Bobby’s Room by Douglas Dunn. Part 4.
Watch on KineScope.
As soon as the family of five left, Netherbank was full almost every night. His parents had found the house to their taste because they had it to themselves, and they were lucky. People often had to be told that there were no rooms left.
Henry tried to keep away from the guests as much as he could, but it was impossible not to ask Mrs Bawden each morning if there was anything she wanted him to do. ‘Maybe you don’t think it’s man’s work, she said, ‘but I could fair do with someone to strip the beds this morning and bring the linen down here for me to launder’ As the days went by he found himself aproned, pulling linen from beds, vacuuming carpets, dusting furniture, cleaning windows and mirrors, polishing the bannister.
‘Next time we hear from you, said Mr Bawden, ‘you’ll be running a hotel. You’ve taken to it. But don’t tell me you like it. Believe me, I know – no one better. She’s a hard woman to refuse!’
A girl from Lincolnshire, about Henry’s age, passed him in the hall and said, ‘You must be blind. What’s that, then, if it isn’t carpet fluff? There, and she pointed. Later the same morning, egged on by a friend who was along on holiday with that family, the girl asked him, ‘Is this your career? Or is it a punishment?’
‘Have you been very bad?’ the other girl said, giggling.
‘Shoo!’ Henry waved a duster at them, and they ran away delighted and laughing.
Breakfast was at seven for the Bawdens and Henry, so that they could eat before the rush of holiday families to the dining room. “The Abercrombie children are sleeping three to a bed, said Mrs Bawden. ‘I told Mr Abercrombie it was the best I could do, and he was only too pleased to accept. The English family are just the same. There’ll be eighteen for breakfast. I’ve never been so busy.’
‘Why folk go on holidays I’ll never know’, said Mr Bawden.
‘Do you want me to wait on the tables?’ Henry offered.
Mr Bawden gave him an uncertain look, and shook his head in a gesture of subdued bewilderment. ‘Eighteen,’ he said. ‘She could never cook and serve at the same time – not for eighteen?’
‘You ask them what they’d like, said Mrs Bawden, patting his hand apprecia-tively. ‘We have fruit juice. We have porridge and packet cereals. This morning we have kippers, and we have eggs, bacon, sausages, and those who want a fried breakfast are to be asked if they want black pudding with it. Some don’t like it, others love it. I never need to take a note, but it might be for the best if you were to write down the orders, like a proper waiter. Eggs scrambled, fried, boiled, or poached. Tea or coffee, and toast, jam or marmalade. And if someone high and mighty asks you for kedgeree, look daft and pretend you’ve never even heard of it’
‘Should I get changed?’
‘Put on my big white apron and you’ll look the part well enough. And don’t be nervous. We’re not the Ritz, she said.
Mr Bawden slipped out into the garden with his second cup of tea.
Most guests chose to come down at eight-thirty, and within the space of a few minutes the dining room was full. Henry was surprised that they could be so fussy about what to eat.
‘Are the sausages fresh?’ a man asked.
‘I can’t see Mrs Bawden serving you a bad sausage, sir.’
‘What’s a black pudding?’
‘Black pudding, Henry said, with a hesitant shrug.
‘But what’s it made of?’
‘Hold on’ He asked Mrs Bawden what black puddings were made of, and Mr Bawden, rinsing his cup at the sink, raised his eyebrows.
Henry came back from the kitchen. ‘Blood and lights,’ he said.
‘T’ll have two lightly poached eggs. No, wait a minute. Did you say there were scrambled eggs? In that case, I’ll have scrambled eggs!’
The two girls from Lincolnshire giggled as Henry stood in his apron with his pad and pen poised. The mother ordered them to hurry up. The father looked seriously at Henry, as if he thought he had been up to something.
By ten ơ’clock, Henry and Mrs Bawden were alone in the kitchen, tired out and hot and sipping tea. ‘My twenty-of-everything set of breakfast china came in handy, she said. Most of it was stacked beside the sink. ‘The Lord be thanked, nobody wants lunch. Rooms next, then laundry. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Henry. Next year I’ll have to get a village girl to come in.’ Mr Bawden appeared with the mail.
‘It’s another letter from your mother!’ Mrs Bawden said. She gave it to Henry.
‘Go on, read it.’
His mother’s cadences were in every line. They had been here, there, and seen that and other things. They had developed a taste for Chinese and Malayan food, although they’d been a bit suspicious at first.
‘Is it so private that you can’t read it out to me?’ Mrs Bawden asked. Her husband hurried outside with a cup of tea in one hand and his watering can in the other. ‘Does she say anything about the climate this time?’ she said, remembering the first letter. ‘Have they got over that exhausting journey? I didn’t like the sound of the airport at Karachi!’
He glanced through the rest of the letter, to make sure his mother hadn’t written anything embarrassing, thinking that it was only to be expected that an old woman who showed her snapshots to all and sundry would take it for granted that a letter should be shared. He read out his mother’s account of the strange food, the deliciousness of which his parents had come round to accept-ing, and the sightseeing. ”Daddy’s had to fly up to Penang for a couple of days, so I’ve been left on my own. Everyone’s extremely kind, and I’ve been playing a very great deal of bridge but as yet no mah-jong, thank goodness. We’ve been out for dinner every night since we arrived, and I shall be quite plump when I see you next. We look forward to a quiet evening by ourselves. Our bungalow is bijou but not quite as colonial as I would have liked. I’m not very geographical, as you know, and I wasn’t quite sure where Singapore was, but I know now, Henry, and I don’t mind telling you that it’s ABSOLUTELY TROPICAL. It was so nice of you to press a flower in your letter. It made me feel quite homesick.”‘
‘What a nice young man you are for doing a thing like that, said Mrs Bawden.
She patted his hand. ‘I knew it, she said. ‘I knew it’d be hot there’