Oh, yes, we had departed months ago from the “nothing but cake” rule. We decided that a thin, anæmic-looking young man (as per the photographic group) needed still more feeding up, and there wasn’t a sufficiency of body-building material in modern cake, as everyone knows who has sampled war-flour, even with currants as well as carraways. So the Head of Affairs and I stoically relinquished the one thin slice of breakfast bacon that we had shared between us each morning, and devoted the proceeds to pork pies for the Navy—in accordance with the highest ideals of the Food Controller.
But, as every good housewife knows, you mustn’t feed your family—let alone your friends—on pork pie when there isn’t an R in the month; and with April nearing its end, and May looming, what was to take its place? As cook said, you are so dreadfully handicapped when you have to sew up your parcel in calico; you can’t send soused mackerel, or Welsh rabbit with Red Tape tied round you like that!
Abigail suggested potted shrimps; but cook scornfully reminded her that seafaring men, living in the midst of shrimps and salt fish all their days, weren’t likely to hanker after it at meal times. We compromised on savoury cheese patties—a come-down after the pork pie, we admitted; only we could think of nothing else equally nutritive and seasonable.
Unfortunately, when I ordered extra cheese to be sent weekly to meet the naval demands (and up to that time I hadn’t seen any rules for rationing cheese), the Stores “greatly regretted,” etc., but there was a scarcity at the moment; they could let me have a tin of golden syrup, however, or, they had a fair stock of candles.
So we removed cheese from our upstairs dietary, consoling ourselves with the thought that, at best, it was only half a course.
Meanwhile it was pleasant to know that the fleet had voted the cheese patties “A 1,” due, so cook said, to the fact that she had told Dick to put the patties into a slow oven for ten or twelve minutes before eating, as “it made all the difference.”
I was beginning to get nervy with the strain of it all. You see, if a letter delayed in coming, then the question arose: Did they like the last parcel? or, had we sent, by chance, something they didn’t care for? And then my household assistants looked darkly at me; I was to blame for ever having suggested lemon curd tartlets. As Abigail said, probably lemon didn’t agree with Dick, it didn’t always with thin people.
Cook acquiesced, adding that you never can tell! There was her eldest sister’s husband, a perfect terror for temper; yet look what he saved her in doctor’s bills—he might have had epileptic fits instead!
On the other hand, there was her uncle (no relation to her really, only her aunt’s husband, and second husband at that), do what you would, you couldn’t rouse him to take an interest in his food or anything else. Her poor aunt had spent a little fortune on medicine; and as bright a house as you could want, not shut off with a whole lot of garden like my house, but nice and close on to the pavement, with heaps of traffic going by. And exactly opposite, the broken railings that the motor-van ran into and killed the driver; heaps of people came to look at the place Sunday afternoons. But her uncle never took a bit of notice of it.