incessantly when they had to have their meals in the dining-room, for they would have liked them served in their rooms.
They were both much too engrossed in their own dissatisfactions to take in that there was anything wrong with my grandmother. My grandfather thought it better not to tell them that his wife had a nervous condition which often made her appear deranged. They realised only one thing. The lady of the house was not very easily available and when they cunningly managed to trap her she was curiously unresponsive to their innumerable complaints. Finding little satisfaction from their hostess, all their bitterness directed itself against my careworn grandfather, and they kept descending on him like two old pecking rooks in their black dresses. Everything was falling apart in their wing ... the frame of their lavatory door was so warped it was impossible to shut it ... they were ladies ... they hadnât been brought up like that ... it was a disgrace ... it wasnât decent to use the lavatory in front of the servants ... Three weeks ago one of the gun dogs had made a mess in their sitting-room. They would like to be given a good reason why no one had yet removed it ... The carpet had humped away from the floor in one of their corridors and it was only a question of time before someone broke a leg ... Like the rain that was always pouring down outside the windows, their moans kept splashing down on Grandfather Dunmartinâs worried head.
As my grandmotherâs behaviour became increasingly weird and unbalanced and his great-aunts became increasingly difficult and dissatisfied, my grandfather recklessly staffed the house with more and more cooks, maids and kitchen-maids from the local village. It was as if he were trying to reassure himself that the sheer number of servants could prove that there was still something solid at the centre of his disintegrating home.
The act of employing so many people appeared to fatigue Grandfather Dunmartin to a point at which he had no further energy for explaining what he expected their duties to be. Never knowing what they were meant to do, they stayed in a demoralised huddle round the fire in the servantsâ hall, where they gossiped and ate soda bread and drank many cups of tea.
In a remote and sleepy country house like Dunmartin Hall, where neither the residents nor the guests found it easy to think of ways to occupy their time, meals had a special importance. They were events which were greedily looked forward to, and everyone who sat down at Dunmartinâs gleaming mahogany inlaid table always yearned to be served some long and delicious meal, for they needed to find pleasant and self-indulgent ways of breaking up the tedium of the dragging hours of the day. Unfortunately, the food served at Dunmartin Hall in my grandfatherâs time was always cruelly disappointing, and his aunts would do their best to make him suffer for it by grumbling relentlessly in their high-pitched querulous tones as they bemoaned the fact that the disgusting food that kept appearing in the dining-room was ruining their delicate elderly digestions.
When these irascible old figures started to make their habitual peevish fuss about the disgraceful quality of the food, Tommy Redcliffe often felt a secret sympathy with them, for he too grew to dread both the sight and the taste of the frizzled unappetising pheasants that were served day after day for both lunch and dinner. No knife ever seemed sharp enough to cut them. Invariably they had been so grossly overcooked that their dehydrated flesh had the texture of plywood.
The Dunmartin pheasants were all cooked together in a big batch every Monday. They were left roasting in red-hot ovens most of the day and then taken out and hung in the larder so that they could be warmed up in frying pans during the days that followed in the numbers in which they were required. All the vegetables were also boiled together in giant iron pots every
They were both much too engrossed in their own dissatisfactions to take in that there was anything wrong with my grandmother. My grandfather thought it better not to tell them that his wife had a nervous condition which often made her appear deranged. They realised only one thing. The lady of the house was not very easily available and when they cunningly managed to trap her she was curiously unresponsive to their innumerable complaints. Finding little satisfaction from their hostess, all their bitterness directed itself against my careworn grandfather, and they kept descending on him like two old pecking rooks in their black dresses. Everything was falling apart in their wing ... the frame of their lavatory door was so warped it was impossible to shut it ... they were ladies ... they hadnât been brought up like that ... it was a disgrace ... it wasnât decent to use the lavatory in front of the servants ... Three weeks ago one of the gun dogs had made a mess in their sitting-room. They would like to be given a good reason why no one had yet removed it ... The carpet had humped away from the floor in one of their corridors and it was only a question of time before someone broke a leg ... Like the rain that was always pouring down outside the windows, their moans kept splashing down on Grandfather Dunmartinâs worried head.
As my grandmotherâs behaviour became increasingly weird and unbalanced and his great-aunts became increasingly difficult and dissatisfied, my grandfather recklessly staffed the house with more and more cooks, maids and kitchen-maids from the local village. It was as if he were trying to reassure himself that the sheer number of servants could prove that there was still something solid at the centre of his disintegrating home.
The act of employing so many people appeared to fatigue Grandfather Dunmartin to a point at which he had no further energy for explaining what he expected their duties to be. Never knowing what they were meant to do, they stayed in a demoralised huddle round the fire in the servantsâ hall, where they gossiped and ate soda bread and drank many cups of tea.
In a remote and sleepy country house like Dunmartin Hall, where neither the residents nor the guests found it easy to think of ways to occupy their time, meals had a special importance. They were events which were greedily looked forward to, and everyone who sat down at Dunmartinâs gleaming mahogany inlaid table always yearned to be served some long and delicious meal, for they needed to find pleasant and self-indulgent ways of breaking up the tedium of the dragging hours of the day. Unfortunately, the food served at Dunmartin Hall in my grandfatherâs time was always cruelly disappointing, and his aunts would do their best to make him suffer for it by grumbling relentlessly in their high-pitched querulous tones as they bemoaned the fact that the disgusting food that kept appearing in the dining-room was ruining their delicate elderly digestions.
When these irascible old figures started to make their habitual peevish fuss about the disgraceful quality of the food, Tommy Redcliffe often felt a secret sympathy with them, for he too grew to dread both the sight and the taste of the frizzled unappetising pheasants that were served day after day for both lunch and dinner. No knife ever seemed sharp enough to cut them. Invariably they had been so grossly overcooked that their dehydrated flesh had the texture of plywood.
The Dunmartin pheasants were all cooked together in a big batch every Monday. They were left roasting in red-hot ovens most of the day and then taken out and hung in the larder so that they could be warmed up in frying pans during the days that followed in the numbers in which they were required. All the vegetables were also boiled together in giant iron pots every
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