by Jo Baker
“What’s first to do, then, ma’am?”
She lifted the kettle from the range, and jerked her head towards the scullery.
“Let’s get you sorted out.”
She poured him hot water from the kettle into the scullery sink and let it down with water from the tap; she gave him a slip of soap and a linen towel and a comb, then fetched Mr. Hill’s razor and stropped it for him. She left her scissors on the drainer, for his nails.
In the kitchen, she scrubbed down the table with salt, and set out the bread, and butter, and cheese, and listened to him huff and splash. When he had rolled back his sleeves at the sink, his arms had been twisted rope, just bone and muscle. These were hard days indeed, to be between employments.
The table laid, she sat and waited. He came up the step from the scullery, his hair still damp and dripping around his ears. His beard was gone, and his skin was pale and soft where it had been. He was ill at ease, moving awkwardly in the confined space of the kitchen, with its obstacles and hurdles, its clutter of stools and chairs, tubs and fire-irons and skillets. He was one of those men, it seemed, who are not quite at home indoors.
“So, what’s to be done now, ma’am?”
She drew out a chair for him at the kitchen table. He looked down at it.
“Sit.”
She poured him a cup of tea, set the milk jug beside it, and placed a bit of sugar on the edge of the saucer. She cut the bread and the cheese, then went to the pantry to shave a few slices off the ham. When she had set all this down in front of him, he was still just looking at the cup; the drink itself was untouched. His lips—he rolled them in, bit down on them—were cracked and peeling.
She sat down opposite him. “You don’t drink tea?”
“No, I—”
“Would you prefer milk?” She pushed her chair back. “Or we have beer. Would you like a mug of beer?”
“I do drink tea, it’s not that.” His gaze was uneasy; it scudded around the room.
“What is it, then?”
“To earn it. I should work first.”
“No,” she said. “Not here. You eat first here.”
He looked at her then, with his clear eyes.
“There will always be food for you here. Breakfast, dinner and tea. You eat, and then you work,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about that any more.”
He smiled then, and it was a transformation; all unease gone, he softened and seemed young. He picked up the sugar lump and set it aside, then lifted the cup and sipped.
“It’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”
“But you don’t like sugar?”
“I do, I suppose. But I don’t take it.”
She shunted the plate of ham a little closer, watched his Adam’s apple roll down, then back up his throat. She dug a knife into the butter, slid it towards him too. He smeared the bread with butter, laid on ham and cheese, folded it in half and bit. When he had finished, she was ready with a broad wedge of gooseberry tart, and a dish of thick yellow cream with the little silver spoon stuck in it.
“Go on,” she said.
He looked up at her. Then he shook his head, and softly laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just. Thank you.”
He dug a spoon into the fruit, and ate. When he had finished the first slice, she gave him a second. And when, after that, she thought he still looked hungry, she just shunted the pie dish towards him and let him get on with it.
“I wonder …” she began, as he picked up the pastry crumbs from the tabletop with a fingertip. “Mr. B. didn’t mention where you’ve worked before.”
“Oh, here and there.”
“Have you come far?”
“Not very far. Been all over, really.”
“Always in domestic service?”
“That kind of thing. And horses. I do know horses.”
“Well,” she said, after a moment, when nothing more was offered. “You’re here now.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s all to the good.”
“Yes,” he said. “And thank you, ma’am, for that fine meal.”
“ ‘Missus’ will do. I hope you will be happy here.”
She took his empty cup, with its thin strewing of leaves at the bottom, and his cleaned plate, and stacked them all on top of the empty pie dish. She pushed back her chair.
“We are glad to have you.”
“What now, though, missus? What shall I be getting on with?”
“You could go and sort that room out for yourself, above the stable.”
He wiped his mouth, and was on his feet.
“You’ll hear the church clock strike,” she said. “Come back over at four. You’ll be waiting on table with Mr. Hill at dinner.”
He nodded.
“Oh, and—do you have any other clothes?”
He glanced down at his loose waistcoat and hitched-in britches, and then up at her; a smile. He shook his head.
“I’ll sort something out for you.”
“You are very kind.”
“Mrs. B. will have you kitted out in due course, but you’ll need something decent for everyday; can’t be mucking out the horses in livery.”
“Livery?”
She nodded. He pulled a face. It made her smile.
“Well then,” she said. “Get along with you.”
When he had gone, Mrs. Hill climbed heavily up to the attics. She picked her way through old banded trunks and chests and boxes that were labelled with long-lost maiden names and the careful print of young boys heading off to school. She swept off dust and brushed away cobwebs, teased straps out of buckles, and flung back lids, making the dust roil away in billows. She lifted out long-outgrown shirts and nightshirts, narrow and unfashionable suits of gentlemen’s clothes, and held these up to the light, assessing their size and degree of decrepitude, remembering the long years ago when they had still fitted, had been fashionable, and had still been worn.
The kitchen was hot, the new pie baking and the fish bubbling gently in its copper kettle, the door standing open to let out the stour. Polly clambered on and off her stool, lifting down the china; Sarah filled a tray with glasses while Mr. Hill scrutinized the silverware, brow furrowed, lifting one fork and then another to the light. He held one out for Sarah’s notice; there was a crust of something stuck between the tines.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Hill. It won’t happen again.”
He shook his head at her, then spat on the fork and polished it up to a satisfactory shine with a corner of his waistcoat.
“Where’s the new fellow, then?” Polly asked.
Mrs. Hill looked up, over towards the window. “Here he comes right now.”
He slipped in quietly through the kitchen door. Dark hair combed and tied back, he was rigged out in a narrow brown coat, black knee-britches and worsted stockings. His appearance was very decent and neat, but the clothes were antique in cut, like in a portrait of a gentleman made thirty years before.
“Coo,” said Polly. “You look like a ghost.”
He rippled ghostly fingers at her; she giggled. Mr. Hill came to look him over; he brushed a lapel, nodded.
“Well,” said Mrs. Hill. “You’ll do.”
It was to be a simple family dinner, Mr. Hill informed him, an easy introduction into the proper arrangement of knives and forks, plates, platters, decanters and glasses, so that by the time that company were invited, James would be able to set these items upon a tablecloth in a manner that would not offend the neighbourhood.
He was as silent as one of the candlesticks. He shadowed Mr. Hill, watching every move of his white-gloved hands, nodding whenever the old fellow looked round at him to check he had been understood. Between them they laid the table, so that all was in readiness for when the family sat down.
Then, at half past four, Mr. Hill went out into the hall and rang the dinner bell. From all around the house came the sound of doors being opened and shut, the clattering of footsteps, and
voices animated in anticipation of another of Mrs. Hill’s good dinners.
The two men, with Sarah to assist on this first attempt of James’s, carried the dishes up to the dining room, and if she had not had a tureen of buttered leeks in her hands, she would have tugged on his queue—it bounced along on his back so temptingly—just to get some kind of notice out of him.
She could see, though, that Mrs. Bennet already looked upon him with considerable satisfaction. He didn’t have to do anything very much at all, just set the sauce boat upon the table without splashing the tablecloth or jostling anyone, and the mistress would gaze around the assembled family to gather up their admiration, her eyes wide, as if to say, See what a clever fellow we have got ourselves here! Sarah would admit that he was an improvement on the rustics they had been obliged to rope in on occasion in the past, but that was all she was prepared to admit. His hands might be nice, and his nails neat and clean, but that hardly made him Beau Brummell.
When the servants were dismissed, Mrs. B. very pointedly said, “Thank you, James.”
Unseen in the hallway, Sarah rolled her eyes. First Mr. B., and then Mrs. Hill, and now Mrs. B.: why was everyone so bowled over? The only thing of note about him was that he was a man. And under fifty, and with nice hands.
“So how do you like it here, Mr. Smith?”
“I hardly know yet.”
He slipped past her, and kept on going, his stride long. She skipped a step to keep up.
“You will find us very dull, I expect, after the kind of thing that you are used to.”
He did not reply.
“I doubt you’ll find anything of interest to you here.”
They were at the kitchen door now. He pushed it open, then stepped back and held it for her. She was utterly wrong-footed. Already a good way gone towards being properly out of humour with him, she had fully intended to continue in that course until she loathed him heartily. Now, she was obliged to shuffle past him, and nod her thanks, and consider to what degree she had already been uncivil, and if he had warranted it or not. Her discomfort was not, however, sufficient to prevent her from pushing home her point: “You will hardly think us worth the trouble of talking to at all, I should say.”
He looked at her now. She met his look, and raised her eyebrows. Then she spun away, and strode off to help Polly lay the kitchen table. She had succeeded in drawing his attention at last. It gave her surprisingly little satisfaction.
Mr. Hill said Grace, and they started dinner.
Polly watched from under lowered eyelids: James ate as though each mouthful was a thing of great importance that must be considered with all seriousness and respect. It was very interesting, Polly thought, that he should eat like that, when most men of his sort ate as though they were shovelling coals into a furnace, or hay into a barn.
Mrs. Hill passed him the bread, and the butter, and the salt, and kept refilling his cup with small beer.
“May we have more milk, please, Mrs. Hill?”
Mrs. Hill pushed the jug across to Sarah; Sarah filled Polly’s cup and then her own with thin blue buttermilk. Polly did not notice, so fascinated was she by this new manservant. She peered at him; she asked questions; she nodded eagerly along with the answers.
Where had he learned his craft?
He had done similar work before.
What work exactly had he done, though, Polly wanted to know, and where had he done it?
Mrs. Hill shushed her.
He said he didn’t mind, and that Polly was a clever girl, and this made her blush and smile, and slowed down her questioning for a little while. He had worked on a farm, he said, and then as an ostler, and then as a general servant in a house much the same size as this.
“Which house, though—I mean, whose? Maybe we know them—maybe the Bennets visit there.”
The house was beyond the neighbourhood, of course; the farm was just over the distant hills; the inn where he’d worked as an ostler was out past Ashworth, and on a few more miles. All of it was just out of reach, Sarah noted: all the places he mentioned were just a little too far away, for there to be any connection or shared acquaintance between his previous situations and his new one, here at Longbourn.
This was what Sarah had always wanted: something—anything—to disturb the quiet, to distract her from the sounds of Mr. Hill’s revolving mastication, and the prospect of another spiritless evening, and the monotony of her own voice reading three-decker novels and three-day-old news. But now change had come to Longbourn, and Polly was staring at it as if she were a simpleton, and Mrs. Hill kept topping up its glass, and even Mr. Hill was smiling and glancing at it and then shyly away, and Sarah was left heartsunk and ignored, and wishing that this change, with its dark hair and its hazel eyes, and its skin the colour of tea, had never come to Longbourn at all.
Sarah felt even lower the following morning, when she stumbled her way down to the kitchen, Polly dragging along three steps behind. The warm glow of her candle illuminated the stairway, the bare treads and the green distempered walls, the candle’s own greasy drips, and her cracked hand carrying it, the skin dark with dried blood and patched with chilblains that she must not scratch however much they itched.
First chores: fuel and water to be fetched, the hearths swept and the range to be blackleaded, and then her hands scrubbed free of blacking and soot before the day’s work could properly begin. Outside, the iron chill of the pump-handle awaited her: she’d almost rather pluck hot coals from the fire.
Polly sat down at the table and rested her cheek on her folded arms. Sarah, still dozy herself, took up the hearth brush and was about to hunker down and sweep the fallen cinders, but then she stopped short. The hearth was clean, the range gleamed, the fire was bright and crackling with new wood. She glanced at the log basket: it was full.
Someone had been up early.
Water next. She leaned into the scullery to lift her yoke. Candlelight fell through the open doorway, and caught on the inner shells of the wooden pails. She crouched to touch: her fingers came away wet. Straightening, she brushed her hand down her apron, then crossed over to the water-tank and laid her hand on the lead. She could feel the cold weight of water pressing out against the metal skin. Someone had mended the fire, and then fetched the water; they had filled the tank right up to the brim.
A brownie. A helpful little lubber fiend. They’d never had one of them at Longbourn before.
“Polly—”
But back in the kitchen Polly had fallen asleep again, head on her arms, curls falling across her face. Sarah stood, hands on hips, looking around the room. For a moment she was lost. Because there was nothing, for the next little while at least, for her to do. An hour had been freed for her, had been presented to her like a gift.
She grabbed the old pelisse that hung by the back door, and ducked out into the peppery-cold morning. Pulling on the coat, her fingers fumbling with the frogging, she strode out of the yard and across the paddock, the frosted grass crunching and the rime kicking back up over her toecaps. She slipped through the side gate and turned up the lane; birds hopped and peeped in the hedgerows. She ducked into blue-black woods, and then back out into the starry morning. The sleeves hung low over her hands; she tugged up the collar and dipped her face into it; the old velvet smelt musty. She came to where the lane crested the hill, and met the drovers’ road.
The drovers’ road was ancient. It swept along the ridge, and was not surfaced or shaped like modern roads were, with their gravel and their ditches. The drovers’ road was just a ribbon of grass worn short by the passing of the herds. The openness, the prospect here were striking; you could see steeples, villages, woods and copses miles away, and the smooth distance of far hills. And she knew that if she just turned that way, and kept on walking long enough, she’d end up at the first city of all the world, and that in itself was a kind of miracle. London was everything that could be imagined; and plenty more, no doubt, that as yet could not.
She wrapped her arms
around herself. A curlew cried. The sun nudged itself up above the hills, flushing the blue morning through with orange. A sheep called; a lamb replied. Shadows reeled out like ribbon; there was green now in the meadows and on the trees. Somewhere, off down the valley, a cockerel crew, and there was a whiff of woodsmoke on the air. And at Longbourn the kettle should be filled and put on to heat because soon enough everybody would need a cup of tea. And she could hardly expect the pixie, however helpful he might be, to think of that.
As she made her way back down the lane, the house was still dark, its windows glassy and blank. A few sheets hung on the line; the linen was a white flicker through the hedgerow’s weave. And she felt a little inward shift: she saw herself standing down there where the washing lines were slung, saw the flicker of movement that she would be making now, as she passed behind the hedge.
It hadn’t been a scotchman, of course, she saw that now: it had been James Smith.
He must have been coming down from the drovers’ road that day, just as she was now. That noise from the stables that evening: that had been him too, sneaking in, honey-talking the horses, like he honey-talked everybody—finding himself a nice warm spot, and bedding down for the night. And in the morning he had somehow contrived to see Mr. B. before anybody had seen him. Why the master had been persuaded to employ him in such circumstances, Sarah had already conjured: it was a matter of economy, no doubt; a bargain so tempting that Mr. Bennet could not bring himself to refuse it.
But the thing was: if he had come down from the drovers’ road, he hadn’t come from that house out past Ashworth like he’d said, or from the farm over the far hills. He could have come from anywhere. He could have come from London. From half a world away.
The kitchen glowed with firelight when she glanced in through the window; Polly was still asleep, head on folded arms. Sarah could hear Mr. Smith moving around in the stables; she should really just go indoors, wake Polly, and get started on their day. But instead she crossed to the stables, and stood on the threshold, looking in at the warm scene there, lit by a hanging lantern. He was rubbing down the mare with a currycomb, and seemed absorbed and peaceful. The horse noticed the newcomer first, and swung her head round to fix a big soft eye on Sarah, buffeting James and making him stumble back and laugh, and then glance round to follow the horse’s look, his face closing when he saw her, like a box.