The Hotel Riviera(57)
STEAK AND KIDNEY PUD IN OXFORDSHIRE.
“We’ll have a bit of that for our supper,” Miss Nightingale said, climbing stiffly out of the car. “It’s good to be home.” She lifted her face happily to the soft, cold rain. “And my Little Nell will be waiting for me.”
“That she is, Miss Nightingale,” Fred said, holding open the car door for me. “And welcome to Blakelys, Ms. March.”
The “saloon” bar was low ceilinged with ancient black beams and lath-and-plaster walls, crisscrossed with more beams. A fire burned in the huge stone grate and a couple of old codgers in cords and tweed jackets and flat tweed caps sat in front of it, quaffing pint mugs of dark brown ale. They glanced our way, lifting their caps as they recognized Miss N, saying, good to see you home again, ma’am.
Little Nell, the Yorkie of the lusty yelps, had already bounced up into Miss N’s arms and was busy licking her face. A stately blond woman emerged from behind the bar, a smile of welcome on her face. “Well, there you are at last, Miss Nightingale,” she said. “It’s lovely to see you again.”
“And you too, Mary,” Miss N replied, returning Mrs. Wormesly’s embrace. “And thank you for taking such good care of my Little Nell. Though you’ve spoiled her rotten of course, as you always do. Just look at her, she’s quite the little porker.”
Mary Wormesly laughed and tickled Little Nell under the chin. “She’s a right one for the beer, Miss Nightingale, better get her home and sobered up. But how about something to eat first? You must be starving after that journey.”
Miss N introduced me and said we would love two steak-and-kidneys, please, and two lager and limes, nice and cold if she had it.
We made ourselves comfortable in a high-backed pine settle with red velvet cushions that looked as though it might once have been in a church. Little Nell was tucked between us. Miss N made the formal introductions and told the terrier she had better behave and make me welcome or she was for it. Little Nell gave my hand an exploratory sniff, then a lick, then sat back smiling at me. And yes, dogs do smile, you know that.
“This is so nice,” I said, sipping my cold lager and lime, relaxing as the logs crackled in the hearth and the old boys settled into a game of dominoes.
“It’s early yet though,” Miss N said. “It’ll fill up later, especially on a night like this.”
A night like this, I thought, with a little shiver of apprehension. A gray, cold, rainy night, so far away from “home” and from the sunshine. And from Patrick. But I pushed away those thoughts and tackled my steak-and-kidney pie, hot and aromatic with a thick gravy and a buttery crust. It was very good, even to my critical chef’s taste buds.
“Exactly what we needed,” Miss Nightingale said, feeding a bit of gravy-soaked crust to Little Nell, who for a miniature Yorkshire terrier was certainly looking a bit “porky.” “I know it’s wrong,” she admitted, “but Nell’s been ruined here, and I don’t want to look like the ogre all at once. I’ll have to wean her off all this and back onto dog food—and no beer. It all takes time, it does every year,” she added with a mischievous grin. “I believe Little Nell looks forward to her vacation at Blakelys Arms as much as I look forward to mine at the Hotel Riviera.”
Our stomachs full, warm and tired, it was time to go. Miss N collected Little Nell, we said our good-nights, then Fred drove us back through the village, to Miss N’s cottage. Across the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go, I thought, smiling.
Gardener’s Cottage was typically Cotswolds, built of the local golden stone with sloping roof lines, set in a riotous cottage garden surrounded by a low dry-stone wall. Dormer windows peeked from under the eaves, and on the ground floor were diamond-paned arched windows. The door was planked wood with massive iron hinges, and the last of the yellow roses draped the lean-to garage. With the sweep of treed hillside in back of it, and the little brook we had forded earlier bubbling in front of it, it was the perfect calendar cottage.
“It’s just a hodgepodge, really,” Miss Nightingale explained as she unlocked the front door and ushered me inside. “Part Elizabethan, part Gothic Victorian, and anything in between.”
I found myself in a small, beamed sitting room, crammed with tables of knickknacks: silver polo trophies and sepia photos of rather grand-looking people in tweeds holding shotguns, standing on the steps of the manor house, with an array of slaughtered pheasant displayed at their feet. Dozens more photos in lovely old silver frames; a Chinese tea service of exquisite design and fragility arranged in a beautiful antique glass-fronted cabinet; a square of scarlet silk embroidered with dragons framed in ebony, and oil paintings of horses and dogs on the walls. There were two deep sofas in rose-patterned chintz arranged in front of the stone fireplace. Some kind person, probably Mary Wormesly, had lit the kindling, so there was a bright fire crackling in the grate to greet us. An Oriental rug in reds and blues warmed the wide-planked dark wood floor, which Miss N told me was chestnut.
Books were everywhere, books, books, and more books, crammed into the built-in shelves, in piles on the floor, tumbling from chairs, propping up lamps.
“My little library,” Miss N said, taking modest credit for the accumulation of a lifetime of reading. “I do like a good book on a long winter’s night.”