in between it’s non-stop scrubbing, scraping, shining, ironing, folding, fetching and carrying, because you’re a nobody skivvy who has to wear a horrid uniform
even though I was as good as anyone in my last year at the home for reading, writing and arithmetic
Mabel and Beatrice really get on her nerves
she walks off, leaving them to it
at least she’s found the right material for her dress – plum-coloured and soft in its brown paper package tied with string
it’s so precious she holds it close to her chest in case it dies or something
she can’t wait to get it home, will use the pattern all the maids are sharing for a dress that comes just below the knee rather than just above the ankle, considered very risqué, as she overheard Baron Hindmarsh’s daughter Lady Esmée tell her weekend guests when she made her entrance at the top of the stairs for one of her parties
Grace peeped out from behind the secret door that connects the servants’ passageway to the house proper as Lady Esmée made a show of herself to all her rich friends
the ladies in backless dresses that shimmied and sparkled, the gentlemen in elegant dinner jackets with satin collars, with their cigarillos in gold holders and mint julep cocktails
who watched admiringly as she walked slowly down the stairs showing off her slender legs and exquisite ankles
it’s all the rage in London, my darlings, all the rage
Grace will never look like that; at least she’ll soon have a new dress to wear when the occasion calls, not that it does very often
she’s not allowed to get dolled up for church, but she is for the Hindmarshes’ Christmas staff party
until she has to put her uniform back on along with the other maids to clear up the mess everybody’s made
she’s about to cross the road outside Gillingham & Sons when a swarm of men on bicycles swoop past so close they almost knock her over, workers cycling home from a factory for lunch, she suspects
next a packed omnibus lurches dangerously close just as she’s about to step on to the road again
she’s used to the busy town, still has to be careful every time she comes into it, seeing as the rest of her time is spent in the middle of the countryside away from busy roads with only the occasional car to be found on the country lanes, usually belonging to a Hindmarsh or guest
she finds she’s not alone, a chap has sidled up to her
you must be the Lady of the Nile, aye, that’s what you are, he says; she turns sharply, looking fierce, ready to tear down his impudence for calling her a lady of the night
reading her mind he says, Queen Cleopatra, you know, the Lady of the Nile
which is quite different altogether
Grace stops herself lashing him with her tongue or whacking him with her package
which she’s done before now
he’s got the brightest ginger hair which he’s tried to comb flat, it’s still sprung up all over the place; a ruddy, friendly face and honest blue eyes staring at her in admiration, he’s not leering at her the way many men do on the streets
she looks at his tweed jacket, smart enough trousers, grubby boots, he’s shorter than her, most men are
Joseph Rydendale, he says, and insists on helping her across the road, he’s just had a profitable morning’s business at the Friday cattle market and deposited a wad of crisp white notes in Barclays Bank
she suspects he’s trying to impress her, which is working (when did a man ever try to actually impress her?)
he seems to be a man of substance, too, who’d normally not pay her any attention, as opposed to the scoundrels and wasters who do
Grace is right fed up of men who fancy their chances when she’s alone with them, calling her a temptress, a tease, a seductress
when she resolutely is not
it can happen anywhere, even at the castle, in the servants’ back corridors or when she’s working alone in empty rooms, one guest snuck into her bedroom one night, prompting her to get Ronnie the estate’s blacksmith to put a bolt on her door the next day
she’s managed to escape all advances without being ruined so far, despises those men who take ladies without their permission
those men who make children without marrying the mothers, and disappear to faraway fairytale places where they eat cheese soufflé every day
she’s long ago resigned herself to eternal spinsterhood, to a future without the joys of marriage and motherhood
nobody wants a mongrel, which she’s been called on the street before now, she lets the perpetrators have it back with, you’re a mongrel yourself!
only she wasn’t reckoning on meeting a Mr Joseph Rydendale, was she?
who, once they’d been chatting a while, asked her to walk out with him Sunday after next, and thereafter travelled to visit her every Sunday afternoon, then had to race home to milk his cows
can’t milk themselves, Gracie, and I don’t trust my farmhands
Joseph had returned from the Great War with his body and mind intact, unlike many of his comrades who’d survived but suffered amputations or still heard bombs exploding in their heads even though it was peacetime
comrades who slowly went mad with it
he’d returned to the family farm, Greenfields, to find both it and his father in decline, disease was decimating the emaciated livestock and crops, the equipment was rusty and broken down, farmhands were being paid every Friday evening and were nowhere to be found the rest of the time
his father, Joseph Senior, widowed many years earlier, had taken to wandering the upper fields at night in his long johns shouting for his wife to come and help with the lambing, Cathy, come and help with the lambing
Joseph put the farm to rights after years away, which took up all of his time and willpower, now he was ready for a wife for company and to carry on the family line
he’d fought in the Egyptian desert and in Gallipoli, had known Ottoman beauties of the Orient (she daren’t ask him how)
when he came home from the war, none of the local girls appealed to him, until he saw her on the streets of Berwick
Grace could see that Joseph was a well-meaning fellow, she began to like him very much, spent the whole week looking forward to Sunday and the few hours they spent together, walking around the permitted areas of the estate in summer, sometimes wearing her best dress, just for him, lying in the grass in the sunshine, or sitting in the servants’ kitchen in winter, where he joined everyone for Sunday lunch
Mrs Wycombe, the cook, allowed it, she’d taken to Grace as soon as she arrived and made sure she was treated well by the other staff
or you’ll have me to answer to, she warned them
Grace couldn’t believe her luck when Joseph asked for her hand in marriage, that he should behave as if she were a prize and not the booby prize
they wed three respectful months after his father died
he brought her home to Greenfields for the first time
the old boy would never have approved, sane or insane, was stuck in the Victorian era and still listened to music hall songs on the phonograph
whereas I play jazz on a gramophone
when he brought her to the farm, he took her there via the only route through the bustling village in his horse and cart on a Saturday morning
past the shops lining the main street, past people out shopping who stopped and stared at this strange creature
most had never seen a Negro before, certainly not one capable of stealing one of the most eligible men in the district, as she was made to feel once she began taking the horse and cart into the village on her own
their Joseph Rydendale, the local farmer and honourable ex-soldier who most mothers of eligible daughters had hoped to have as their son-in-law
when they heard her speak, they were surprised she sounded just like them, a local-enough lass, and warmed to her
not the grocer, wh0 threw her change on to the counter with such force it scattered and she had to crawl around on the ground to pick it up