Chapter One – But Mostly Mabel

Binky’s Story

Little Eardsley

Dorrage Hall, a many-bedroomed, eighteenth-century, double-turreted, English baroque manor house situated in the county of Eardshire, was the sort of place where nothing and nobody worked. Except Mabel, the cook/housekeeper.

Bam! Mabel crashed the second-best tray down on the kitchen table, making a mental note to have a go at bicarb-ing the tarnish when she next had five minutes. A bone china cup from the last remaining tea-set clattered in its saucer, wobbled, dithered for a sec, then decided, yes it would keel over and puddle the tray with stone-cold tea.

‘Six! Six perfectly good eggs,’ she fumed. ‘Chucked up the wall because none of them was cooked to his liking. Six flipping eggs, Bill. ‘Scuse the language, but I ask you!’

Bill looked up from the Squire’s Daily Mail. ‘Flipping ain’t swearing, old girl. I’ll tell you what swearing is. Swearing’s–’

Mabel pursed her lips. ‘Thank you, Bill. I don’t think we need a demonstration.’ She grabbed a cloth to mop up the mess. ‘I’ve had about enough of today, and it’s not even time for elevenses.’

The day had started off badly and headed south from then on. The Squire had been more than usually shouty over his breakfast, Miss Venetia more than usually moany over hers.

‘Acting up, is he, the Old Bugger?’ Bill said, Old Bugger being one of the nicknames Bill had for Sir Jago, the Squire. ‘What’s it this time?’

‘The usual.’ Mabel put on the voice, a passable take-off of their employer. ‘None of these bally eggs is edible, Mabel and Bill. Half too soft.’ She mimed chucking an egg at the wall. ‘Half too hard. Whites should be soft-set,’ she mimed chucking the rest, ‘and yolks firm. Is that too much to ask?’ Sighing, Mabel reverted to her normal voice. ‘You know what he’s like first thing.’

‘I’m guessing you were giving your new egg wheeze a try-out,’ Bill said.

Mabel nodded. ‘Boiled up half a dozen. Surely, I thought, one of them is going to meet with approval. Should have knowed better. Not one! Not the four-minuter, nor the nine-minuter, nor none in between.’

Bill shook his head. ‘Thought you’d have learned after all these years. Nothing much gets the thumbs up before five in the afternoon.’

‘Cocktail hour,’ they chorused in harmony.

‘I know,’ Mabel said. ‘But throwing stuff, that’s crossing a line.’

‘Told you there’d be consequences from the village dropping him off the cricket team.’ Bill gave his paper a shake. ‘Don’t suppose his bowling action’s improved.’

‘I never know, Bill, if you’re being serious or not. And now I’ve got an eggy mess to wipe off the wallpaper.’

‘Damned waste. I could have polished off them leftovers.’

‘You’re very welcome to what I can scrape off.’

‘You’re all right.’

Mabel let a silence fall, then tried again, more direct this time. ‘A bit of support wouldn’t come amiss.’

Bill lowered the newspaper. ‘That would help how exactly? You know what he’s like. Can’t do right, for doing wrong. Sun’s too bally bright. Birds too bally twittery. Leaves too bally rustle-y. What are we supposed to do? Most days he’s found five things to bellyache about before Perkins has had time to put on his monogrammed slippers and chaperone him to the bog for his morning piss.’

Mabel winced.

‘As for Princess Pathetic up there,’ Bill raised his eyes to the ceiling, ‘if she was any wetter, she’d be a bleeding codfish.’

Bill never held the Corkerham family in the same regard as Mabel. He saw them as privileged pains in the whatsit, to be tolerated and, whenever the opportunity arose, mocked. Whereas, to Mabel, they were the latest links in a historic chain that went right back, it is believed, to a Saxon ancestor called Aethelwulf the Ill-Favoured… as well as being privileged pains in the whatsit.

It bothered Mabel when Bill slagged them off. It should be possible, it seemed to her, to respect a person’s position in life, even when you didn’t hold with the system that put them on the top rung of the social ladder, or even like them that much. But, she had to admit, the Corkerhams did often make respecting them a stretch.

‘Please,’ Mabel said, hand to her forehead, ‘not today, Bill. We’ve got Miss Venetia’s pals tomorrow. The Mudhill set. Could be up to a dozen of them. She’s give me her menu.’ Mabel counted off the courses on her fingers. ‘French onion soup to start with, followed by rib of beef with roasties, red cabbage and all the trimmings, jam roly poly and yellow custard, and finishing up with an Eardshire cheeseboard with some of my pear chutney. I’ve got onions to chop, a ton of spuds to peel, mould to scrape off the chutney, and I don’t know what else to be getting on with.’

Mabel looked over at Bill. He was deep into an article about some busty actress, his nose almost touching the page.

‘I don’t suppose you could…?’ she asked.

‘Look at the state of that,’ Bill interrupted. ‘Talk about trout mouth. Them lips is more like inflatable dinghies.’

Mabel gave a yawn, putting it on a bit. ‘Didn’t hardly get no sleep last night.’

‘Had you running around, did he, the Old Bugger? Single malt from his special supply? Cucumber sarnies with the crusts cut off? The fire in his sitting room banked up so high you can hear the chimney cracking? All at some ungodly hour when decent folks is tucked up in bed. That sortathing?’

‘Not Himself. Herself. Miss Venetia. It was her running me ragged.’ Again, Mabel did the voice. ‘One simply must have one’s Harrods hot chocolate, Mabel&Bill, or one will toss and turn until rosy-fingered dawn.’

Incidentally, you might be wondering about the Mabel&Bill thing. It probably seems odd to you, but in Sir Jago and Miss Venetia’s world it made perfect sense. Why waste time on two names when an all-purpose one would do for both? No-one remembered when they’d started doing it. It was more than likely a Corkerham family joke that stuck. Bill and Mabel never minded. Not really.

‘Just when I got my head down,’ Mabel persisted, ‘she rings for her special ciggies. The lilac ones she gets sent from Westphalia. For her nerves. So I had to dig them out. And the silver table lighter what I can never get to spark. She’s as bad as him sometimes.’

Bill looked up, suddenly serious. ‘She ask for the key?’

Mabel pulled a face. ‘No. Not yet.’ She patted the pocket of her pinny. ‘When she does, I’ll be ready.’

‘How much longer can she keep it up?’ Bill said. ‘She visits that place more often than you’re down at Miss Spooner’s.’ Priscilla Spooner ran the village shop. ‘Even the Squire is bound to smell a rat eventually.’

The same worry had been itching at the back of Mabel’s mind. She felt responsible, you see, as it had been her idea in the first place. Another of her wheezes. She pushed the thought away. She had more immediate concerns.

‘Can’t think about that right now,’ she said. ‘Got loaves to bake and butter to churn. Beds to make up. Because a pound to a penny her pals will be expecting to stay the night, and wanting kippers and kedgeree for breakfast more than likely. On top of everything, we’re almost out of logs. Someone needs to get out there and chop some.’

At that moment, a gust of wind sprang up outside, spattering drizzle against the kitchen windows and rattling the frames. It was a bleak, unwelcoming day.

‘And if the range goes out, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ Mabel went on. No response. ‘I could do with some help, Bill. With chopping the logs?’

Bill was now lapping up a juicy bit of football gossip. ‘What about this joker?’ he said, prodding the newspaper. ‘All that cash. And for what? A gormless grin and a pair of knobbly knees. World’s gone stark staring mad, I tell you.’

‘I know how the world feels,’ Mabel said, an edge of bitterness to her voice, as she headed for the scullery. She paused on the way to select a knife from the drawer, picking out a stubby one and running her thumb over its blade to check for sharpness. ‘Some days,’ she called over, ‘it’s all I can do to stop myself from doing a certain someone a serious mischief.’

‘No jury would convict you,’ Bill shouted back. ‘Them two upstairs would drive anyone to it.’

Mabel paused at the scullery door, sack of spuds in tow. ‘I wasn’t necessarily thinking of them,’ she said, eyes narrowing.

Bill, who’d been licking the end of his pencil in preparation for the Kwik Krossword, put the newspaper down.

‘This ain’t like you. Normally you can handle anything them upstairs throws at you.’ He broke into a grin, unable to resist. ‘Even boiled eggs.’

Mabel let go of the sack and, to her embarrassment, felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘If you must know,’ she sniffed, wiping her cheeks on her pinny, ‘it’s Binky. She’s missing. Haven’t seen her for three days. I’m that worried.’

‘Is that all?’ Bill laughed. ‘She’s always wandering off, as well you know. She ain’t a kitten no more. Probably gone and got herself a boyfriend. Don’t waste your tears. She’ll be having a whale of a time, the shameless hussy.’ He turned his attention to the crossword. ‘She’ll turn up when she’s had her fill of how’s-your-father. You’ll see.’

Mabel wasn’t so sure. This was different. Binky had never stayed away this long before.

‘Something’s up. I know it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve looked everywhere for her. Upstairs and down. Everywhere except the attic rooms. This afternoon, I thought I’d try up there and you know how them back stairs give me the creeps. I thought if the two of us went…?’

Bill tapped his pockets, searching for something.

‘I said,’ she repeated, ‘if we was to go up in the attic together? This afternoon?’

‘I heard you. Aha!’ He’d found his pipe and busied himself packing it with tobacco. ‘I would oblige.’ He put a match to the bowl and sucked. ‘Only, there’s a problem.’ The tobacco glowed red. Puffs of blue smoke spiralled to the ceiling. ‘A complication, sortathing.’

‘I somehow thought there might be.’

‘Up on the top field.’ Puff. ‘There’s this path. Wants clearing.’ Puff. ‘Promised the Old Bugger I’d take a look.’ Puff. ‘Walk the path. Do a recce. Gonna take me the best part of the rest of the day.’ Puff, puff, puff. He stuck the pipe in his mouth, knocking the stem against his dentures, and got to his feet. ‘Time I made tracks, as a matter of fact.’

Mabel crossed her arms. ‘The path from the top field that skirts the woods? The shortcut to the village and the Spread Eagle?’ She glanced across at the kitchen clock. ‘And would you believe it? It’s not long till opening time.’

‘Yep, the good old Spread Legs.’

Mabel winced again. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t.’

Bill folded the newspaper into his jacket pocket and grabbed his coat from the back of the door. ‘I’m off then, old girl. See you when I see you. Watch your step on them back stairs. They’re terrible rickety.’

After Bill had gone, Mabel stood, tutting to herself at the sheer nerve of the man. Then, throwing on an old riding mac of the Squire’s, she stumbled outside to pump water for the kettle, and put it on the range to heat.

‘If he can skive off to the pub, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have ten minutes to myself,’ she said out loud.

While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, she plumped up the cushions on the chair Bill had vacated and dropped gratefully onto them. Digging around in her pinny pocket, she took out a small brass key, contemplated it for a moment, then put it back and removed a cassette player. She fiddled awkwardly with the controls, then settled back to lose herself in Elton John’s husky tones.

Outside, the wind got up again and the window-frames gave another rattle. Mabel shivered. Chopping the logs could wait.