The Most Marvellous Summer. Betty Neels

Venables. ‘How could she?’ cried that lady in an outraged voice. ‘When we have the dinner party this evening and absolutely no chance of getting a cook at such short notice. What am I to do? She must have been careless—’

      ‘She’s cut off two fingers,’ said Matilda. ‘I’ll stay here until I know what is happening to her. She’s been very brave.’

      She didn’t wait for Mrs Venables’s reply.

      She sat for an hour, revived by a cup of hot strong tea, thinking about Cook and Mr Scott-Thurlow. She shouldn’t have blurted out her silly remark in Casualty—she went hot again just thinking about it—and then to have been sick… She wriggled with humiliation. He had been kind to Cook; she hoped that he would be able to sew the fingers back on—surgeons were clever and she supposed that he was very experienced.

      The kind little nurse who had lent her the twenty pence came into the waiting-room and she got up to meet her.

      ‘She’s going to be all right,’ said the nurse. ‘Mr Scott-Thurlow did a good job, and her fingers will be as good as new—well, almost. He’s a wizard with bones. Sister said will you arrange for Mrs Chubb’s clothes—nighties and washing things and so on—to be brought in? She’s to stay a few days.’

      Matilda nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Which ward is she in?’

      ‘Women’s Orthopaedic, second floor. You’ll be able to see her.’

      ‘I’ll go and get everything now and come back as soon as I can. Thank you, you’ve all been awfully kind.’

      She was back within the hour, Cook’s necessities in a case, with a couple of paperbacks she had stopped to buy and a bunch of flowers, Mrs Venables’s unfeeling, complaining voice still ringing in her ears.

      ‘The woman will be of no use to me,’ she had said impatiently. ‘Now I shall have to get another cook.’

      Matilda had turned a thoughtful green gaze on to her hostess. ‘Has she worked for you for long?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh, years,’ said Mrs Venables. ‘I must say it is most inconvenient—’

      ‘I dare say Cook finds it inconvenient too, and very painful.’

      She had received a very cold look for that; a good thing they were going home in a few more days.

      Cook was in a small ward, sitting up in bed, looking pale. Matilda put everything away in her locker, fetched a vase for the flowers and offered the paperbacks—light romantic reading which she hoped would take Cook’s mind off her problems. She parried the awkward questions she was asked, skimming smoothly over the future, and invented one or two suitable messages from Mrs Venables. ‘I’ll pop in some time tomorrow,’ she finished, ‘just to see if there’s anything you would like.’

      ‘That’s kind of you, miss. We all said in the kitchen what a kind young lady you were, and so very understanding.’

      Matilda said goodbye and found her way out of the hospital, trying not to wish that she might meet Mr Scott-Thurlow. But of course she didn’t.

      She got back to the house to find Mrs Venables raging up and down the drawing-room floor while Roseanne sat in a corner looking obstinate. She had intended to spend the morning with Bernard and she had had to put him off. Her mouth was set in a thin line and she looked very like her mother.

      Mrs Venables, pacing back to the door, saw Matilda. ‘I’ve telephoned every agency I can think of,’ she declared. ‘There is not a decent cook to be had at a moment’s notice. I am distraught.’ She wrung her hands in a dramatic fashion and glared at Matilda.

      ‘You will be relieved to know that Mrs Chubb’s operation was successful and that she is comfortably in bed.’ Matilda glared back. ‘I can cook—I’ll see to dinner this evening.’

      Mrs Venables’s glare turned to a melting sweetness. ‘Matilda! Oh, can you really cook? I mean cordon bleu? My dear girl, however can I thank you—what a relief, you have no idea how worried I’ve been.’ She reeled off the menu: consommé royale, poached salmon, roast duck with orange garnish and brandy, straw potatoes and a selection of vegetables, some sort of a salad—she had left that to Cook—and then peach condé and coffee mousse. ‘Can you manage that?’ She patted Matilda’s arm. ‘So good of you to do this for me.’

      ‘I’m doing it for Cook,’ said Matilda.

      She didn’t wait for Mrs Venables’s outraged gasp but took herself off to the kitchen, where she explained matters to the domestic staff and sat down at the kitchen table to get organised. She had plenty of willing help, and, satisfied with the arrangements, she went away to tidy herself for lunch, an uncomfortable meal with Mrs Venables suppressing her ill temper in case Matilda should back out at the last minute, and Roseanne still sulking.

      Matilda spent most of the afternoon preparing for the evening. She enjoyed cooking and she was an instinctive cook, quite ordinary food turning into delectable dishes under her capable hands. She had her tea in the kitchen, which rather upset the butler and the kitchen maid and certainly upset Bertha, who had disapproved of the whole thing to start with. ‘Ladies,’ she had sniffed, ‘don’t belong in the kitchen,’ a remark to which Matilda didn’t bother to reply.

      Everything went well; as the first guests arrived and the butler went to admit them, Matilda gave the ducks a satisfied prod, tasted the consommé and began to make a salad. There was half an hour before dinner would be served and she enjoyed making a salad.

      The Honourable Mrs Venables greeted her guests with an almost feverish eagerness. She had planned the evening carefully and if anything went wrong she would never recover from it. She cast an anxious eye over the laughing and talking people around her. Bernard had come and she sighed with relief, for Roseanne had stopped sulking at the sight of him and even looked a bit pretty. There were two more to come, Rhoda Symes and Mr Scott-Thurlow, and they entered the room at that moment. A handsome couple, she conceded; Rhoda looked magnificent, but then she always did. Mr Scott-Thurlow looked much as he usually did, rather grave; always courteous and lovely manners, though. She went forward to welcome them.

      Mr Scott-Thurlow had seen Roseanne as soon as he entered the room but there was no sign of the bright head of hair he had expected to see. He listened politely to one of the guests trying to prise free advice from him while he glanced round the room. Matilda wasn’t there. He caught Rhoda’s eye and she smiled at him. She was looking particularly beautiful, exquisitely made up, her hair a blonde halo, her cerise dress the very latest fashion. She would make him a very suitable wife; she was a clever woman as well as attractive, completely at ease against a social background, cool and undemonstrative. The uneasy thought that her charming appearance hid a cold nature crossed his mind and he found himself wondering why he had asked her to marry him. He knew the answer to that: she made no demands upon him and appeared quite content with the lack of romance between them. He had been an only child and had lost his parents in a plane crash when he had been a small boy. He had gone to live with his grandparents, who had loved him dearly but had not known what to say to him, so he had learned to hide his loneliness and unhappiness and had grown up into a rather quiet man who seldom allowed his feelings to show, channelling his energy and interest into his work. It was his old nanny, Mrs Twigg, who kept house for him, who had begged him to find himself a wife and he had acknowledged the good sense of that; his friends were all married by now and despite his absorption in his work he was sometimes lonely.

      He and the man to whom he was talking were joined by several more people and the conversation became general until they were summoned to dinner, where he sat between two young married women who flirted gently with him.

      It was someone at the other end of the table who remarked loudly upon the delicious duck. ‘You must have a splendid cook,’ he remarked, laughing.

      ‘I’ve had her for years,’ declared Mrs Venables. ‘She’s a treasure,’ and Mr Scott-Thurlow, happening to glance at Roseanne across the table, saw the look of surprised rage on her face and wondered why.

      It was some time