The Kitchen Front Read online

  “That’s the whole point, though. I can’t do any more.” The familiar rush of being overwhelmed washed through her. She felt the prick of tears, but quickly held them in check for her eldest son.

  A light tap came from the back door.

  “Is that you, Nell? Come in, come in.” Audrey shrugged away her thoughts and opened the door to a mouselike girl of nineteen, skinny in a kitchen maid’s uniform. “I’m afraid the pies aren’t quite ready. Can you wait for ten minutes?”

  Every morning Nell would come to pick up special vegetables and herbs, such as salsify, endives, and garlic, as well as the pies that Audrey made for the kitchen at Fenley Hall.

  “I c-can’t wait for long, though.” Nell was a bag of nerves, sometimes stumbling over her words with shyness. She’d come to work at the hall when she was only fourteen, straight from the orphanage where she’d grown up. “Mrs. Quince is in an awful flap with Sir Strickland’s dinner party tonight. He’s so exacting.” Then she added, “Oh sorry! I always forget you’re…related.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that!” Audrey grimaced. “Just because that pompous toad married my ridiculous sister, it doesn’t mean that I have much to do with them. She hardly deigns to speak to me now she’s Lady Gwendoline.”

  Nell grinned, and her face lit fleetingly, making her look more forthright—rare for someone who’d spent her whole life being put in her place. “Lady Gwendoline has one of her wartime cooking demonstrations in the village hall tomorrow evening, if you want to go and watch. She’s doing Lord Woolton Pie.”

  Alexander laughed. “What’s the world coming to! Aunt Gwendoline teaching housewives how to make wartime food! Everyone’s suddenly an expert, even the well-to-do. I can remember a time when she wouldn’t stoop to pick up a serving spoon.” A mischievous glint sparkled in his eyes. “If you ask me, she’s more interested in the attention and praise than she is in helping the war effort.”

  Audrey snuffled a laugh. Her unruly children had grown up hardly seeing her younger sister Gwendoline, and when they did, she was lofty and disapproving—a quick recipe for becoming an object of ridicule in Willow Lodge.

  “She looks like a horse,” Alexander said bluntly, “with that long face and big nose.”

  Audrey cut in sharply. “She attracted a great deal of admiration when she was young.”

  “Too good for them, I bet.”

  Audrey tutted, but she privately agreed. Her sister was not only prim, but she was also smug. Ever since she’d married money and moved into the magnificent Fenley Hall, she’d become the most self-important woman in the district. Her husband, Sir Reginald Strickland, had made a fortune manufacturing canned meat at precisely a point in history when it couldn’t have been in higher demand—the “bully beef” cans appeared in every soldier’s lunch and dinner rations. Sir Strickland’s business had been blessed by the occurrence of not just one world war—which was when he was awarded his knighthood—but two, the second one conveniently presenting itself just as his fortune might have begun to slip.

  One man’s luck was another man’s slaughter.

  The sisters hardly spoke. The years and their marriages had pulled them apart. It was only when Audrey knew she had no other option that she asked her sister for a large loan to pay off the mortgage and bank debts. Lady Gwendoline had replied, “Of course we’ll help, but remember that you made your bed, Audrey. You didn’t have to marry an artist and have an array of wayward boys, did you?”

  A deep frown creased Audrey’s forehead as she thought about the crippling weekly repayments the Stricklands now demanded. They were slowly killing her.

  Alexander’s voice snapped her out of it. “What’s Sir Strickland having for the dinner party tonight, Nell? How many courses this time?”

  “There’s five courses: crab bisque, a smoked pheasant appetizer, then seabass roulade, followed by beef medallions, and finally your mother’s berry pies with sweetened vanilla cream.”

  Alexander scoffed. “We’re all half starved on rations, becoming vegetarians against our will, while Sir Strickland eats pheasant? Probably plying politicians into giving him more contracts.”

  Audrey slapped Alexander’s shoulder playfully. “At least they give us good money for our pies. Without his big dinner parties, we’d be out on the streets.”

  She helped Nell to the door with the crate, and with a “cheerio,” Nell began her walk back up the path to Fenley Hall.

  Audrey could see the side of the grand edifice from the back door, not half a mile away. She couldn’t help thinking that, in spite of its inhabitants, it was the most beautiful eighteenth-century hall. Four stories high with squared turrets, the pale-brown heft was perched high on the hill, a manor house to rule the surrounding domain.

  They had stood in that doorway as girls—Audrey and Gwendoline—making up stories about becoming grand ladies living in the great house.

  To Audrey, it was a fairy tale.

  To Gwendoline, it was a plan.

  The Kitchen Front on the wireless droned on. “As you all know, sugar is perhaps our biggest challenge. Because it is entirely imported, sugar, more than other foodstuff, has been affected by the U-boat blockades. We have to find alternatives. Honey, treacle, syrup are on the Points Plan—you get twenty-four points a month to spend as you like. Sweet vegetables can also be used. Cooked carrots have a lovely natural sugariness. For example, you can make goat’s milk palatable for children by mixing it with pureed carrots.”

  “Pureed carrots?” Audrey grimaced, going back to her berries. “You can bet Ambrose Hart has never tried goat’s milk, let alone mixed it with carrots.”

  Alexander came over. “Funny how dear Ambrose lives so close by in the village and yet we’ve barely seen him since Dad left for war. You’d have thought he’d be a bit of help to us, being a good friend of Dad’s. You could give him some proper cooking tips, Mum.”

  “He’s a busy man, Alexander,” Audrey said.

  “Why don’t you ask him for a job on his radio program?”

  She laughed. “They don’t let women do jobs like that.”

  “But Ambrose doesn’t know a thing about cooking. Didn’t he used to do a travel program? One minute an expert on the French Riviera, the next on pureed carrots.”

  Audrey glanced at the wireless. “That’s how the world works. Men who’ve never been in a kitchen in their lives tell us women what to do. The Ministry of Food thinks we women are mindless worker bees in need of a queen. Or a king, in this case.”

  “You’d be much better on The Kitchen Front than him, or any other BBC presenter. Listen to him! He’s just regurgitating government propaganda. Next he’ll be telling us how food rationing is making us all terribly healthy.”

  “Wise housewives know that the Ministry of Food has your health in mind…”

  They both began laughing as Ambrose Hart expounded eloquently on a subject about which he knew absolutely nothing.

  Audrey’s Homity Pie

  Serves 4

  For the pastry

  ⅓ cup margarine, butter, or lard

  1 cup flour

  For the filling

  4 large potatoes

  2 large leeks, chopped

  A little butter or margarine

  2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley and thyme, or 2 teaspoons if dried

  Any other leftover cooked vegetables or scraps of meat

  1 egg, whisked

  ½ cup shredded cheddar (more or less according to how much you have left from your rations)

  1 teaspoon English mustard

  Salt and pepper

  Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C. Make the pastry by rubbing the fat into the flour, then binding it together with a little water. Roll it out and fit it into a greased 8-inch pie dish. Half bake it for 10 minutes, then remove it from th
e oven.

  Turn up the oven to 425°F/220°C. Peel and chop the potatoes. Boil until cooked through, then drain, retaining their shape. Meanwhile, chop and fry the leeks in butter or margarine, adding the chopped parsley and thyme.

  Add the cooked potatoes, any leftover vegetables or meat, the egg, half the shredded cheese, the mustard, and salt and pepper to the cooked leeks. Mix briefly over the heat, then pour the mixture into the pie dish. Top with the other half of the cheese and a sprinkle more thyme and pepper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is browned.

  Allow to cool, then cut into thick slices to go into a packed lunch. The egg holds the filling together, making it perfect as a lunch or nourishing snack.

  Lady Gwendoline Strickland

  A Wartime Cooking Demonstration, Fenley Village Hall

  As she stood on the stage in the wood-paneled hall, Lady Gwendoline Strickland looked precisely as she should: her coiffured brown hair neatly rolled at the back of her neck and her dress conservative—nothing too extravagant or youthful. She was a thirty-eight-year-old lady, with a capital L, speaking to mere housewives. All in all, her air was one of high efficiency.

  “Today I am going to demonstrate how you can make an elegant dinner party a glorious success well within your usual weekly rations.”

  At a glance, nothing in Lady Gwendoline’s looks or manner resembled her older sister, Audrey. Her hair was a rich brown, her mouth thin, straight, and uncompromising. But beneath the mascara and makeup, the sisters shared the same eyes: blue and wide. Lady Gwendoline’s flickered impatiently around the room, as if inspecting it and finding it wanting.

  If not precisely packed, no one could dispute that the event was popular. Both well-to-do matrons and working-class mothers sat in tight rows, their dresses beginning to show wear now that clothes rationing was entering its second year.

  The public’s acceptance of food rationing was reasonable, the Ministry of Food told its demonstrators. After an initial spurt of confusion at the ration book system and the ensuing annoyance that they couldn’t make their usual meals, women seemed ready to adapt and experiment.

  Fear was goading them. The Nazis were at their door. Every food sacrifice was deemed crucial. Vegetable patches were patriotic. Gardening groups ploughed up cricket grounds and parks. Posters told housewives that food waste was illegal and cost the lives of seamen shipping food over the Atlantic—now the deadliest waterway in the world.

  Food had never been more crucial.

  Ambrose Hart sat in the front row, smiling. Just in case the public failed to recognize him, he wore his trademark polka-dot bow tie, and he looked around sporadically catching people’s eyes and nodding, as if he were minor royalty. His hair was long on the top, carefully swept over a balding crown with the liberal use of hair oil, and his eyes seemed to pop out, as if he were overly keen. Although he was an acquaintance of her husband’s, Lady Gwendoline tolerated Ambrose Hart, and vice versa.

  Also in the front row was Mr. Alloway, her dreary yet painstaking Ministry of Food supervisor, and beside him were a few of Lady Gwendoline’s fellow Ministry of Food demonstrators, or home economists, as they’d been ceremoniously dubbed. Instructing ordinary women about food and rationing had become a good way for upper-class women to “do their bit for the war.” Lady Gwendoline was still yearning to be adopted into the higher circles, her husband’s knighthood merely scratching the underside of the aristocratic heights. Thus, she had joined the ranks of posh home economists to boost her status, feigning a deep-seated longing to help the war effort, which she promptly adopted as a long-held truth.

  “On tonight’s menu we have Lord Woolton Pie, named after our very own Minister of Food. It was created by the chef at the Savoy Hotel, no less, to aid the war on food. Lord Woolton is a great fan of carrots, but if they are not popular in your household, you can use any vegetables available. Onions are scarce since ours usually come from France, so why not use leeks or chives instead? Remember, you can use every part of a vegetable, from the tough outer leaves of cabbages to the peelings from potatoes and carrots. Any inedible remains can be put in the pigfeed collection box at your local town hall.”

  Lady Gwendoline began by parboiling the vegetables—today she had carrots, leeks, cauliflower, and the inevitable potatoes.

  Next, she began spooning flour into a mixing bowl. Pastry was one of her specialties. Her mother had taught her the basics as a child, but she’d never had any interest in it, thinking it was rather beneath her. Besides, her mother would never think her as good as Audrey. When she took the course to become a home economist, she was surprised how easily it came back to her.

  Chemistry is at the basis of all cookery, she thought. It was all about precise measuring and following recipes. She had it mastered.

  “I’m replacing some of the flour and fat with cooked, mashed potatoes in order to use less precious fat. The mashed potato gives the flavor a lovely wholesomeness, but you have to cook it quickly as it can turn the pastry a gray color. Some people say that it makes their pastry hard, but that’s only if you don’t eat it immediately.”

  As she blended the pastry, she remembered to smile at her audience and fill the silence with a spirited speech.

  “Winning the war isn’t only about young men fighting on the front line. It’s about the home front, too, and how we can stay strong for them through all the shortages and rationing. We need to show Hitler that the British will never give in.”

  Tucking the pastry neatly over the vegetables, she put the pie into the portable electric oven with a flourish. “It’s as simple as that!”

  Lady Gwendoline was a perfectionist. Every one of her pies was flawless, every part of her life well thought out. Indeed, she couldn’t quite work out why some people found life so difficult, like her sister Audrey, always filled with anxiety, making sure not to tread on other people’s toes, always trying to be nice, for heaven’s sake. Audrey didn’t understand that that wasn’t how the world worked. One needed to be single-minded, focused.

  She alone had achieved the thing they had both coveted. Hadn’t she got the highest prize: a wealthy husband? Hadn’t she been able to persuade him that Fenley Hall was the one and only house that would do for them? Their mother would be turning in her grave.

  The dizzying wealth fueled by the food-importing industry had led to an exquisite, if not especially cheerful, life. Gwendoline’s marriage had been forged by her dogged ambition. On meeting, the pair shared a passion for success. They both had strict ideas about perfection, although sometimes his ideals seemed even more exacting than hers. His business often made him bad tempered and particular about the way things were done. It was only to be expected. You have to be ruthless to be a good businessman, after all.

  Looking into the audience, her eyes scanned the seats for Audrey. A sharp twist of annoyance took hold as she realized that she wasn’t there. Her only sister hadn’t even bothered to come to see her exemplary cooking showcase. Audrey had always been heralded by their mother as the better cook, the only good cook. Gwendoline, meanwhile, had been brandished a selfish schemer, hardly a family member at all. That time when she was caught with Audrey’s cakes, their mother hadn’t given Gwendoline a chance to explain that she’d only wanted to help with the icing.

  Mama couldn’t bear to witness me outshining her favorite, she thought indignantly.

  With that she slipped on the oven glove, opened the portable oven, and pulled out a perfectly risen pie, the crust golden and glistening.

  Rich aromas of casseroled vegetables stole around the hall as she sliced the pie open and pulled out a piece onto a waiting plate: chunks of vegetables coated in a tasty sauce, contained within a crisp, light pastry.

  “And, ladies and gentlemen, here we have,” Lady Gwendoline announced, pausing for effect, “Lord Woolton Pie.” Showing it around, she added, “The only ration it uses is a little co
oking fat. It’s the homegrown vegetables that make this into such a terrifically economical wartime favorite.”

  A round of applause went up, housewives craning their necks to get a better view, the gentlemen’s nostrils opening to accommodate the warm, homey smells.

  “Now, do we have any questions?” she said graciously.

  “How do you make the pastry if you’ve run out of butter and fat? I never have any left by the end of the week.” It was one of the lower-class women, and Lady Gwendoline smiled benevolently as other women in the audience agreed: getting butter was a dreadful problem.

  “There are no easy answers, I’m afraid. The key is to use it very sparingly, just a fraction of what you would normally use. Remember that your butcher might be able to give you some extra pork lard, lamb suet, or tallow from beef cuts. Lard especially makes a good pastry. There’s fat in bone marrow, too, which is off rations.”

  Suddenly, a forthright female voice rang out from the end of the second row. “Tell me, what gives you the authority to speak about cooking?”

  Lady Gwendoline looked over to see an attractive woman of around thirty. Her curled long hair was dyed blond, clashing somewhat with a maroon hat that Lady Gwendoline recalled despising when she saw it at the Selfridges sale last season. Slim, striking, and well made up, the woman had the shrewd, stubborn expression of someone with a point to prove.

  Standing firm, Lady Gwendoline placed a condescending smile on her face.

  “The Ministry of Food sent me.” You couldn’t get more authority than that. “The Ministry was set up to make sure that we all get our fair share of food. Otherwise scarcity would push prices up, and all the poor would find themselves without a bean.” She paused, pleased with her little play on words.

  A muffle of polite laughter quickly seeped away.

  “The Ministry of Food thinks it own us,” the blond woman called out. It was hard to tell where she came from by her accent. It was an odd combination of upper-class English with an undertone of French and traces of cockney that she’d probably been trying to iron out.