Aunt Sadie looked intensely worried.
‘Oh, dear, yes, she is an awful cook, I know, but Davey, what can one do? The meat ration only lasts about two meals, and there are fourteen meals in a week, you must remember. If she minces it up with a little sausage meat – poison meat (I do so agree with you really) – it goes much further, you see.’
‘But in the country surely one can supplement the ration with game and farm produce? Yes, I know the Home Farm is let, but surely you could keep a pig and some hens? And what about game? There always used to be such a lot here.’
‘The trouble is Matthew thinks they’ll be needing all their ammunition for the Germans, and he refuses to waste a single shot on hares or partridges. Then you see Mrs Beecher (oh, what a dreadful woman she is, though of course, we are lucky to have her) is the kind of cook who is quite good at a cut off the joint and two veg., but she simply hasn’t an idea of how to make up delicious foreign oddments out of little bits of nothing at all. But you are quite, absolutely right, Davey, it’s not wholesome. I really will make an effort to see what can be done.’
‘You always used to be such a wonderful housekeeper, Sadie dear, it used to do me so much good, coming here. I remember one Christmas I put on four and a half ounces. But now I am losing steadily, my wretched frame is hardly more than a skeleton and I fear that, if I were to catch anything, I might peter out altogether. I take every precaution against that, everything is drenched in T.C.P., I gargle at least six times a day, but I can’t disguise from you that my resistance is very low, very.’
Aunt Sadie said: ‘It’s quite easy to be a wonderful housekeeper when there are a first-rate cook, two kitchen-maids, a scullery-maid, and when you can get all the food you want. I’m afraid I am dreadfully stupid at managing on rations, but I really will try and take a pull. I’m very glad indeed that you mentioned it, Davey, it was absolutely right of you, and of course, I don’t mind at all.’
But no real improvement resulted. Mrs Beecher said ‘yes, yes’ to all suggestions, and continued to send up Hamburger steaks, Cornish pasty, and shepherd pie, which continued to be full of poison sausage. It was very nasty and very unwholesome, and, for once, we all felt that Davey had not gone a bit too far. Meals were no pleasure to anybody and a positive ordeal to Davey, who sat, a pinched expression on his face, refusing food and resorting more and more often to the vitamin pills with which his place at the table was surrounded – too many by far even for his collection of jewelled boxes – a little forest of bottles, vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamins A and C, vitamins B3 and D, one tablet equals two pounds of summer butter – ten times the strength of a gallon of cod-liver oil – for the blood – for the brain – for muscle – for energy – anti this and protection against that – all but one bore a pretty legend.
‘And what’s in this, Davey?’
‘Oh, that’s what the panzer troops have before going into action.’
Davey gave a series of little sniffs. This usually denoted that his nose was about to bleed, pints of valuable red and white corpuscles so assiduously filled with vitamins would be wasted, his resistance still further lowered.
Aunt Emily and I looked up in some anxiety from the rissoles we were sadly pushing round our plates.
‘Bolter,’ he said, severely, ‘you’ve been at my Mary Chess again.’
‘Oh, Davey dulling, such a tiny droppie.’
‘A tiny drop doesn’t stink out the whole room. I’m sure you have been pouring it into the bath with the stopper out. It is a shame. That bottle is my quota for a month, it is too bad of you, Bolter.’
‘Dulling, I swear I’ll get you some more – I’ve got to go to London next week, to have my wiggie washed, and I’ll bring back a bottle, I swear.’
‘And I very much hope you’ll take Gewan with you and leave him there,’ growled Uncle Matthew. ‘Because I won’t have him in this house much longer, you know. I’ve warned you, Bolter.’
Uncle Matthew was busy from morning to night with his Home Guard. He was happy and interested and in a particularly mellow mood, for it looked as if his favourite hobby, that of clocking Germans, might be available again at any moment. So he only noticed Juan from time to time, and, whereas in the old days he would have had him out of the house in the twinkling of an eye, Juan had now been an inmate of Alconleigh for nearly a month. However, it was beginning to be obvious that my uncle had no intention of putting up with his presence for ever and things were clearly coming to a head where Juan was concerned. As for the Spaniard himself, I never saw a man so wretched. He wandered about miserably, with nothing whatever to do all day, unable to talk to anybody, while at meal-times the disgust on his face fully equalled that of Davey. He hadn’t even the spirit to play his guitar.
‘Davey, you must talk to him,’ said Aunt Sadie.
My mother had gone to London to have her hair dyed, and a family council was gathered in her absence to decide upon the fate of Juan.
‘We obviously can’t turn him out to
