with Leslie?
‘With my body I thee worship,’ Sandra repeated derisively to herself: the whole thing was unbelievably old-fashioned. She would get married in a registry office or America or
a ship, in white leather, and go away in a helicopter. And she certainly wouldn’t marry anyone as old as Leslie.
Rosemary watched the ring being put on Alice’s finger and felt a lump in her throat: a lot of her men friends had said she was too emotional, but there it was. She felt like crying,
and those two, standing there, seemed quite unmoved: that was British phlegm for you. If she had been standing where Alice was, her eyes would be full of great, unshed tears.
The vicar, gathering speed, was pronouncing them man and wife. He’s like an old horse, Oliver thought, on the last lap to the stable, or, in this case, the registry. His stomach was
rumbling uncontrollably and he had the nasty feeling that it was just the sort of sound most suited to the acoustics of this church.
End of the first lap, thought the colonel, rising to his feet. He had managed, during the service, to count the guests – roughly, anyway – and on the whole he felt he had been
sensible to put away two of the cold salmon trout that the caterers had been laying out. Those fellows always produced too much food because then they could charge you for it. So he had simply
taken away two of the dishes and put them in the larder . . .
Where Claude, who never had very much to do in the mornings, smelt it. He had known for ages how to open the larder door, but had not advertised the fact, largely because there was hardly ever
anything there worth eating; but he was extremely fond of fish. He inserted a huge capable paw round the lower edge of the door and heaved for several minutes: when the gap was wide enough he
levered it open with his shoulder and part of his head. The fish lay on a silver platter on the marble shelf, skinned and garnished. He knocked pieces of lemon and cucumber contemptuously aside,
settled himself into his best eating position and began to feast. He tried both fish – equally delicious – and when he could eat no more, he jumped heavily off the shelf with a prawn in
his mouth which he took to the scullery for further examination.
2. Flight
Elizabeth, back into her comfortable blue jeans and one of Oliver’s old shirts, had taken the two salmon trout from the larder and laid them on the vast kitchen table.
Her assignment was to patch up one of the fish for supper, so that the colonel need never know of Claude’s depredations. Alice, before she had left, had begged both Elizabeth and May to look
after him; of course they had both promised, and Alice was scarcely out of sight before May discovered the larder crime.
Taking pieces from one fish and transposing them to another was like a frightful jigsaw with none of the pieces ready made. On top of this, the fish had been overcooked so that the flakes broke
whenever she tried to wedge them into position. ‘I’ll have to cover the whole lot with mayonnaise,’ she thought despairingly. Well – at least she knew how to make good
mayonnaise: at least she knew that.
‘Isn’t it nasty having the whole house to ourselves?’
It was only Oliver.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean that anywhere as large and hideous and otherwise undistinguished as this is only bearable when it’s heavily populated.’ He sat on the kitchen table. ‘It
must have been built by someone who made a packet out of shells or gas masks in the First World War. Do you know what the first gas masks were made of?’
‘Of course I don’t. What?’
‘Pieces of Harris tweed soaked in something or other, with bits of tape to tie round the back of the head. What fascinates me about that is that it should have been Harris tweed: so
hairy – a kind of counter-irritant.’
A minute later, he said,
‘Listen, ducks, what are you going to do?’
Elizabeth had been separating two eggs into pudding