‘Miss Brown?’ The maid was pretty and fresh-faced. ‘Lady Harris is expecting you, she’s in the morning room.’
‘Thank you.’
The taxi driver had followed her up the steps and now placed her case and cloth bag just inside the large square hall - which was as big as the rooms the helpers had been expected to live in at Hatfield - and she turned to him, feeling as though she was saying goodbye to the last normal person in the world. ‘Thank you very much, you’ve been very kind. What do I owe you?’
‘Five bob’ll cover it, love.’ He pocketed the five shillings, and the sixpence tip, and then he was gone.
The morning room was smaller than the ornate drawing room where she had had her interview, but undeniably grand, the long velvet drapes at the wide bay window and thick carpet the same shade of dull pink, and the upholstered couches and two high-backed winged chairs of the finest quality.
Lady Harris was sitting at her writing bureau in a far recess of the room, but rose immediately at Sarah’s entrance, her smile of welcome going some way to quieten the legion of butterflies that were fluttering madly in Sarah’s stomach. ‘Miss Brown, how nice to see you again. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’ It was for all the world as though she was greeting a visiting acquaintance, and this impression was strengthened when she added, ‘I’ve asked Peggy to serve us tea in here. Why don’t you come and sit by the fire, you must be exhausted.’
The fire, set in a deep high fireplace with an exquisitely carved wooden surround, was piled high with blazing logs, and as Lady Harris led the way to the two chairs, pulled comfortingly close to the warmth, Sarah found herself studying the bright little birdlike creature in front of her, the snow white hair and tiny bent frame belying the perkiness that would have sat well on a woman half her employer’s age.
‘Do sit down, my dear, and try to relax.’ The keen gaze was understanding. ‘It must have been quite a wrench to leave all your friends and everything that was familiar, and come down here? I like the sort of spirit that takes life by the horns and wrestles it into shape, and I recognized it in you, you know. My dear husband used to say I was far too independent for my time, but he was a good man, a very good man. Did you know I was a suffragette?’ she added with surprising suddenness.
‘A suffragette?’ Sarah was too startled to hide her amazement.
‘Oh, it was quite a scandal at the time.’ This was accompanied by a quiet chuckle that told Sarah Lady Harris had loved every minute. ‘Of course poor Emmeline had the worst of it. Men can be quite hateful when they’re threatened, can’t they, my dear? I’m still in touch with Christabel and Sylvia and they are very much their mother’s daughters. Yes, I like boldness, when accompanied by a desire to rise above injustice and intolerance on behalf of our fellow man. I feel it is that which takes us above the animal kingdom.’
What a remarkable woman. Sarah stared into the bright brown eyes set in flesh that was parchment thin. She had thought so at their first meeting, though that had been formal, unlike now; even then something of Lady Harris’s indomitable spirit had shone through.
She was just trying to think of something to say when the door opened and the maid entered, pushing a tea trolley complete with silver tea service and plates holding an assortment of small wafer-thin sandwiches and a large fruit cake, that must have used up a week’s rations all by itself.
‘I hope you have a healthy appetite, my dear?’ Lady Harris smiled at her before raising her eyes and saying, ‘That’s all right, Peggy, we’ll see to ourselves.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’
Sarah had served tea in the Roberts household many times when Mrs Roberts had had her bridge afternoons and ‘good works’ meetings, as she had termed them, and now, as Lady Harris smiled again and said, ‘Won’t you be mother, my dear,’ she felt on safe ground. After serving Lady Harris her tea with lemon - Mr Roberts had liked his tea that way and the lemon squeezer held no mystery for her - she helped herself to a cup with milk, but found she could manage no more than one salmon sandwich and a small piece of the cake, the nerves that had gripped her making her stomach tight. Nevertheless, something had settled in her spirit and the brief panic was over. There was no one to smooth the way here, it was up to her whether she sank or swam, and by golly, she intended to swim.
‘Now.’ They had finished tea and Peggy had wheeled the trolley away with a shy smile at Sarah. ‘I think I fully explained your duties three weeks ago?’ Lady Harris said quietly. ‘Is there anything further you wish to ask me?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Lady Harris.’
‘In that case I think it opportune to tell you a little about myself and the family, and the callers you might expect. As you know I normally spend most of the year on the estate’ - the estate being a large, fifteen-bedroomed country house in Kent with several hundred acres and a farm - ‘but of necessity I need to be in London several months of the year, and I prefer home comforts these days.’
She smiled and Sarah smiled back.
‘However, I have to say that as I get increasingly older these visits are endured rather than enjoyed, but no matter, no matter.’ She shook her head at herself. ‘My son and his wife and family live at Fenwick most of the time; Geoffrey took over some of my husband’s affairs on his death, but if they come to town they reside here. My widowed sister visits, but rarely, and my niece will occasionally stay for a week or two. Other than that we are normally a quiet little household of four. You met Hilda, my cook, on your previous visit?’
‘Yes, I did, she seems very nice.’
‘Oh, Hilda is the guardian of my digestion: where I go, she goes. Peggy is responsible for most of the household chores, but when the house is full I would expect you to take on light duties, perhaps arranging the flowers, things like that? The work is not arduous, but I do like things to run smoothly, I cannot abide fuss.’
‘No, Lady Harris.’
She stared back into the bright little face, the crackling fire and the swiftly darkening sky outside adding a cosiness to the beautiful room which had been missing before, and then was more than a little surprised when her employer leant forward and touched her hand lightly as she said, ‘Smile, child, smile. I’m not such an ogre when you get to know me. Victoria Roberts said you were discreet, loyal, trustworthy - a tower of strength was her final summing up, I think, and I am a great believer in personal recommendation. I’ve known George Roberts for a good many years and he is nobody’s fool. He too spoke very highly of you when I asked him to endorse his wife’s reference. Now, perhaps you would ring for Peggy to show you to your room, and if there is anything you require please don’t hesitate to ask her.’
And then, as Sarah rose, she added, ‘On the evenings I don’t have guests I wonder if you would join me for dinner? It’s unconventional, I know, but I do not care to eat alone and I enjoy the sort of spirited conversation the young are so adept at providing. Besides which’ - again the round eyes twinkled - ‘I rather enjoy flouting convention.’
Sarah looked down at her in stupefied silence before managing to say, ‘Thank you, Lady Harris. I’d like that.’
‘Good.’ Once Peggy appeared in answer to the bell cord at the side of the fireplace, Lady Harris rose briskly to her feet, her thin tiny body in its starched black dress trimmed with white lace seeming to spring upwards with childlike vigour, and she was seated at the bureau again before Sarah had had time to leave the room.
Sarah had seen her accommodation three weeks before, but with no more than a cursory glance as Peggy had shown her round the enormous town house, which boasted six guest bedrooms, besides the servants’ quarters, and now, as she followed the young girl along the hall to the back staircase which led to the top floor and attics, she found herself marvelling at her good fortune. She doubted if there was another employer like Lady Harris in the whole of London, she thought bemusedly, Maggie’s last words to her suddenly clear in her mind.
‘You’re doin’ the right thing, lass. Never look a gift horse in the mouth ’cos sure as eggs are eggs you won’t get a second chance. Look how that Mrs Roberts went on an’ on about how good the old lady was an’ all, an’ she wouldn’t put you wrong - thought the world of you, she did. Have a go, lass, you can’t lose by it.’
‘Here we are.’ They had reached the top landing - the main staircase, with its thick red carpeting and open banisters some fifteen yards away - and now Peggy opened the first door on their right where Sarah saw her suitcase had already been placed in readiness for her arrival. ‘Lady Harris said to light the fire this morning so it should be nice and warm.’
‘Thank you.’ Sarah smiled at the maid, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, before saying, ‘Did you carry my case up here? I’d have helped you if you’d waited.’
‘That’s all right, miss, I’m stronger than I look. Wiry, my mum says.’
‘Oh, call me Sarah.’
‘I can’t.’ Peggy looked askance at the suggestion. ‘Cook says for me to call you miss.’
‘Oh.’ Her first faux pas, Sarah thought wryly, but no doubt not her last. ‘Well thank you anyway, I know it weighs a ton.’
‘Cook said to ask if you want to come down to the kitchen when you’re ready and she’ll run through some things with you before she starts on the dinner.’
‘Yes, of course. In about twenty minutes?’
‘Right, miss, I’ll tell her.’
Left alone, Sarah glanced about her. The room she had had at the Robertses would have fitted into the space several times over, and she knew the door on the far left of this room led to her own private bathroom, and yet for all its largeness it wasn’t intimidating. Perhaps it was the fire? Lady Harris had already told her over their tea that the trees on the Fenwick estate provided much of their fuel, and that the rationing which affected most of the country wasn’t a problem, but she hadn’t expected to have such a splendid fire in her own room.
She glanced at the roaring blaze which was shedding a soft pink glow over the furnishings, the light from the large standard lamp in one corner and the muted glow from the darkening sky outside the window at the other end of the room casting grey shadows here and there.
Her bed, a small double with a brass headboard and a thick, tapestry-like woven bedcover, was at the far end near the window and bathroom, and where she was standing now was almost like a small sitting room, complete with two easy chairs, a small bookcase, a big fitted cupboard which she took to be the wardrobe, and a little occasional table. The furniture wasn’t new but it was highly polished, if a little battered, and the large square of carpet in the middle of the room, and the long drapes at the window, made it luxurious by Sarah’s standards.
It was like a little house. She sat down suddenly in one of the chairs as her legs gave way and emotion flooded her chest. Her first real home. And she was glad, oh she was, she was glad but . . . she was nervous too, nervous that all this would be snatched away and she would return to being Sarah Brown again, instead of Miss Brown, housekeeper to the illustrious Lady Harris.
She shut her eyes tight, pressing one fist on top of the other into the hollow between her breasts as she swayed back and forth with a mixture of excitement and apprehension before the realization of what she was doing brought her upright, the voice in her mind saying, Stop it, that’s enough of that, you’re as good as anyone else and don’t you forget it.
It was something she had told herself every day of her life since the time she had run away from Hatfield, only to be ignominiously returned the same night, and it had only recently occurred to her to question why she still had to say it ten years on.
Not that things hadn’t been better under the new matron for her remaining years at Hatfield; they had, much better, and she had sensed most of the Mothers were secretly relieved that Matron Cox was safely locked away in the lunatic asylum where she could no longer terrorize children and staff alike. Her worry of being supplanted in Rebecca’s affections, brought about by her low physical and mental state after Matron’s attack, had been groundless too; from the day she had returned to Hatfield Home after her stay in the Sunderland infirmary, she and Rebecca had been as close as ever. So why did she feel so adrift, alone, at times?
She rose now, walking to the end of the room where a tall thin rectangular mirror had been fixed to the wall one side of the bed, and stood quietly gazing at her reflection before moving closer, her eyes searching the delicate features for long moments. There was no vanity in her inspection, and she couldn’t have explained to anyone why this scrutiny was a regular practice, but she just felt she needed to
know
each contour, each eyelash.