Reading and writing e to me easy. I learn my letters as follows: A for asparagus, asperges au beurre fohough never, for my mothers sake, with a sauce batarde); B for boeuf, baron of, roasted mostly, with a pouding Yorkshire patriotically sputtering away beh it in the dripping pan; C for carrots, carrottes, choufleur, camembert and so ht down to Zabaglione, although I often wonder what use the X might be, si figures in no cooks alphabet.
And I stick as close to that kit as the cro?te to a paté or the mayono an oeuf. First, I stand on that stool to my saus; then on an upturned bucket; then on my own two feet. Time passes.
Life in this remote mansion flows by a tranquil stream, only vulsing into turbulence a year and then for two weeks only, but that fuss enough, the Grouse Shoot, when they all e from town to set us by the ears.
Although Sir and Madam believe their visit to be the very and unique reason for the existences of ead every one of us, the yearly climacteric of our beings, when their staff, who, as far as they are ed, sleep out a hibernation the rest of the year, now spring to life like Sleepiy when her priurns up, in truth, we get on so well without them during the other eleven and a half months that the arrival of Themselves is a iterruption of our routine. We sweat out the fht of their preseh as ill a grace as gentlefolk forced by reduced circumstao take paying guests into their home, and as for haute cuisine, fet it; sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches, all they want is sandwiches.
And never again, ever again, a special request for a soufflé, lobster or otherwise. Me mam always a touch broody e the Grouse Shoot, moody, distracted, and, even though no order came, heless, every year, she would prepare her lobster soufflé all the same, send the grinding boy off for the lobster, boil it alive, beat the eggs, make the panada etc. etc. etc., as if the doing of the thing were a magic ritual that would raise up out of the past the great question mark from whose loins her son had sprung so that, perhaps, she could get a good look at his face, this time. Or, perhaps, there was some other reason. But she never said either way. In due course, she could struct the airiest, most savoury soufflé that ever lobster graced; but nobody arrived to eat it and none of the kit had the heart. So, fifteen times in all, the chis got that soufflé.
Until, one fiober day, the mist rising over the moors like the steam off a é, the grouse taking last hearty meals like ned men, my mothers vigil was at last rewarded. The house party arrives and as it does we hear the faint, nostalgic wail of an accordion as a closed barouche es bounding up the drive all festooned with the lys de France.
Hearing the news, my mother shakes, es over queer, has to have a sit down on the marble pastry slab whilst I, oh, I prepare to meet my maker, having arrived at the age when a boy most broods about his father.
But whats this? Who trots into the kit to pick up the chest of ice the duc ordered for the bottles he brought with him but a beardless boy of his own age or less! And though my mother tries to quizz him on the whereabouts of some other hypothetical valet who, once upon a time, might possibly have made her hand tremble so she lost trol of the ne, he claims he ot uand her Yorkshire brogue, he shakes his head, he mimes inprehension. Then, for the third time in all her life, my mother wept.
First, she wept for shame because
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