‘Here you are then,’ she said, bustling in and putting my teacup down on a shelf to the side of the fire, which was burning cheerfully. ‘You’re at the back but there’s no slight meant to it because the front rooms are black as caves and here you’ve a good view down the garden. Clara and Phyllis – she’s the housemaid – are across the way and the rest of them – well, it’s just the two of them now – have the front room.’ She stopped and smiled at me. ‘I’ll let you get settled then,’ she said. ‘Servants’ hall is in front of the kitchen and dinner’s at six. Mrs Balfour said she’d not need to see you until seven, so there’s a nice easy start for you. The – ahem – is just out the back there, up the steps to the walkway and on the left beyond the scullery and it’s ladies only, so there’s no need to worry about that. The menservants have their arrangements down at the mews.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very kind. And regarding the ladies’… arrangements, is the back door open?’
‘Until Mr Faulds locks up at night it is. Now do you have your chit for your trunk? I’ll get Mattie and John to slip down for it before tea.’ I fished out the pink ticket and gave it to her. ‘We’re a happy house, Fanny,’ she said, then hesitated as though wondering whether to say more. ‘Young Mrs Balfour is a dear girl and you’ll not have much to do with the master, I don’t suppose.’
Which, I thought to myself once she had left, was commendably discreet but still spoke volumes. It need have no connection to Lollie’s troubles, of course, but still I should have liked to know why my predecessor had left before a replacement could be found for her. The loss of a servant from a household of such friendliness, in which fires burned in bedroom grates on afternoons in May, needed at least some explaining.
My new home, now that I had a chance to look around it, was a great deal better than I had been expecting; a very great deal better than the attic rooms at Gilverton anyway. It was perhaps ten feet square, with a tall window, modestly clothed in muslin halfway up, which looked out over a patch of grass and a cherry tree. There was a black iron bedstead – exactly the same as those at Gilverton – with fat pillows and a fat quilt, an armchair near the fire, a chest of drawers with jug and basin on top, a bookcase and a hanging cupboard. A door beside the window revealed a tiny room housing a small china sink with hot and cold taps, a very small mangle fitted to it at one end and a clothes airer on a pulley above it. Boxes of Sunlight soap and packets of Robin starch lined up along the windowsill told me that this was where Miss Rossiter would lovingly launder Mrs Balfour’s most delicate garments. I sniffed at the packets, of course. Armed with Grant’s notes I would raid the kitchen for lemon and lavender; I knew the right way of things. I leaned over the taps and peered out of the window wondering if there might be a butt of rainwater I could lay claim to, but the fire, armchair and sweet tea were calling to me.
When I left my room at five minutes to six for dinner in the servants’ hall, I had already made it wonderfully cosy. Photographs of Bunty – and one of Nanny Palmer whom I was proposing to pass off as my mother – were ranged on the chimneypiece; my clothes were folded away or hanging over the airer to uncrease themselves, and I had upended my trunk and covered it with a gay shawl as a nightstand, a trick learned at finishing school where the furnishers of our dormitory bedrooms had taken great care to discourage reading in bed by failing to provide anywhere to put a candle or cup of cocoa.
Before I was halfway up the stairs to the basement again I could hear talking – men’s talking – and I hesitated, smoothing my hair under the restraining pins and patting flat the starched collar of my frock. When I pushed open the door a sea of faces turned towards me.
‘Here she is,’ said a jovial voice, and the butler I had met on the day of my interview stood up from a fireside armchair and opened his arms in welcome to me. Mrs Hepburn was sitting in a matching armchair on the other side of the fire with a small glass of some brown liquid in her hand. There was a third chair in a less exalted position just off to one side and a plump young man sprang out of it and began shaking up its cushions before turning towards me.
‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said, with a slight bow.
‘Sherry, Miss Rossiter?’ said Mr Faulds, taking out a fat watch and peering at it. ‘There’s just time before dinner, I see.’
Slightly bewildered, I sat down and accepted a glass with a thimbleful of thick, dark sherry in it.
‘Now,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Here’s where we test your memory for you!’ As he sat back down again he waved around the long table, covered in oilcloth but laid for a meal, where the rest of the staff were sitting.
‘Clara, Millie and Mattie I know already,’ I said, nodding at the three of them, the known faces in the crowd. As I spoke a young man in grey britches and braces, with his collar open and sleeves rolled, sat up very straight and whistled.
‘Mind out for your glass with they vowels flyin’ about, Mrs Hepburn,’ he said.
One of the maids tittered and I smiled too, to show willing.
‘That’s John,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘He’s the chauffeur. Cheek of a monkey but no harm in him.’ John grinned at me and stretched out in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle and lacing his hands together behind his head. Chauffeurs are most often chosen to complement an elegant motorcar and this one was no exception: tall and broad-shouldered with a square jaw and straight brows, as though the word ‘strapping’ had been invented to describe him.
‘Next to him,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘is Harry, master’s valet.’ Harry took his nearly finished cigarette out of his mouth and saluted me with it, touching his fingertips to his temple in such a way that the insolence was as hard to define as it was to ignore. I smiled at him regardless and he looked away. He was as young as John and as tall, but nature had been less kind, giving him a weaker chin, a larger nose, a rather red and angry-looking complexion.
Beside Harry was the man who had vacated my armchair. He was clearly a butler-in-waiting, natty in dress, stout in outline, dressed in the same striped trousers, yellow-edged waistcoat and butterfly collar as Mr Faulds.
‘Stanley,’ he said to me, half rising to bow. ‘I’m the footman.’ He tweaked at his trousers as he sat back down and I noticed that Millie’s eyes, soft behind her spectacles, were fastened upon him with something approaching rapture. I had to purse my lips not to smile. For if the scullerymaid was a china doll fashioned by Mabel Lucie Attwell, then Stanley the footman was made to match her with his large blue slightly pop eyes, his pink cheeks and his egg-like figure. They put one in mind of the carved couples who trundle out one on each side of a cuckoo clock to mark the halves and quarters with a bang of a mallet.
‘And then there’s Phyllis, the housemaid,’ said Mr Faulds, gesturing with a broad smile.
‘Nice to meet you, Miss Rossiter,’ said Phyllis. She was a taking little thing, perched at the end of the table with her feet up on the spar of her chair and a small embroidery frame held up close in the dimness as she sewed. She had that very pretty Celtic colouring of dark hair, pale skin, light eyes and sparse pale brows, with curling lips which looked as though they had been rouged but were really just naturally pink, and a shiny little spade of a chin. I could not help glancing at John and Harry to see if there were any more rapturous glances to be intercepted, but I found none.
‘And finally,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘Eldry, the tweenie.’ Eldry, the tweenie, when she looked up and nodded a greeting – for she was sewing too – was revealed to be a plain girl with a bony nose and teeth which, at rest, were always visible against her bottom lip. She should have scraped her hair back, painted her lips red and pointed that sharp nose to the sky, I thought – I had seen girls who had managed to make themselves striking that way if they had enough confidence to pull it off – but Eldry had taken the much more common route of pressing her hair into little curls around her face, lowering her head to hide the nose and pursing her mouth to hide the teeth, after which of course there is no helping it.