“As we discussed, Snout might make something of himself with a scholarship and a better attitude,” said Hugh. “But I’ve found that intelligence is often no match for the circumstances of life, Miss Beatrice. It takes an exceptional boy to fulfill such early promise.”
“I hope a determined teacher might make a difference,” said Beatrice. “I can only follow my father’s example and give them the knowledge I have.”
“I would come with you, but I fear I must go home and face my Aunt Agatha,” said Hugh. “I report back for duty on Monday. Let’s hope she recovers her usual sensible demeanor next week or I may have to spend all my future days off in London.”
“That would be a great loss to your friends,” she said, and she held his gaze, though a flush in her cheeks threatened to betray her.
—
It was hot in the kitchen. The back door was propped open with a chair and all the windows secured on the furthest points of their long iron catches, but the breeze could not quite clear the steam from the large copper pans of peaches and plums bubbling on the stove and the glass preserving jars and lids jiggling about nicely in their baths of boiling water. Piles of runner beans as fat as baby eels lay on sacking in the scullery along with small hills of carrots, cauliflowers, and small, early beetroots thick with mud about the roots. Agatha, swathed in a voluminous white apron, with her hair tucked under an old mobcap that was a relic of her mother’s trousseau, was helping Cook to put up as much preserved fruit and vegetables as they could make against any further food shortages to come. Extra jars had been rescued from Hugh’s workroom and from various corners of the stable, amid some grumbling as preserved laboratory specimens and Smith’s collections of screws and nails were summarily tipped into less suitable containers.
If Cook wondered at the outsized effort, and Agatha’s insistence on working in the kitchen all day, she did not say, and Agatha was grateful for her unusual lack of inquisitiveness. Hard manual labor seemed to Agatha to be just the thing to keep her thoughts from racing and her heart palpitating at Hugh’s appearance in uniform. Though John had sent her a note to let her know Hugh’s intention, it had been a shock to see him step off the train with John, all nonchalant in his khaki, and brimming with talk of battlefield surgery.
“My ability to serve has removed all my father’s and mother’s objections to my continued medical studies,” he had said over dinner as he and John discussed the details of the surgeon’s plans for specific head injury facilities.
“I expect you Medical Corps chaps all have a signed doctor’s note in your pocket in case you need a quick escape to Blighty,” Daniel had added. “How will you feel about amputating your own leg if necessary?”
Agatha had sipped her Earl Grey and tried not to feel sick. She had treated the war as another civic duty and had entered willingly into her many new commitments. She truly believed that all must serve to the best of their abilities, but the sight of Hugh in uniform, and the realization that his talents would send him to the battlefield, was like a physical blow to her enthusiasm.
“We shall have to clean out the cellar properly this year,” said Agatha. “I fear we have become used to ordering from the high street whenever we wish.”
“You’ll be needing us to send boxes up to town as well, then,” said Cook. “I wouldn’t want Mr. Kent to go hungry.” Cook had a country woman’s disdain for the town and was quite sure that there would be starvation in London where there were minor shortages in Sussex.
“I expect Mr. Kent can always get dinner at his club,” said Agatha. “I’m not sure I shall be up in town much with all the work to do here.”
“We’ll be using just about all our sugar and salt if we’re to fill all these jars,” said Cook.
“When Smith comes back from the mill, we’ll send him to the grocer’s again and see if there are any new supplies to be had,” said Agatha. Smith had been dispatched in the hopes of purchasing larger bags of flour than were available in the town shops and to pursue any information about rumors of the government buying up future corn crops for the army. It was not Agatha’s intention to indulge in hoarding, but to refrain from such practices called for credible information that food would continue to be in adequate supply. She was not above doing her own information gathering to supplement her husband’s assurances.
“We could maybe keep a pig or two if we dug up a bit o’ grass,” said Cook. She was not content with Agatha’s carefully manicured vegetable garden and had been upset when she got rid of the chicken coop on account of the smell and an obnoxious rooster, who woke up houseguests. Cook did not hold with large areas of grass just lying there, mowed, for playing croquet or walking about.
“I think we’ll keep patronizing the butcher as long as possible,” said Agatha. “The poor man is so embarrassed at how little he has in stock.”
“Tongue was all he had yesterday,” said Cook. “So many I had a sudden vision of a whole field of silent cows. Quite a nasty turn it gave me.”
“I had no idea you were so imaginative,” said Agatha. As she looked up from forcing the last half of a fat peach into a jar, she saw that Cook had lost all the ruddy color from her face. “Are you all right?” she added.
“I’m sorry, madam,” said Cook, sitting down too fast on a chair, a large carrot forgotten in each hand. “Only my daughter’s husband has up and gone to the army, and her with the little girl to take care of.”
“I believe there are special allowances to wives and children,” said Agatha gently.
“Oh, he says it’s more money and a bit of adventure, like,” said Cook. “But what if he comes home maimed or dead? What if he takes up with some camp follower and doesn’t come home at all?” She shook her head and wiped away a tear. “He’s never been happy to have a cripple for a daughter.” Agatha did not know what to say. An unworthy concern flickered through her mind that Cook might now take to being absent without warning, burning gravy because of tiredness, bringing her granddaughter with her to get underfoot in the kitchen. Agatha was forced to consider whether her sympathetic interest in her staff’s families might have more to do with appearing generous than with any willingness to be inconvenienced by their actual problems.
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” she said, wincing at her own weakness.
“You’re very kind, ma’am,” said Cook. “I always tell my daughter, not a kinder lady in Rye than my Mrs. Kent.”
The telephone could be heard ringing in its little room under the front stairs, and Agatha was grateful when Jenny came in to inform her that she was wanted by Lady Emily.
“Lady Emily on the telephone?” asked Agatha, who was well aware of Lady Emily’s opinion of the instrument as impossibly vulgar. She had installed one, but had it placed in her husband’s library, hidden in a wooden box so that it often went unanswered because no one could hear it ringing.
“I think it’s her daughter, ma’am,” said Jenny. “But she said Lady Emily for Mrs. Kent.”
“Tell her I’m coming right away,” said Agatha, washing peach juice from her hands at the big iron sink.
As she hurried down the hall, she took off the mobcap, which she knew could not be seen on the telephone but which she removed as a nod to the importance of maintaining standards.
“This is Agatha Kent,” she said into the heavy black telephone, trying not to raise her voice as so many did, as if they could thus force their voices down the copper wiring.
“Hello, this is Eleanor Wheaton, here with my mother,” said the caller. There was a muffled conversation in the background. “My mother apologizes for not coming to the telephone herself, but you can’t be too careful about the germs.”
“I know she hates the telephone,” said Agatha. “She usually just sends a message.”
“She has,” said Eleanor. “But she was becoming anxious before the footman left the house, so I offered to just ring you up and say that my mother simply must have you and Mr. Kent for dinner on Saturday. Earl North is coming.”
“Earl Who?”