There was more brain-work and less inspection required for the pudding. When Ruth asked me if I would like to see the eggs, I said no, that was a question for the hen’s conscience, and one must leave something to somebody. Neither would I waste precious eyesight on the butter. I knew it was a lot, and the less seen about it the better. If I could have seen an ice-machine amongst our kitchen properties I should have felt less irritable. I know that the efficient female makes hers in something very simple—a biscuit tin or a boot, I forget which—but we were all too amateurish for these conjuring tricks. We have to get our rabbits out of shops like other people, and I would not trust an omelette made in James’s hat. We bought a machine at great expense, and when at last, wet to the knee and chilled to the bone, I hurried upstairs to dress, I saw with my last eye a vision of two alternatives—one, successive platefuls of congealed cream; the other, a petrified mass, bounding at the first touch of the spoon from end to end of our parquet floor. Which would it be?
I once read in the “Book of the Home” that the cook should lie down for a couple of hours before beginning the serious work of a dinner party. According to the author of the book all preparations should be made the day before; then, when the generalissima is roused from her bed at 5 p.m., there is practically nothing to do except to put the heavy guns in the oven and pass a salamander over the light infantry. The key to the situation, the brainy part, the staff office, whatever you like to call it, lies in the sauce-boats, and the gods alone decide what goes on there.
As a matter of fact, everything turned out quite differently. Ruth prepared nothing the day before; she rose late on the morning of the engagement, and omitted to clean the flues. We had a terrific fire going all day, and she ran about the kitchen at top speed, purple in the face, trembling and uncomplimentary. Far from the two hours of peaceful sleep anticipated by the “Book of the Home,” she had not even time to wash up after luncheon, and, as it was, dinner was more than ten minutes late. It is sad, but remarkable, that nothing ever happens to me in the way that books and efficient people claim as a certainty; but I am sure that Ruth enjoyed the dinner more than Mrs. Beeton ever enjoyed anything. You lose half the fun of a dish if you know beforehand what it is going to look like. The range, with his unfailing common sense and utter lack of artistic feeling, behaved strictly in accordance with his flues, slightly undercooking some things and burning others just a trifle: but the ice was perfect. I have often made ices in the same way, and they have turned out failures, which just proves what I have always said, that cookery books are written in the same spirit as “The Home Conjurer,” “Every Man His Own Chauffeur,” “How to Become a Golf Champion by Post,” and so on. The people who write them do not want us to know how they do the things, so they keep us harmlessly employed with a few simple rules while they themselves go on cooking and conjuring and get paid for it.
Ruth, Clara, the charwoman, and a borrowed housemaid sat up until twelve washing dishes, breaking a few, and filling the air with hilarity born of tea, fatigue, and insufficient food. But Ruth was happy. We had had company and she had been at her wits’ end.
CHAPTER VI: THE JOB GARDENER
After all I had suffered at the hands of Elizabeth Tique’s gardener I determined not to keep one at all. That is the kind of resolution one makes, judging a whole class from a single specimen, and then buying experience. But it seemed to me that just as a cook is too pervasive in a small house, so a gardener occupies too much space in a small garden. I remembered the mowing machine, and the manure, and one thing and another, and thought how much enjoyment I should get from doing the garden myself, with the help of an occasional man. I did not know that in our neighbourhood that particular breed of garden pest is called a Saturday scratcher. If I had heard the term sooner I might have guessed what he would be like, but I engaged one in my innocence, and bought experience like other people. I engaged him on the recommendation of an enemy, and he tramped over the flower-beds to my door early one morning. He was just the sort of working man who gets caricatured on the music-hall stage: infinitely ugly and full of inane conversation. His opening remark annoyed me.
“Pretty little bit o’ garden you’ve got ’ere mum.”
“That’s a liar,” I thought, considering the weeds and the seedy laurel bushes, but I resolved not to give way to prejudice.
“There is a good deal to be done, Mr. Mullins,” I said vaguely. The fact was, I knew what I wanted the garden to look like when it was done, but my ideas began and ended there. I was as ignorant as Mullins himself; the difference between us was that I was not nearly so stupid. That is why we could not get on; if his wits had been equal to mine we should have devised something between us in spite of our ignorance—I was going to say, with the help of our ignorance—because we should have done something entirely original. Being unhampered by foregone conclusions born of knowledge, we should not have had our inspirations blighted, as so many people have who understand the possibilities of an art. And we might have revolutionised the laws of Nature; one never knows! But Mullins was a fool; he did not understand when I said that I wanted the garden to look as if the things grew there by themselves.
“You’ll want some nice beddin’-out plants, mum, if that’s so,” he observed.