Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [74]
The household management was a different matter. The butler was offended because the visiting valets were not in his control, which he felt they should have been. They dined separately, and it was greatly inconvenient. The laundry maids were overworked because one of them was in bed with the vapors and there was far too much to do. Miss Moynihan’s maid gave herself airs and had managed to quarrel with Mrs. McGinley’s maid, with the result that an entire bucketful of soap was spilled all over the laundry room floor.
The scullery maid had a fit of the giggles and was perfectly useless, not that she was much good at the best of times. Eudora’s maid was so distressed she forgot what she was doing half the time, and poor Gracie was forever picking up after her—when she wasn’t watching Hennessey, or listening to him, or wondering when he was corning back again.
Tellman was getting more and more ill-tempered, and Dilkes was fed up with him. He seemed to be neither use nor ornament, although presumably his being a policeman explained that and why Pitt endured him.
But it was Mrs. Williams, the cook, who finally broke Emily’s patience.
“It isn’t my job to be doin’ plain cookin’,” she said indignantly. “I’m a professed cook, not a general cook. I do specialities. You’ll still be wantin’ that Delilah’s trifle tonight, and baked goose, no doubt? Them kitchen maids is supposed to fetch after me, not me be runnin’ behind them as they get a fit o’ cryin’, or is hidin’ from goblins in the cupboard under the stairs. And I’m not havin’ any butler tellin’ me how to discipline girls in my own kitchen, an’ that’s a fact, Mrs. Radley!”
“Who’s in the cupboard under the stairs?” Emily demanded.
“Georgina. An’ that’s no name for a kitchen maid! I told her if she don’t come out this minute, I’ll send in worse after her than goblins! I’ll come in after ’er meself. An’ she’ll rue the day! I’m not doin’ vegetables and rice puddings an’ custards. I got venison to do, an’ apple pies, an’ turbot, an’ Lord knows what else. You put a sore trial on a decent person, Mrs. Radley, an’ that’s a fact.”
Emily was obliged to bite her tongue. She would dearly like to have fired Mrs. Williams on the spot, with considerable sarcasm, but she could not afford to. Nor could she afford to lose face. It would never be forgotten, and would open the door to all kinds of future troubles.
“There is a sore trial upon all of us, Mrs. Williams,” Emily replied, forcing her expression into one of friendliness she did not feel. “We are all frightened and worried. My greatest concern is that the household should emerge from this awful weekend with honor, so that afterwards people will remember all that was good. The rest will not be associated with us, but with Irish politics.”
“Well …” Mrs. Wilhams said, snorting through her nose, “there is that, I suppose. Although I’m sure I don’t know what’s good about it.”
“The food is more than good, it is excellent,” Emily replied with something a shade less than the truth. “This is the sort of disaster which sorts the great cook from the merely good. Test under fire, Mrs. Williams. Many people can do well when everything is fine for them and there is no invention called for, no courage or extraordinary discipline.”
“Well!” Mrs. Williams straightened up noticeably. “I daresay as you have a point, Mrs. Radley. We’ll not let you down. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I daren’t stay here talking any longer, unless there was something else? I got to be about my work if I’m to do that daft Georgina’s as well.”
“Yes, of course, Mrs. Williams. Thank you.”
On returning upstairs she went into the morning room, where there was a blazing fire, and found Justine talking to Kezia and Iona. The atmosphere was brittle but still within the bounds of civility. But then Kezia had kept her greatest anger for her brother, and Charlotte had explained why. Emily thought that in similar circumstances she might have felt the same.
“I was thinking of going for a walk,” Iona said dubiously, staring out of the tall windows at the gray sky.