and clutched Mollie by the arm.
‘Oh, my dears, I’m so glad you’re here before me, because of course I don’t know a soul,’ she said, ‘and really I feel I’ve no right to be here. I mean, I only met Mr and Mrs Waldron that once in your house. Of course it was very interesting to meet them, very interesting. It was so strange recognizing her after all these years. But I still have a sort of feeling I’m imposing on them by coming. I very nearly changed my mind at the last minute and didn’t come. But then I’m so anxious to meet Luke again. I told you I used to know him slightly in the days before he got famous, didn’t I? I wonder if I’ll recognize him as I did Suzie—I mean Anna. I think I’m rather clever at recognizing people. Oh—there he is!’ As she broke off Brian Singleton came into the room, followed by another man.
It struck Andrew that the brothers bore no resemblance to one another. Whereas Brian was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular and ruddy, Luke Singleton was several inches the shorter, slender, sharp-featured and pallid. He held himself with a rigid uprightness, almost as if he was on parade, and his face was bleakly expressionless. It gave no sign of the colourful and violent imagination thatmust churn within him. When Anna Waldron hurried to greet him he responded with a small smile and a stiff little bow that was almost Germanic. When Brian introduced him to the Davidges and Andrew, he repeated the bow, accepted a drink and then was led by Brian to meet other people.
‘You see, he didn’t know me!’ Eleanor exclaimed, but she said it almost as if this pleased her, rather than otherwise. She gave a little giggle. ‘But I’d have known him anywhere, although he’s really changed a great deal. He used to look much friendlier, and that stiff way of holding himself, as if he’d like you to think he’s in the army, that’s new. But I suppose he has to keep people at arm’s length or they’d trample all over him. I believe in his way he’s really very shy—oh!’ She broke off again as Sam Waldron appeared in the doorway.
He was wearing a long white apron and a cook’s white hat. As he appeared he clapped his hands, and at once there was silence in the room.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘may I have your attention for a moment?’
He beamed at the company in the room.
‘First of all,’ he said, as the company waited, ‘I want to bid you welcome and to thank you for coming here tonight to help me indulge this whim of mine. It is my desire to give you the kind of meal that the people who lived in this house over two hundred years ago, but who I can’t pretend, as you know, were kin of mine, would have given you as a matter of course on a festive occasion. But you needn’t be frightened. I don’t want to chase you away by making you fear for your digestions. I am not going to give you the actual meal that they would have had, but I will read you a menu of such a meal, then tell you what items I have selected from it, I hope for your pleasure.’
He paused for a moment, took a piece of paper from a pocket in his great white apron, and went on.
‘This was a dinner given by a bishop in his palace to twenty guests. You are about twenty this evening, I believe, but alas, I am no bishop and this is not a palace, and this is not the year 1783, but is near the end of the twentieth century. Had these things been otherwise, however, you would have had two dishes of prodigious fine stewed carp and tench, a fine haunch of venison, a fine turkey poult, partridges, pigeons and sweetmeats, followed by mulberries, melon, currants, peaches, nectarines and grapes. And do you know, as I read it now, that doesn’t seem such an outrageously great meal as it did when I read it first. All the same, I’m not about to inflict it on you. There are tench, caught in our own pond on the common, but no carp, and I hope, after the way in which I have cooked them you will not find they
‘Oh, my dears, I’m so glad you’re here before me, because of course I don’t know a soul,’ she said, ‘and really I feel I’ve no right to be here. I mean, I only met Mr and Mrs Waldron that once in your house. Of course it was very interesting to meet them, very interesting. It was so strange recognizing her after all these years. But I still have a sort of feeling I’m imposing on them by coming. I very nearly changed my mind at the last minute and didn’t come. But then I’m so anxious to meet Luke again. I told you I used to know him slightly in the days before he got famous, didn’t I? I wonder if I’ll recognize him as I did Suzie—I mean Anna. I think I’m rather clever at recognizing people. Oh—there he is!’ As she broke off Brian Singleton came into the room, followed by another man.
It struck Andrew that the brothers bore no resemblance to one another. Whereas Brian was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular and ruddy, Luke Singleton was several inches the shorter, slender, sharp-featured and pallid. He held himself with a rigid uprightness, almost as if he was on parade, and his face was bleakly expressionless. It gave no sign of the colourful and violent imagination thatmust churn within him. When Anna Waldron hurried to greet him he responded with a small smile and a stiff little bow that was almost Germanic. When Brian introduced him to the Davidges and Andrew, he repeated the bow, accepted a drink and then was led by Brian to meet other people.
‘You see, he didn’t know me!’ Eleanor exclaimed, but she said it almost as if this pleased her, rather than otherwise. She gave a little giggle. ‘But I’d have known him anywhere, although he’s really changed a great deal. He used to look much friendlier, and that stiff way of holding himself, as if he’d like you to think he’s in the army, that’s new. But I suppose he has to keep people at arm’s length or they’d trample all over him. I believe in his way he’s really very shy—oh!’ She broke off again as Sam Waldron appeared in the doorway.
He was wearing a long white apron and a cook’s white hat. As he appeared he clapped his hands, and at once there was silence in the room.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘may I have your attention for a moment?’
He beamed at the company in the room.
‘First of all,’ he said, as the company waited, ‘I want to bid you welcome and to thank you for coming here tonight to help me indulge this whim of mine. It is my desire to give you the kind of meal that the people who lived in this house over two hundred years ago, but who I can’t pretend, as you know, were kin of mine, would have given you as a matter of course on a festive occasion. But you needn’t be frightened. I don’t want to chase you away by making you fear for your digestions. I am not going to give you the actual meal that they would have had, but I will read you a menu of such a meal, then tell you what items I have selected from it, I hope for your pleasure.’
He paused for a moment, took a piece of paper from a pocket in his great white apron, and went on.
‘This was a dinner given by a bishop in his palace to twenty guests. You are about twenty this evening, I believe, but alas, I am no bishop and this is not a palace, and this is not the year 1783, but is near the end of the twentieth century. Had these things been otherwise, however, you would have had two dishes of prodigious fine stewed carp and tench, a fine haunch of venison, a fine turkey poult, partridges, pigeons and sweetmeats, followed by mulberries, melon, currants, peaches, nectarines and grapes. And do you know, as I read it now, that doesn’t seem such an outrageously great meal as it did when I read it first. All the same, I’m not about to inflict it on you. There are tench, caught in our own pond on the common, but no carp, and I hope, after the way in which I have cooked them you will not find they
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