Chapter One, Episode 108 - Poetic Justice - Situationally Theirs

Review, Revision, Edit and Update
This Episode, in its first draft form, was written on my first day back in Saskatchewan as a resident. 

Any revisions I made were within each paragraph. Additions of detail, reordering some of the sentences and the inclusion of a wee piece of poetry.

Poetic Justice

Mary Elizabeth Saunders had emptied the pantry, cans of tomatoes, kidney beans, corn; jars of home preserves, boxes of rice and salt, empty jars awaiting garden produce and the odds and ends of a busy kitchen were spread out on the long table in the Beaufort estate kitchen. 

Elizabeth was better known to many as Cook - her staff position and well deserved title on the Estate. When she heard her two friends, Martha Haverstock, Housekeeper and James Edward Digby, Butler, making their honeymoon plans, she started to think about what she could get up to while they were away. 

While she washed down all the shelves in the pantry, she wrote a mental 'to-do' list. First she’d write a letter to her sister Lily in England, but that would only take up one or two hours of one day. After that she supposed she would clean out her storage room that she’d been putting off for far too long. Elizabeth, swept the pantry floor, picking up the bits and pieces of dust and crumbs with her dust pan. Then, she would ask Samuel, the yardman and her good friend, to help her with anything heavy, up too high or needing to be tossed out. He had told her he’d always be available to take things out to the city landfill for her. Even though that would be a big job, she would still be left with time on her hands. 

~~~~~

Posting the letter to Lily, was just a short walk to a Canada Post mail post. Samuel had come over to help her clean out the storage room and reorganize it. Grateful for his help, she made him a good lunch along with hers. He ate up his lunch quickly and thought he'd best get his truck out of the driveway. “You never know, Elizabeth. If that old truck sits still too long, there may be some talk.” After he was gone, Elizabeth smiled a small smile. She didn't have that many neighbours, and if they had any notions, she supposed they had a right even if they were wrong.

The heavy work done and her little house quiet, Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. With a good strong mug of tea and the book of poetry from local poets, Martha's birthday gift to her, she went outside. She missed having a large porch, but kept an old brown wicker chair tucked beside her front door for the rare occasions when she had a sit down. Sometimes it was only to rest easy when coming home from a particularly busy work day. But on this afternoon, she had promised herself a little holiday, if you could even call it that. Her tea got cold and the book never left her lap. At first it was just nice to sit quietly, but Elizabeth never had been one to sit still for long. Energy that she couldn’t ignore stirred inside her. She drank up half of the cold tea and, with the other half, watered her geraniums. Red ones and white ones that blossomed profusely. She opened the book of poetry that Martha had given her, and glanced at the first page. 

Summer Savoury

Crumbles and peachy sweetness, 

Summer ripeness to savour - 

A delicious recall.

by Amber Peters

Elizabeth was pleased. The author was one of the clerks at her favourite grocery store. Few people knew or even suspected that Mary Elizabeth liked poetry. Most people just thought she would only ever think of food, but she was really quite the romantic and she liked the turn of phrases that poets used. Like the flowers and scroll work on a cake, or the way a meal was plated and presented with elegance - it was all poetry. No one knew that when she peeled a pear or sliced an onion that she would see the beauty and elegance of these humble foods. Before taking her book in the house to put it away on the shelf, she glanced through the pages, intrigued by the words penned various people she knew. In the house, she began to slip it between two other books of poetry. She pulled it back and took it to her bedside table to read at bedtime.

Still restless, she slipped on her sweater, and grabbed an umbrella against the greying skies, setting off for a walk with no intended destination. Soon she found herself at the back door of the Estate, unlocking the door and stepping inside the mudroom. It had been like a magnet had pulled her to her work place, and she hadn’t even felt it. Humming tunelessly, she went into the kitchen, put her sweater, purse and umbrella away. The silence of the big old house stopped her. “Well, it’s just you and me now. It’s been a long time since we had this old house to ourselves, hasn’t it, Sarah? I’ve always felt you at my side when I cook, especially the sweets. If I’m going to keep making these sweets, I need you to help me or get out of my way.” No one had ever talked to Sarah that way, all of them just a little afraid of ghosts. Not Elizabeth. In England when she was a young girl, she had seen many ghosts, some of them scarier than others. This little ghost - Sarah was her name - did get cranky from time to time, but never with Elizabeth. Sarah knew that Elizabeth could and would banish her from the kitchen. For anyone peering into the kitchen, they would only see Elizabeth, walking back and forth from pantry to sink to table. They may think ‘the old woman is only talking to herself’ when really Elizabeth was chatting with her little friend Sarah. 

“Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing 

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass 

the world is too full to talk about.”

~ Rumi

**Author’s note on August 13, 2020: It's good to be back and I've missed your good comments and enthusiasm, dear readers. My story of Dez and Emelina continues with all of their characters - Dez Eliot, her sister Emelina Beaufort, James Edward Digby,  Martha  Haverstock, Brigitte Smithson, Samuel Forrester, yardman and jack-of-all trades, Sarah, the Estate ghost, and a cast of several other characters. Situationally Theirs began on March 25, 2020 in the early days of the Covid19 pandemic. With the beautiful help of my readers, it has been my way of living inside of restrictions, vulnerability and uncertainty. This little hiatus has been to move my life onto another chapter and to continue Situationally Theirs.