Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Christabel came in, perspiring and flustered, and said, ‘Cookie, how long should we rest the goose?’

‘About half an hour, miss.’

‘Oh dear, I fear that supper will be frightfully late,’ said Christabel, hurrying out.

‘Would you like me to come and look, miss?’ called Cookie after her, in vain.

‘I wonder if it will snow,’ said Mr McCosh, like the good Scot that he was, who knows only to talk of the weather when no other topic is at hand.

At this point Millicent burst into tears, not merely because she had thought she might spend all her Christmases with Hutchinson, but because an unexpected catastrophe had descended on her family out of the blue, and she was unable to restrain her despair any further.

‘Millicent, what is it?’ asked Mr McCosh, who had been standing by the fireplace with his left arm on the mantelpiece and a substantial glass of neat whisky in his left hand.

‘What’s up, dear?’ asked Cookie, glad to have something to deal with.

Millicent sobbed into her hands. ‘We lost everything,’ she cried at last. ‘We got nothing left!’

‘Nothing left? What on earth do you mean, girl? Lost everything? Farrow’s? Do you mean Farrow’s?’

‘Yes, sir, it’s them lot. They’ve gone and taken everything, and we won’t never get it back. How are we going to manage? Every last penny, and now we’ve got nothing! All our savings! Gone!’

‘Oh good Lord,’ exclaimed Mr McCosh. ‘If I’d known you’d put all your savings into Farrow’s, I would have advised you against it. I know Farrow and Crotch, nice enough fellows, and very plausible, but their interest rates were quite mad. I wasn’t at all surprised when they crashed.’

‘Oh, you poor thing, you should have kept it all under the bed, like sensible folks,’ said Cookie.

‘Now we know where you keep yours,’ observed Fairhead. ‘You’ll have to put it somewhere else.’

‘How much have you lost?’ asked Mr McCosh.

‘About two hundred pounds, sir. It was everything that me and Mother saved up for years and years, sir.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Mr McCosh. ‘I suppose you know that the government has refused to bail them out? There’s no compensation?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ve seen the people outside the branches. The weeping and wailing. It’s most distressing. I don’t know if you know Mr Hughes at the toy shop in Eltham? He told me he couldn’t pay for his Christmas stock, so I lent him the money at 2 per cent for three months. The least I could do. Damned bankers! They’re the scum of the earth. I can’t tell you how much trouble they’ve caused me and how many opportunities I’ve lost because of damn bankers. They only lend to you when they know perfectly well that you don’t need it. Damned bankers. Curse the lot of them.’

Millicent sobbed into her handkerchief, and Mr McCosh said again, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ sniffled Millicent.

‘Thank God I took my money out of Farrow’s to buy a motorcycle,’ said Daniel. ‘At least I have something to show for it.’

‘I withdraw my remark about the madness of buying it,’ said Fairhead.

‘Ah, but do you apologise?’

‘My dear fellow, that would be to go too far. You will undoubtedly come to grief on it one of these days. Should hospitals ever require spare parts, it will be to motorcyclists that they will turn.’

‘In future you should put any spare money into Martin’s Bank,’ said Mr McCosh to no one in particular. ‘They are very solid, very solid. There’s a branch in Eltham. Let us propose toasts, as usual. Millicent, to whom would you like to propose a toast?’

‘Um, my poor old mother, I think, sir.’

‘Well, here’s to Millicent’s poor old mother!’ exclaimed Mr McCosh, raising his glass. ‘God bless her!’

Gaskell said, ‘I propose a toast to Oxford University!’

‘My dear lassie, why?’

‘Because on the 14th of October they gave out degrees to women for the very first time.’

‘Ah, the monstrous regiment of women gains apace! Here’s to Oxford University!’

‘And a curse on Cambridge for not,’ added Gaskell.

‘A curse on Cambridge!’ toasted Mr McCosh. ‘What about you, Cookie?’

‘I’m toastin’ Charles Elmé Francatelli, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘Charles Elmé Francatelli, sir.’

‘Gracious me, Cookie. Who’s he? Sounds like a wop.’

‘Wrote my favourite cookbook, sir. A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes . That’s what it’s called. It’s a godsend, sir.’

‘For the working classes, Cookie? When do you get a chance to use that?’

‘All the time, sir. Wouldn’t have got through the war without it. You know that giblet pie you like, sir, and that toad-in-the-hole and them Norfolk dumplings and that rabbit pudding? Them’s all from that book, sir.’

‘Good God, are they? You’ve been cooking for us from a book for the working classes? Well, I’m damned. Socialism comes to Court Road! Gracious me.’

‘Don’t tell the mistress, will you, sir? But he was a cook to Queen Victoria, sir, and I do use the posh book he wrote too.’

‘I certainly won’t. She would have a thousand fits. And kittens. But she would certainly be swayed by his having been a royal cook.’

‘I do use Countess Morphy’s book ’n’ all, sir.’

‘Cookie, you’re a dark horse,’ said Fairhead.

‘Oh well, here’s to what’s-his-name the gastronomical wop that got us through the war!’ Mr McCosh drank, and the company followed suit.

‘I propose a toast to Dame Nellie Melba,’ said Fairhead, ‘the most wondrous warbler of them all.’

‘And I to the monstrous regiment of women,’ said Mr McCosh, ‘and in particular to Cookie and Millicent, without whom we would all grind to an ignominious halt.’

‘Dame Nellie Melba and the monstrous regiment of women and Cookie and Millicent!’

At that moment Mrs McCosh entered, having woken from a nightmare and been drawn down by the pleasant aroma of cooked food. ‘Ah,’ she said as all the menfolk stood, ‘drinking the usual toasts, I see. I hope you have not forgotten Their Majesties.’

‘We drink the loyal toast after our own Christmas dinner, my dear, as you know.’

‘In that case let’s drink to King Constantine of the Hellenes.’

‘But why, my dear?’

‘He’s just been restored. One has to stand up for the principal of royalty, my dear, otherwise the whole world falls apart, as we know.’

‘I’d quite like to be restored,’ said Daniel, resisting the temptation to ask her whether her support of the principle of royalty extended to the Kaiser and the Emperor of Austria. ‘I’m exhausted after that drive from Partridge Green. I don’t think I have ever been so wet or so cold, not even at fifteen thousand feet. It would have taken minutes in a Snipe.’

Mrs McCosh glared at him, and then, as if having read Daniel’s thoughts, Gaskell said, in her languid, rather decadent drawl, ‘Well, here’s to the Dutch handing over the Kaiser, so we can string him up.’

‘I feel sorry for the Kaiser,’ said Fairhead.

‘What?’ cried Daniel. ‘Are you mad?’

‘Oh, very probably. What I mean is that he seems to have wanted an empire in Europe, when the rest of us have already got one elsewhere. There wasn’t anywhere else to get one, really. And now everybody is going to hate and despise him forever, including his own relatives. He must be hiding in Holland, blushing with shame and embarrassment. He must be in Hell, actually, when you consider how omnipotent he was before. He’s been well and truly cast out of Paradise, I’d say.’

‘The man was a complete and utter fool,’ said Gaskell shortly. ‘Did he really think he could invade neutral countries and go to war with our Allies, and get away with it?’