Ravenscliffe Read online

  ‘It’s all ’appened so fast for them,’ Eve said now to Daniel. ‘We’re a good few steps ahead of t’bairns, me an’ you.’

  ‘I think they’ve caught on,’ Daniel said. ‘And they’re going to be just fine. Even Seth.’ Privately Daniel wondered if a more robust approach to Seth’s famous feelings might be in everyone’s interests. However, he wouldn’t say so.

  ‘I’ll talk to ’em later,’ she said decisively, making an effort. ‘And I’ll take Ravenscliffe. That’s if Mr Blandford lets me ’ave it.’

  She said this with a smile, but in fact she wasn’t speaking in jest. It was only three months ago that she’d spurned the unwelcome and wholly unexpected advances of the earl’s bailiff: Absalom Blandford, a fastidious guardian of his own dignity, would hardly be inclined to accommodate the wishes of the woman who had so recently humiliated him. Mercifully, she was rarely in his orbit, but when she did see him, he regarded her coldly and his nostrils seemed to flare and twitch as if the air around her offended him.

  ‘Send Anna,’ said Daniel. ‘She’ll sort him out. In any case, what kind of bailiff would he be to refuse to let Ravenscliffe? I don’t see a queue of potential tenants forming, do you?’

  She didn’t answer, because the great bell in the clock tower chimed a quarter past the hour and she exclaimed at the time, leaving him standing there watching as she walked briskly away up the avenue towards the house to meet Lady Netherwood and Mrs Adams in the morning room to discuss Yorkshire puddings for the king.

  Strictly speaking, Eve’s Yorkshires were King Edward’s principal reason for visiting Netherwood Hall. An extraordinary fact, but there it was, and try as she might to suppress that information, the countess found it had travelled far and wide, not least because when the king had fallen for Eve’s cooking – specifically, for the tiny Yorkshire puddings filled with rare roast beef – it had been at a crowded party during the London season, where the guests, hanging on his every word, missed nothing that the monarch had to say. However, this humiliation was a small price to pay for the sheer relief of securing a royal visit; the honour had been long overdue, even to the point that society had been holding its collective breath in delicious anticipation of an out-and-out snub. But the Hoylands had been spared, his visit was imminent, and now Clarissa’s time was spent planning every detail of every day he would be with them. She wasn’t sure, at first, to what extent Yorkshire puddings should feature. Should they appear, wittily, in a different guise at every meal? The earl had tactfully advised against this approach, persuading her that one magnificent offering would have greater meaning than several, and that there was no better occasion to serve it than on the evening of his arrival. So it was agreed: ten courses of old-fashioned, plain fare of the type Bertie – from time to time – delighted in. There would be three subsequent evenings on which to ply him with cream and truffles, but for his first dinner at Netherwood Hall, Mary Adams could produce her near-legendary roast rib of beef, with Vichy carrots, stewed peas and claret gravy, while Eve would be drafted in to do her bit, by royal appointment.

  ‘Quite an honour for you, my dear,’ said the countess now to Eve, as they faced each other across the lustre of the morning-room table. On Eve’s left sat Mrs Adams, spilling over the edges of the Chippendale chair and listening closely for slights. Clarissa held her pocketbook open in front of her.

  ‘And a little silly,’ she continued diplomatically, ‘since Mrs Adams makes lovely Yorkshire puddings. But we did promise Bertie he could have yours.’

  This was the line she was taking, for the sake of the cook’s dignity and her own: that Eve’s presence in the Netherwood kitchens was indulgent nonsense and, though requested by the king, was still entirely at the say-so of the countess. Eve quite understood. She knew Lady Netherwood well enough now to expect and accept these small rewritings of history. Eve didn’t much mind, either, that there’d been no mention of payment. None of it was of any account, in the wider scheme of things. She let the countess prattle on about details, and allowed her mind to wander, because she had been in this room before, just where she sat now, not much over a year ago. She had come, tongue-tied and mortified, to ask the earl to invest in her business, and – inexplicably, it had seemed to her – he had thrown himself with unbridled zeal into the project. It had been a spectacularly successful partnership, Lord Netherwood’s money helping to convert the former flour mill in town where Eve’s Puddings & Pies now flourished. His faith in Eve’s talents had paid dividends; more than that, though, it had forged a warm regard of each for the other, rooted on one side in profound admiration and on the other, profound gratitude. Also, it had given Lady Netherwood the mistaken idea that Eve Williams was theirs, to be called upon at the drop of a hat.

  ‘So. Wednesday the fourteenth,’ said the countess now. She was looking down at her list in the confident assumption that Eve’s mind, like her own, would be wholly focused on the king’s Yorkshire puddings. ‘Dinner is to be half-past seven for eight. You may decide when you need to report for duty. We shall be thirty altogether.’

  She looked up and Eve, a little caught out and rather woolly on the exact details, was nevertheless ready with a smile.

  ‘Grand,’ she said. ‘Thank you, your ladyship.’

  Mrs Adams harrumphed. She admired Eve Williams; her talent for pork pies and her skill with pastry had already been tested and proven. But batter was a different matter. Batter had always been Mrs Adams’s speciality: that is to say, one of them, for she felt she had plenty. Respect for the countess forced her to hold her tongue, but there was enough she could have said and it showed in her face.

  Lady Netherwood, quite aware that the cook’s feelings were running high, took pity and regarded the cook warmly.

  ‘Dear Mrs Adams,’ she said. ‘You are most obliging to allow Mrs Williams into your kitchen.’ Then she leaned across the table towards both of them and lowered her voice confidingly.

  ‘Mrs Keppel’s coming, of course. She hasn’t been here before and some people won’t have her at all, you know. The Norfolks at Arundel, the Cecils at Hatfield.’ The countess paused, and sighed. ‘I do hope we’re not upsetting the queen. One would so detest to be in her position.’

  Eve, entirely flummoxed at this unexpected turn in the conversation, had absolutely nothing to say. Mrs Adams, on the other hand, had an opinion for every occasion and she opened her mouth to pass a remark, but was prevented from speaking by the countess who, it seemed, was merely thinking aloud.

  ‘I suppose one simply suspends one’s judgment,’ she said. Particularly – this thought she kept to herself – as her own record with regard to marital fidelity was hardly unblemished. But still, she had never indulged in corridor-creeping at other people’s country homes. Her liaisons dangereuses had always been conducted in London, in the respectable hours of daylight between three and five o’clock.

  ‘Anyway, none of this need concern you,’ she said, briskly now and in a tone that rather implied someone other than herself had raised the subject in the first place. Eve bridled a little.

  ‘No, indeed, your ladyship,’ she said. ‘Yorkshire puddings are where my involvement starts and ends.’

  And though Eve was entirely serious, the countess laughed merrily.

  ‘Poor you,’ she said, then she clapped her slender hands together to conclude the meeting and snapped shut her pocket book, and at this slightest of signals the door was opened by one footman, her chair pulled back by another, and she swept gracefully from the room, leaving behind nothing of herself but an invisible cloud of rose-scented cologne.

  Eve and Mrs Adams looked at each other.

  ‘Rum do,’ said the cook.

  Eve stood to leave. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You can say that again.’

  Mrs Adams collected herself in readiness for the effort of standing up, bracing her hands on the arms of the chair. A large shoehorn might have been useful.

  ‘If I were you,’ she said. ‘I’d practise them puddings.’ />
  This was said not kindly but ungraciously, though Eve let it pass because she had no wish to lock horns with Mary Adams. Instead she nodded civilly at the cook, though as she crossed the room to leave she rolled her eyes heavenwards. Practise, my eye, she thought indignantly. She had no more need to practise Yorkshire puddings than she had to practise breathing. What’s more, she reckoned Mrs Adams, currently wholly occupied in the task of heaving her bulk out of the chair, knew this to be true.

  Chapter 5

  When the Global Steamship Company employed Silas Whittam as not much more than a dogsbody fourteen years earlier, he alone had known himself to be on the cusp of greatness, a latter-day adventurer, fearless explorer of dark and dangerous lands, albeit in the guise of a malnourished boy of sixteen with only his wits to live on. He had set out from Grangely the very day that Eve married Arthur: he stayed for the wedding, but only just, sitting at the back of the chapel and slipping out during the ‘Ode to Joy’. His haste to leave was misinterpreted by many, but not by his sister: she understood perfectly. Like Silas, Eve felt that their real life was just beginning, as if a long and undeserved prison sentence had been suddenly revoked and the door of their cell flung open. Silas had fidgeted on his bony backside on the chapel pew until he could stand it no longer. He had to get to Liverpool and he couldn’t waste another minute. He didn’t even manage to catch Eve’s eye before he fled, so his empty seat was her first indication that Silas was gone. But she knew where he was off to: he had told her often enough.

  His journey to the Liverpool docks had been frustratingly slow for a boy with his sights set on the West Indies. He looked a complete ruffian; not the sort of boy you’d want to offer a lift to, skulking along the edges of the county’s main highways, sticking out his thumb for a ride. He had walked for days and days – he had no idea how many – before he remembered the railway, after which he began to make better progress. Freight trains were the easiest – there were no passengers on board to blow his cover – but even then there were setbacks, as freight-train drivers had an awkward habit of unexpectedly retracing their journey, having no obligation to announce their intention to a series of empty wagons. More than once Silas found he’d fallen asleep in a hidden corner of a cargo train, only to find himself travelling east again after the load had been shed. By this erratic, snakes-and-ladders method he made his way west, finally arriving in Liverpool in some style, courtesy of the Lancashire Railway Company, having crept unnoticed into an empty Pullman car and slept deeply, gratefully, dreamlessly, all the way from Crewe.

  From the station he followed the seagulls to Albert Dock then wandered for a while enjoying the stink and bustle and purpose of the place. There was a towering unbroken run of red-brick warehouses and shipping offices, and he thought about trying for a position at one of these, but changed his mind when he saw how people were looking at him; even in this insalubrious ragbag of humanity, he seemed to stand out as undesirable and people gave him a wide berth, skirting around him, checking the contents of their pockets as they passed. In any case, thought Silas, it was more in the spirit of his big adventure to stow away in one of the great vessels anchored at the harbour side.

  He watched for an hour or so as cases were disgorged from the ships’ holds and opened for inspection at the foot of the gangplanks by port officers bloated with self-importance. Brandy, cotton, tea, ivory, sugar, silk: Silas was looking for bananas, but found none.

  ‘Is that your ship?’ he asked a seaman, who stood among a pile of crates close to the water’s edge, sucking hard on a grubby, hand-rolled fag. The sailor regarded him coolly and nodded.

  ‘Where’s tha bin?’ said Silas, and the seaman took another long drag, weighing up whether or not to trouble himself, then he said, ‘Jah-maay-caah,’ in an accent he clearly intended as parody, though it was lost on the boy, who only knew pure Grangely. Silas absorbed this interesting fact – that the ship docked just beside him had sailed from the very island he had once read about at school, the very island where he happened to know that bananas grew on trees. Someone barrelled down the gangplank and shoved Silas roughly out of the way, so that he stumbled backwards over a crate, perilously close to the harbour’s edge. Below him, black water slapped the wall and behind him, the seaman laughed.

  ‘Mister?’ Silas said, when he was standing again.

  The seaman dropped the stubby damp end of his cigarette and ground it out with the toe of his boot. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Are there bananas in any o’ these cases?’ asked Silas, undeterred.

  The seaman gave a brief, dismissive laugh. ‘No, soft lad,’ he said, in his real accent now, his Scouse one.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s not.’ He pulled a tin from his pocket and, opening it, pinched a nub of tobacco and popped it in his mouth.

  ‘Where I come from,’ said Silas, ‘miners chew baccy an’ all. Can’t light a fag down a mine.’

  ‘Is that right? So where you from?’

  ‘Grangely,’ said Silas. The seaman laughed.

  ‘Grangely,’ he said, imitating the boy’s Yorkshire brogue. ‘An’ where the fuck’s tha’?’

  ‘I reckon you can’t carry bananas cos they’d rot, comin’ over,’ said Silas, who knew that the seaman had no real interest in exactly where in England Grangely might be. ‘But they grow ’em, in Jamaica. I’ve seen it in a book.’

  The seaman, losing what little interest he’d had, shrugged and strolled away into the throng. Silas stayed put, gazing at the vessel with calculating eyes, watching the rhythm of the activity on the gangplank, waiting for his moment. The steamship had one great, fat chimney at its centre, white with a band of blue around its top. There were two masts festooned with a complex cat’s cradle of rigging, and the broad hull looked newly painted, glossily blue to match the trim on the flue. In white lettering along the bow was painted Adventurer, which Silas took as final proof that this ship was where his life would begin.

  By nightfall he was on board, squeezed into the top third of a barrel of apples, munching contentedly on the fruit. And by the time he was discovered forty-eight hours later, the ship was steaming at full tilt for the Indies, already too far out of Liverpool, too far from land, to bother doing anything but put the little blighter to work.

  He was thirty now. A success in the world, you could see that. His suits were Henry Poole and his hats were Locke & Co. He had a small townhouse in Mayfair, a plantation house in Kingston – Jamaica, that is, not Surrey: he always had to explain this, laughingly, because no one ever thought he could possibly mean the West Indies – and the end property in a Georgian terrace in Clifton, because much of his time was spent in Bristol where his small shipping company was based. He wasn’t tall but neither was he short: he was lean still, but not painfully so, as he’d been as a lad. His clothes hung well on him: he was, said his tailor, a pleasure to dress and these past eight years his measurements had stayed the same, for all his love of good wine and food. He was handsome, no doubt about that. Eyes that undressed you and a smile – crooked, engaging – that got him what he wanted. There was no Mrs Whittam, and wouldn’t be any time soon. He liked to be free, unshackled, at liberty to jump on one of his own ships whenever he pleased.

  His accent, his flat, broad Yorkshire vowels, had long gone, eradicated by years of travelling the globe, of trading with foreigners, of mixing with successful merchants and men of business. He had found it easy to reinvent himself, because he hadn’t really known what he was in the first place. But he knew what he was now all right: Silas Whittam, a gentleman of means, with his own name on a brand new warehouse full of half-ripe bananas at Bristol docks, and a fleet of steamships – the Dominion, the Trinity, the Emperor and the Antonia – cutting through the oceans between England and Jamaica on his behalf. They were fine vessels, models of their kind, all of them fitted out with the latest innovations in refrigeration: when the bananas were lifted out of their packing crates to hang in the warehouse, they were cold to th
e touch, no further on in the ripening process than when they were picked. It was a marvel, really, as if time stopped for the duration of the voyage, starting again only when the cases were unpacked. There were vertical iron poles in the warehouse, hundreds of them, their surfaces studded with hooks, and on to these hooks the cold, green bananas went, losing their chill in the mild Bristol climate, clinging to their man-made trees and slowly, obligingly, turning yellow, even though they were so very far from home.

  They had made Silas a fortune, these bananas, and they continued to do so. Extraordinary that it had all started with a picture in a schoolbook. He was fond of saying this, elaborating and embellishing as people do a small, insignificant detail of childhood and making it into something portentous. The story went that he had seen, aged seven, a picture of a banana palm, and it had ignited a spark of ambition in his youthful self that, burning ever stronger, took him across the world in pursuit of his dream. The full account of the past fourteen years was, of course, rather less romantic: a man couldn’t get as far as Silas in so short a time without recourse to ruthlessness. But, still, there was much to admire about the man, and all of it was on the surface, the better to appreciate it.

  His train arrived at Netherwood Station one week to the day after his crate of bananas had been delivered to Eve at the mill. He’d sent them on an impulse from Bristol, hoping she’d remember what he said to her in those last few days before they both left Grangely. When I get to t’West Indies, I’ll send you a bunch of bananas. Well it wasn’t a bunch in the end, it was a crate, because he was a wealthy man and fond of a flamboyant gesture. He wished he could have been there to see her face.