and promise them that all was well, which was what her mam always said. But it wasn’t, was it? They had to return to the front, tomorrow.
Instead she smiled cheerfully, which was what everyone who worked here was taught to do. ‘You both need to stretch your legs, do something active, breathe in some fresh air. There will be peace and quiet as the gamekeepers are only allowed to shoot at a time suitable to the hospital, to save upsetting the patients. Come.’
She moved the pan on to the range’s rest corner, leading them out of the kitchen into the bell corridor. Mr Auberon paused, looked at the bells, then at Evie, and nodded, his face even more drawn. She realised he had not seen before that the room names beneath the bells were those of a hospital.
‘Everything has changed,’ he murmured.
‘Not everything,’ she replied. ‘The cedar tree on the front lawn remains the same.’
He merely nodded slightly, Jack too. Evie headed towards the back door, the men following her down the corridor like ducklings. At the door Mr Auberon reached forward and opened it, stepping aside and ushering her up the steps before him. It wasn’t proper that he should do this for a servant, so perhaps he was right, almost nothing was as it used to be.
She reached the top step. Opposite were the garages, which housed the volunteers’ children’s playroom, run by Evie’s mam, Susan Forbes. Raisin and Currant, Veronica’s dachshunds that Lord Brampton had ordered to be killed on the outbreak of war, were disappearing round the corner, probably heading for the formal gardens to be spoilt by whatever patients were taking the air. Evie’s family had taken them in until the Bastard left, and then they had been returned.
Evie stepped on to the cobbles, looking for Simon, who had said he must find a place for the head gardener to plant a rose bush in Bernie’s memory. Bernie had been another under-gardener, his friend. He had died of shrapnel wounds at . . . Where was it now? Ypres? Somewhere with rain, mud and cold as well as the bloody guns, Si had said.
He was nowhere in sight. She lifted her head, taking in the grey sky. They only had today together and then the men started on their return journey, and she needed her fiancé to herself for a few hours. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask? Then she closed her eyes. Stupid, greedy girl, of course it was and at least he was alive.
To the left of the garage yard the kitchen staff and volunteers were trooping down the internal corridor steps, pinching out their Woodbines. She waited, counting out the seconds, and sure enough within a minute she could hear Mrs Moore shouting, ‘What time do you call this? Yes, I know some of you volunteers have given up your Christmas Day to help, but those lads upstairs have given up a sight more than that, and these vegetables won’t wash or peel themselves, the table won’t lay itself, the game won’t find its own way into soup pans and I won’t produce a smile until a grand bit of work is done. You, Sally Armitage, can wipe that look off your face, because I, for one, am not living with any more nonsense today. You scullery lasses, I need them pans and I need them now. Remember, soda and elbow grease is the key.’
Next to Evie both men laughed. Jack poked her. ‘Aye, fresh air and peace, eh, bonny lass? I’ll take the gamekeepers any day.’
The snow still just covered the cobbles, though it was scuffed by the footsteps of the volunteers who came from the pit villages of Easton, Sidon and Hawton by day and night as the rota dictated, knowing that it could have been their bairns, husbands, or brothers who needed help. She felt the chill breeze, and watched the clouds shifting fast across the sky, but then she heard her name called. ‘Evie.’ It was her lovely lad, Simon, hurrying across the cobbles, clutching dried sage and thyme for the stuffing, his face alight with love, his glorious red hair shining even without the sun. He slowed when he registered Mr Auberon, and started to salute, and then stopped, uncertain.
Mr Auberon called, ‘No uniforms so no salutes, Simon. We’ll have them back soon enough, and that bloody nonsense will start up, but for now they’re being cleansed by the laundry, whilst Jack and I are sent for a walk. It appears that we’re surplus to requirements, but I daresay you’ll make a better fist of helping your Evie.’ He laughed, but it was strained.
From the bottom step they heard another voice. It was Lady Veronica, Mr Auberon’s sister, in her kitchen apron rather than her VAD uniform. ‘Oh tut tut, no disappearing for anyone today. Come back here, all you able-bodied men. Poor Mr Harvey needs help organising the tables as you, Aub, have insisted everyone eats together in the ballroom ward: servants, staff, patients and visitors. This I applaud, but we need your soldierly muscle power to make it happen, or Mr Harvey will resign as butler and the place will fall apart. You too, Jack, but Simon, as a special dispensation, can have half an hour to spend with you know who, or she will quite deliberately burn the turkeys’ parson’s noses in retribution.’
Jack winked at Evie as he about-turned, his hair riffled by the cold breeze, as he waited for Mr Auberon to precede him. She watched them troop back down the steps, one so dark, one so fair, following Lady Veronica into the corridor. Lady Veronica called. ‘Make the most of it, Evie, because though you have thus far only instructed me in the preparation of a roux and a passable cup of tea, I am here to help, so let the real havoc begin.’
‘Don’t worry, I have just the task, we need more onions chopped.’ Lady Veronica’s groan and the guffaws of the men wafted up the steps, to be cut short by Mrs Moore’s bellow. ‘Shut that door. We’re not living in a barn.’
Evie heard Simon murmur behind her, and felt his breath on her neck. ‘No, not living in a barn here, but in reserve we do. Now, I have half an hour to show you how much I love you, Evie Forbes.’ She felt his arm around her waist, his kisses on her neck, and turned into him. He dropped the herbs, but the scent was still on his hands as he cupped her face. He was the same age as the other two and looked as many years older as they did, but she suspected she was no rose any more, if she ever had been. It didn’t matter, he was here, he was safe for now, and what was more, he was hers. They clung to one another. ‘I love you,’ he repeated. ‘I love you so much I could drown in it.’
‘Don’t,’ she said against his mouth. ‘Don’t you dare or I will kill you myself.’ They didn’t laugh, because time was so short and the future so . . . what? Uncertain? Dangerous? Impossible? When would it end? Who would survive? What would happen if they lost? She buried her face in his shoulder and he rocked her back and forth and she thought again of her mother’s endless sayings, which frequently drove those who knew her to want to strangle her. She would say, yet again, ‘All will be well.’ This time Evie found comfort in the words.
Half an hour later Lady Veronica used her hands to sweep the vegetable waste on to sheets of Mr Harvey’s out-of-date Daily Sketch. The juice from the carrot tops seeped into the front page, which told of the Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby deaths and casualties resulting from the shelling by the German navy. Evie said, ‘It’s hard to believe, Ver.’
‘Nowhere’s safe, Evie,’ Lady Veronica almost whispered, rolling up the waste and putting it into the compost bucket. ‘How is Mrs Green’s niece?’
Mrs Moore was passing. ‘The shrapnel wounds to her leg are healing and she’s home with her mother, and so Mrs Green will be back from Whitby within days to take up her housekeeping duties. She thanks you for the hamper, Your Ladyship, and asks after your husband. I told her Captain Richard is improving but not yet able to function downstairs. I hope you find him improved again today, slightly at least?’
Lady Veronica sat down on a stool, easing her back and wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I do believe he is, Mrs Moore. Just a tad.’
Evie snatched a look at the clock before saying briskly, ‘Now, enough chat, let’s get the roasts out so they can rest. It won’t be for long enough, but it will have to do. It’ll be a bit of a trudge to get it all up to the ward, so perhaps you should suggest that Mr Auberon and his little troop help Archie and Mr Harvey transport the feast to the multitude, Lady Veronica.’ She tried to remember to address Veronica properly in the company of others. She passed her a heavyweight oven cloth. ‘You hoy out the turkeys if you wouldn’t mind, and Annie, you take the middle range, there should be six geese in there, and watch the fat. We mustn’t spill a drop as we’ll need every scrap for January. Who knows what food shortages are coming? I’ll handle the hams. How’s the soup, Mrs Moore?’
Chaos took over for the last hour with only one mishap. Lady Veronica burned her arm. It was dusted with flour, and she was told it was a medal. She promised she’d wear it proudly.
Somehow Mr Harvey had organised the tables in the ballroom ward so that everyone could be seated, though it would be shoulder to shoulder with one’s neighbour. All around would be the recovering enlisted men still bedbound; the officers had their own cubicles, created from the many bedrooms on the second floor.
For now, sherry was served in the great hall and helped to ease the social revolution that was occurring. Nicely lubricated, Mr Auberon led the gaggle into the ballroom, taking his place at the head of the long, long table covered in pristine white linen tablecloths. The fact that they were really sheets was ignored. The glasses glistened, the cutlery too. Chrysanthemums on short stalks were arranged in shallow bowls down the centre of the tables, and candles were lit in candlesticks taken from the silver safe.
Lady Wendover, a middle-aged VAD, was waiting to take her seat next to Maudie, one of the scullery maids, another VAD would sit next to Daisy, a housemaid. Evie thought they could discuss the merits of soda in the scullery, or the virtues of sprinkling tea leaves on the carpets before brushing, rather than the usual subject of how lazy the servants were. She grinned as Jack, who sat opposite her, and a few places down from Mr Auberon, raised an eyebrow. He’d always been able to read her like a book. So had her da and mam, who were to Jack’s left and chuckling at her.
Mrs Moore leaned into her, saying in a voice meant to be a whisper but which was considerably louder, ‘If you feed the beggars well, it will always be an occasion of cheer no matter who has to sit next to whom.’
Perhaps Mr Auberon heard, for not long after, when the turkeys had been carved on the side table, and the main course was about to begin, he proposed a toast to the kitchen, absent friends, and lastly, the King, mentioning that it was a rare occasion for cheer, grinning at Mrs Moore and Evie as he did so. After glasses were raised, sipped and replaced, they sat again, except for Roger the valet, who Evie saw hurrying to the baize door, having said to Simon that he wasn’t going to sit opposite ‘that monstrosity’ for a minute longer. The ‘monstrosity’ was Sergeant Harris, who wore a tin mask to hide his facial injuries and sat alongside Captain Simmons whose nose had got lost, as he delighted in telling everyone, due to carelessness. He would then stick his thumb between his fore and middle finger and say, ‘Good grief, and here it is, after all.’
As Roger stormed off Evie and Jack exchanged another look, this time one of fury. Mrs Moore said forcefully, but for the family alone, ‘Then he’ll go hungry. There’s nothing left downstairs for even a sparrow to peck on, and with the dogs taking up both armchairs he’ll have to make do with a stool.’
Evie pretended not to notice Millie, Jack’s wife, flush at these words, laying down her knife and fork. Jack sat next to her, his stepson Tim on his lap, with lashings of cranberry sauce on his small plate. Evie smiled. It was a sure bet that this would be the two-year-old’s favourite part of the meal. He was a lovely little lad, but was there an increasing look of his father, bloody Roger, about him? Dear God, she hoped not and if there was, that it was the end of any family resemblance.
Simon ran his hand along her arm and it was only then she saw she had gripped her knife and fork so tightly her knuckles had whitened. He nudged her with his knee and whispered, ‘Stop fretting; Millie wouldn’t jeopardise what she has with Jack to go chasing after the bloke who made her pregnant when she was the kitchenmaid, and dumped her. She’s not that big a fool.’
Jack helped Tim to another great dollop of cranberry and shrugged when his mam said it would rot the bairn’s teeth. ‘Sugar could get short soon enough, Mam. It’s Christmas, we’ll let him, shall we?’
Soon conversations were fluttering more easily around the long table, and laughter was spreading. Bravo for Mr Auberon, Evie thought. He’d been right, everything had changed, even the nobs, but perhaps it wouldn’t take long to get back to the old order once the war was over, if it ever was. Evie whispered, ‘Si, we must remember this: good food, good company, and wine. When things get difficult let’s just think of it. I prefer it to looking up at a moon dangling in the sky like the poets say.’
He laughed. ‘It’s because you live and breathe cooking, and I love you for it. One day I’ll be home, we’ll all be home and you can get on with sorting our dream of a hotel, at last.’
She lifted her glass of chilled white wine, taking a large sip, more a gulp really, but by, she needed it. Within seconds it seemed her shoulders were low, her muscles felt loose, her smile was growing. ‘You will sing and fiddle for the wedding parties and we can get Bern . . .’ She stopped. Bernie had been killed, so too Jack’s marra, his close pitman friend, Mart Dore.
Jack had been listening and leaned forward, stroking Tim’s dark hair. ‘We’ll come back, Evie pet. We’ll all come back.’
Mam said, ‘All will be well.’ The family laughed and Da patted his wife’s shoulder. It was then Evie noticed that Millie’s place was empty. ‘Where is she?’
Jack shrugged. ‘She’s gone for more cranberry sauce.’
Mam murmured, ‘I told her there was some further along by Captain Neave but she was determined.’ She mouthed, ‘Showing off for Jack, I reckon.’
Evie placed her serviette on the table, and started to rise, her food like ashes in her mouth. ‘I’ll help her. She probably doesn’t know where it is.’
Simon pulled her back down, saying for her ears only, his blue eyes determined, ‘Let someone else do something for a change. Every moment with you is precious. She’ll find what she’s after.’
That was what Evie feared, because the only other person down there was Roger.
Jack was watching and listening, and now he leaned forward yet again, saying quietly, ‘Let it go, pet. It’s the bairn that’s important. Over my dead body will he have Tim, who deserves better, and, by, I don’t want to have to keep leaning over like this to calm you down, it’s causing havoc with me innards.’
She laughed. Jack grinned, lifting a finger towards the baize door. ‘Here she is with the cranberry, so I reckon you’ve counted two and two and made ten.’
Millie sat, avoiding everyone’s eyes, her hair adrift from her cap, and Evie would have bet that nearer ten was right after all. Stupid woman. She always had been and always would be, and why had Jack ever married her? But she knew why, and it was best left alone.
After the meal the nurses sang Christmas carols under Matron’s Amazonian conducting, and were joined by several of the wounded, as well as Simon and Evie, and Dr Nicholls, the Medical Officer. It was Simon whose solos brought the audience to their feet, his pure notes taking them from the present to a quieter, more blessed time. Jack told Evie how Simon had stilled everyone’s hearts in the trenches, during a lull in the fighting, when he had sung ‘Oh for the wings of a dove’.
For that moment she allowed happiness to enter.