Louise was in the kitchen when the staff began to arrive. Justin knew most of them and they knew him. They were delighted to see him.
‘Justin! My, how you’ve grown!’ said the most motherly of the women who came in, who Meg realised must be Susan. ‘Where has the time gone since you were a little boy scrounging snacks?’
Justin smiled and shrugged, embarrassed but tolerant.
The woman turned to Meg. ‘Now, who’s this? Although no need to ask! You’re Louise’s daughter,aren’t you? My, don’t you look alike! Different colouring, but otherwise – peas in a pod, you are.’
Meg was flattered. She thought her mother was beautiful.
Louise laughed. ‘Yes, this is my Meg, Susan. She’s helping out. I asked her to come when Geoff started being so difficult. I knew I’d need someone I could rely on. And it’s just as well considering he sacked everyone. And as she’s my daughter and not really staff, no one could complain about her being here, could they?’ Louise cast a quick look at Justin as if to check whether he was indeed going to complain.
‘She looks very professional to me,’ said Susan. ‘Now, you know my Cherry – she and I will waitress.’
‘I can waitress too, if you need me,’ said Meg, suddenly thinking how much less stressful it would be. She knew she was a really good waitress. If she was in the kitchen she would be trying to impress a man who probably wouldn’t be impressed if she announced she had a Michelin star.
‘I’ll need you with me,’ said Justin.
‘We know what we’re doing,’ said Susan, kindly but firmly putting Meg in her place. ‘My sister’s coming in later. Between the three of us we’ve got it all sorted.’ She smiled. ‘It’s easier than having to tell someone else what to do.’
Meg was offended. She had worked at plenty of large functions, serving food over people’s shoulders with two serving spoons. She had no trouble carrying several plates on her forearm at once. But Susan was not to know any of this and Meg wasn’t going to tell her.
Instead, she forced herself to smile. When she’d dragged herself out of bed at five o’clock that morning, she had been in charge, with a plan, the saviour of a tricky situation. A few hours later she was assisting a chef who thought women didn’t belong in kitchens and she wasn’t even allowed to be a waitress. Soon, she knew, she’d laugh about this, but just now she wanted to scream.
Her mother came and put a hand on her shoulder, possibly reading her expression. ‘Glad to see everyone is happy!’ she said with a warm smile. ‘I’m just going to get dressed and then supervise setting the table.’
Meg let out a small squeak, not intended to be heard.
A few hours later, even though she had done so much preparation, Meg realised that she wouldn’t have managed the lunch on her own. Why, for example, had she changed the cold soup, which could have been put on the table while the guests were having their pre-lunch drinks, to hot soup, which was going to be a little harder? She’d made the soup already, but it still had to be heated. It was really annoying that Justin asked the same question, out loud.
‘Why didn’t you stick with having vichyssoise for the soup?’ he asked.
‘Geoff was going to make it from a packet and Ambrosine told me that lots of people didn’t think cold soup was a proper thing to eat. Obviously, cold soup is easier to get to the table, but we have got a cold main course.’ He was looking at her, his expression challenging, demanding, unrelenting. She knewshe should just hold her head up high and stick by her decisions. ‘I had planned to cook some frozen peas and put a few of them with a swirl of cream as a garnish.’ She heard the words come out of her mouth and regretted them.
‘Let’s just stick with the swirl of cream, shall we?’ said Justin, ‘and hope no one thinks serving soup on a warm day is a bad idea.’
Secretly, just before service, Meg tasted the soup. It was delicious. The fresh herbs made it taste of summer and the good chicken stock base gave it substance. There was quite a lot of cream in it, which also helped.
Justin tasted it openly, when it was hot. He didn’t say it was delicious, but he didn’t add salt either, which Meg chose to interpret as meaning much the same.
Suddenly, the lunch had begun.
Chapter Five
Although to begin with they had all been a bit cliquey, the waiting staff began to unbend towards Meg as service went on. She and Justin were filling soup plates as fast as they could (and they were both efficient) and although there was only one door into the dining room, which slowed things down a bit, everyone was working well.
Meg was praying that the soup was hot enough. It was one thing people not liking cold soup, but they’d be really unhappy if it was only lukewarm.
‘They liked the soup,’ said one of the older women eventually. She was possibly Susan’s sister, Meg thought. ‘Men don’t like cold soup really.’
‘We just have to hope they like the chicken,’ said another woman, delivering four empty soup bowls and taking three plates of coronation chicken. ‘They’d have preferred a pie really. Men don’t like salad.’
There was no time to argue about this. The kitchen wasn’t designed to serve fifty people all at once, even if it had done so for many years.
However, the bread-and-butter pudding went down really well. It looked a mess on the plate, Justin said, but almost every plate came back empty.
Even with the door shut between the kitchen and the dining room, noise carried between them. It meant when the staff wanted to start on the washing-up, they had to be really quiet for the lengthy speeches to be finished.
Justin, as chef, didn’t feel obliged to worry about the clearing up and went off into the office instead. Louise, who’d crept in to join everyone in the kitchen, whispered to Meg. ‘I know everything is in order, but I’m not really responsible for the books. He might find some awful mistake made before I got here.’
