Page 151 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘We have guests coming to dinner today,’ Mrs Webster said at servants’ breakfast. ‘Friends of his lordship, a Mr and Mrs Talbot Arthur, and they’ll be staying the night. We’ll put them in the Jade Room – Rose, see it’s prepared, please. Do what you can about flowers.’

‘Yes, Mrs Webster.’

‘And they won’t be bringing servants with them. So will you look after Mr Arthur, Mr Crooks?’

‘Certainly, Mrs Webster. It will be my pleasure.’

‘And, Rose – you’ll maid Mrs Arthur?’

‘Yes, Mrs Webster.’

‘They’re on their way to Egypt,’ Speen commented, ‘where they’ll live in a tent and eat God knows what – beetles, probably, and scorpions – so they won’t need much looking after. A real bed instead of a blanket on the ground will be luxury to them.’

‘It’s not for you – or any of us – to pass comment on guests in this house – and close friends of his lordship into the bargain,’ Moss said sternly.

‘If anyone thinks any guest in this house is to be treated with less than full attention, they’d better tell me so now,’ said Mrs Webster. There was a dutiful silence.

Then Ada remarked to Ellen, ‘I shouldn’t like to live in a tent. All grass and insects and such. I went on a picnic once, and a caterpillar fell down my neck.’

Moss heard her – he was always sensitive to her voice. ‘A tent may be humble, Ada, or it may be very grand indeed,’ he pronounced. ‘When King Henry the Eighth met the King of France, all the tents were made of cloth-of-gold. When a tent is so rich and sumptuous, it is often called a pavilion. And Queen Cleopatra, the Bard tells us, lay in a pavilion of tissue of cloth-of-gold. “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water.”’

Cleopatra again! Mrs Webster thought, with a silent roll of the eyes. ‘Never mind tents—’ she began.

But Speen had picked it up and spoke over her. ‘Burned, did it, Mr Moss?’ he said innocently. ‘I expect someone’d knocked over a lamp – like Mr Hook did the other day. Awful mess, wasn’t there, Mr Hook? And flaming oil is a real danger, especially on those old wooden boats – they’d go up like tinder. I suppose she had to jump into the water, this queen?’

Moss drew breath to correct some of the many misapprehensions, then thought better of it, and said instead to Mrs Webster, ‘A good dinner, I presume, will be ordered?’

‘I spoke to Mrs Terry about it yesterday,’ said Mrs Webster. Now that Ida was properly the cook, she was called by her surname, and was ‘Mrs’ by custom. ‘Caviar, julienne soup, cold salmon, pigeons, saddle of mutton, plum tart, and anchovy savoury and cream cheese.’

‘Excellent,’ said Moss. ‘They should carry away a good impression of Ashmore Castle.’

Hook was furious that Speen had referred to his lamp mishap, especially in front of the lower servants. He was seething as he strode along Piccadilly, and bumped hard into William, coming out of the boot-room and moving with a particularly under-water sort of languor, like weed swaying in a gentle current. ‘Watch where you’re going, can’t you?’ he snapped.

William didn’t even react, only stared at him, and then said, ‘Sorry,’ as if his mind was far away.

Hook knew that look. ‘Mooning about your girl-friend, are you? I don’t know how you can be so daft as to be taken in by a female like that.’

William was jerked from his reverie. ‘Don’t you say anything about Tabby,’ he said. ‘She’s the woman I love.’

‘Huh! You and every other man in the county!’ said Hook.

William didn’t get the jibe. ‘She’s always been popular, and why not, so beautiful as she is? I’m lucky it’s me she wants to marry, when she could have anyone.’

‘Gawd! You get softer in the head every day! Have anyone? She’s already had everyone!’

‘What are you talking about?’ William began to burn slowly, sensing at last that Hook was being insulting.

‘She’s only marrying you ’cause she’s got a bun in the oven. And you fell for it.’

‘I’m standing by her, as any decent chap would,’ William said, reddening.

‘It’s not your bun, you dullard! Can’t you count?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘When’s the baby coming?’