Good Behaviour by Maggie O'Farrell, Molly Keane Page B

burned up quickly and delightfully in the high fast-draughting Georgian grates. As a corrective to the
     butcher’s bills lambs were slaughtered on the place. Half the meat was eaten while the other half went bad, hanging in the
     musty ice house without any ice.
    Life at Temple Alice went on, well sheltered in the myths of these and other economies. Mummie thought up one which, to her,
     was as good as putting a big cheque into her dying bank account. I was not to be presented or to have a London season. Papa’s
     efforts were variable and more pleasurable. Every day’s hunting improved his ability to ride and thus to sell young horses.
     The victims of a day’s shooting, whether pigeons and rabbits in the demesne, grouse on the mountain, snipe in the bogs, or
     woodcock by winter springs deep in hazelcopses, fed the diningroom. When the servants’ hall sickened at the sight of game: ‘Then let them eat pig’s cheek – delicious.
     Think of Bath chaps,’ said Papa.
    During the holidays Hubert and Papa shot together. Papa took a half-hidden delight in Hubert’s shooting – improving towards
     excellence. I think his son’s looks were another unadmitted pleasure and satisfaction to him. Lucky Hubert – he never knew
     the anxiety and disgust of acne. He strode from childhood to youth without pausing in adolescent ugliness. In the fishing
     season they spent long days and late evenings together on the river. Then the household ate salmon and brown trout until the
     maids and the stable lads finally struck: ‘We’re killed from fish,’ they said. The cooks, sickened by salmon and exhausted
     from stoking the Eagle range and its satellite boiler with wood and turf, left, one after another; in those days there was
     always another to follow, worse if possible than her predecessor.
    Wild Rose’s transference from housework to cooking was accidental and unpremeditated. One of the undedicated cooks left without
     warning. ‘Gone on the bread van,’ Wild Rose reported at dinnertime, ‘and it’s Teresa’s night out so I brought ye a hunting
     tea – poor Mrs Lennon’s poached eggs and rashers.’ The eggs were perfect, swelling primly on large slices of buttered toast,
     the lightest dust of cayenne blown over their well-matched pearls.
    ‘How did you know about my red pepper? It’s years since I’ve seen it,’ Papa said sadly, giving Rose one of his embracing looks,
     distant, grateful, promising.
    ‘I seen herself at it, sir, God rest her soul.’
    ‘God rest her soul,’ Papa repeated, and ate his eggs with reluctant enjoyment.
    It was after this that Mummie put Rose’s wages up by
£
1 a month and persuaded her to stay in the kitchen. An underling, Breda, took Rose’s place as house-parlour maid, rather impeded
     than helped in her duties by a succession of trainees called between maids. Teresa, a sad, slow-witted character, retained
     her position as kitchen maid. She cleaned potatoes and other slug-infested vegetables, kitchen sauce pans, and stone-flagged
     floors. She washed up after the servants’ breakfasts, mid-day dinners, and teas, meals which Tommy Fox (the battered ex-steeplechase
     jockey who was Papa’s most valued asset in the stableyard) and his helper (successor to Ollie Reilly) shared with the female
     staff in the servants’ hall.
    Rose was young for her senior position in the household. But her plain and careful cooking, her flaring good looks, and her
     biting tongue kept her underlings and the lads from the yard in order; while her indefeatable will to succeed made her torture
     Mummie daily for receipts and suggestions suited to the diningroom. Mummie was entirely unable to fulfil either demand, try
     as she might; at the moment she longed to please and distract Papa, for Goodwood was near, where one of the distant harem
     had taken a house and invited him to stay for the meeting.
    ‘I don’t know what to suggest.’ She looked at Rose hopelessly, Rose in her lilac cotton