Page 40 of One More Christmas at the Castle
He went off, still humming the ‘Lumberjack Song’ and I soon had the soup simmering.
When Henry beat the gong and then took out the soup, I grated cheese for the omelettes – I make wonderfully fluffy omelettes, if I say it myself – and soon he was returning with the empty plates and some compliments.
‘They’re down to the cheeseboard and fruit. Mrs Powys says she’ll ring when she wants coffee, and she and Xan want theirs in the study, because he’s going to record the first session of her memories for the biography.’
‘That’s quick! He doesn’t hang about.’
‘Mrs Powys also told me she hadn’t had proper onion soup for years and Xan said your omelettes are amazing.’
‘Huh!’ I said, but I was pleased, all the same.
‘You’re a sweet-and-sour dish in yourself,’ Henry said with a grin, giving me a quick hug, and began to load the dirty crockery into the dishwasher.
So the first lunch had been a success, but we still had four weeks’ worth to go.
11
Plum Pudding
Once lunch was out of the way and the coffee taken through, I began my big stocktaking session, throwing open all the kitchen cupboard doors, examining the contents of the huge fridge, the two freezers and the large larder.
It certainly needed reorganizing, for so many things were out of date and would need replacing. Maria had clearly tended to use whatever was nearest to hand, which was of course the most recently bought, but since the last live-in help had departed some time ago, she’d had to cope with everything single-handed, so I couldn’t really blame her.
Soon there was a steadily growing pile of things to throw out on one end of the long kitchen table and many ticks on my shopping list.
The big upright freezer was not too bad – Maria must use that the most – but the chest one was another matter and I removed several anonymous items from the bottom of it, along with some with dates from so long ago that they would have entirely lost both taste and texture.
‘I’ll sort all this lot out,’ Henry offered as I dumped anotherload of rejects on the kitchen table, then made to return to the larder.
He was polishing up a sturdy vintage tea trolley he’d found in one of the rooms off the passage, and the wood and brass now gleamed.
‘I just need to oil the wheels on this and it’s ready for action.’
‘I can’t imagine why Maria didn’t use it,’ I said. ‘Can you recycle the packaging from the stuff I’m throwing out and bin the rest?’
‘I’ll do that. According to the notice board, it’s refuse collection day on Fridays. It doesn’t say we have to take it up to the gate, so I assume they come down for it.’
‘I hope so – and thanks, Henry.’
‘No problemo,’ he said, squirting oil into the trolley wheels and then wiping them clean with a bit of kitchen towel. ‘The booze list won’t take so long.’
There were a lot of tins of expensive soup in the larder and one shelf looked like a minor branch of Fortnum and Mason, with enough tins and jars of preserves, pickles, jam, honey, fruit and pâté to keep the inhabitants of the Castle going for at least a year. I rearranged everything into correct date order – luckily none of these had run out – and made a memo to tell Mrs Powys she needn’t order any more, though I supposed she might buy her Christmas ham from them? I made another note about that, and also to ask about ordering the turkey.
I took my lists back to the kitchen to work on and found that Henry had already disposed of the discards and was about to go and see if the coast was clear in the sitting room so he could have a good look at the contents of the drinks cabinet in there.
He returned with a log basket full of jars and bottles.
‘I went through the drinks in the dining-room cupboard,too,’ he explained. ‘They were both so full of bottles of out-of-date and half-used liqueurs, and jars of things like olives, maraschino cherries and lemon slices that I had to fetch this basket to carry them all in! I don’t think anyone has drunk anything but sherry and whisky for years, other than a little wine with dinner, perhaps.’
He dumped the basket on the floor and vanished down to the wine cellar, to see what was there.
Xan wandered in, Plum at his heels, but I was absorbed in compiling my shopping lists and barely looked up.
‘Just going to make some coffee,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’
‘You won’t,’ I said absently, comparing Mrs Hill’s list of supplies with my own and amalgamating them into one long one, adding some ingredients for Christmas baking that I needed urgently, not all of which Mrs Hill seemed to have considered necessary …
When I looked up again, Xan had gone, but Henry had reappeared, cobwebs in his red-gold curls.
