In and Out the Houses by Elizabeth Taylor. Part 4.
Watch on KineScope.
‘Shall I prepare your mise en place?’ Kitty enquired of Mrs De Vries, trying her luck again.
‘My! We are getting professional, said Mrs De Vries, but her mind was really on what Kitty had just been telling her. Soup and jugged hare! She was thinking.
What a dreadful meal!
She was glazing a terrine of chicken livers and wished that all the village might see her work of art, but having Kitty there was the next best thing.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, as Kitty put the jar of apple jelly on the table.
‘I have to take it to the Vicarage on my way home. It’s some of Mrs Prout’s apple
jelly’
Mrs De Vries gave it a keen look, and notched up one point to Mrs Prout. She notched up another when she heard about the ravioli, and wondered if she had underestimated the woman.
‘I shooed that Tiger away, Kitty said.
“The wretched cur. He is driving Topaze insane’
Kitty mooched round the kitchen, peeking and prying. Mrs De Vries was the only one in the Village to possess a mandoline for cutting veget-ables. There was a giant pestle and mortar, a wicker bread-basket, ropes of Spanish onions, and a marble cheese-tray.
‘You can pound the fish for me, if you have the energy, said Mrs De Vries.
As this was not a house where she was made to wash her hands first, Kitty
immediately set to work.
‘I was just going to have pears, Mrs De Vries said, in a half-humorous voice.
‘But if the Glaziers are going in for apricot mousse I had better pull my socks up.
That remark, of course, is strictly entre nous’
***
“Then Mrs De Vries pulled her socks up, and made a big apple tart, Kitty told her mother.
‘I have warned you before, Kitty. What you see going on in people’s houses, you keep to yourself. Or you stay out of them. Is that finally and completely understood?’
‘Yes, Mother, Kitty said meekly.
***
‘My dear girl, I couldn’t eat it. I couldn’t eat another thing,’ said Mr Glazier, confronted by the apricot mousse. ‘A three-course-meal. Why, I shouldn’t sleep all night if I had any more. The hare alone was ample.’
‘I think Mr De Vries would do better justice to his dinner, said Mrs Glazier bitterly. She had spent all day cooking and was exhausted. ‘It’s not much fun slaving away and not being appreciated. And what on earth can I do with all the left-overs?’
‘Finish them up tomorrow and save yourself a lot of trouble.’
Glumly, Mrs Glazier washed the dishes, and suddenly thought of the Prouts sitting peacefully beside their fire, cracking walnuts, playing cards. She felt ill-done-by, as she stacked the remains of dinner in the fridge, but was perfectly certain that lie as she might have to to Kitty in the morning, the whole village should not know that for the second day running the Glaziers were having soup, and jugged hare, and apricot mousse.
***
Next day, eating a slice of apple tart, Kitty saw Mrs De Vries test the soup and then put the ladle back into the saucepan. ‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart cannot grieve over, Mrs De Vries said cheerfully. She added salt, and a turn or two of pepper. Then she took more than a sip from the glass on the draining-board, seeming to find it more to her liking than the soup.
‘The Vicarage can’t afford drinks, Kitty said.
“They do confide in you”
‘I said to the Vicar, Mrs De Vries drinks gin while she is cooking, and he said,
“Lucky old her”!
“There will be a lot of red faces about this village if you go on like this, said Mrs De Vries, making her part of the prophecy come true at once. Kitty looked at her in surprise. Then she said – Mrs De Vries’s flushed face reminding her – ‘I think next door must be having the change of life. She is awfully grumpy these days.
Nothing pleases her.’
‘You are too knowing for your years, Mrs De Vries said, and she suddenly wished she had not been so unhygienic about the soup. Too late now. ‘How is your novel coming along?’ she enquired
‘Oh, very nicely, thank you. I expect I shall finish it before I go back to school, and then it can be published for Christmas’
‘We shall all look forward to that, said Mrs De Vries, in what Kitty considered an unusual tone of voice.