Authors: Elizabeth Adler
“And so would I,” Lily agreed. But hard though it was, she knew she would never get another job as a parlormaid. With every day that passed, she told herself she could not go on like this much longer. She was not meant to be anyone’s servant—she had been a lady, and somehow one day she would be a lady again. She would wear silk again and never even set foot in a kitchen. She didn’t know how she would achieve it, but she knew she would. Whatever it took. And she just gritted her teeth and kept on working.
She was dusting the hall one afternoon when the doorbell rang. Quickly wiping her hands on her apron she ran to answer it, staring surprised at the tall bearded man standing on her doorstep, and at the cabbie unloading a small mountain of baggage onto the sidewalk.
“Good afternoon,” the man said, striding past her into the hall and up the stairs.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Adams, sir,” Lily called after him, realizing at once who it was. She doubted he had even noticed her, let alone heard her, and she ran down to the basement to tell Emer to warn Mrs. Hoolihan and Cook. Then she scurried up the back stairs and changed quickly into her parlormaid’s black dress and organza cap and apron.
The quiet house sprang suddenly to life. Lights blazed in every room, and thanks to Lily most of them were shining clean. Mrs. Hoolihan was sober again and Cook was back in her kitchen. Mr. Adams was home.
John Porter Adams was not a “social” man. He hated
parties and especially boring dinners where the matchmaking Boston dowagers always placed him next to some eligible young woman guaranteed “to catch his eye.” He was forty-nine years old and so far they had failed. He knew that a woman would only mess up the perfect life he had created for himself: a world of art, books, and travel, and the undemanding company of good friends. He had an excellent wine cellar and the freedom to do as he pleased. He preferred conversation with learned men to the flirtatious small talk of women, and besides, he knew a woman would ruin his schedule.
He was a man in love with his work, and his lectures on seventeenth-century European literature at Harvard were the highlight of his year. He had earned a Ph.D. in classics from Oxford University and was also a linguist, fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German, as well as ancient Greek and Latin.
The Porter Adamses were an old Boston family of great wealth, and as the last surviving male heir John had inherited most of it at the young age of twenty-three. He was a fine-looking man, tall and a little stooped, with a Vandyke, dark eyes, and hair that had turned gray just before his twenty-sixth birthday. He was not a fastidious man: his clothes were good but there was a haphazard, forgetful air about him. He wore odd socks and mismatched jackets and pants. He would throw a muffler casually around his neck and go out into a snowstorm forgetting to put on his overcoat. He could never find the studs for his dress shirt, or his cuff links, and he couldn’t tie his bow tie. One of the servants always had to do it for him, and whenever it happened he thought to himself that he really should employ a valet, but then a valet would want to “organize” him and he was a man who simply loathed being organized.
He refused to own a carriage and horses and instead walked everywhere, often forgetting there were holes in his boots until they almost fell off his feet. And at the end of a day there was nothing he liked better than a simple meal and to sit afterward by the open library window in summer,
or in front of the roaring fire in winter, with his nose in a good book and a glass of excellent port on the table at his side. Whenever the mood took him he would wander upstairs and sit in the dark, playing the piano. It had a wonderful tone and the quiet sonatas and etudes he favored wrapped him in exquisite solitude. He was his own perfect companion and he needed no one. He was vague, erudite, gentle, and not quite of this world.
With the exception of Mrs. Hoolihan he never even noticed the servants, and Lily soon learned not to expect him to greet her if he passed her working around the house. He never even saw her. She was just part of the background, like a piece of furniture and far less interesting than a book or a painting.
There was to be an “entertainment” at the house the following Saturday evening to celebrate Mr. Adams’s return. He had invited six of his Harvard colleagues, and Cook was in a turmoil of preparations. Mrs. Hoolihan flitted about in her good black silk, looking important and checking on Lily every two minutes as she set the table.
“I know where the glasses go, Mrs. Hoolihan,” Lily told her impatiently, as the housekeeper shifted them around for the third time, putting fingerprints all over them, and Lily sighed because now she would have to shine them up again.
“How is it you know how to set a table, when you’re nothing but a kitchen maid?” Mrs. Hoolihan demanded.
She was always aggressive after a few drinks and Lily said soothingly, “Sure and didn’t I work at the Big House in Connemara, Mrs. Hoolihan. I was taught by the butler himself.”
“Is that right?” Mrs. Hoolihan asked, impressed, departing for the kitchen to check on Cook.
Mr. Adams preferred simple food. “Nothing fancy and nothing sloppy,” were his instructions to Cook, and she was preparing lobster bisque, baked sole, roast pheasant, lemon ice, and chocolate pudding. Mr. Adams himself had selected the wines and decanted them and now he called
impatiently for someone to come and find his cuff links and his studs and to fasten his tie.
“He doesn’t know we don’t have the upstairs maid anymore,” Emer said wearily. “And she was the only one who knew how to tie his tie.”
“I’ll go,” Lily said confidently. Pa had often allowed her to help him with his tie when he was dressing for dinner and she knew exactly how it was done.
She ran upstairs, thinking worriedly of the hundred and one details yet to be taken care of, hoping Emer would remember to stoke up the fires and light the candles. The house smelled sweetly of the masses of flowers she had bought and arranged in huge vases, making Mrs. Hoolihan grumble loudly at the expense. “The master’s not used to flowers,” she had said acidly. “And what’s more, he doesn’t care.”
Lily hurried into Mr. Adams’s dressing room and took the stud box from where it was always kept, on top of the chest of drawers. “Here they are, sir,” she said. “Let me help you put them in.”
He stood to attention like a little boy, humming a complex tune and staring over her head into space while she fitted the gold-and-onyx studs in his shirtfront. “And your cuff links, sir,” she said, and he held out his arms obligingly. “And now the tie, sir. If you could just sit down in front of the mirror it would make it easier.”
He glanced in the mirror, seeing her for the first time. “You’re not the same one,” he said, astonished.
“No, sir, I’m not. I’m the new parlormaid. Lily.” Standing behind him she tugged the tie into position and inspected it in the mirror. “I think that should do it, sir.”
He glanced at it briefly and said, “Yes, fine, just fine. Thank you.” And he wandered off still humming his tuneless tune.
The sound of Cook singing “Rock of Ages” came from the direction of the kitchen as Lily hurried back. She was hovering, red-faced, over her stove. A half-full bottle of gin stood on the table beside her and Emer caught Lily’s eye
and made a little face. “She’s been at it for the past hour,” she mouthed silently.
Lily nodded, worried. If Cook messed up the dinner, they would all be in trouble and maybe out of a job. She ran to Mrs. Hoolihan’s room and knocked, but there was no reply. She knocked again, but the housekeeper still did not answer, and with a sigh she ran back to the kitchen.
She noticed thankfully that at least Cook still seemed to know what she was doing: the soup was ready, the baked sole was curled neatly into little twists ready for the oven, and the pheasant was already roasting. The game chips were prepared, the vegetables were ready to go on the stove, and the puddings were daintily arranged on a silver tray.
Lily crossed her fingers; with a bit of luck and no more gin they might make it through the dinner.
The doorbell rang, and throwing an anxious glance at Emer, Lily ran to answer it. She smoothed her apron, patted her hair neatly back under her white cap and smiled politely at the two gentlemen waiting on the steps. “Good evening, sirs,” she said, taking their coats and showing them up the stairs into the drawing room where their host was waiting. The other guests arrived soon after and she offered them champagne, remembering not to look them in the eye, but it didn’t stop her listening eagerly to their conversation about her employer’s recent travels to Italy.
She announced that dinner was served and stood silently by the sideboard while they enthusiastically spooned up their lobster bisque, praying that the fish course would be ready in time. She collected their plates and sent them down in the dumbwaiter, breathing a relieved sigh as, like clockwork, the fish arrived.
She knew how it should be served and she went discreetly from person to person, offering him the dish. No one so much as glanced at her; they simply placed a portion on their plates and carried on their conversation. And Lily went back to stand by the sideboard, eyes lowered, listening to their talk of travel and art and books and academic
gossip. It was so like evenings she remembered at home that it brought tears of nostalgia and regret to her eyes. She wiped them discreetly away with her fingers, but no one was looking at her and no one noticed.
She collected their plates and sent them down to the kitchen in the dumbwaiter, but this time only the platter of game chips and the brimming sauce boat joggled upward. She placed them on the sideboard and waited impatiently for the pheasant. After a few minutes she tugged on the rope to signal the kitchen to send it up, but still nothing happened.
The minutes ticked by. Mr. Adams threw a quizzical glance at her and passed the claret decanter around again. Panicked, she tugged on the rope again but still nothing happened.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall and the dining room door was flung open. Cook stood there, scarlet-faced, clutching the enormous silver platter with the pheasants. Lily saw young Emer hovering behind her, a terrified look on her face, and she knew to expect the worst.
Planting one foot deliberately in front of the other and humming “Rock of Ages,” Cook marched drunkenly toward the table. An expression of mild astonishment crossed her employer’s face as he looked at her. “I thought I’d show you it myself, sir,” she said, holding the platter triumphantly aloft.
A blast of her gin-soaked breath wafted over him, the tray dipped unsteadily, and Lily’s horrified eyes followed the pheasant as it slid slowly to the
edge
of the silver platter, heading for Mr. Adams’s lap.
She leapt across and grabbed it just in time and Mr. Adams and his astonished guests watched the cook stumble tipsily from the room. “Rock of Ages” sung in a wavering contralto drifted loudly from the hall, and he said mildly, “My apologies, gentlemen. Let us hope this lapse on my cook’s part has not impaired the excellent quality of her food.”
The conversation picked up where it had left off and Lily
hurriedly served them. She carried out her duties perfectly, but inside she was seething. The drunken cook and housekeeper had probably cost her her job and she told herself angrily it wasn’t fair. They did not deserve to work for a decent man like Mr. Adams. And besides, she knew they were robbing him every way they could. She stalked angrily back to the kitchen.
“Jayzus, Emer,” she shouted, slamming through the door. “Cook’s a stupid old drunk. And
we
shall be lucky if we have a job in the morning.”
Emer finished the dishes and crawled wearily off to bed, leaving Lily alone. The kitchen door was open and she could hear the guests’ laughter and booming masculine voices, and somehow she did not feel quite so lonely.
Cook and Mrs. Hoolihan had power over her and she knew that tomorrow they would use it, because they would be too ashamed to face her after what had happened. They would fire her and Emer. Maids were two a penny in Boston and they would be able to hire replacements the same afternoon. She decided there was only one thing to be done.
The next morning she knocked on Mr. Adams’s study door and asked if she might have a word with him. She looked him straight in the eye and Mr. Adams stared back at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. But no, it was the second. “You are the one who tied my tie,” he said, remembering.
“That’s right, sir. I’m Lily.”
He nodded. “But were there not two other maids?” he asked, bewildered.
“Yes, sir.” For a moment Lily almost lost her nerve. He might fire her for saying what she was going to say, but if he did not, Mrs. Hoolihan surely would. She had nothing to lose and she quickly told him of the firing of the two maids and how the housekeeper and Cook had pocketed their wages, about the “arrangement” Cook had with the tradesmen and suppliers, and of Mrs. Hoolihan’s daily sorties to the saloon and their nightly bottles of gin.
“You saw for yourself the state Cook was in last night, sir,” she said finally.
John Adams threw back his head and laughed. “It’s only thanks to your quick thinking the whole platter didn’t end up in my lap. It’s a good thing you are young and fleet of foot, Lily.” He sighed, thinking of the disruption this would cause in his settled household. He looked hopefully at her.
“You say you are Irish, but you have no brogue.” He twisted a silver letter-opener between his fingers, watching her.
“I’m convent-educated, sir,” Lily replied, blushing at the new lie. “I lost my family on the voyage over,” she told him hurriedly. “The ship went aground off Nantucket and they were all drowned.”
He was shocked. “I’m so sorry.” And then he got briskly down to business. “I shall fire Mrs. Hoolihan and the cook. You, Lily, are appointed as housekeeper in her place at the salary of fifty dollars a month, and you will hire a new cook and whatever maids are necessary to run my household properly. I can trust you, can I not, Lily?”
He smiled at her and she blushed with triumph. “Indeed you can, sir,” she said.