Free The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch Page A

to sophisticated cuisine for dinner-parties, references essential, salary to be negotiated, those without a Cordon Bleu need not apply …”
    I was so intrigued that I forgot the biscuits and polished my glasses to make sure I’d read the ad correctly. I myself lived in SW1, the eastern end which, apart from the little Georgian enclave around Smith Square, was hardly considered a choice area of the City of Westminster. But beyond the council estates of Page Street and the charity housing around Perkin’s Rents, beyond the market on Strutton Ground and the church at Rochester Row, lay Pimlico, where the yuppies now exercised their Porsches, and north of Pimlico lay the cream-and-white magnificence of Belgravia, the classiest part of SW1. A person who could afford to keep a live-in cook—not a cook-housekeeper but a cook—and imperiously demand a Cordon Bleu qualification (which meant the salary would be more than peanuts) wouldn’t be living in Perkin’s Rents and doing her shopping on Strutton Ground. Nor would she be renovating some tired terrace house in the Pimlico Grid and making shopping trips to Sainsbury’s, Nine Elms. She’d be living in Belgravia, possibly in one of the Eatons—Eaton Place, Eaton Terrace, maybe even Eaton Square—and doing her shopping in Harrods Food Hall.
    I decided I could take to life in Belgravia very happily, but did I have any hope at all of nailing such a glittering prize? Normally I would never have considered applying for anything so upmarket. Rich, beautiful people, I had always told myself, would never want to employ someone who couldn’t mirror their glamour. However … I paused to examine my pre-conceived ideas. Someone who advertised in a church magazine wasn’t going to be a run-of-the-mill rich bitch, and someone who advertised in the St. Benet’s magazine was possibly not going to be a bitch at all. Perhaps she too believed everyone had value, and besides … would Nicholas have mentioned the job to me if he’d felt I had no chance of getting it?
    A second later it dawned on me that he’d wanted me to apply—which in turn meant he’d seen no reason why I shouldn’t be successful. Perhaps he’d even seen me as ideally suited to work for this person—but no, I was getting carried away by my dream of living within a stone’s throw of Harrods’ Food Hall and I had to return to earth at once.
    By this time I was in such a state of nervous excitement that I hadto have yet another golden syrup biscuit. Almost immediately I paid the price for all my bingeing that day, and as soon as I’d finished vomiting I crawled upstairs, flopped on my bed and passed out in utter exhaustion.
    XII
    When
I awoke an hour later I knew I had to call the advertiser immediately before I started bingeing again out of sheer fright. Marching downstairs I grabbed the magazine, reached for the telephone and started dialling.
    The woman answered on the first ring. I pictured her reclining on a couch in a sumptuous drawing-room while sipping tea—Lapsang Souchong, perhaps—from a Crown Derby cup. Beyond the tall Georgian windows the trees of Eaton Square would be swaying in an exquisitely delicate breeze.
    “Hullo?” It was certainly an aristocratic voice, soprano and self-confident, and the manner proved to be aristocratic too, pleasant but steely, making me wonder if her charm was only skin-deep. A polite conversation ensued, effortlessly shaped by this formidable female. It was hard to guess how old she was. She could have been in her thirties but the effortless way in which she directed the interrogation made me suspect she was considerably older.
    “What’s your connection with St. Benet’s?” she demanded sharply after asking the essential questions about my qualifications.
    “The Rector conducted my aunt’s funeral today.”
    Of course she didn’t offer her condolences. What was Aunt to her? She didn’t know me, and the idea that she might make an effort to observe the