Oysters for Supper

It all started with the wearing of my blue velvet rather than my green muslin. I had arranged my customary Saturday afternoon off and I intended to take a walk along the cliffs, hat in hand and my hair unpinned. Mr Wicks had sanctioned my excursion himself and Mrs Bester even went so far as to give me a parting benediction:

‘Trust you’ll have a fine afternoon. See you’re back at six sharp’.

I walked slowly, for I had the afternoon and I wanted the luxury of wasting time rather than having to eke out each minute carefully and stringently. The wind blew my hair and wrapped it around my mouth and eyes; I held my flapping bonnet tight in my hand while seagulls screamed and harped as they tossed and bounced over the white-laced sea.

As I entered Lymton, Hetty Marsh hailed me from outside the drapery.

‘Oo-ee, Mary’!

She bounced over, all glee and puff, her yellow curls bobbing either side of her eager, rosy face.

‘Mary, I’m that glad to see you. For you’ll never guess but I’m to accompany Mrs Vighe tomorrow night to the vicarage supper – you remember Mrs Vighe, the one with the powdered face and a small Pekinese under her arm. I should never have expected such attentions but Mrs Vighe’s girl brought the invitation this morning. Now then, I’ve just bought this piece of green velvet, what do you think’?

She paused to draw breath.

‘Can I make a passable dress with this piece of green what’s been meant for finer than a vicarage supper to be sure but is cheap due to the large flaw down the middle – dare say it were caused on the loom and whoever spun it probably had her wages docked. Anyways I think this could make a fine show, no frills admittedly, but a new dress…’

Hetty stopped to wrap the green velvet around her plump shoulders with a theatrical flourish such was her excitement at the prospect of attending the vicarage supper the next evening.

There she was, a middle-aged young girl, all clad in the green velvet with the long-flawed seam and chatting and extolling, yellow curls nodding, when I saw sideways, almost behind me, young Mr Tate who helps Doctor Plum in the apothecary. Mr Tate advanced towards us in a calculating manner, I know this for certain because I saw him attach his eye firmly on Hetty’s green velvet and as he did he adjusted his gait so as to make a line directly to us. Only, when he happened up close to us, he did so all surprised as if he had been about something else and it was all strange and sudden that he should come across Hetty in yellow curls and fresh green and me in my blue.

‘Ladies, good morning’.

He inclined his head to us; one small girl-like ear bent close enough for me to see its lining - a pale moist crust of orange glinting in the sunlight.

‘What a lovely morning, what charming weather’. Nodding in agreement with himself as if to validate his statement and stave off any discussion.

‘Yes, yes a fine morning’.

Hetty and I waited for his reason in addressing us. We both knew him but had no cause or inclination to make pleasant chatter with this particular young man. We looked up at him like two small quizzical birds, Hetty with barely contained impatience.

‘Well, well, must be getting on…’ he muttered.

I was just about to put his attentions down to a youthful burgeoning confidence that needs some material on which to hone and refine its social mores, when I caught sight of his right arm suddenly pitch a square white object into Hetty’s gaping reticule. Then he was gone and I scarce could believe what I had just seen. I searched Hetty’s face but one glance told me she had seen nothing.

‘Do you think I could edge the flaw with lace Mary? Would it be obvious d’you think’?

I composed my startled face.

‘I think it would be perfect Hetty dear’. I replied, my mind still questioning Mr Tate’s action.

‘Well if you’re really sure. Bless you my dear. I must be off for I’ve much arranging to do. Good bye Mary. I’ll tell you all about it next week’.
Hetty scuttled off, her yellow curls trailing behind her like the ears of a silky blond spaniel.

As I walked back to March Hall I pondered the actions of Mr Tate and puzzled, doubted, repeated the scene, puzzled and doubted all over again. I could not fathom the likely object nor a plausible reason why Mr Tate would be passing an object to Hetty when she was so obviously oblivious to its receipt. A clandestine involvement I instantly rejected. Mr Tate was a naïve young man of one and twenty years whilst Hetty had reached an age firmly past the likelihood of courtship or matrimony.

The following day being Sunday we all squashed into the old turnip wagon and jolted off to Morning Service. We were four in number for Lady March was a frugal housekeeper and besides Mrs Bester and Mr Wicks and myself there was only Agnes, the scullery maid. But the turnip wagon was very small owing to it having originally been a station jig which Lady March had purchased prudently years earlier when a hitherto fallow field had suddenly started to produce turnips.

Our vicar, Mr Craven, gripped the lectern with both his hands and cast his head further in our direction, propelled like a bobbing boat by his rising feet balancing first on his toes and then subsiding back onto his heels ready for another rise. He was a petite man dominated by a cloud of dark rich curls which framed his small vixen face. He had large doleful brown eyes which peered now over his spectacles while his fragile rosebud mouth worked hard to deliver his sermon. He had only been in the living for two months and had already provided rich material for discussion owing to there being no Mrs Craven. I regarded him and thought again how unlikely an example of male superiority he presented. It was not just his slender physique and his hesitant and affected delivery. He seemed altogether an insubstantial little man as if on turning him around one might find a set of buttons starting at his neck and ending at the base of his spine and on unbuttoning them, instead of skin, muscle, blood and bone, one would fine emptiness like an unused broom cupboard that smells of India-rubber and damp wood.

Mr Wicks and Mrs Bester were full of high spirits on the journey back to March Hall. Unusual, for they were both of dour disposition and both had taken a dislike of me ever since I had joined Lady March’s employ six months previous. Their dislike stemmed from our first meeting when I had declared my intention of one day becoming a writer! This disturbed them. Steadfast determination to step off the ladder of domestic service left them implacably resentful and distrustful.

A fine mist of rain glossed the hedgerows and caused small curlicues of hair to form around Mr Wick’s boney cheeks. He caught my eye and grinned:

‘’Ever tasted oysters Mary’?

‘No Mr Wicks’.

‘Hear that Mrs B? Reckon our Mary ought to have a taste this evening. What d’you think’?

‘If you say so Mr Wicks’, she chuckled as if she thought it adequate entertainment.

Agnes stared at me with an expectant expression as if Mr Wicks had suggested I be fed the soles of old boots.

That evening we gathered around the small pine table which occupied a screened off corner of the large kitchen. It was a very agreeable and cozy cranny thoughtfully provided by the erstwhile progressive forbears of Lady March. Mr Wicks carefully and expertly cracked open a large mushroom coloured oyster shell. The oyster sat quivering and cold. Agnes pulled up her chin and grimaced silently.

‘First goes to Mary’.

Mr Wicks leaned in to the table, his eyes shining. I looked down upon the rocking shell contemplating the alien delicacy, intrigued and hesitant. I glanced at Mr Wicks and he nodded encouragingly.

‘Tell her how to eat it Mr Wicks. She durnt know’, chivied Mrs Bester.

Mr Wicks let out a satisfied guffaw, picked up another shell, cracked it open, tipped the occupied half to his lips, threw back his head and swallowed the oyster. His large boney Adam’s apple registered the deed.
Three pairs of expectant eyes focused on me, Agnes with unmistakable pity. I picked up the half shell and, smelling nothing but the familiar fragrance of salt and seaweed, touched it to my bottom lip. Three bottoms raised off three seats, three mouths parted in mute replication of my own. I held them there, conscious of their tension for I have a brave disposition which rebels at any hint of intimidation. I tilted my head, the shell hovering but still anchored to my lip. I took a deep breath taking care to keep as nonchalant as possible. Then I quietly thrust the wet bivalve into my mouth where its warm heavy slipperiness threatened to destroy my calm exterior. I gulped and it was in my stomach! I brought my gaze back to theirs, with a quietness and insouciance I did not feel, as if to say, ‘Is that all? Why I didn’t even get to chew. What a fuss about nothing’.

Wicks and Bester kept their eyes on me, nettled, hoping for a delayed display of revulsion. Agnes looked a mixture of admiration and repugnance.

‘Thank you Mr Wicks. Nourishment and substance yes, but a complete absence of flavourful mastication renders me indifferent’.

Mrs B poured the tea; it was obvious there was to be no sport and she resigned herself to gorging.

I would eventually have forgotten Master Tate, Hetty and the small square object but I did dwell more that once on its strangeness till I began to consider that perhaps it was not so very strange. Perhaps objects pitched all around me into various other places invisible to me by their very regularity. Let me explain. I always wear my green muslin on my afternoons off and on Sundays too. My green is ubiquitous. My blue velvet has remained hanging in the shallow wooden wardrobe four flights above since I came to March Hall. But for some reason, some inner intuitive tug, I selected my blue to wear that Saturday I met Hetty. As I fingered its faded softness I knew I should wear it. Funny how it had hung there for the past six months so familiar it had become concealed from me by its very presence. My blue dress is like a child’s picture book, the blue the colour of a soft summer sky, its pale cream lace collar is both lambs and clouds whilst the pretty faded pink rose at the centre contains the essence of all heroes and heroines. Just like my blue dress, unnoticeable by its unremarkable existence until chance happened to cause my eye to alight upon it; so too the square object drifting inexorably but caught by my sudden consciousness. I had explained the inexplicable and resolved to puzzle it no longer.

However, the morning after the vicarage supper I rejected all the above suppositions. With the morning paper came the paper boy and with him came the news that Hetty Marsh had exposed herself to ridicule and mortification! She had stalked Mr Craven in the vicarage dining room just after the supper of chicken and giblet pie with all the trimmings. She had declared her most heartfelt reciprocation of the vicar’s emotions, her delight at finding love so unexpectedly and her desire to provide feminine sensibility at the vicar’s humble dwelling. All this took place at the supper table recently departed by the guests to the drawing room for cards and music. The vicar heard Hetty’s declarations while walking backwards around the oval table his hand sinking into a five eighths-eaten bowl of syllabub, the lemon paste trapping in his fingernails and gluing between his knuckles. No sooner had it left the syllabub than his hand sank into cold sago pudding then warm sticky date cake, before upsetting a white china cup containing still a little amber tea. The resulting clatter halted Hetty who stared at the vicar expectantly, her open mouth revealing her dry graying tongue. The vicar, seizing the lull in her assault, swiftly informed her that he was, firstly, at a loss to understand the origin of her belief that his emotions had in any way been directed towards her, secondly, that although he sympathized with her delight at finding love etc he was not the man to provide that delightful surprise and thirdly, as far as he was concerned, the vicarage had enough feminine sensibilities provided by the daily char and the piebald cat. By this time he had ushered poor Hetty into the hallway where he brusquely took leave of her and returned to the safety of the drawing room. Hetty, mortified and shaken found her way to the small parlour where she spent the remainder of the evening composing herself in order to face the evening home with Mrs Vighe and the Pekinese.

♥♥♥

In Hetty’s bedroom in the top drawer of her lonely little bureau, lying under an expertly darned chemise, lay the white object delivered by Mr Tate into Hetty’s reticule and found by her later that day:

My Dearest
You are the most feminine of creatures. You have captured my heart. I adore you. Allow me to hope you will consent to be mine. Only say you will be mine. declare your feelings as I have declared mine and make me the most joyful man in lymton.
Yours in Love
Cuthburt Craven

It was some time later that I discovered that Mr Tate had been instructed by Mr Wicks at Bester’s bidding to drop the folded missive into Miss Mary Hardwick’s reticule. Tate would be certain to find her for she would be in Lymton on Saturday afternoon and always wore her green dress. For this undertaking, in addition to the snuff Tate diverted from the apothecary’s shelf to Wick’s pocket, Wicks promised to divert Lady March’s snuff budget Tate’s way.