‘Goodnight then, Miss Rossiter,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ve had a pleasant first day.’
‘Indeed I have, Mr Faulds,’ I said. ‘It seems a very happy household. I’m glad to have joined it.’ He locked the door, making an echoing clunk all around us, then removed the key, hung it on a hook and shot the bolts, top and bottom, with the kind of resounding clang one can feel in one’s teeth.
‘Your windows closed, Miss Rossiter?’ he said. I nodded. ‘Lovely job. I’ll bid you goodnight, then. And I hope you sleep soundly. Oh but, Miss Rossiter?’ I waited. ‘It’s not my place but we’ve no housekeeper to say it so I hope you’ll forgive me.’ He gestured towards my nightdress. ‘You should really have mistress’s things folded and in a muslin bag for carrying through the house. That there doesn’t look good, if you ask me.’
The stairs from the kitchen floor emerged opposite the dining-room doorway, as one would expect, and coming up them I saw that the door was open. I lowered my eyes in proper maidly fashion and prepared to scuttle past, but was arrested by Pip Balfour calling my name. He had evidently been lying in wait for me; had, in fact, drawn his chair far back from the table to be sure of spotting me.
‘A moment, Rossiter,’ he said, rising and beckoning me into the room. With my nightie behind my back, I stepped forward and bobbed a faint curtsey. ‘I just wanted to say,’ he continued, ‘that is, I mean, to say again, how very welcome you are. My wife…’ He paused and fiddled with the stem of his brandy glass. ‘… my wife is in great need of you.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said, giving Miss Rossiter’s vowels my all, for here was a test of them. ‘Most discommoding to have been left without her maid, sir.’
‘It’s not that, Miss Rossiter,’ he said. ‘It’s more than that. She hasn’t been herself lately. Not at all.’
‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ I said, and from the way he let his breath go in a short sigh I saw that this conventional answer had disappointed him, which was, of course, a triumph to me.
‘Well, anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad you’re here. She needs companionship, you know. It’s not good for her to be so much on her own.’ He was a master of his art, if art it were, because even knowing what I knew I could not fault the words, the voice, the look, the slight suggestion of fidgeting (far short of any histrionic hand-wringing but a nod in its direction). Thankfully, I knew exactly what to say; one never forgets the sting of being snubbed by a servant with whom one has been too chummy. I even rather relished the chance to give it a go.
‘Very good, sir,’ I said, eyes flat, voice wooden. Flushing a little, he dismissed me.
Lollie was already undressed when I let myself into her room, and was sitting on her bed in a pair of yellow flannel pyjamas, hugging her knees to her chin. The blinds were down – the lavender and white chintz was clearly just for show – and they shifted a little as the breeze blew through the open window.
‘Is there anything for me to do?’ I said. ‘Hanging things up or brushing or anything?’ Lollie shook her head.
‘I told you I hadn’t always had a maid,’ she said. ‘I’ve shaken out my evening clothes and put them away and I’ve washed some small things and hung them up in the bathroom but you might take them downstairs in the morning and let them finish off drying there in case anyone should wonder.’
‘I’ll just change then,’ I said, heading for the bathroom.
‘And I’ll make up your bed,’ said Lollie. ‘I’ve pilfered some pillows and blankets. Will you be all right on the chaise or would you rather have this? I don’t mind which for me.’ I hesitated. The chaise was wide and long and I was used to a little constriction anyway – Bunty takes up a great deal of room when she is deeply asleep – and besides, was it actually a politeness to offer one’s bed to a guest who knew that there might be a visitor in the night bent upon strangling its occupant?
‘I’ll be fine on the chaise,’ I assured her. ‘And perhaps we could draw the screen across in front of it. If anything should happen – if your husband should visit you – I’d like to be hidden from view.’
When I returned in my nightgown, wishing for flannel pyjamas of my own since the open windows let all of the night’s chill into the room and the screen shut me off from the fire as well as from the door, Lollie was under the bedclothes with a glass in her hand and had set another on the table by my little bed.
‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘Just a little one to help us sleep, but I couldn’t find the soda so it’s neat, I’m afraid.’ I tried to look grateful, but the thick, dark sherry at six o’clock and the beer with the sausage pie had been followed by the burgundy which Mr Faulds thought really should be drunk up that evening after all so that a long glass of water and an aspirin would have been my first choice for a nightcap.
‘How did you meet, you and Pip?’ I asked, when I was tucked up, feeling very comfortable against my heap of pillows and under my heap of blankets, feeling – actually – very similar to how one used to feel wrapped in furs on a deckchair during those long Atlantic crossings, especially with the stiff breeze and the feeling slightly queasy.
‘At a tennis party,’ said Lollie. ‘We were partnered by the girl whose party it was, because we were both so terrible no one else wanted to play with us. We got put out very quickly, of course, and spent the rest of the afternoon together. The very next day Pip came to speak to my father.’
‘And he gave his blessing?’
‘Almost,’ said Lollie. ‘My father was the last bishop of Brechin.’
‘Rev. Percival?’ I said. ‘I remember him very well. I met him many times.’
‘Well, he insisted on Pip becoming an Anglican, but apart from that he made no objections. I was only eighteen, but my mother – she was never strong – had died three years before and my father was fifty when I was born,’ said Lollie, ‘and his health was beginning to fail, so I think he was glad to know I wasn’t going to be alone. Glad to see me settled and secure, you know.’ She laughed a little at her own words.
‘And you must have taken to him,’ I said. ‘To Pip, I mean.’
‘I fell head over heels the moment I saw him,’ she said. ‘Well, no, not the very moment, but within ten minutes. A bumblebee had got itself mixed up in the tennis net and some of the other boys were taking swipes at it with their racquets. I told them to stop and tried to pick it out, but Pip put his fingers in the holes of the net all around the bee to stretch it and then he blew – very gently – and it flew away. He told me our skin can feel like hot coals to bees’ feet. Well, to spiders and all kinds of creepy-crawlies.’
‘How… touching,’ I said, trying not to sound as though I were smiling. Entomology was an unusual route into courtship, but I did not doubt her sincerity.