‘That’s a very unusual name you have,’ I said to her. Phyllis – I guessed that she was the giggler amongst the girls; there always is one – tittered again.
‘Etheldreda,’ said Eldry. ‘Only my ma’s Ethel and my grandma’s Dreda so there was only the middle bit left for me.’ She sounded so plaintive as she said it that the laughter spread around the room, even as Eldry blinked at us all wondering what the joke was.
‘Eh, dear,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Ah well, if you can’t laugh, eh? Right then, girlies! It’s sausage and onion pie and treacle pud, Fanny. Drop of pea and ham soup to start with. I knew you’d be wanting a good dinner after your long day.’
Eldry and Millie jumped up and Mrs Hepburn, one hand on each knee, hauled herself to her feet too. Clara, who had come to drape her long frame on the arm of the chair during the introductions, now slid into its seat and stretched her feet out towards the blaze.
‘Is there someone missing?’ I said, looking around and counting them off surreptitiously on my fingers. The butler, the cook and me made three, the four menservants – handsome John, plain Harry, round little Stanley and sweet Mattie – made seven and Clara, Phyllis, Millie and Eldry, the four maids, made eleven in all. Lollie had definitely told me there were twelve. Stanley and Mr Faulds glanced at one another, but it was Harry who spoke up, his voice as rough and awkward as his complexion.
‘Maggie,’ he said. ‘Kitchenmaid. Done a flit on Saturday night.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Silly wench,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Didn’t know when she was well off.’ I saw Clara shift in her seat, her long face solemn and her small eyes beady, and Phyllis put her embroidery down and leaned over to squeeze the other girl’s arm. ‘Took off after a promotion, Miss Rossiter, down by Berwick in a big house with a chef and a lot of girls to boss about. Kept it to herself and didn’t work a day of her notice. Mistress would have let her off with a week and given her a reference, but there’s no talking to these youngsters.’
Privately, I agreed. To have left a post with no reference was a reckless move for any servant and if the Berwick job fell through, good luck to Maggie finding another.
‘Mind you, Mr Faulds,’ said Stanley, looking up from the newspaper spread over his place setting, ‘if she’d stayed her week she’d never have got there. It says here there’s no trains on tomorrow with this general strike.’
‘It’s not a general strike,’ said Harry, sitting forward suddenly so that his chair legs banged against the floor. ‘It’s a selective co-ordinated industrial action.’
‘Harry is our resident Red, Miss Rossiter,’ said Mr Faulds.
‘It’s a menace is what it is,’ said Stanley, folding up his newspaper in brusque angry movements. It is always pointless – either annoying or amusing – for the under-thirties to attempt pomposity and Stanley failed to do anything but make Phyllis giggle again.
‘And you’re the… valet?’ I said to Harry. I was still trying to get them straight in my head after the whirlwind of introductions.
‘He is indeed,’ said John, grinning. ‘It’s all part of the plan.’ Then he ducked as Harry aimed a punch at the side of his head.
‘Now, now, lads,’ said Mr Faulds, as Stanley looked on with his mouth pulled down in a cod-like pout of disapproval. The butler heaved himself up to his feet. ‘There’s a bottle of burgundy needs using up,’ he said to himself, ‘but sausage and onion pie wants beer, really.’ Picking over a large bunch of keys, he left the kitchen and I heard the hobnails on his heels ring out against the stone steps as he descended to the sub-basement where, I guessed, the beer cellar must be.
‘All part of what plan?’ I asked the lads once he was gone. John grinned again and Harry gave me a long appraising look.
‘Don’t encourage them,’ said Phyllis, who had taken up her sewing again.
‘All the valets are Trots,’ said John. ‘Just waiting for the word and then ccrrrkkk!’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘The lords and masters struck down while they get their morning shave and the revolution begins. Easiest way, really.’
‘Disgraceful!’ said Stanley.
‘You should recruit Miss Rossiter, Harry,’ said John. ‘Get the lady’s maids as well as the valets and you’re laughing.’
‘Eldry would have plenty to say if she caught you sweet-talking Miss Rossiter,’ said Phyllis to John. I looked at her, startled. Poor plain Eldry and this rather arrogant young man? Surely not. But I thought, from John’s shout of laughter and Phyllis’s look of mischief, that this was a tease more than an indiscretion.
‘You wouldn’t dare go on like this if Mr Faulds could hear you,’ said Stanley.
‘Aye, we would,’ said John. Stanley flushed.
‘Well, you wouldn’t dare if we had a butler like the butlers that trained me,’ he said. ‘Like the butler I’ll be one day.’
‘Oh Stan,’ said Clara, stretching out a long leg and poking the footman with her toe. ‘Don’t let him rile you, he disnae mean anything by it.’ But Stanley was not to be soothed.
‘I’ll go and help Mr Faulds,’ he said, rising and patting at imaginary specks on his waistcoat. ‘Heaven knows, he needs it.’
‘That’s my boy,’ said Harry. ‘We’re all workers together. We shall surely overcome, united in toil.’
So Stanley’s exit was marred by yet more giggling and his slightly pendulous cheeks were aflame as he passed me, his pop eyes shining.
‘They were saying on the train that Baldwin and Pugh are meeting tonight,’ I said, hoping to sound knowledgeable, wondering what Miss Rossiter would, and therefore what I should, make of the affair.
‘Uncle Arthur’ll never give in,’ said Harry.
‘Fingers crossed,’ said a small voice. I started. It was the first time since I had come into the room that Mattie the hall boy had spoken. With his white-blond hair and his pale skin, he appeared not only childlike but positively elfin and anything less like a troublemaker could scarcely be imagined.
‘They’ll be awright, Matt,’ said Phyllis, and she and Clara swooped down on him from each side and kissed a cheek each. ‘Mattie’s worried about his family, Miss Rossiter. With the lock-out, you know.’
‘Mrs Hepburn’ll give you such a basket to take to them on your day off, you’ll not be able to carry it,’ said Clara, trying to make him smile. ‘You’ll have to eat the lot to keep your strength up and then you’ll have an empty basket and your ma’ll leather you and call Mrs H. all sorts and you’ll wish the strike was all you had to trouble you.’ Mattie did, indeed, give a small chuckle at that.
‘Who’s this and what are they calling me?’ said Mrs Hepburn, coming back in with an enormous tray, steam rising from six deep plates of soup. Eldry followed with another tray and Millie brought up the rear with a breadboard and butter dish. ‘Where’s Mr Faulds and his shadow got to now, then? This soup needs supped before the pies get over-browned. Come on, come on – get your legs under. You too, Fanny. Grub’s up.’
The journey from the servants’ hall after dinner was a long one. Of course, any upward journey is hindered by the recent ingestion of pea soup, sausage pie and treacle pudding – I was blowing like a whale by the second landing – but it was more than that. Across the linoleum, past the scuttles, up the worn stone steps, across the glittering tiles on the ground floor, past the hall table with its salvers, up the marble stairs with the gilded banisters, across the gleaming parquet of the drawing-room floor, up the carpeted stairs with the ebony banisters, all the way to where Lollie waited, peeping around her door, looking out for me, and when I arrived it took a moment for the idea to fall away that I was simply going to help her into an evening frock, stud her hair with a few ornaments and take her stockings away to rinse out for the morning. Miss Rossiter had possessed me body and soul.