“And you’ll call me Stella,” said Miss Adderton with a nod. “It’s much better than being ‘Cook.’ ”
“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look far too young to be a cook,” Beth ventured.
Stella sighed and began unpacking grit-covered leeks from one of the wooden crates. “I grew up in Highbury and was the most senior kitchen maid before the war started. One by one, all of the other girls left to join up. I went, too. I wanted to be a WAAF because I think flying around the world would be grand.”
“What happened?” Beth asked.
“I was deemed medically not fit for service—asthma, just like Master Robin—so that dream died.” Stella offered her a half smile. “Anyway, it all worked out because now my nephew, Bobby, is staying with me.”
“Do you like working at Highbury House?” Beth asked.
“I like the money from my wages. I like that I can have a dash of milk from time to time that others might not have. And on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I put on a uniform and work for the Civil Defense unit and feel as though I’ve done something in this war. But no, I don’t think I like working at Highbury House at all.”
“Why don’t you leave?” asked Beth.
Stella smiled. “One day I will.”
“It sounds as though you have a plan.”
“I take correspondence courses. I can do shorthand and take dictation. I’m working on typing now, but I don’t have a typewriter, so I have to use a chart and pretend.”
“Will you go to London?” Beth asked.
“To start,” said Stella. “Then wherever I can go. I collect postcards and photographs of all of the places I want to go someday.”
“Where is first on your list?” Beth asked, fascinated.
“Tahiti. There is an island called Moorea. I’d like to go there.” Stella’s face fell. “It’s more complicated now that I’ve got Bobby, of course.”
The cook looked so sad Beth rushed to change the subject.
“And what of Mrs. Symonds?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“Mr. Penworthy spoke very highly of her.”
Stella snorted, glanced over her shoulder at the door, and then dropped her voice. “She’s very grand. When the government requisitioned this house right after her husband died and the hospital moved itself in, Madam tried her very best to go on as though nothing had changed. She still entertains. Still dresses for dinner, even on nights where it’s just her in her morning room because the hospital put beds in the formal dining room. She spends time with the soldiers, I’ll give her that, but more often than not she’s in the garden.”
“The garden must be beautiful,” said Beth.
Stella shrugged. “If you enjoy gardens. You can see them on your way out if you like.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said.
“No one will know, if you’re worried about that. Mrs. Symonds went up to London this morning to take care of some business, and the patients will pay you no mind. You can just let yourself through the side gate from the kitchen garden.”
“Well, maybe, if you’re sure it’d be all right,” Beth said.
“I will say one thing for Mrs. Symonds,” said Stella. “She loves her son. Master Robin is a sweet, handsome boy, although he doesn’t have the size of his father. He was sickly when he was very young, but maybe he’ll grow into himself one day.” Stella put her palms on the worktop. “Well, this seems to be all in order. You’ll have to thank Mr. Penworthy for giving us cauliflower. We haven’t seen that since last year.”
“He asked me to tell you that more will be coming. We’ve only just taken up the first heads.”
Stella nodded and then stooped to scribble a few things on a scrap of paper. “This will do for next week.”
Beth reached for the paper, but Stella grabbed her hand and flipped it over, exposing one of the cracks in her skin that had been nagging at Beth for the last few days.
“That has to hurt,” said Stella.
“It mostly stopped stinging yesterday. Now it’s only uncomfortable when I hold a pencil,” Beth admitted.
“Writing letters?” Stella asked.
Fewer than I should. She was managing just one to Colin’s three.
“I sketch, too,” Beth said. “Just for fun.”
“Well, we can’t have chapped hands keeping you from that. Wait one moment.”
Beth sat obediently in front of her empty mug until Stella came back with a small package wrapped in clean cloth. “Here. This will help.”
“What is it?” Beth asked, unwrapping a corner to expose a hard ball of creamy wax.
“Beeswax and olive oil heated up and then cooled together. If you rub it on your hands whenever you wash and dry them, it will help,” said Stella.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely.
Stella waved it away. “It’s an old trick you learn when you first start working in a kitchen. A few days of plunging your hands in and out of hot water, and you’ll want to cry. If you come again next week, you can tell me if it helped.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Beth.
She said her goodbyes to the cook and let herself out the kitchen door. She fully intended to climb up into her cart and head off again, but the gate to the kitchen garden caught her eye. After a moment’s hesitation, she loaded the empty crates she’d taken from Stella into the back of the cart and let herself through the gate into the kitchen garden.
An iron gate that must have been overlooked in the scrap collection connected the kitchen garden to a yew hedge. Beth opened it, wincing at the squeak, and glanced around. No one in sight. She scurried down the column of yew and found herself in a circular garden with a statue of a winged god in the middle. Though it was barren now, she could tell that in the spring it must be lush.
She found a gap in the overgrown hedge and followed it to another garden, and then another. She itched for a watercolor palette and some thick paper, but a bit of pencil would have been enough to commit the space to memory. She could see why Mrs. Symonds would want to spend time here. In these garden rooms, one could find something close to peace in a time when none was to be had.
Beth rounded a corner—this one constructed from brick—and found herself staring at another gate. If the garden rooms she’d just walked through were still dormant with the winter season, this one was audaciously alive, awash in greens and silvers and reds.
Glancing over each shoulder, she tried the gate. Locked. She stood there, her hands wrapped around the bars, wishing that she could enter. To see life springing forth so vigorously in the first weeks of March felt almost… obscene.
She was about to leave when something caught her eye under a bush just to the right of the gate. She crouched down and snaked her hand through the bars, just managing to grasp it—a toy train, the paint slightly chipped but otherwise in good nick. Tilting her head, she could see other toys stored under the same bush. A smile touched her lips. This must be Mrs. Symonds’s son’s playground.
Voices drifted to her from somewhere nearby. Quickly Beth replaced the train and hurried out of the garden the way she’d come, shutting the gate quietly behind her.