Phoenix and Ashes Read Online Free PDF

I’m off! There’s heaps of better positions
in London going begging now!”
    By
then, even married men were being conscripted, and Mrs.Bennett’s son had
been killed, leaving a wife and two tiny children with a third baby on the way;
Mrs.Bennett turned in
her
notice to go and help care for them.
    The
result had been a sea change in how meals were dealt with in this household.
Alison could compel Eleanor to cook—but she couldn’t compel Eleanor
to cook
well
. And it appeared that no matter how great Alison’s
powers were, they weren’t enough to put the knowledge of an expert cook
into Eleanor’s mind, nor the skill of that cook into her hands. Eleanor
hadn’t done more than boil an egg and make toast in her life, and cooking
was an undisclosed mystery to her. So for one week, Eleanor labored her way
through the instructions in the cookery books, but the resulting meals were
anything but edible. After that week, Alison gave up; the White Swan had
supplied most of the components of luncheon and dinner to the household from
that time on, while Brown’s Bakery provided bread, crumpets, scones,
muffins, cake and pie for afternoon tea.
    The
rest of the help had followed when Alison proved disinclined to pay for their
meals from the pub as well as hers. Kent Adkins the gardener and Mary Chance
the other maid vanished without bothering to give notice.
    Eleanor
still wasn’t more than an adequate plain cook, and she took a certain
amount of grim satisfaction in the fact that no more dishes with fancy French
names graced Alison’s table unless they came ready-made out of a tin. She
could not bake much of anything—her bread never seemed to rise, and her
pie crust was always sodden. She
could
make ordinary soup, most eggy
things, toast, tea, and boil veg. She could make pancakes and fry most things
that required frying. Anything that took a lot of practice and preparation came
from the Swan or out of hampers from Harrods and Fortnum and Mason, things that
only required heating up before they were presented at table.
    There
was rationing now—sugar, according to complaints Eleanor overheard or saw
in the newspaper, was impossible to get, and the authorities were urging
meatless days. There were rumors in the newspapers that other things would soon
be rationed—but none of that touched this household
as
privation. However it happened, and Eleanor strongly suspected
black-marketeering, there were plenty of good things stocked away in the pantry
and the cellar, including enough sugar to see them through another two or three
years, and plenty of tinned and potted meats, jams and jellies, honey, tinned
cream, white flour, and other scarce commodities, enough to feed a much larger
household than this one. Not that Eleanor ever saw any of that on
her
plate. Rye and barley-bread was her lot, a great many potatoes roasted in the
ashes or boiled and served with nothing but salt and perhaps a bit of dripping,
and whatever was left over from the night before put into the ever-cooking
soup-pot, sugarless tea made with yesterday’s leaves, and a great deal of
sugarless porridge. In fact, the only time she tasted sweets now was when an
empty jam jar came her way, and she made a little syrup from the near-invisible
leavings to pour over her porridge or into her tea.
    She
glanced at the light coming in through the door; almost teatime. This, of
course, was Howse’s purview, not hers. There was a spirit-kettle in the
parlor; Howse would make the tea, lay out the fancy tinned biscuits, bread,
scones, crumpets, tea-cakes, butter and jam. If toast was wanted, Howse would
make it over the fire in the parlor. And then Howse would share in the bounty,
sitting down with her employers as if she were their equal. Thus had the war
affected even Alison, who, Eleanor suspected, had learned at least one lesson
and would have done more than merely sharing meals in order to avoid losing
this last servant. A lady’s maid was a necessity to someone like