Free The Quivering Tree by S. T. Haymon Page B

table, my unbelieving eyes were dazzled by the sight of a large dish loaded with triangles of bread and butter sliced with a delicacy to bring tears to the eyes, plus half a currant cake already cut into pieces, which must mean it was expected all to be eaten. A glass bowl filled with a home-made strawberry jam full of the bumps of whole fruit, none of your shop mush, completed a tea that dreams were made of.
    Only, how much was my share? Obviously, tea had been laid out for the three of us. I tried to count the pieces of bread and butter, in order to ascertain how much I might take with a clear conscience, but the dish was so full that, for fear of breaking tender slices which might not be mine, I was forced to desist.
    Drooling at the chops, I waited a little in the hope that the housekeeper would come into the dining-room and issue me with my instructions. Nothing happened, and at last I could bear it no longer; went timidly into the kitchen where I found her adding a teapot to a tray already set with a slop basin, sugar bowl, milk and hot-water jug.
    Not so much as looking at me, Mrs Benyon said in the flat, glazed voice which went so well with her glazed eyes, her mottled-marble complexion: ‘Can’t be kept waiting a minute, can you? Regular little madam. Let me tell you, miss, whatever it may have been like where you come from, here we won’t all jump to your tune.’
    I countered, stammering the first excuse I could think of: ‘I – I thought I could save you the bother of bringing in the tray –’
    â€˜Very kind of you.’ The tone conveyed no kind of thanks. ‘But as it happens, I don’t encourage interlopers in my kitchen any more than I do black beetles.’ Saying which, she picked up the tray and, with a heavy tread that positively cried out for the Dead March in Saul as an accompaniment, bore it out of the room, abandoning me so definitively that, starving as I was, I could have wished I had the willpower to go upstairs to my bedroom and stay there and keep your rotten old tea.
    Not being made of the stuff of which martyrs and masochists were made, I followed the woman meekly back to the dining-room, stifled my impatience until she had set down the tray at the side of the incomparable feast. ‘Please,’ I whispered then, unable to stay quiet a moment longer, ‘could you please tell me how much is for me?’
    Mrs Benyon turned on me her frozen glance and observed icily: ‘It’s your stomach, not mine.’
    â€˜I mean –’ hunger emboldening me – ‘I don’t want to eat Miss Gosse’s or Miss Locke’s by mistake.’
    â€˜I should hope Miss Gosse and Miss Locke get their bread and butter and cake fresh cut.’ The housekeeper spoke as if I had insulted her. Yet, as her tidings of great joy sank in at last, I could, almost, have embraced her.
    â€˜You mean, it’s all for me? How kind you are!’
    â€˜Not kind at all,’ declared Mrs Benyon, still aggrieved. ‘So don’t you go thinking any such things. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s false pretences. And if there’s another thing I can’t stand and never have, it’s kids.’
    I protested, with that winsomeness of which I was half-proud, half-ashamed: ‘I won’t stay one for ever, you know.’
    The housekeeper turned away from the table; gave me a coldly appraising once-over. ‘Two years an’ a bit, Miss Gosse said. You’ll still be a kid when you get out of here. Either that, or –’ She broke off.
    â€˜Or what?’
    â€˜You go on like that at home?’ Mrs Benyon demanded without much interest. ‘No wonder they wanted to get rid of you.’
    â€˜They didn’t want anything of the sort!’ I cried, beyond either politeness or policy. ‘It’s what I chose to do! That is, I wanted to go and stay with Mrs Curwen, only Mrs Crail