The man explored the inside of his cheek with his tongue and regarded me.
‘Aye, Balfour, that’s right,’ he said at last.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s my first position, you see.’
His face softened with understanding and, I think, pity. He ripped off a pink ticket and closed my hand around it with a fatherly pat.
‘I do see,’ he said. ‘Well, you take that there wee chitty and give it to the housekeeper. She’ll get a pair of lads to lift your trunk round for you. And sorry I was that wee bit short, there. It’s been going like a fair all day and I’m run off my feet with it.’
‘It’ll be a quieter day tomorrow for you,’ I said. ‘If this strike goes ahead anyway.’
‘I’ll be on the pickets, hen,’ he said. ‘On my feet all day and no’ getting paid for it.’
I stared at him. A striker! I was face to face with one of them. He did not look much like a revolutionary, with his uniform jacket open over a Fair Isle jumper in bright colours and with a stub of pencil behind each ear as well as the one in his hand.
‘See if you can get the lads down for your case nice and sharp, eh?’ he said. ‘The store’s fillin’ up fast already and we’ve still the late rush to come.’
There was no front door and butler for me today, of course. The maids’ store might have thrown me for a moment but I knew that much, and I passed through the iron gate and descended the area steps to the door below. It opened before I had reached the flagstones and a smiling face appeared round it.
‘Miss Rossiter? I’m Clara, the parlourmaid.’ She opened the door completely, came out into the area and took my bag from me. ‘Mind they steps,’ she said. ‘They get right mossy when it rains.’ She was a tall, vigorous girl in her twenties, with a long oval face and small dancing eyes, and her smile – perhaps to hide imperfect teeth – was more a bunching up of her lips into a bud than a stretching of them, which was most appealing.
‘Mrs Hepburn’s making toffee nests for tonight’s sweet,’ she said, ‘and she cannae leave them, but come away back and say hello a minute, before you go to your room, and you can pick up a wee cup of tea and take it with you, eh?’
‘That would be lovely, Clara,’ I said, envisioning kicking off Miss Rossiter’s shoes and lying back against pillows, sipping and dozing.
‘So what’s your Christian name?’ asked Clara over her shoulder as she closed the area door behind us and started along a stone passageway towards the back of the house, squeezing past the filled scuttles and zinc liners which waited in a row there.
I stopped walking. What was Miss Rossiter’s Christian name? I had not imagined that she would need one. Grant was Grant to me and Miss Grant to the others as far as I knew. Before I could speak, Clara turned around and gave me a cold look out of her little eyes, not dancing at all now.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s like that, is it?’ and she flounced into the kitchen with her head held very high.
‘It was Miss Rossiter you heard right enough, Mrs Hepburn,’ she said. ‘Here she is. Miss Rossiter.’
I stepped inside behind her. It was a cavernous room dominated by the black Eagle range which took up most of one wall and sent shimmering waves of heat to stir festoons of flypapers all around the ceiling. At the table, directly under the electric light, a formidable-looking cook in a rose-pink dress and enormous apron, with a bunch of keys twinkling at her waist, was letting ropes of syrup drop from a small ladle onto a wooden contraption like a large darning ball on a stick, held up by a kitchenmaid who was quivering with the effort of holding it steady and was cross-eyed from staring just in front of her face. By the range, a very young boy was sitting with his stockinged feet on the fender, plucking a chicken and throwing the feathers onto the flames.
‘Fanny,’ I said, rather louder than I had intended.
The young boy looked up, Clara bit her lip and the cross-eyed maid jumped.
‘Millie-molly-moo,’ said the cook, ‘how many times have I told you?’ She wiped up a blob of syrup from the table-top with her finger and stuck it out for the girl to lick. ‘You have to hold the paddle steady.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, meaning it to take in all of them. ‘I always tell myself that next time I meet someone I shall say Frances and I never do. I got close this time, though – said nothing at all!’
Clara was smiling at me again; she had swallowed it.
‘Nothing wrong with Fanny,’ she said. ‘Better than Millie-molly-moo, anyway.’
Mrs Hepburn took the paddle and stuck it into a kind of pipe-rack affair where a few others were cooling, then she put the sugar pot on the back of the range to keep warm, wiped her hands on her apron and turned to greet me.
‘Kitty Hepburn,’ she said. ‘And this wee chookie is my niece, Amelia, the scullerymaid. She gets Millie, though. And Mattie, the hall and boot boy.’
‘Miss,’ said Mattie, dipping his head.
‘Kitchenmaid now, Auntie Kitty,’ said Millie. ‘I mean, Mrs Hepburn.’
The cook’s face clouded very briefly.
‘Well, let’s just see, will we?’ she said. ‘Make a cup of tea for Miss Rossiter to be going on with anyway.’
Millie trotted towards the scullery door then turned and took a few paces back in the direction of the large dresser which filled the wall opposite the range.
‘What cup does a lady’s maid get, Auntie Kit- Hepburn?’ she said.
‘I’ll get it, Molly-moo,’ said Clara, rolling her eyes at me. The scullerymaid, unperturbed by the teasing, sat down opposite Mattie by the fireside and put her hands between her knees, like a toddler who is trying ostentatiously to stay out of mischief. She was fifteen perhaps, with the face of a pink-and-white china baby doll and a round, dumpy figure that one could easily believe was made of stockinet stuffed with sand. Her brown hair was plaited and pinned over her head and her innocent eyes blinked from behind round spectacles. She caught me studying her and beamed at me with the guilelessness of a child.
‘I’ve put two lumps in,’ said Clara, holding out a teacup with the saucer balanced on top to keep it hot, ‘seeing you’ve been on the train getting all trauchled.’
‘There’s a good girl,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘I’ll take you down to your room now, Miss Rossiter. Clara, you better get into your blacks before Mr Faulds comes in. Coal scuttles, Mattie-boy. And potatoes, Millie – ten big ones and mind you set them in the salt water straight away and not leave them out on the bunker to brown.’ Mrs Hepburn gathered up my bag and umbrella in one hand and taking my teacup in the other she swept out of the kitchen.
‘Isn’t she lovely spoken?’ said Millie as I was closing the kitchen door behind me. The others shushed her furiously but I caught her eye and smiled.
‘Down to my room?’ I said, following the cook, and right enough she had crossed the passageway and was descending a set of worn steps, her wooden heels knocking on the stone with a rather mournful sound. ‘I was expecting an attic.’
We arrived in the sub-basement, and I peered around waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did I saw dark green walls, dark brown doors and a dark red painted stone floor, covered with a narrow strip of grey hair carpet. There was no furniture, only two deep laundry hampers set against the wall, one open and half-filled with white bundles and one buckled shut, an address label tied to its handle, awaiting collection or just returned.
‘You’ve never been in an Edinburgh house then?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘The nurseries are in the attics and our rooms are all down here.’
I had indeed noticed the almost subterranean windows below basement level in some of Edinburgh’s houses but had never stopped to wonder what was behind them. Mrs Hepburn turned right and opened one of the brown doors.
To my surprise, light flooded out into the passageway.