‘Not towards Dagoes,’ said Uncle Matthew, grinding his dentures.
‘But what we can do is to get him a job, only first we must find out what his profession is. Now, Davey, you’re good at languages, and you’re so clever, I’m sure if you had a look at the Spanish dictionary in the library you could just manage to ask him what he used to do before the war. Do try, Davey.’
‘Yes, darling, do,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘The poor fellow looks too miserable for words at present, I expect he’d love to have some work.’
Uncle Matthew snorted.
‘Just give me the Spanish dictionary,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll soon find the word for “get out”.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Davey, ‘but I can guess what it will be I’m afraid. G for gigolo.’
‘Or something equally useless, like M for matador or H for hidalgo,’ said Louisa.
‘Yes. Then what?’
‘Then B for be off,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘and the Bolter will have to support him, but not anywhere near me, I beg. It must be made perfectly clear to both of them that I can’t stand the sight of the sewer lounging about here any longer.’
When Davey takes on a job he does it thoroughly. He shut himself up for several hours with the Spanish dictionary, and wrote down a great many words and phrases on a piece of paper. Then he beckoned Juan into Uncle Matthew’s business-room and shut the door.
They were there a short time, and, when they emerged, both were wreathed in happy smiles.
‘You’ve sacked him, I hope?’ Uncle Matthew said, suspiciously.
‘No, indeed, I’ve not sacked him,’ said Davey, ‘on the contrary, I’ve engaged him. My dears, you’ll never guess, it’s too absolutely glamorous for words, Juan is a cook, he was the cook, I gather, of some cardinal before the Civil War. You don’t mind I hope, Sadie. I look upon this as an absolute lifeline – Spanish food, so delicious, so unconstipating, so digestible, so full of glorious garlic. Oh, the joy, no more poison-burger – how soon can we get rid of Mrs Beecher?’
Davey’s enthusiasm was fully justified, and Juan in the kitchen was the very greatest possible success. He was more than a first-class cook, he had an extraordinary talent for organization, and soon, I suspect, became king of the local black market. There was no nonsense about foreign dishes made out of little bits of nothing at all; succulent birds, beasts, and crustaceans appeared at every meal, the vegetables ran with extravagant sauces, the puddings were obviously based upon real ice-cream.
‘Juan is wonderful,’ Aunt Sadie would remark in her vague manner, ‘at making the rations go round. When I think of Mrs Beecher – really, Davey, you were so clever.’
One day she said: ‘I hope the food isn’t too rich for you now, Davey?’
‘Oh no,’ said Davey. ‘I never mind rich food, it’s poor food that does one such an infinity of harm.’
Juan also pickled and bottled and preserved from morning till night, until the store cupboard, which he had found bare except for a few tins of soup, began to look like a pre-war grocer’s shop. Davey called it Aladdin’s Cave, or Aladdin for short, and spent a lot of his time there, gloating. Months of tasty vitamins stood there in neat rows, a barrier between him and that starvation which had seemed, under Mrs Beecher’s régime, only just round the corner.
Juan himself was now a very different fellow from the dirty and disgruntled refugee who had sat about so miserably. He was clean, he wore a white coat and hat, he seemed to have grown in stature, and he soon acquired a manner of great authority in his kitchen. Even Uncle Matthew acknowledged the change.
‘If I were the Bolter,’ he said, ‘I should marry him.’
‘Knowing the Bolter,’ said Davey, ‘I’ve no doubt at all that she will.’
Early in November I had to go to London for the day, on business for Alfred, who was now in the Middle East, and to see my doctor. I went by the eight o’clock train, and, having heard nothing of Linda for some weeks, I took a taxi and drove straight to Cheyne Walk. There had been a heavy raid the night before, and I passed through streets which glistened with broken glass. Many fires still smouldered, and fire engines, ambulances, and rescue men hurried to and fro, streets were blocked, and several times we had to drive quite a long way round. There seemed to be a great deal of excitement in the air. Little groups of people were gathered outside shops and houses, as if to compare notes; my taxi-driver talked incessantly to me over his shoulder. He had been up all night, he said, helping the rescue workers. He described what he had found.
‘It was a spongy mass of red,’ he said, ghoulishly, ‘covered with feathers.’
‘Feathers?’ I said, horrified.
‘Yes. A feather bed, you see. It was still breathing, so I takes it to the hospital, but they say that’s no good to us, take it to the mortuary. So I sews it in a sack and takes it to the mortuary.’
‘Goodness,’ I said.
‘Oh, that’s nothing to what I have seen.’
Linda’s nice daily woman, Mrs Hunt, opened the door to me at Cheyne Walk.
‘She’s very poorly, ma’am, can’t you take her back to the country with you? It’s not right for her to be here, in her condition. I hate to see her like this.’
Linda was in her bathroom, being sick. When she came out she said:
‘Don’t think it’s the raid that’s upset me. I like them. I’m in the family way, that’s what it is.’
‘Darling, I thought you weren’t supposed to have another baby.’
‘Oh, doctors! They don’t know anything, they are such fearful idiots. Of course I can, and I’m simply longing for it, this baby won’t be the least like Moira, you’ll see.’
‘I’m going to have one too.’
‘No – how lovely – when?’
‘About the
