An Excellent Wife by Charlotte Lamb

full of people, all sitting around an enormous table. James was horror-struck by meeting so many strangers all at once; in self-defence he bowed slightly, saying in a pompous voice, 'Good evening, how do you do? I'm James Ormond.'
    There was a general murmur in reply. 'Hallo,' some said. Others said, 'Good evening.' James looked hurriedly from face to face—was one of them his mother? But he did not recognise any of the old ladies who bobbed their heads and smiled. Lavinia was not one of them; he remembered her. She must have been the woman he had glimpsed in the kitchen, helping Patience.
    Emmy pulled him down onto a chair next to her just as Patience came into the room wheeling a trolley on which sat large green soup plates of pasta, which was now well mixed with the sauce he had seen cooking. Toby and some of the old ladies helped her put the plates in front of each person around the table.
    Patience stood behind her own chair. 'Whose turn is it to say grace? Emmy?'

    'Yes, me. Lord, thank you for our daily bread,' Emmy said at a gallop.
    Everyone else said, 'Amen.'
    'Help yourself to cheese and bread,' Patience told James briskly, putting a plate before him. The smell of the spaghetti was heavenly.
    He took a chunk of granary bread from the big wicker basket in the middle of the table, sprinkled some grated cheese over his pasta and picked up his fork and spoon. He often ate Italian food and deftly wound spirals of pasta onto his fork and lifted it to his mouth while Emmy watched him admiringly.
    'How d'you do that? Mine falls off all the time.'
    Everyone looked at James, who flushed under their eyes. 'Like this,' he said, showing Emmy how to separate some spaghetti, then twist her fork round and round. 'Now you try.'
    She slowly copied him, the tip of her pink tongue between her lips. Pink with success, she lifted the fork towards her mouth and the spaghetti flopped off again. Everyone laughed.
    'It's slippery stuff,' James quickly said as Emmy reddened, her mouth quivering. Like most small children, she was very sensitive to mockery; James couldn't bear to see her look like that.
    'Like pink worms,' Thomas added. 'Careful they don't wriggle off your plate, Em, and go down under your clothes.' He held up a long, drooping strand of spaghetti and waved it at his sister, who shrieked.
    'Stop that, Tom.' Patience leaned over and cut some of the little girl's spaghetti into short lengths. 'Use your spoon if you like, Em.'
    Emmy began to eat much faster, and for a few moments there was silence as people ate with bent heads.

    James loved every mouthful; even Enid did not make pasta better than this.
    Simple food needed to be perfectly cooked to work, and this was perfectly cooked pasta. Patience was a very good cook.
    'Wine?' asked Patience, offering James a large china jug.
    'Oh...er, thank you.' He looked a little suspiciously at the contents; it would be cheap stuff and no doubt more like vinegar than wine, but it was either that or the jugs of water or milk which the children were drinking.
    Patience poured wine into his glass; James very warily tried a mouthful, rolling it round his tongue before he risked swallowing. Well, it was rough but it wasn't sour; it had a country taste which matched the vegetables in the sauce. He took another mouthful; yes, it was really quite pleasant. He had once spent a month touring the Italian countryside, and this was the sort of table wine you were served in a remote Italian village in the summer. He had happy memories of sitting under a vine at some trattoria with a glass of this rough local wine and a plate of pasta served with a sauce of either tomato or pesto.
    He finished his meal with a sigh of completion. The empty plate was suddenly whisked away; the table was being cleared. Was the meal over? He looked sideways at Patience, who appeared to be able to read minds.
    'There's plums and custard now,' she said. 'Our own plums; I bottled them myself last autumn. They aren't very big