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Pioneering in Poverty Bay (N.Z.)

XXI — Of Cooks

page 151

XXI
Of Cooks

The Candidate
Say, did your old boss beam, man,
  The sourest guest look pleasant,
Called they a come-true dream, man,
  Your kumara1and pheasant?

Can you from nothing fake, man,
  Victuals for half a troop?
And can you really make, man,
  Proper pukeko2soup?

And can you cook wild pork, man,
  Well—à la kopa Maori3?
And is it common talk, man,
  That all your spuds come floury?

And does the welkin ring, man,
   Yet louder still and louder,
When they your praises sing, man,
   Anent your oyster chowder?

No? But your chance ain't dead, man,
    You still can come out top.
Oh, can you bake good bread, man,
    And can you grill a chop?

In New Zealand, where the material for good food is abundant, where there is excellent meat and butter, and a good climate and page 152soil for vegetables, there is, alas, hardly a soul who can cook. Waking at seven in the morning in the country, in a wooden house where everything is audible, you will be aware of a loud sizzling. It is the great panful of excellent mutton chops, frying In plenty of fat. In half an hour the noise ceases, and you know that those chops will have been put in the oven to harden, while the billy is boiled. At eight, you breakfast off something that looks and tastes like rather greasy boot soles. Cooking chops is easier that way, and as few English know good victuals from bad, I suppose it does not matter much, but if a French housewife offered such food to her men, I shudder to think of what would happen. I remember a déjeuner with carters and pedlars in the Dordogne—but I digress—to your chops, O Israel.

The general standard of cooking being so low, it is not to be expected that the man who prepares the food on a station or in a camp will be an accomplished chef. He may be an old soldier, he may have been a sailorman, a drunken schoolmaster, a stoker, a tinker, or a tailor, he may have been of almost any trade in the wide world, but he will never have been a cook. And as it is rather a thankless, irritating job, this serving page 153everybody at all hours of the day and night, the "Doctor," as he is called, unless of a naturally imperturbable good temper, is apt to become soured and cranky to the last degree.

My good neighbour, Hood, came to the conclusion, from long experience, that all station cooks were mad, and, when short of one, even applied to an asylum. For, said he, I shall in that way get to know in what particular way he is likely to break out, and shall be able, in that direction at least, to be on my guard.

One howling wet day, when no work could be done, and the shepherds were taking their time over breakfast, the crusty old cook, hot with indignation, shambled up to the owner's wharé with a big slice of bread. "D'yer see anything wrong with this, Mr. 'Ood?" Mr. 'Ood did not. "Well, if you'll believe me, sir," said the old man, gaspine with insulted wrath, "the men are toastin' it, toastin' it, sir."

They are not all fools, though. A runholder I knew, on hearing complaints from some of the men, went down to interview his cook.

"Well, Sam," he said, "what's this I hear about the bread?"

"True, sir, all perfectly true; but I'm page 154blowed if I know the reason of it, anyway. It's a fair puzzle to me." Then reaching aside into the bread bin, he fetched out a small bun, and holding it forth on the palm of his outstretched hand, he said in slow, sad astonishment, "You'd hardly believe it, sir, but that there little b——r weighs fifteen pounds".

My friend crumpled up and retreated.

It's nearly always the bread. A good loaf will cover a multitude of sins, but the baking of it, in camp, is none too easy. Not only have you, in the first place, to make your own yeast out of potatoes and hops, but the kneaded dough must be kept warm till it rises, which, in a draughty shack or tent, is not always a simple matter. (Even in a house it needs care; I remember my good mother's horror in finding it, on one occasion, well tucked up in the old woman-cook's warm bed.) Then there is the camp oven, a circular cast-iron affair with three rudimentary legs and a convex lid, also of castiron. When partly filled with dough, this oven is stood on a bed of incandescent wood cinders, and more are shovelled on top of the lid. The renewal of these cinders above and below in exactly the right amounts, and for the correct time, needs, as I know to my sorrow, a lot of practice. One big loaf page 155that I was responsible for in the early days was too solid for even our ravenous appetites, and was cast out. It withstood the weather and the attacks of wild animals for months, and was in the end, at least so I was told, carried off by the Maoris to use as a grindstone.

My station cook having relinquished his job, there appeared next day an active, cheery little man who had walked up fourteen muddy miles from the coast to replace him. (Plate XVIIIb.) Inquiries as to his competency were met with an affable but slightly pained surprise, and we were smilingly given to understand that cross-questioning was entirely unnecessary—that he had come up to take the job. And take the job he did, forthwith, and kept it for the rest of his life.

Brought up in a training ship, he had been a ship's steward, and had then taken up hotel and other work ashore. One night, when head waiter in a small town, the landlord consulted him about a dubious cheque, paid by a guest who was to catch the early express in the morning. "You leave it to me," said Lloyd. That night the hotel clock stopped for an hour, and when, in the morning, the whistle of the departing express synchronised with the doubted one's shaving, profuse apologies were forthcoming, page 156but there was, very regrettably, no other train till after the bank opened.

This early training and varied experience had made Lloyd an uncommonly useful man; always happy, never idle for a moment, smart and absolutely reliable, with a very proper pride in doing well anything he undertook, he was indeed a treasure. By no means devoid of humour, he had a seaman's even-toned behind-your-hand way of speaking, that would sometimes, somehow, make a quite ordinary remark a thing of Pyecroftian delight. He was soon turned into a keen gardener, and he fell in love with my dog, Skobby, at first sight, but the crown of all his virtues was the fact that he could, and would grill chops—that he could, in fact, really cook.

All went well for a year or two, when I engaged a rather tactless head shepherd, too much inclined, in my absence, to lord it over Lloyd, so that relations between the two became uneasy, and then distinctly strained. The climax was reached when a valuable ram, having, through the carelessness of the shepherd, been left in the killing paddock, was innocently reduced to mutton by the cook. Lloyd reluctantly proposed to go.

Now, anyone with a genius for happiness is of high value if he do but sit down and page 157radiate it, but when that man can and will cook into the bargain, he has to be retained at any cost. But how was it to be done? An idea dawned. Could he manage to hang on here till I built a house elsewhere? He quite enthusiastically could, and when later he moved away with me, and became my cook, butler, gardener, washerman, and general odd jobber, how my neighbour' wives all envied me him, and how they hated my remarks as to womenkind being quite unnecessary in a house! Why, even now our happy ménage comes in very useful, on occasion, to hold up before the present Management.

Things certainly did go very well with us. I admired and enjoyed Lloyd, and it came round to me that he had given out that never for the rest of his life would he work for anyone else, and never in all those eleven years did the least shadow of disagreement come between us—never but once.

Up country there is seldom any whisky; for one thing it is stuff that will not keep, and there are other reasons. Now Lloyd, like many another good man, needed occasionally a little excitement, and about every six months he took time off to go to town. He was never any the worse when he came back; maybe a trifle more warm-hearted page 158and friendly, perhaps a shade more loquacious, but that was all.

But there had just returned with him, to do some work in the house, a rather lowdown plumber, also just off a spree. The weekly coach came by next day, and happening to see the driver get down and deposit something or other in the bushes, I took occasion to stroll round and investigate. Two bottles of whisky, so discovered, were destroyed without hesitation as absolute contraband. But the stern sense of rectitude that supported this action on my part did not prevent me feeling uncommonly mean, when I saw these two poor thirsty devils quartering the ground in every direction in search of the lost treasure. At last Lloyd came, and hesitatingly inquired of me, and I told him what I had done and why. After a painful pause, and with almost tearful solemnity, he said: "Well, sir—the bond that's kept us two together all these years is busted, sir." But it wasn't, for next morning he was nipping round with his housework and gardening as happy as ever.

I have been blessed in having many better men than myself working under me, on one job or another, but of all of them, "Mr. Lloyd down at Kenway's" has, I think, the warmest place in my memory.

1 Kumara=sweet potato.

2 Pukeko=swamp hen.

3 Kopa Maori (pronounced copper mowry)=native hole-in-the-ground cooking.