‘We were married the following spring,’ she said, ‘and we were very happy. We went on cruises and visited lots of exciting places.’
‘Visiting relatives?’
‘No,’ said Lollie. ‘There aren’t any. Well, there are actually any number of cousins but they’re not on speaking terms.’
‘He turned even his cousins against him?’
‘No,’ said Lollie. ‘None of that was Pip’s fault. It was his grandfather – rather a horrible old man. He held the purse strings and so he thought he could tell everyone what to do. And he disowned all his sisters, because of their “disappointing marriages”, and the family went its separate ways. No, we just travelled to anywhere that sounded like fun. America and the Indies and we went to Africa but it was shockingly hot – and then we came home and found this house and I was looking forward to… well…’
‘Babies?’ I guessed.
‘That is, I was hoping for them – we both were – but then Pip started to change, off and on, and things became rather strained between us until, last Christmas, what I told you happened and since then it’s been just awful. And the worst thing about it is that sometimes – most of the time even, and always when anyone is watching – he seems just the same sweet old Pip as ever, so that I never know what to expect and I can’t tell anyone and I… I almost begin to doubt my reason sometimes. I-’
‘Sssh!’ I said. I had heard a floorboard creak outside on the landing. Slowly I sat up and put my eye to the space between two panels of the screen, peering through it at the door handle. For minutes nothing happened, although I was sure from the very silence that he was out there, listening, as tense as we were, and then I heard a footstep and another going away down the stairs. ‘He’s gone,’ I said to Lollie in a whisper, ‘but we should stop talking now.’
It was a remarkably quiet night, I thought, as I lay there. I had never lived in a town and when Hugh and I used to take a London house, before the war and the children, the streets rang with life until the early hours of morning. Here though, on this Monday night in Edinburgh, nothing came in at the open windows except the occasional sound of a policeman’s heavy tread as he passed with measured pace along the street and back again. Just after midnight struck, there was some distant shouting and catcalls, and I wondered if somewhere, in some other part of town, the start of the strike was being celebrated or lamented, but it was very distant shouting and I turned over and burrowed deeper into the blankets, feeling sleep begin to steal close to me and hearing Lollie’s breathing start to slow.
It was light when next I opened my eyes, but in Scotland in May that is no help to one and I squinted at my wristwatch before so much as stretching, in case more sleep might be in the offing.
‘Good morning,’ said Lollie’s voice. ‘I was just about to wake you. You’d better get back down to your room before Clara arrives, don’t you think?’
I sat up a little, shuddering at the empty brandy glass on the table, and swung my feet to the floor.
‘How much time do I have?’ I croaked, standing and stumbling towards the bathroom where my clothes were laid. Last night, padding up and down the stairs in the lamplight seemed neither here nor there, but being four flights away from my bedroom in my nightclothes with the household stirring gave me a nasty creeping feeling up the backs of my legs this morning. I dressed hastily, dragged my hands over my hair, stuffed my nightdress into a cupboard until later and let myself out onto the landing.
All was quiet enough up here, but from below I could hear the scraping of a grate shovel as someone cleared a fire and from further below that, there was a sudden dull boom. Yesterday morning I should have been at a loss to explain such a noise arising from what sounded like the bowels of the earth but now I knew it to be the sound of Mrs Hepburn, shutting an oven door with her knee. I stopped at Pip’s door on my way past and put my head near to the panelling, but there was no sound from inside so I crossed to the stairway and started down it.
Between the drawing-room and dining-room floors I met Eldry on her way up. She was carrying two trays stacked one on top of the other and was in the striped morning dress which she wore above stairs, but had a capacious brown apron over it. She looked startled to see me, but I carried off the encounter very well.
‘Where’s Clara?’ I demanded. ‘It’s she whom mistress is expecting.’
‘Not feeling very well this morning, Miss Rossiter,’ said Eldry, ‘so I said I’d bring the trays and do the fires both together.’
I frowned at her. A tweenie should not on any account be carrying tea trays and certainly should not be raking ashes and touching tea things in the same apron. I was surprised at Mr Faulds for letting this pass.
‘Couldn’t the valet have helped?’ I asked. ‘Harry?’
‘Harry’s not up yet, I don’t think,’ said Eldry and it seemed to me that she was blushing a little. ‘Besides,’ she said softly, ‘I dinna mind.’ She turned her eyes towards the back of the house, towards – I thought – the garden and yard and carriage house in the mews, where Harry would be sleeping, and smiled a very small and rather secretive smile. ‘I dinna mind taking on a bit extra to spare him.’
Ah, I thought, remembering Phyllis’s teasing.
‘I’ll take mistress’s off your hands anyway,’ I said. ‘She’s awake already. No sound from him yet, though.’ I nodded at the uppermost of the two trays where a teacup, pot and milk jug, along with a rolled-up Scotsman, were laid on a plain cloth.
‘Good!’ said Eldry. ‘I hope I can get in and out without him stirring. I havenae got his paper, see?’ She sounded rather fearful. ‘He takes The Times but it never came. And when Mattie went round to the paper shop to get it, they said they had none, cos there’s no trains and so they’re all stuck in London. No trains at all, miss, nor buses nor trams, and Mattie said he met a man who’d walked up from Leith and the docks are as quiet as the grave and even the gasworks! I never thought it would really happen.’
‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘So Mattie got a Scotsman instead, but I cannae make up my mind whether to take it in or leave him with none.’
‘Take him the Scotsman,’ I said. ‘The strike’s not your fault. He can’t blame you for it.’ Eldry said nothing but looked far from consoled by my breeziness. ‘Or I tell you what,’ I said, ‘let me take his tray in to him.’ I welcomed any chance to see more of Pip, for I was still far from knowing what I thought about any of it.
‘Oh, I couldnae, Miss Rossiter,’ said Eldry. ‘It wouldn’t be right, miss. You’re mistress’s lady.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I said, truthfully.
‘Beg pardon, Miss Rossiter, but you would if you kent him,’ Eldry said and flushed.
‘So I believe, dear,’ I answered. ‘Well, how’s this? I’ll take mistress’s and let’s leave the doors open and if he gives you any bother when you go in I’ll come in at your back and sort him out for you. He doesn’t scare me.’
Eldry bit her lip and opened her eyes very wide. It was an expression she often wore and one which did nothing to enhance her meagre claims to beauty.
‘He’ll put you on notice, if you’re not careful,’ she said. ‘But he’ll no’ try anything with both of us there, at least.’
We managed the handover of the bottom tray quite smoothly even there on the stairs and Eldry’s chin was as high as mine as we processed upwards. I had no worries: it was Lollie who had engaged me and it was only Lollie who could sack me; in fact it was rather odd that he had got involved in the matter of Phyllis, the housemaid. I wondered again what it was she had done.