A uniform hung on the hook behind the door—black skirt, white apron, frilly cap—and I put it on, feeling like a child who had discovered its mother’s wardrobe. The skirt was stiff beneath my fingers and the collar scratched my neck where long hours had moulded it to someone else’s wider frame. As I tied the apron, a tiny white moth fluttered away in search of a new hiding spot high up in the rafters, and I longed to join it.
The cap was white cotton, starched so that the front panel sat upright, and I used the mirror above Nancy’s chest of drawers to make sure it was straight and to smooth my pale hair over my ears as Mother had shown me. The girl in the mirror caught my eye briefly, and I thought what a serious face she had. It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.
Sylvia has brought me a cup of steaming tea and a slice of lemon cake. She sits next to me on the iron bench and, with a glance toward the office, withdraws a pack of cigarettes. (Remarkable the way my apparent need for fresh air seems always to coincide with her need for a covert cigarette break.) She offers me one. I refuse, as I always do, and she says, as she always does: ‘Probably best at your age. Smoke yours for you, shall I?’
Sylvia looks good today—she has done something different with her hair—and I tell her so. She nods, blows a stream of smoke and tosses her head, a long ponytail appearing over one shoulder.
‘I’ve had extensions,’ she says. ‘I’ve wanted them for ages and I just thought, Girl, life’s too short not to be glamorous.
Looks real, doesn’t it?’
I am late in my reply, which she takes for agreement.
‘That’s because it is. Real hair, the sort they use on celebrities. Here. Feel it.’
‘Goodness,’ I say, stroking the coarse ponytail, ‘real hair.’
‘They can do anything these days.’ She waves her cigarette and I notice the juicy purple ring her lips have left. ‘Of course, you have to pay for it. Luckily I had a bit put aside for a rainy day.’
She smiles, glowing like a ripe plum, and I grasp the raison d’être for this reinvention. Sure enough, a photograph materialises from her blouse pocket.
‘Anthony,’ she says, beaming.
I make a show of putting on my glasses, peering at the image of a grey-moustachioed man in late middle-age. ‘He looks lovely.’
‘Oh Grace,’ she says through a happy sigh. ‘He is. We’ve only been out for tea a few times, but I’ve got such a good feeling about this one. He’s a real gentleman, you know? Not like some of them other layabouts that came before. He opens doors, brings me flowers, pulls my chair out for me when we go about together. A real old-fashioned gentleman.’
The latter, I can tell, is added for my benefit. An assumption that the elderly cannot help but be impressed by the old fashioned. ‘What does he do for a living?’ I say.
‘He’s a teacher at the local comprehensive. History and English. He’s awful clever. Community-minded too; does volunteer work for the local historical society. It’s a hobby of his, he says, all those ladies and lords and dukes and duchesses. He knows all kinds of things about that family of yours, the one that used to live up in the grand house on the hill—’ She breaks and squints toward the office, then rolls her eyes. ‘Oh Gawd. It’s Nurse Ratchet. I’m supposed to be doing tea rounds. No doubt Bertie Sinclair’s complained again. You ask me, he’d be doing himself a favour to skip a biscuit now and then.’ She extinguishes her cigarette and pops the butt in the matchbox. ‘Ah well, no rest for the wicked. Anything I can get for you before I do the others, pet? You’ve hardly touched your tea.’
I assure her I’m fine and she hurries across the green, hips and ponytail swinging in accord.
It is nice to be cared for, to have one’s tea brought. I like to think I have earned this little luxury. Lord knows I have often enough been the bearer of tea. Sometimes I amuse myself imagining how Sylvia would have fared in service at Riverton. Not for her, the silent, obedient deference of the domestic servant. She has too much bluff; has not been cowed by frequent assertions as to her ‘place’, well-intentioned instructions to lower her expectations. No, Nancy would not have found Sylvia so compliant a pupil as I.
It is hardly a fair comparison, I know. People have changed too much. The century has left us bruised and battered. Even the young and privileged today wear their cynicism like a badge, their eyes blank and their minds full of things they never sought to know.
It is one of the reasons I have never spoken of the Hartfords and Robbie Hunter and what went on between them. For there have been times when I’ve considered telling it all, unburdening myself. To Ruth. Or more likely Marcus. But somehow I knew before beginning my tale that I would be unable to make them understand. How it ended the way it did. Why it ended the way it did. Make them see how much the world has changed.
Of course, the signs of progress were upon us even then. The first war—the Great War—changed everything, upstairs and down. How shocked we all were when the new staff began to trickle in (and out again, usually) after the war, full of agency ideas about minimum wages and days off. Before that, the world had seemed absolute somehow, the distinctions simple and intrinsic.
On my first morning at Riverton, Mr Hamilton called me to his pantry, deep in the servants’ hall, where he was bent over ironing The Times. He stood upright and straightened his fine round spectacle frames across the bridge of his long, beaked nose. So important was my induction into ‘the ways’, that Mrs Townsend had taken a rare break from preparing the luncheon galantine to bear witness. Mr Hamilton inspected my uniform meticulously then, apparently satisfied, began his lecture on the difference between us and them.
‘Never forget,’ he said gravely, ‘you are fortunate indeed to be invited to serve in a great house such as this. And with good fortune comes responsibility. Your conduct in all matters reflects directly on the family and you must do them justice: keep their secrets and deserve their trust. Remember that the Master always knows best. Look to him, and his family, for example. Serve them silently . . . eagerly . . . gratefully. You will know your job is done well when it goes unnoticed, that you have succeeded when you are unnoticed.’ He lifted his gaze then and studied the space above my head, his ruddy skin flushed with emotion. ‘And Grace? Never forget the honour they do you, allowing you to serve in their home.’
I can only imagine what Sylvia would have said to this. Certainly she wouldn’t have received the address as I did; would not have felt her face constrict with gratitude and the vague, unnameable thrill of having been lifted up a step in the world.
I shift in my seat and notice she has left her photograph behind: this new man who woos her with talk of history and nurses a hobbyist’s affection for the aristocracy. I know his type. They are the sort to keep scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs, to sketch elaborate family trees about families to which they have no entrée.
I sound contemptuous but I am not. I am interested—intrigued even—by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.
I close my eyes again. The sun has shifted and now my cheeks are warm.
The folk of Riverton have all been dead so long. While age has withered me, they remain eternally youthful, eternally beautiful.
There now. I am becoming maudlin and romantic. For they are neither young nor beautiful. They are dead. Buried. Nothing. Mere figments that flit within the memories of those they once knew.
But of course, those who live in memories are never really dead.
The first time I saw Hannah and Emmeline and their brother David, they were debating the effects of leprosy on the human face. They had been at Riverton a week by then—their annual summer visit—but to that point I had caught only occasional wafts of laughter, tattoos of running feet amid the creaking bones of the old house.
Nancy had insisted I was too inex
perienced to be trusted in polite society—juvenile though it might be—and had conferred on me only duties that distanced me from the visitors. While the other servants were preparing for the arrival of the adult guests a fortnight hence, I was responsible for the nursery.
They were too old, strictly, to need a nursery, said Nancy, and would probably never use it, but it was tradition, and thus the large second-floor room at the far end of the east wing was to be aired and cleaned, flowers replaced daily.
I can describe the room, but I fear any description will fail to capture the strange appeal it held for me. The room was large, rectangular and gloomy, and wore the pallor of decorous neglect. It gave the impression of desertion, of a spell in an ancient tale. It slept the sleep of a hundred-year curse. The air hung heavily, thick and cold and suspended; and in the doll’s house by the fireplace the dining table was set for a party whose guests would never come.
The walls were covered in paper that may once have been blue and white stripe, but which time and moisture had turned murky grey, spotted and peeling in places. Faded scenes from Hans Christian Andersen hung along one side: the brave tin soldier atop his fire, the pretty girl in red shoes, the little mermaid weeping for her lost past. It smelled musty, of ghostly children and long-settled dust. Vaguely alive.
There was a sooty fireplace and a leather armchair at one end, huge arched windows on the adjacent wall. If I climbed up onto the dark timber window seat and peered down through the leadlight panes I could make out a courtyard where two bronze lions on weathered plinths stood guard, surveying the estate churchyard in the valley below.
A well-worn rocking horse rested by the window: a dignified dapple-grey with kind black eyes who seemed grateful for the dusting I gave him. And by his side, in silent communion, stood Raverley. The black and tan foxhound had been Lord Ashbury’s when he was a boy; had died after getting his leg stuck in a trap. The embalmer had made a good attempt to patch the damage, but no amount of pretty dressing could hide what lurked beneath. I took to covering Raverley while I worked. With a dust sheet draped over him I could almost pretend he wasn’t there, looking out at me with his dull glassy eyes, wound gaping beneath his patch.
But despite it all—Raverley, the smell of slow decay, the peeling paper—the nursery became my favourite room. Day after day, as predicted, I found it empty, the children engaged elsewhere on the estate. I took to rushing through my regular duties that I might have a few spare minutes in which to linger, alone. Away from Nancy’s constant corrections, from Mr Hamilton’s grim reproval, from the rowdy camaraderie of the other servants that made me feel I had so much still to learn. I stopped holding my breath, began to take the solitude for granted. To think of it as my room.
And then there were the books, so many books, more than I had ever seen in one place at the one time: adventures, histories, fairytales, jostled together on huge shelves either side of the fireplace. Once I dared pull one down, selected for no better reason than a particularly pretty spine. I ran my hand over the fusty cover, opened it and read the carefully printed name: TIMOTHY HARTFORD. Then I turned the thick pages, breathed mildewed dust, and was transported to another place and time.
I had learned to read at the village school and my teacher, Miss Ruby, pleased I expect to encounter such uncommon student interest, had started loaning me books from her own collection: Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, The Castle of Otranto. When I returned them we would discuss our favourite parts. It was Miss Ruby who suggested I might become a teacher myself. Mother had been none too pleased when I told her. She’d said it was all very well for Miss Ruby to go putting grand ideas in my head but ideas didn’t put bread and butter on the table. Not long after she’d sent me up the hill to Riverton, to Nancy and Mr Hamilton, and to the nursery . . .
And for a time the nursery was my room, the books my books.
But one day a fog blew in and it began to rain. As I hurried along the corridor with half a mind to look at an illustrated children’s encyclopaedia I’d discovered the day before, I stopped short. There were voices inside.
It was the wind, I told myself, carrying them from elsewhere in the house. An illusion. But when I cracked open the door and peeked inside: shock. There were people in there. Young people who fit perfectly in that enchanting room.
And in that instant, with neither sign nor ceremony, it ceased to be mine. I stood, frozen by indecision, unsure whether it was proper to continue my duties or to return later. I peeked again, made timid by their laughter. Their confident, round voices. Their shiny hair and shinier hair bows.
It was the flowers that decided me. They were wilting in their vase atop the fire mantle. Petals had dropped in the night and now lay scattered like a rebuke. I couldn’t risk Nancy seeing them; she had been clear on my duties. Had made certain I understood that Mother would learn if I were to run foul of my superiors.
Remembering Mr Hamilton’s instructions, I clutched my brush and broom to my chest and tiptoed to the fireside, concentrated on being invisible. I needn’t have worried. They were used to sharing their homes with an army of the unseen. They ignored me while I pretended to ignore them.
Two girls and a boy: the youngest around ten, the eldest not yet seventeen. All three shared the distinctive Ashbury colouring—golden hair and eyes the fine, clear blue of Ceylonese sapphires—the legacy of Lord Ashbury’s mother, a Dane who (so said Nancy) had married for love and been disowned, her dowry withdrawn. (She’d had the last laugh though, said Nancy, when her husband’s brother passed and she became Lady Ashbury of the British Empire.)
The taller girl stood in the centre of the room, wielding a handful of papers as she described the niceties of leprous infections. The younger sat on the floor, legs crossed, watching her sister with widening blue eyes, her arm draped absently around Raverley’s neck. I was surprised, and a little horrified, to see he had been dragged from his corner and was enjoying a rare moment of inclusion. The boy knelt on the window seat, gazing down through the fog toward the churchyard.
‘And then you turn around to face the audience, Emmeline, and your face will be completely leprous,’ the taller girl said gleefully.
‘What’s leprous?’
‘A skin disease,’ the older girl said. ‘Lesions and mucus, the usual stuff.’
‘Perhaps we could have her nose rot off, Hannah,’ said the boy, turning to wink at Emmeline.
‘Yes,’ said Hannah seriously. ‘Excellent.’
‘No,’ Emmeline wailed.
‘Honestly Emmeline, don’t be such a baby. It’s not really going to rot off,’ Hannah said. ‘We’ll make some kind of mask.
Something hideous. I’ll see if I can find a medical book in the library. Hopefully there’ll be pictures.’
‘I don’t see why I have to be the one to get leprosy,’ Emmeline said.
‘Take it up with God,’ Hannah said. ‘He wrote it.’
‘But why do I have to play Miriam. Can’t I play a different part?’
‘There are no other parts,’ Hannah said. ‘David has to be Aaron, because he’s the tallest, and I’m playing God.’
‘Can’t I be God?’
‘Certainly not. I thought you wanted the main part.’
‘I did,’ Emmeline said. ‘I do.’
‘Well then. God doesn’t even get to be on stage,’ Hannah said. ‘I have to do my lines from behind a curtain.’
‘I could play Moses,’ Emmeline said. ‘Raverley can be Miriam.’
‘You’re not playing Moses,’ Hannah said. ‘We need a real Miriam. She’s far more important than Moses. He only has one line. That’s why Raverley’s standing in. I can say his line from behind my curtain—I may even cut Moses altogether.’
‘Perhaps we could do another scene instead,’ Emmeline said hopefully. ‘One with Mary and the baby Jesus?’
Hannah huffed disgustedly.
They were rehearsing a play. Alfred the footman had told me there was to be a family recital on the bank holiday weekend. It
was a tradition: some family members sang, others recited poetry, the children always performed a scene from their grandmother’s favourite book.
‘We’ve chosen this scene because it’s important,’ said Hannah.
‘You’ve chosen it because it’s important,’ said Emmeline.
‘Exactly,’ said Hannah. ‘It’s about a father having two sets of rules: one for his sons and one for his daughters.’
‘Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,’ said David ironically.
Hannah ignored him. ‘Both Miriam and Aaron are guilty of the same thing: discussing their brother’s marriage—’ ‘What were they saying?’ Emmeline said.
‘It’s not important, they were just—’ ‘Were they saying mean things?’
‘No, and it’s not the point. The important thing is that God decides Miriam should be punished with leprosy while Aaron gets no worse than a talking-to. Does that sound fair to you, Emme?’
‘Didn’t Moses marry an African woman?’ Emmeline said.
Hannah shook her head, exasperated. She did that a lot, I noticed. A fierce energy infused her every long-limbed movement, led her easily to frustration. Emmeline, by contrast, had the calculated posture of a doll come to life. Their features, similar when considered individually—two neat noses, two pairs of intense blue eyes, two pretty mouths—manifested themselves uniquely on each girl’s face. Where Hannah gave the impression of a fairy queen—passionate, mysterious, compelling—Emmeline’s was a more accessible beauty. Though still a child, there was something in the way her lips parted in repose that reminded me of a glamour photograph I had once seen when it fell from the peddler’s pocket.
‘Well? He did, didn’t he?’ Emmeline said.
‘Yes, Emme,’ David said, laughing. ‘Moses married an Ethiopian. Hannah’s just frustrated that we don’t share her passion for women’s suffrage.’
‘Hannah! He doesn’t mean it. You’re not a suffragette.
Are you?’
‘Of course I am,’ Hannah said. ‘And so are you.’
Emmeline lowered her voice. ‘Does Pa know? He’ll be ever so cross.’