Chop-Chop the Cook

There was a damp, fresh breeze from the south and west as Lucy traveled from Downs Edge toward the railway station at Waycross. Henshawe's clerk Jenkins operated the steam-car while Lucy sat in back with her companion, the redoubtable Chop-Chop the cook, known to Edmund and Clarissa as 'Cook', to the upstairs help as 'Chop-Chop', and to her scullions and scrubmaids as 'Yes, Miss, yes.'

Lucy and her daughter Annie knew her given name was Carlotta.

It was fortunate that Augustus Henshawe's steam-car had a commodious rear seat, for Chop-Chop filled more than her proper share. With arms thicker than a man's legs, and a great round head on a stout body, she cut a formidable figure. For the train trip, she had put on her Sunday bonnet and apron, whose lace and frills were an incongruous match to the rest of her. She even sported a purse, although it found its home in her apron pocket as soon as they had entered the car.

Lucy would still laugh when she recalled betimes a story Chop-Chop had told her about how Edmund Netherwood had attempted to compel her to yield her virtue. "I just squeezed me honey-hole tight and pleaded that I was a true virgin and so help me there was nothing I could do. So what does he do but get the butter. Still he gets nowhere. Then he assails me bum-hole, and I tell you, that was a test, but I made him yield. Nasty bugger still plows me bum cheeks until he spills his tallow, but that was the last time he ever touched me."

Chop-Chop was the right person to help her set Old Netherwood to rights.

"So are you a true virgin?" Lucy had naïvely asked.

"Eh, no," Chop-Chop had said. "But I never met me true match. Lads is as a rule more trouble than fun."

Jenkins pulled up to the railway station on the brisk spring morning. "You have your ticket, Miss...?"

"Cook," Chop-Chop supplied.

"And Mistress Netherwood?" he asked. Lucy and Chop-Chop waved their tickets at him. Jenkins adjusted the car's boiler, forestalling the possibility of a loud release of steam from the safety valve, then hopped out and paid a porter to assist the ladies with their bags.

Chop-Chop insisted on keeping her box of kitchen knives with her. "Like gold, these are," she said.

The conductor showed them into a comfortable second-class compartment which they shared with a dozing gentleman in the seat opposite. Chop-Chop's box of knives rested on her lap.

It was an uneventful first several miles, and with the train's gentle rumbling and rocking, Lucy herself began to feel sleepy. She leaned her head on Carlotta's shoulder and closed her eyes.

The blast of the train whistle startled Lucy awake. She was leaning away from the centre of the seat. She opened her eyes to darkness. The rumble of the rails sounded with redoubled loudness. Second-class compartments were not lit in daytime, and they had just entered a tunnel.

Lucy passed her hand to her side. Emptiness. "Cook? Cook, where are you?" she called.