The Kitchen Front Read online

  “Now, Ambrose—”

  He put up a hand to stop her. “It is my duty to stand by my own decisions when it comes to judging the competition. You know that Sir Strickland is a jolly good friend of mine, but you must understand that I cannot be seen to favor one person above another.”

  She offered him a scone. “Well, if that’s the case, I sincerely hope that you won’t favor my sister, Audrey—I know you and Matthew were good friends.” Her eyes narrowed. “She must have had words with you, buttered you up with her poor-little-widow act.”

  He frowned. “It was Matthew who was my friend, not Audrey. And although I commiserate with Audrey’s situation, I cannot give her preference.” He paused in thought. “Has it ever crossed your mind how dreadful this war is for your sister?”

  Lady Gwendoline blanched uneasily, but she quickly retaliated, “All the more reason for you to give her an easy win.”

  He sighed impatiently. “As I told you, I have to be fair, and that includes Audrey, you, everyone. What would people say if I weren’t completely impartial?” Then he added under his breath, “I’m sure that Miss Zelda Dupont would be a considerable force if she believed me to be favoring one of the competitors.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re afraid of that jumped-up canteen cook, Ambrose?” She let out a bray of mock laughter to emphasize his absurdity.

  “Well, not afraid, precisely, but you can see her point, can’t you?” Ambrose said with an anxious little laugh. “Everyone should be given an equal chance.”

  Although she hadn’t wanted to lay it down so early in their conversation, she brought out her trump card. “Surely anything is better than losing one’s job at the BBC?”

  Evenly, he broke his scone and then buttered it thickly. “I don’t think Sir Strickland would have me fired should a better cook win, Lady Gwendoline.” Then he added pointedly, “Not only would Miss Dupont cause a big fuss, but it wouldn’t look good.”

  “What the Dupont woman chooses to do or not do is not my concern, Ambrose. Look, it’s very simple. You need something—your job. I need something—to win the contest. It’s a fair swap, don’t you think?”

  He said nothing. His eyes were flickering over the food, but she knew he was thinking hard. He wouldn’t give in as easily as that.

  “What a delightful spread,” he said politely. “It’s rather ironic, don’t you think, that while your job is to instruct the general population about how best to deal with the rations, your household seems to eat just as well as usual.” He picked up a smoked trout sandwich. “Smoked trout pâté? Let me guess, black market?”

  She tutted him, bringing up a finger to wag in jest. “Buying off the black market is illegal, Ambrose. You know that.” Her eyes remained steady. She knew that a man arrived twice a week with cigars, her husband’s favorite clarets, and a stock of items for the kitchen: tea, jam, sugar. And then there was the fresh produce from the farm, the cream, the butter, the meat…She wasn’t going to admit anything to Ambrose.

  “Then, where’s it all coming from?”

  “I think you’ll find that smoked trout can be picked up from Fortnum & Mason. We have a few hampers delivered every week.”

  “And the cream and the butter?”

  “It comes from the estate farm.” She smiled. Everything could be explained so simply.

  “Ah, but the estate has to submit its produce and consumption to the Ministry of Food. It’s taken off rations so farmers don’t get more than everyone else.” He raised his eyebrows, as if winning the point.

  She shrugged haughtily, mocking him for being so naïve. “It’s a perk of the job, a little extra milk here, an egg or two there.”

  “A perk of the job?” Ambrose laughed, watching her confusion. “Oh, is your husband immune to rationing rules? Does he think he’s above the rest of us?”

  Lady Gwendoline shifted in her seat uncomfortably. One of Sir Strickland’s favorite sayings was “Rules are for fools.” She’d always thought it part of what had made him such a successful businessman.

  But was it right? And if his life was lived outside the rules, then what did that mean about her and their life together…

  Ambrose was watching her, so she painted on a quick smile. “Not at all,” she said sharply, reaching for a dainty sandwich. “We always stay within the law.” Loyalty was another of Sir Strickland’s keystones: He would look after her, she would look after him. Loyalty was a sign of character and strength, he said. It came from trust. And she trusted him, didn’t she?

  Didn’t she?

  It was with mixed feelings that she waved Ambrose off. There was no doubt that he had enjoyed the repast, most of which had been valiantly consumed.

  “I hope you bear in mind what I said,” Lady Gwendoline told him at the door.

  “Well, it would certainly make my life easier if you win fair and square, so I wish you luck and will keep my fingers crossed for you. Goodbye for now.”

  As she retreated to her private reception room, she couldn’t help feeling that control was slipping inexorably from her grasp. Might her husband’s possible stretching of the rationing rules overtake any power she had over Ambrose’s BBC job? If Sir Strickland punished him, would he retaliate by tipping off the Ministry of Food? That would come back to haunt her, and her hand went automatically to her wrist, her throat.

  How crucial this contest has become, she thought to herself. But as she glanced out the window, she found her gaze slipping away, away from the gardens and off into the hills, where the hawk soared menacingly above the fields.

  Audrey

  Audrey believed in luck. Born on a Sunday at lunchtime and raised in a household of art, good food, and passion, she felt it in her soul that life was far greater than her or her family, greater than the house in which they lived, along with the hens, the pig, and a hedgehog called Cyril—who, truth be told, repeatedly demonstrated that he wasn’t actually part of the household by frequently wandering off. Life, in the main, was outside of her control. There was just one thin sliver, one tiny portion of her life that remained within her power, and it was this one part that she clung to: her cooking and now, relatedly, the contest.

  Which was why she decided to get some bees.

  As a child her family had kept bees, and she remembered that tradition dictated that you didn’t buy bees. You had to exchange them for things, services, or love. The bees in question were thus sourced from a beekeeper in a neighboring village, swapped for two sacks of carrots and cabbages with the promise of two more later in the season. Bartering had become common these days. Audrey only had to walk down to the village shop and someone would offer a brace of brown trout or rabbits in exchange for some of her produce. Eggs had become increasingly scarce since the beginning of the war, so she always kept some aside for swapping.

  The bees arrived on Monday afternoon. Audrey and the younger boys were in the chicken coop collecting eggs for the Stricklands’ pies, although Ben had already broken one. He was trying to put chickens on one another’s backs, “then they can have a piggyback race.”

  “Are you sure they’re enjoying that?” She laughed, putting an arm around him and giving him a hug, gently releasing the hen from his grip.

  Christopher was leaning against the ancient stone sundial, the shadow of time slipping seamlessly by. He was watching the resident hedgehog, who had a jam-jar lid with a tiny trickle of milk in front of him. “Come on, Cyril. You have to drink up. It’s rationed. You don’t know how lucky you are!” The familiar words were told to children all over the country, especially if dinner was leftover soup—all the scraps, peapods, and carrot tops cooked up with discarded outer cabbage leaves and potato peelings, everything that was edible.

  Ben piped up, “Bickie Sanderson told me that a London chef made a cookbook full of things you make from nature, and there’s a recipe for hedgehog stew.” He let out a lo
ud chuckle, as Christopher looked anxiously at Cyril.

  Audrey patted his back. “Don’t worry, darling. Cyril hasn’t got enough meat on him to tempt me. And think about all those spikes.”

  Christopher gave a little squeal, while Ben expounded further on the subject. “There’s another recipe for roast sparrow and one for squirrel-tail soup.” He let out a laugh. “Bickie Sanderson made a portable hay-box out of his gas mask box so that he can take a tin of shepherd’s pie to school and it stays hot for lunch, and today he said it was sparrow pie. No one believed him, so we all had to try some, and it tasted incredibly funny. I hope it wasn’t poisoned.” He put a hand dramatically on his stomach.

  “I’m sure it’s just his mum making do with some other ingredients. We all have to do that, you know.”

  “Can I make a hay-box out of my gas mask box, too? A hot meal would be far better than the usual carrot and sweet pickle sandwiches.”

  “No, darling,” she said pointedly. “You need your gas mask box for carrying around your gas mask.”

  “But there’s never been a gas attack, has there?”

  “No, thank heavens.” A gas attack would have brought the country to its knees.

  The sky was a deep blue, a hawk circling above the hill. A ripple of mackerel clouds seemed to pause for thought high in the sky, and the buzz of insects infused the day with a sense of peace.

  It reminded her of summer days gone by, the time she and Matthew threw a garden party for their friends, a crowd of artists and writers, his cousin from Sicily, and a few women she’d known at school. Ambrose was there, of course. He was always the best person to invite to a party, entertaining people with witty stories and playing Noël Coward ditties on the piano. He’d brought his croquet set over, and he and Matthew were fiercely competing against anyone brave enough to try.

  Suddenly, the low drone of aircraft jolted her out of her reverie. Within moments, the sound was louder, two planes heading fast in their direction.

  “Are they Nazi bombers?” Christopher’s bottom lip quivered.

  “No, darling. I’m sure they’re our planes, ferrying important people around,” Audrey said calmly, but she sprang over to him quickly, gathering him into her arms. She had learned that you had to quell the panic promptly, before it began to overwhelm him. It wasn’t usually practical, especially when she was cooking, but she couldn’t let him sense her frustration, otherwise he would enshroud himself in silence for a week or more.

  As tears of worry and frustration coursed down her cheeks, she felt Christopher’s cries turning into dramatic convulsive gulps. He was panicking, his insides overloading.

  Scooping him up, she raced to the Anderson shelter beside the outbuildings. “Shh! SHH!”

  Thank heavens Matthew put up the Anderson before he left, she thought as they went into the little metal hut dug into the earth. It might be a bit flooded half the time, but at least it was a refuge. Inside, Ben sprang onto the top bunk while she set Christopher on the lower one, getting in beside him, her arms pulling his slim body close to hers.

  Please let him be all right!

  It wasn’t for another ten minutes that he began to calm down, another twenty before she could slowly get him up, take them back to the garden. Almost an hour of her busy day gone.

  Her son—her youngest—was so fragile, so vulnerable. She felt a visceral need to protect him in a way that she hadn’t been able to protect his father.

  Thankfully, the collected eggs were still intact in the chicken coop when they returned. The Stricklands had upped their daily quota of food from Willow Lodge. Today they needed four meat pies, two rhubarb tarts, and a large birthday cake for a dinner party. The reason given was that Sir Strickland had a group of politicians coming—something to do with bigger canned meat orders for the troops. But Audrey couldn’t shake the idea that her sister, Lady Gwendoline, was playing games with her, draining her of precious time and ingredients so that she couldn’t cook so well for the contest.

  Meanwhile, the noise of the planes had wound the hens up, and they began tussling among themselves. Gertrude, Audrey’s most difficult hen, was looking a little more tyrannical than usual. Her beak was slightly malformed, the upper part skewed to one side, and she fought off the pecks as good as she got, earning herself a bit of a reputation.

  “Are you causing trouble again, Gertrude?” Audrey said, taking in the loss of more feathers and a particularly rebellious look in the beady eyes.

  She picked Gertrude up, gave her a squeeze, and then passed her to Christopher. A little cuddle with a hen would cheer him up.

  “Hello? Mrs. Landon?” The beekeeper’s voice called from the gate.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment,” Audrey called, making sure Christopher was all right. She didn’t need him getting panicked again, not now. Not with the bees.

  Bees had to be kept calm.

  And you needed to talk to them.

  They’d had bees in the garden—this garden—when she was a girl, and she remembered her mother explaining, “You need to tell them everything, and never get angry close to the hive, or they will reap their revenge.”

  She’d been a girl then, taking it all in. “What kind of things do I need to say?”

  “Anything you like.” Then suddenly, her mother had looked more serious. “But you need to tell them if someone dies. You have to tell them immediately, or they will get cross, go rogue.”

  Audrey didn’t want rogue bees in her garden. “Well, that wouldn’t be very good, would it?”

  Her mother had gently laughed. “Well, let’s hope we never have to tell them anything like that.” She took Audrey’s small hand in her long, slender one. “In any case, bees know that everything will work itself out. You have to remember that. Whatever happens in life, everything will be all right in the end.”

  Audrey’s mother had died shortly after she and Matthew were married. They were living in his tiny flat in London, and she was pregnant with Alexander. She couldn’t believe that her mother had died before seeing her first grandchild. There hadn’t been any bees to tell. A heart attack had taken her father a few years earlier, and with her mother too unwell to look after them—to talk to them—the bees were passed to another house, another person’s voice.

  When her parents’ old house was left to her in the will, Audrey found herself wandering its corridors, remembering the ghosts of her childhood, stroking her pregnant belly, on the brink of bringing a new child into the bare rooms. Now she was on the other side of it: the mother, and not the child, repeating the same experience but this time in a parental role. She wondered if this perpetual reliving could carry on, generation after generation, the house connecting a new child to long-held traditions, long-held hands like a chain through the generations.

  A lingering shadow fell over her memories as she prayed that she would never favor one of her children over the other, the way her mother had.

  Her sister, Gwendoline, had not been left any share in Willow Lodge. It was no secret that their mother didn’t see eye to eye with her younger daughter. Gwendoline had been petulant and willful. One time she rode her friend’s pony over the vegetable garden because she wasn’t allowed a pony of her own. Another time, she spitefully swapped the sugar for salt to ruin her mother’s cakes. As a teenager, she stole her mother’s dresses to remodel them for herself. Gwendoline’s marriage to Sir Strickland had been the final straw, with his rude dismissal of her family. After that Gwendoline and her mother barely spoke. Words had been exchanged between them: angry, bitter words, according to her mother. But Audrey had never found out exactly what they were.

  Ever since then, Gwendoline had assumed that Audrey had sided with their mother, so she pulled away further, happy to live in a separate, lavish world with wealth, status, and power.

  Until Matthew’s death, that is. Gradually it became clear that Matthew
had taken out extra loans to make the mortgage payments, and the bank refused to give Audrey any more money. Sir Strickland was a man of considerable fortune, and grueling as it was to ask her sister, Audrey did. Gwendoline was unspeakably patronizing, but Audrey would do anything to stay in her family home.

  But the hefty weekly repayments that Lady Gwendoline had set were a continual strain.

  Audrey had become older, harder, since the deal was made. She had started to wear Matthew’s trousers and old boots after that first Christmas without him. The gardening, the cooking, the boys—what did clothes or makeup matter?

  Life had been drilled back to the bare bones: survival.

  Old superstitions held that bees brought more than just honey, they brought wealth, stability, and good fortune. And it was this that filled her mind as she’d arranged for the delivery of the bees, praying they would bring her some luck—if ever in her life she needed it, it was now.

  The man positioned the beehive beneath the cherry trees and carefully opened the entrance to allow them out. After an hour of buzzing around, they seemed to settle into their new location. Audrey pulled a few garden chairs over—at a safe distance—and waved off the beekeeper with his sacks of vegetables.

  Finally, they could welcome the bees.

  “Hello, bees,” she began, directing her voice toward the old hive. “This is your new home, Willow Lodge. I’m Audrey, and I live here with my three boys. This is Ben and Christopher, and you’ll meet Alexander later when he’s home from school.”

  “Tell them about Dad,” Ben said, nestling in beside her.

  She glanced at Christopher. It was still such a difficult subject for him. “Why don’t you tell them, Chris?”

  Silence fell upon them, only the soft background buzz of the bees, the wisp of the breeze in the cherry tree.

  “My daddy was killed fighting in the war. He was a long way away, in Germany. He is a kind man—you’d like him if you met him.”

  She bit her lip. When would he begin to realize the difference between the present tense, “he is,” and the past, “he was”?