Dinner at 8
Victoria was minding her own business one afternoon in early September, working on a new knitting pattern, when her mother-in-law burst into her sitting room without knocking.
"They've quit!" Nell cried. Victoria blinked.
"Who's quit?" she asked in return.
"The chef. And the kitchen maid. Even the scullery girl and the kitchen boy! The whole lot are gone!" Nell told her. She collapsed onto the other end of the sofa Victoria was on, red-faced. She paused, then took a moment to glance about the room. "What've you done with the chair covers?"
Holding in a sigh, Victoria set her project aside. She and Victor had been married for six months, and were living in a suite of rooms on the second floor of the Van Dort mansion. They had a small sitting room, a bedroom, and a private bath, all of which Nell had decorated herself. The cozy space didn't bother Victoria, but chintz furniture covers did. She'd been quietly redecorating to her own taste over the past couple of months-putting up real paintings and framed photographs instead of lithographs, and taking the ghastly covers off of the perfectly serviceable furniture. She thought she'd gotten away with it.
"They needed a cleaning," Victoria lied, gearing up for an argument, but Nell wasn't listening.
"Never mind," said Nell. She picked up one of Victor's nature journals from the side table and fanned herself furiously. "Bigger things to worry about. Monsieur up and quit—you know how temperamental those people are. And Katie saw her chance to scarper, that ungrateful little-"
"What happened?" Victoria asked carefully, looking Nell up and down. The woman was in a state. Despite what one might assume, given her usual brassy behavior, Nell did not make a habit of barging into their rooms, so Victoria knew she was terribly upset. Nell always dressed for company, even when she wasn't visiting or hosting at-homes. Victoria felt a little drab next to her, wearing her simple blue house dress while Nell was done up in gray silk and jewelry. But there were telling little sweat-spots around Nell's collar and she appeared altogether disheveled.
Nell straightened up a bit, held up her chin, and patted at her elaborately set hair, which was beginning to come down in wisps. "There might have been an incident," she said calmly.
"An incident," Victoria repeated, her mind swirling with possibilities. The French chef was new, the third Nell had employed in as many months. Victoria had no complaints about the quality of the food he sent up, but Nell could always find something to criticize. Nell had a hard time keeping talented senior staff. She wasn't very good at managing servants. Not that Victoria would ever, ever say such a thing aloud.
"We had a difference of opinion about tonight's menu, and Monsieur overreacted," was all Nell would say about it. She began to wring her hands, talking faster. "And now I've no kitchen staff, with guests arriving in hours. Oh, this is going to be a disaster, what am I going to do?"
"Oh dear," said Victoria, putting a hand to her mouth as she understood. "The party is tonight, isn't it?"
"You'd forgotten?!"
Victoria winced. "No, no," she lied hastily. "How could one forget? It's been planned for weeks. I simply...confused the days."
The party. Nell loved throwing dinner parties. The Van Dorts hosted elaborate ones at least once a month, and more intimate ones much oftener. Tonight's was to be one of the intimate affairs. Two of Mr. Van Dort's business acquaintances and their wives.
"Perhaps you could speak to my mother?" Victoria ventured. "Mother might loan you her chef for the evening. And some of the staff."
Nell's withering glare was more eloquent than any verbal response might have been.
"Never mind," Victoria said quietly.
There was a silence. Nell leaned forward with her face buried in her hands, muttering to herself, while Victoria sat there awkwardly. What on earth could she do? Victoria didn't even know where the kitchens were. And she'd never touched a stove or a pot or a pan in her life.
But desperate times….Victoria glanced regretfully at her abandoned knitting project, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
"It will be all right," said Victoria kindly. "Why don't you show me the menu?"
0–0
The Van Dort kitchen was enormous. It was deep under the house, with low ceilings and pale walls. The counters seemed to run on for miles. Pots and pans hung from hooks in the ceiling. The sink in the scullery was big enough for a person to bathe in. Gadgets of all sorts, ones Victoria couldn't even put names to, abounded. Looking around, all Victoria could think of was a scrupulously clean torture chamber.
Particularly because of the pig's head on the counter.
"What is that?" Victoria asked, taken aback at the enormous head, with its wrinkly pale skin and clouded eyes, sitting in a roasting pan. It appeared to be grinning at her.
"You've never seen a boar's head before?" Nell huffed. Victoria felt her ears go warm.
"Only cooked," she replied weakly. "And even then, only the cheeks." Her mother-in-law gave her a brief, judgmental side-eye.
"Here's the menu," Nell said, pushing a sheet of thick, creamy paper at Victoria. "Thirteen courses for eight. I insist on the boar's head, it's a royal favorite."
The tone, Victoria thought, shed a bit of light on what might have been the last straw for the chef. Instead of replying, she simply ran down the list of food. Beyond the head, which was to be the centerpiece, Nell had planned for three different soups, two roasts, two fish, several vegetable dishes, an aspic, an ice, desserts, and cheeses. All fairly standard, really.
But without servants or a cook, where was the food to come from?
Victoria looked at the mammoth stove, gleaming black. The pantry shelves reached nearly to the ceiling, and she had no idea what all was on them. Storage bins were everywhere, as were collections of knives and work surfaces. She didn't know where to begin.
"How will we manage this?" Nell asked, hands on hips, surveying the room. Victoria stared, wondering where this sudden "we" had come from.
"No one but my mother has servants to hire out in the village," Victoria said. "If we don't ask for her help...Can any of the housemaids cook? The housekeeper?"
Hildegarde, after all, had started out as a lady's maid. As the Everglot fortunes had dwindled, she'd gradually become a maid-of-all-work. Surely others on Nell's massive staff had other skills.
But Nell was shaking her head. "I wouldn't trust them to work on this dinner, not so far as I could throw them," she said.
"Cancel," Victoria suggested gently, "with your regrets."
Nell waved her off. "I'm not canceling, not hours in advance! Just think of the talk, if I have to cancel a party. Everyone will wonder why, and they'll think I'm a terrible hostess! Think of the business William might lose!"
Victoria's shoulders sagged. They were running out of options here. She understood very well how her mother in law felt at the idea of crawling to Lady Everglot for assistance. In her place, Victoria wouldn't do so either. But if she wasn't willing to cancel, and wasn't willing to enlist every other servant still in her employ, Victoria hadn't any idea what to do.
Well, that wasn't quite true. She did have one idea. With an inward sigh she thought of her abandoned work basket up in her cozy sitting room.
"Then we'll do it," Victoria said stoutly. She reached for one of the long aprons hanging from a peg near the pantry and put it on.
Nell was staring at her dubiously. "Cook? In my own kitchen?" she asked. "I'm well beyond that sort of thing. It's been almost twenty years!"
"Surely you must remember how, a little," said Victoria. "This is an emergency. Your social reputation is on the line. I am here to help."
"It's all we've got, I suppose," Nell said at last. She reached for the other apron, but reluctantly, as if touching it would give her some kind of disease. "But I can't cook all that French slop. And that's what everyone expects."
"Perhaps everyone will appreciate something different," said Victoria. Without a clue as to how to prepare to cook, she started pulling out supplies she thought they might need—a large bowl, a whisk, and a spoon—and set them on the work table.
"It's not as if they're new guests," Nell said slowly. "The people coming tonight already like us. Mr. de Wit has already signed that contract with William, so...What are you doing?"
Victoria turned from the cabinet she'd been rifling, holding a rolling pin in one hand and cleaver in the other. "I haven't any idea," she admitted.
Nell reached and took the cleaver. "Get me one of the roasts from the cold room, the beef, I assume you'll be able to tell. Then set to work on an aspic, there's a Beeton's around here somewhere to show you how. I'll stoke up this fire."
With a brisk nod, Victoria did as she was told.
0–0
Watching Nell in the kitchen, Victoria was amazed. There were at least six different saucepans burbling away on the top of the stove, and Nell knew what was in each and how long it should stay there. Though she was years out of practice, it seemed to Victoria that her mother-in-law moved with innate knowledge and ingrained experience. For certain, Nell looked natural at a stove, in an apron. Much more so than she ever did in her furs and jewelry.
"You're very good at this," said Victoria, who, for the first time in her life, was working with food in a kitchen. It was both terrifying and exciting. "You must have done this often."
"Don't remind me," Nell said irritably, wiping sweat from her forehead. She pushed a pot of soup to the back of the stove. "How's that aspic coming?"
Victoria looked down at the mess of tomato pulp in her bowl. She'd pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, and was covered in tomato up to her wrists, since she couldn't think how else to turn tomatoes into pulp other than with her hands.
"Just fine," said Victoria. She peered at the cookery book, which was also covered with bits of tomato. "Just getting to…soaking gelatine in water."
What on earth was gelatine?
Nell appeared to understand, for she rolled her eyes and jerked her head toward the other side of the room. "Check the pantry, that's where I'd keep it. But who knows about these Frenchies..."
Victoria nodded her thanks, and made for the pantry. She hoped the stuff was clearly labeled. Carefully she stepped up onto the rickety stool, standing on tiptoe to scan the shelf. At last she saw the box, narrow and tall, pushed back just enough to be hard to reach. Victoria stretched, flailing her fingers, just barely brushing the box.
"When you've got that in a mold, get over here and season these potatoes!" called Nell. Now she was working flour and water together furiously in a large bowl. "I've only got two hands!"
Victoria wobbled on her stool. The heat in the kitchen was making her woozy. Sweat pooled under her arms. Also...Season potatoes? How? With what?
Above the sounds of clanking, boiling, and popping came the creak of the heavy kitchen door. Victoria looked over her shoulder to see Victor poking his head into the room.
"Mother? Victoria?" he said, stepping into the kitchen and looking around. "Father and I are home. Why are you-"
"GET OUT!" Nell bellowed.
Victor disappeared in a flash, door swinging behind him.
"Wait, I need him!" Victoria cried desperately from her perch. The gelatine was up there in its box, mocking her short arms.
"GET BACK HERE!" Nell bellowed again.
Victor slowly re-entered the room, hesitant and shell-shocked from being shouted at.
"Help your wife!" Nell told him, flicking a floury hand toward the pantry before turning back to her dough, which she was rolling out on the table.
"What are you doing?" Victor asked in a whisper when he joined Victoria at the pantry. He set a hand on her lower back to steady her.
"Trying to reach the gelatine," Victoria told him. She pointed out the box.
"I meant with Mother. In the kitchen," he said, reaching the box with ease and handing it to her.
"Emergency," she replied, stepping down from the stool with Victor's arm for balance. "We've lost all the kitchen staff, and we have guests for dinner tonight." Somewhere along the line, she realized, she'd begun thinking of herself and Nell as "we" in this escapade as well. She went back to her tomatoes and set about soaking her gelatine in water. Victor stood over her shoulder, and she wished he wouldn't. She had to concentrate. She pushed a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes.
"For the love of...how long does an aspic take?! Quit your lollygagging!" Nell barked. She was spooning meat filling into its pastry shell. "And Victor, if you're going to be hanging about, make yourself useful. Get that head in the oven, it's staring at us."
"Head?" Victor finally noticed the pan with the boar's head in its pan on the counter. He grimaced a little.
"But I don't know anything about-" he began to protest, but Nell cut him off.
"Neither does your wife, and she's not complaining!" she said, gesturing at Victoria with the spoon she was using to heap meat filling into its pastry case. Splatters of gravy hit the work table. Victoria couldn't help a little smile of pride.
"All right," said Victor uneasily. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. "Er...which one is the oven?"
0-0
"There," said Nell at last, taking off her apron and throwing it down on the counter.
"You were remarkable," said Victoria honestly, taking off her own apron. Nell huffed at her, but there seemed to be a hint of a preening smile around the corners of her mouth.
"You didn't do so badly, either," said Victor from the doorway to the scullery, wiping his hands and forearms with a cloth. His vest bore a large wet patch and there were splatters of gravy on his tie. He'd long since removed his jacket and hung it on a peg beside the huge sink.
"Let's just hope the guests are impressed," Nell said, dabbing at her forehead with her handkerchief.
Victoria looked over the spread they'd created. Well, Nell had done the bulk of the work. Victoria's contribution, beyond seasoning potatoes, arranging a fruit tray, and buttering peas, was the aspic, which had turned out to be a fiddly and strange first cooking project. She knew only that, by some magic, it was supposed to hold its shape. For now it sat in its mold in the cool room, the prettiest mold she could find in the huge collection. Victoria wished it luck.
Even the boar's head, sitting on a parsley-strewn tray with an apple in its mouth, wasn't as impressive as the meat pie Nell had produced. It was huge, encased in beautiful golden pastry. Victoria had, under Nell's orders, decorated it with little scraps of pastry made to look like leaves. Nell had managed a soup, which Victoria had stirred, and there were several vegetables. Victor had done the heavy lifting and scullery work.
Victoria smiled at her mother-in-law, beaming with pride in a day's work well done. But Nell was frowning as she cast a critical eye over the food. Victoria's smile faltered.
"I swore I'd never slave over a stove again," said Nell, nearly to herself.
"No one needs to know," said Victoria. "I certainly won't tell."
Nell nodded briskly and turned to leave. "Only an hour to dress!" she said as she pushed through the kitchen door. "And I smell like a kitchen maid!"
Discreetly, Victoria sniffed at her own sleeves and the strands of hair that had escaped her bun. She smelled just the same. Like hard work and cooking smells. Victoria, new to it, didn't mind as much. She still felt proud. With luck, everything would be edible and no one would be the wiser.
"We'd best go change our clothes," she said when Victor joined her, jacket in hand. "We look like we've been slaving all day."
"I feel as if I have been slaving all day," he replied. "If we ever have a scullery maid, let's pay her double the usual."
"Kitchen maids, as well," she agreed with a smile. She folded her tomato-stained apron neatly before setting it on the work table. "What hard work this is."
Indeed, she thought, it was a wonder kitchen staff didn't quit all the time. How had Hildegarde done all this alone when Victoria had been growing up? And Nell, she'd done it for a long time, too. Right now she might feel terribly good and accomplished, but she could not imagine doing this every single day of her life.
"I hope Mother finds new kitchen help quickly," said Victor, echoing her thoughts. He put his arm around her shoulders and touched his cheek to her hair. "I'm not at all sure I could do this every day."
"A task well done, though," Victoria said, looking again at the dinner laid out in its courses. "Now, we really should change, we haven't much time and I must put some scent on. I haven't time enough to bathe."
Victor put his nose to her hair. "You do smell of meat pie," he said. Then he sniffed again. "But it's not a bad thing. If you put on perfume you'll just smell like a meat pie going courting."
Victoria grinned and gave him a gentle, playful nudge in the ribs before making her way to the kitchen door. Before she could get very far, though, Nell's angry voice from the corridor stopped her.
"WHAT?! Canceled? You mean I demeaned myself all afternoon for nothing?!"
"Look on the bright side, dear!" came William's voice. "No need to pretend we like the de Wits! Or spend the evening listening to that old trout Jansen bang on about his trout farm."
Victor and Victoria pushed open the kitchen door just enough for them both to see through the gap. Nell stood in a little huddle with William and the butler. Her cheeks were pink, and William was patting her arm.
"And only an hour's notice!" fumed Nell. "How incredibly common of them both. The only bright side I see is not having to bluff my way through five courses. I can't believe I was prepared to serve common food at my dinner table. I don't think I'd ever have overcome the embarrassment."
Victoria felt her own cheeks go a little pink. Why, she thought everything looked marvelous. She felt especially offended on behalf of her poor aspic, still waiting to be unmolded.
"You cooked?" William asked, impressed. "I can't remember the last time you-"
"Don't try to remember, those days are over," interrupted Nell.
"I thought I smelled your meat pie," William said, nearly dreamily. "I thought I was imagining things!" Nell rolled her eyes, but, again, Victoria thought she was hiding a bit of pride.
"Tell the house girls to knock off early, they're not needed to serve," Nell told the butler. "And tell my maid to run me a bath. Send up the housekeeper to my room, too. We need to solve this staffing problem as soon as humanly possible!"
With that, Nell continued on down the dark, windowless corridor toward the staircase. The butler set off behind her. Victor and Victoria glanced at each other and let the kitchen door swing shut.
"Shame for all of this to go to waste," said Victoria. "Your mother worked very hard."
"What waste?" asked William, pushing his way through the kitchen doors. He cast his eyes over the table and rubbed his hands together. "We still need to eat, don't we?"
"Oh," said Victoria, trying in vain to smooth back her hair. "But we aren't dressed."
"Eh, one night eating in the kitchen won't kill us," said William. "We used to do it all the time, didn't we, Victor? None of this eating at eight in full costume nonsense. Pull up chairs, what we don't finish we'll let the staff have for supper."
So that was precisely what the three of them did. A bemused housemaid gave them plates and cutlery from the staff's collection, and the butler, with a disapproving look, opened a bottle of wine. He also, at Victoria's request, brought out the aspic and set it on the table. With bated breath, Victoria did the honors of unmolding it. To her pride and pleasure, the aspic held its shape and only lost a small chunk near the bottom. Otherwise it was perfect. Round and firm and red, and covered in a design of strawberries and vines. After that, William dismissed the servants and directed Victor and Victoria to sit down and tuck in.
There wasn't much by way of conversation. All three were far too busy eating. The meat pie was exquisite. Victoria had never had one better. Nell was a remarkable cook. Never in yet in the Van Dort house had Victoria had a better meal than this one. Perhaps the fact that she'd helped to make it improved the flavor.
Aside from all of the intimate suppers she and Victor had had in their quarters over the past few months, this was by far the most enjoyable dinner she'd had in her in-law's home. It certainly felt the most like a real party. There was something daring and different about it. Making one's own meal and then serving oneself and then eating in the kitchen. Victoria had never eaten in a kitchen before. Not that she'd do it every day, but there was something about the coziness and warmth of it that she liked. She also enjoyed watching Victor and William eat with such gusto. Even though she doubted either of them would trade their current lifestyle altogether for what they used to have, it was obvious they loved and missed Nell's cooking.
If only Mrs. Van Dort felt the same, Victoria thought with a private grin. And she helped herself to a bit more tomato aspic.
The End.