by Jo Baker
“Thank you,” she said, shifting on her cold feet, her arms wrapped tight around her. “For doing all that work this morning, I mean.”
He turned back to the brushing. “That’s all right.”
“It’s mine—and Polly’s, really, but she finds it hard to wake up early. So.”
“I was awake anyway. I like to keep busy.”
He did not so much as glance at her.
She squeezed her arms the tighter. “What are you doing here?”
He paused in his work. “What?”
“I mean, why here? I mean, if I were you, I wouldn’t have settled for this. Hidden away like a pike in a backwater. Hardly knowing you’re alive.”
He shifted the currycomb in his palm, straightening the strap across the back of his hand. He didn’t look up.
“I saw you walking down the lane the other day. It was you, wasn’t it?”
He stiffened, and turned to look at her. She was struck again by those light hazel eyes, the darkness of his weather-tanned skin.
“Where did you come from?” Her voice dropped. “You must have travelled. Have you ever been to London?”
“London’s only twenty miles or so from here, you know.”
She flushed, kicking one boot heel with a hard-capped toe. He went back to his work.
“I don’t know what to make of you at all,” she said.
“Please don’t trouble yourself to try.”
She spun away, and clumped off back to the kitchen. He was such a frustrating mixture of helpfulness, courtesy and incivility that she could indeed form no clear notion of him. Of one thing, though, she was certain: he was lying. He was not what he pretended to be. He might have fooled everybody else at Longbourn, but he did not fool her. Not for a minute.
The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
Mrs. Bennet’s dressing room: her inner sanctum, her retreat from the pressing demands of family life; a place of bulging upholstery and swags and cushions and drapes and Turkey-rugs; a place heaped with worn-once gowns, abandoned shawls, spencers, pelisses and bonnets; a place of rose-petal mustiness, of striped and flowered wallpaper, of surfaces trinked out with all the porcelain her pin money could supply, and all the paper flowers and shellwork and scrollwork and embroidered panels and painted china her daughters’ nimble fingers could furnish, and all of it decomposing now and peeling and gathering dust, and driving Mrs. Hill’s ordered, governable heart to distraction.
Mrs. Hill had been summoned to discuss the menus for the week, and having committed the requests for partridge and timbales and ragouts, as she always did, to memory, she should now be off and away to knead the bread dough, which she’d left to rise in the kitchen. But instead she was kept in the dressing room to hear Mrs. B.’s complaints, which concerned—as they often did—Mr. B.’s failure to understand the necessity of something that was violently important to his wife. And since he seemed barely capable of hearing her voice, let alone the import of her speech, Mrs. B. was resolved not to pursue the matter with him any further. Instead, she complained of it to Mrs. Hill.
It was not in Mrs. Hill’s nature to make sympathetic noises and be idle, even though she knew from long experience that all attempts at putting this room in order were entirely futile. She dusted a japanned box with a corner of her apron, and then wiped the dust off the cabinet shelf that it stood on. She lifted a rumpled egg-yolk evening-gown from a chair, and shook out its folds.
“Oh, just leave it, Hill.”
“I’ll hang it up—”
“Hang it up? Hang it all! Don’t bother yourself with it! That ragged old thing!”
Mrs. Hill looked the dress over: had the girls missed something? The silky yellow folds slipped through her hands. No marks that she could see, no fallen hems or pulled seams; no obvious tears. It seemed entirely as it had been when returned to Mrs. Bennet’s wardrobe after its last laundering; there had been a particularly soupy supper at the Gouldings’. How the girls had tutted over the gown; how they’d steeped and soaped and teased the spots out of the silk. She had been proud of them, capable little laundresses that they were. And she had felt that they were pleased with themselves, too, when it had at last come up clean, and that was gratifying: they were beginning to take a proper pride in their work, rather than just getting through it, wishing they were elsewhere.
“I must have something new,” Mrs. Bennet was saying. “Really, I must. And so must all the girls. Surely that is not too much to ask, after all these years? You shall have that hideous old thing. I don’t want it any more.”
Mrs. Hill laid the gown carefully over her arm; there was a time it would have quickened her heart to think of possessing something of such loveliness. But really, now, what use were yellow silk and flounces, to her? It would need taking up and taking in and all the silliness cut away or she would catch fire while she was cooking. So it was really not so much a gift as another job of work, and that was something that she did not need at all.
“It is terrible indeed, Hill. You have no notion of what it is, to be a mother, and to know your children suffer, for want of fatherly attention.”
And now Mrs. B. made a great evacuation of her lungs, and heaved her softened body up from her reclining posture, waving Mrs. Hill’s proffered hand impatiently away. She crossed the little room, stays creaking, to glower out of the window, though her thoughts clearly were not occupied by the view of the pretty park below.
“And not just for the coming ball; we shall need new gowns for morning calls, and for family dinners, and for supper parties, and for drinking tea in, and all that kind of thing.”
Then she leaned on the windowsill, and wiped her eyes.
“But I suppose he will forbid it. He does not understand this kind of thing at all. Indeed, I do not think he cares.”
Mrs. Hill gazed at her mistress’s broad back. If she did not get down to the kitchen and sort out the bread, they would have bricks that week instead of loaves. She had to send one of the girls to collect eggs, and the other to beat the hall carpet, and whichever girl she asked to do whichever job, they would scowl and bicker over it. And James was away off up in the High Field, repairing fences, and she had a jug of beer set aside on a shelf in the larder, to carry up to him, and if she didn’t take it soon, she wouldn’t have the time to take it up at all before his work was finished there. Before you knew it, dinner would have to be got under way, and Mr. Hill would be wanting his cup of tea, and it was not good to leave him wanting his tea for very long.
And yet Mrs. B. was sad, and needed her; she came close, and touched her shoulder.
“I am sorry, madam.”
Mrs. B. shook her ringlets. “There is always something more pressing, as far as he’s concerned. Some tenant not paying the rent. Or they want seed on the farm, or there are repairs to be done; there’s always something more important than me, and the needs of my poor girls.”
Mrs. B. turned to face the housekeeper, her look grave and earnest. Mrs. Hill found her hard hands caught up in her mistress’s soft ones.
“Would you speak to him for me, Hill?”
“I can, if you wish, madam, but I don’t think that it would have much consequence.”
“Oh, you know you have influence with him, Hill. If you tell him it is necessary he will understand that it is. If I say something he thinks it is not worth attending to. But he will listen to you. He does not listen to me. Not any more.”
Mrs. Hill turned her face away. A powder-pot sat on the dresser nearby, the puff lying loose, the mahogany surface floured thick with good lavender-scented powder. There had been no more babies, and there would never be more babies now: this was what lay at the heart of this rats’ nest of unhappiness. She had not provided the necessary heir, and this was a desperate disappointment. And yet, Mrs. Hill thought, having been worn threadbare by all those pregnancies and torn by all those confinements, with all those lost teeth and all that shed blood and a loose
belly now to lug around with her like a sack; there must be some relief for Mrs. Bennet, mustn’t there, to know that it was all over now, and she would not be obliged to endure it all again?
“You know that it is true,” the mistress continued. “One word from you, and we’ll have a new broom or a pan tinned or more candles or whatever it is that you want.”
“Household matters, madam, and that is all.”
Mrs. Bennet released Mrs. Hill’s hands.
“These are household matters! This concerns all of us! I had thought, as a woman, you would understand. But then, you are not a mother, so you do not know. You cannot comprehend how I suffer for my girls. Mr. Bingley may be married off before my dear daughters can even get a look-in.”
“Mr. Bingley?”
“Oh, yes, perhaps you haven’t heard!” Mrs. Bennet’s face was like a blustery spring day: dark clouds were bundled away, and then the sun shone. “Netherfield Park is let at last, you know. When Mrs. Long was here earlier, she told me all about it. They are to be in residence by Michaelmas.”
“Mrs. Nicholls will have her work cut out, to get it all in order.”
Mrs. Bennet wafted the air: Mrs. Nicholls’s troubles did not signify at all in comparison with her own.
“But you see, Hill. The new tenant is a young gentleman—an unmarried gentleman. A young unmarried gentleman of good fortune.”
Mrs. Hill shifted on her feet; she glanced at Mrs. B.’s cushion-cluttered sofa, considered collapsing into it. A young, unmarried gentleman, newly arrived to the neighbourhood. It meant a flurry of excited giggly activity above stairs; it meant outings, entertainments, and a barrowload of extra work for everyone below.
“Yes. So the girls must have new clothes so that they may be fallen in love with, and I must too, so as to show that we are a respectable family and worthy of his notice. I will not have Mr. Bingley overlooking us and thinking we are nothing, for want of a few frocks. Therefore you must speak to Mr. Bennet about it, and insist that we have them.”
At least they had James to help out this time. Another pair of hands, a young man to drive the carriage in Mr. Hill’s place.
“I will speak to Mr. Bennet,” Mrs. Hill said. “If you really wish it, madam.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Bennet, and she sank down on the sofa once again, leaving Mrs. Hill standing. “Well, as soon as you can, Hill. And pour me a dose of my balm, would you? My nerves are all aflutter.”
Mrs. Hill unstoppered the bottle and half filled a glass and handed it to her mistress, who sipped and closed her eyes, and was soothed. Mrs. Hill left her there, and trudged back down to the kitchen. The bread dough had risen up above the edge of the bowl; it was tight and round and streaked with stretch marks. She turned it out onto the floured tabletop, scraping it away from the bowl with her fingernails, flipping it over and slapping it down again, then pounding and hammering at it with her fists, sending out gusts of flour; when Mr. Hill shuffled into the kitchen a little later, he took one look and decided it would be better not to ask for his tea, and instead sat down quietly by the fire and waited till she noticed him.
Sarah had been there, once, years ago, before Polly had even come to Longbourn. She’d been sent with a gift of a ham, after the killing of a Bennet pig. Back then the grand pillars of Netherfield had stood streaked with green and damp. The door had been opened by a desiccated footman, whose livery was moth-eaten and food-stained and who stood in the dim lobby and looked at her with his one good eye—the other being an orb of milky white—and asked her whose girl she was, and then had pulled the creaking door wide and bowed her in.
Inside it had been cold, and echoing, and full of flitting shadows: the little girl had passed down corridors lined with foxed and blistered mirrors, with furniture draped and shrouded in dust sheets. The ham, swaddled like a baby in its cotton wraps, was heavy and cold in her arms. The footman showed her into a parlour, then he sank down in a sofa and tilted his head back, mouth open, as if utterly exhausted by the small journey to and from the door.
The room was frowsty and cold, and smelt of medicaments and camphor wood and urine but also something faintly sweet; a card-table was set out with a clutter of mismatched tea things, and there was a tumbled daybed in the corner, on which lay what she first took to be a bundle of mending, but which moved and then turned, and then smiled at the child; such teeth as the old lady still possessed were black.
“Would you like a piece of cake, little girl?”
Sarah shook her head, set down the ham, and walked backwards for the door. She spun round and sprinted the length of the haunted corridor, and heaved open the huge front door herself. Then she ran, stumbling, the first mile back to Longbourn, and when she couldn’t run any more she walked as fast as she could, glancing over her shoulder. The smell of the place—the sweetness that was decay—had seemed to linger about her for days.
Today, all grown up, she approached Netherfield again. This time, instead of a heavy cold ham, she was carrying an elegantly phrased invitation for Mr. Bingley, requesting his company at a Family Dinner.
Crunching up the gravel drive, which had been raked and hoed and cleared of weeds, she gazed up at the stately scrubbed-clean colonnade: this was clearly no longer the kind of establishment where a neighbour’s housemaid could be received at the front door. She took a path round the side of the house, looking for the servants’ entrance. The sashes were lifted to let the fresh air in to sweeten the rooms—all inside was newly painted; she could smell it. She glimpsed pure-white ceilings, dust sheets, a watery mirror.
The young ladies and Mrs. B. were all of a twitter about him, this Mr. Bingley. There had already been a bit of to-and-fro, but the servants had had little to do with it. When Mr. Bingley called at Longbourn, the gentlemen had sipped Canary wine in the library in a remarkably self-sufficient manner. James had seemed to think the care of the Bingley horse—an impressive black gelding—to be a pleasure rather than an imposition.
But now there was this, the invitation to a Family Dinner, and Mrs. B. was already in a fluster about fish and soup, because a Family Dinner was of course more difficult to get right than a formal one. You had to impress, but at the same time you had to look like you were not trying to impress at all. It had to be excellent, and it also had to seem as though it was how they were all used to dining every day.
Mrs. B. had been very particular about the note, had shaped the words carefully on the best paper in the house, tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth. Mrs. Hill had been very particular about it too: when James came down from the breakfast room with the missive, she had tweaked it off the salver, squinted at it a long moment, then handed it straight to Sarah.
“Quick as you can; no dawdling, please. I need you back here to help with the pies.”
The door was small and plain and must be a servants’ entrance. No one answered her knock, so she just slipped in, and followed the noise towards the kitchen. This seemed a likely place to find someone to convey a note on its onward journey to an upstairs apartment. Sarah already felt anxious, and she had not even been obliged to speak to anybody yet: it would surely look odd that she, a housemaid, had come with an invitation, instead of a footman. What was Mrs. Hill thinking? What was Mr. Smith for, if not to dash about the countryside on the family’s behalf?
Sarah sidled through a swing door, and into the vast kitchen. No one even noticed her. The place was cavernous, echoing, and bustling with activity. She saw a male cook in a blue jacket, pacing and peering into pots; three kitchen maids chopped onions and leeks; menservants swept in and out. The scents were overwhelming: beef and wine and stewing fruits. Then a footman—tall, in fine livery and powdered wig—whisked past her.
“Excuse me …”
He stopped, and came back. His face was quite brown. She glanced at his hands; he wore white gloves, so she could not see if they were brown too. She bit her lip, looked up at his face again—he was distressingly handsome—and then away, because it was rude to st
are. Her cheeks were hot; she stared down at her feet.
“May I be of assistance?”
The words were English, and spoken in a very gentlemanlike fashion. Not daring to meet his gaze, she held out Mrs. B.’s carefully constructed note, and shook it at him.
“For— For Mr. Bingley.”
“And do you wait for a reply?”
She nodded. But he just stood there, so she was obliged to look up at him again. His eyes, dark as black coffee, still rested on her; he was almost smiling. She felt her cheeks get hotter.
“I am very glad to know it.” He bowed, and was gone.
So was he what they called a black man, then, even though he was brown? An African? But Africans were cross-hatched, inky, half-naked and in chains. That plaque she had seen at the parsonage, hanging in the hallway: Am I not a man and a brother? This fellow, though, was immaculate in his livery, and his skin was not scribbly at all, but beautifully smooth and clear. He was indeed hardly darker than Mr. Smith, or any local man who worked the fields in the August sun. Though with them, the brown faded with the winter, and only ever extended as far as their shirt collar and rolled-back sleeves …
Sarah shrank back against the wall, so as to be out from under everybody’s feet. It must be a fair old hike up to the family rooms and back. Or perhaps Mr. Bingley could not make up his mind whether he could face a Family Dinner with the Bennets or could not. The lime-washed plaster was cool against her palms. She watched the busyness and hurry and was glad that she was not required to be a part of it. The Netherfield housekeeper, Mrs. Nicholls, had been stopped by the male cook, and he was barracking her; he must have come up with the family from London, since they did not have male cooks around here. Mrs. Nicholls was apologizing, flustered, hands spread in supplication, and Sarah looked away; Mrs. Nicholls would not want to be noticed like that.