Dear Laura

by Jean Stubbs

  ‘How do you run through it so fast?’ she asked, very low.

  ‘I hardly know myself. But I owe Marchmont at cards, and some tradesmen, and they are pressing me for payment.’

  ‘You promised me you would not gamble.’

  ‘I promised I should try – and so I did!’

  ‘Have you not approached Theodore yourself?’

  ‘To no purpose. I thought you would know how to persuade him otherwise. It will not be the first time you have petitioned him for me, on one count or another.’

  She stared at her rings.

  ‘I have no influence over him.’

  ‘That I find impossible to believe. You have considerable influence over me.’

  She lifted her head and looked directly at him.

  ‘Not at cards, Titus,’ she said drily.

  For a full minute each held the other’s gaze: he admiring, she confronting. Then she looked away again.

  ‘I shall see what I can do,’ she said without hope.

  After a pause, Titus said, ‘The influenza begins to rage here as well as in Europe and in the United States of America. Lord Salisbury, I hear, is confined to Hatfield. I wonder if I shall catch it?’

  She rose and paced slowly to the window, lifted a curtain and contemplated the Common at night. He knew, without seeing, how she held her head crowned by that ashen coronet, and how well the emerald watered silk set off her pallor. And she, struggling against tears, sensed the arrogance of his ease and his sureness of her.

  ‘If I were ill again,’ said Titus, surveying the fire with half-closed eyes, ‘would you come again to nurse me like a kind sister-in-law?’

  She was silent, very still at the window, and he twisted to see her.

  ‘Would you, Laura?’

  ‘I beg of you,’ she said to the empty dark, ‘to forget what should be forgotten.’

  His face changed.

  ‘That is very hard,’ he replied. ‘Do you not find it so?’

  ‘I find it both hard,’ said Laura, ‘and bitter.’

  Her sadness had wiped out his humour.

  ‘I suppose,’ she continued, in sorrowful acceptance, ‘that your money has been spent on ladies as well as cards? It is, perhaps, unmannerly of me to mention such a possibility, but there can hardly be any pretences between us.’

  He took counsel of the fire again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘both women and cards. But I appear to have developed a taste for someone who cannot be bought. So what matter?’

  ‘I would rid myself of you with that knowledge.’

  As torn as herself, but adamant, Titus replied, ‘Try, Laura.’

  The entrance of Theodore acted as a restorative to them.

  ‘You will catch cold at the window in that thin dress,’ said the master of the house. ‘Come to the fire, Laura. Titus, you should not allow her to stand in a draught.’

  ‘Ah, but I have no influence over her,’ said Titus carelessly. ‘Have I, Laura?’

  She let the curtain fall and turned towards them, her smile lifted like a banner.

  ‘None whatsoever,’ she replied, just as carelessly, and sat back in her chair to be admired, with the brooch glittering at her heart.

  2

  On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.

  The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

  IN the vast hot kitchen the servants settled to a supper of cold meats and pickles after the day’s labours.

  ‘There’ll be nothink more from that quarter tonight,’ said Mrs Hill, nodding at the bell-board above the kitchen door. ‘Let me help you to a bite o’ beef, Mr Hann. I can recommend it.’ And she nodded to herself, and narrowed her eyes at the blade of the carving knife.

  A woman of fifty, stout of body and high of colour, she was a tribute to good cooking and heavy feeding, queening her tableful of deferential faces in contentment.

  On her right sat Nanny Alice Nagle, who had been in the Crozier’s service only one year less than herself; brought in to nurse Master Edmund, the first-born child. She and Mrs Hill were strong-minded women with a powerful sense of their own dignity, and they understood each other. The kitchen was the cook’s province and the nursery belonged to the nanny. On their separate grounds they deferred to one another, but to the rest of the staff they presented an irresistible front. Should anyone offend either they could expect a united attack, larded with exclamations of horror and protestations of outraged disbelief.

  On the cook’s left sat Kate Kipping the parlourmaid: small-boned, smooth-haired, with a ladylike aspect. Privately the others considered she gave herself airs, but she commanded sufficient respect to keep their opinions unvoiced. By her side was Harriet Stutchbury the housemaid, one of Cook’s protegées: kind-hearted, gullible and awkward. Henry Hann, the coachman, took the foot of the table. Between himself and Nanny wriggled the latest of Cook’s recruits Annie Cox: an undersized child of thirteen, who played general factotum for the sum of ten pounds per annum and board.

  ‘Another Christmas over and gone, Lord love us,’ Nanny Nagle observed, watching Cook’s knife sheer expertly through the baron of beef and deposit three red slices on her dinner-plate.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs Hill, shaking her head sadly, though her mind and eyes were on the carving, ‘and none of us getting any younger. Harriet, make yourself useful and cut the bread. Not too thick, neither. We aren’t cannibals I hope.’

  Harriet set a pair of rough hands to the task, without avail.

  ‘Six year,’ said Mrs Hill, with sombre satisfaction, ‘has that girl been under my instructions, and can’t keep the loaf straight. Six year. Cut another for Miss Nagle, Harriet, and give that slice to Annie. She don’t mind.’

  ‘Glad to get it, Missus,’ said Annie sincerely, anxious to oblige. ‘Fresh or stale, as my mam allus says.’

  Mrs Hill put down her carving tools with some deliberation, and a tight silence descended. Annie, stricken sparrow, stopped with the uneven slice of bread at her mouth and stared round-eyed at the mountain of wrath.

  ‘Have I been trained and training in my profession for uppards of thirty-seven year this Michaelmas,’ said the cook terribly, ‘to be called Missus at my own table?’

  ‘Shame on you,’ cried Nanny Nagle, ‘and put that bread back on your plate, Annie Cox, instead of gormandizing in front of your betters.’

  ‘She don’t know nothink,’ said Harriet Stutchbury kindly, remembering a hard apprenticeship under the same authority. ‘She don’t do it a-purpose.’

  The child squirmed, scarlet-cheeked and grateful, and looked anxiously at her slice.

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Harriet Stutchbury,’ cried the cook. ‘Mrs Hill is my name, Annie, and Mrs Hill I will be called,’ though it was purely a courtesy title due to her status, since she had never married. ‘Two week you’ve been in this gentleman’s house, Annie Cox, and a-gazing at the food as if you never saw meat in your born days. What you do at home is no concern of mine,’ she added loftily, ‘but in my kitchen you learn your manners. Last served is last to start, and nobody starts afore grace. You say grace at home, I hope?’

  ‘No, Missus – Hill.’

  The quietness was dreadful. In awed delight and suspense the others waited.

  ‘Take that plate to the scullery, Miss,’ said the cook, ‘and light a candle to eat it by. I don’t sit down to my meal with a Heathen of a Christmas-day. Get along with you, do!’

  The child, relieved that she was not to be deprived of her food as well as their company, scrambled down from her chair.

  ‘You’ve forgot somethink, Miss,’ cried the cook grandly, pointing to her knife and fork.

  Annie scurried back and collected the cutlery she was unused to wielding. But in the privacy of the cold scullery, with her two inches of candle, she delved her fingers here and there in the titbits, glad to enjoy it in peace.

  Alone among them
, Kate Kipping ate sparingly and elegantly as her mistress did, and wiped her lips with her napkin after every mouthful.

  ‘Lantern slides this evening, Mr Hann?’ said Mrs Hill.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, with Mr Titus a-clowning.’

  ‘Ah, he’s a merry gentleman,’ said Mrs Hill drily. ‘Very free. I hope he behaves hisself with you when you open the door, Kate.’

  The girl lifted an exceedingly self-possessed face.

  ‘I know my place, I hope, Mrs Hill.’

  ‘Ah yes, but does he? That’s what I’m saying!’ And the cook sucked a fragment of meat from her tooth reflectively.

  Harriet, staunch to the chains that bound her, said, ‘He took a liberty with me, once, Mrs Hill. That day Kate was poorly.’

  ‘How do you mean, girl, a liberty?’

  ‘Pinched my cheek, ma’am, and gave me a bit of a squeeze.’

  ‘He’s done a deal more than that in his time, I can tell you,’ said Mrs Hill heavily.

  The housemaid giggled nervously, misjudging her mentor.

  ‘I’ll have no light behaviour here, Harriet Stutchbury,’ said the cook, very sharp. ‘Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Begging your pardon, ma’am.’

  ‘Well he never took liberties with me, and never shall,’ said Kate Kipping firmly. She glanced at the subdued housemaid. ‘A gentleman knows when he may and when he may not, and Mr Titus is a gentleman.’

  ‘Excepting where a certain lady is concerned,’ said Nanny Nagle, raising her eyebrows significantly.

  ‘Name no names, Miss Nagle,’ the cook replied. ‘Say what must be said, but name no names.’

  ‘Oh, we all know very well round this table,’ said the nanny. ‘Henry Hann could tell a tale or two, couldn’t you, Mr Hann?’

  He paused in the midst of his eating, swallowed and cleared his throat.

  ‘What I say now I could say in a Court of Law,’ he began, and they all pulled their chairs nearer, except for Kate Kipping who mentally withdrew from a conversation she could not check. ‘And I lay it all at Mr Titus’s door. The mistress is a lady, and without Mr Theodore I’d be in the workhouse.’

  ‘No, no,’ they cried, as his lower lip trembled. ‘Never in this world, Mr Hann.’

  ‘Yes I should,’ he protested, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Owing to an unfortunate weakness of mine as is no secret. Though I promised Mr Theodore as I’d be sober whenever I drove his lady. And so I was, stone cold sober, when Mr Titus was took ill in the summer.’ He buttered his bread liberally. ‘She was with him nigh on two hours, and she’d clean forgot about me when she come out.’

  ‘Lor’!’ cried Nanny Nagle, throwing up her hands. ‘Whatever do you mean, Mr Hann?’

  Although they had heard the tale, with variations, many times already.

  ‘Mrs Crozier comes out, a-pinning her hat and a-drawing on of her gloves, and begins to walk along the street. So I calls out, “Here I am, ma’am.” And she stops, as if she recollects somethink, and walks back and says, “I did not see you, Henry.”’

  ‘Whatever did you say?’ the cook asked, agog.

  Some delicacy was evident in his reply.

  ‘I said, “Begging your pardon, ma’am. I must’ve drawed up too far back.”’

  Kate Kipping lifted her head and looked at him, then looked down again at her locked fingers.

  ‘Was she flushed up?’ asked Nanny Nagle, on the flushed side herself with scandal.

  ‘She had a good colour, but it could have been the heat. It was a warm day,’ said Henry slowly, regretting the deathless popularity of his story.

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ cried Nanny Nagle. ‘I’d call it Shame if I didn’t know her better.’

  ‘Whatever it was, and we don’t know as it was what we think,’ said Henry with rough courtesy, ‘it was Mr Titus’s doing.’

  ‘A man is as he is,’ said Nanny Nagle, ‘and a woman should know that and keep herself Pure.’

  ‘She is pure,’ cried Kate, firing up. ‘Purer than you, Miss Nagle, for thinking shame of her.’

  ‘Hoity-toity, Kate Kipping,’ said the cook. ‘We all know you set yourself up to be like her. Walking the Common of a Sunday in her hand-me-downs, acting the lady. I shouldn’t be surprised, Miss, if you didn’t know more than you say. Thick as thieves together!’

  ‘I know nothing, Mrs Hill, and there’s nothing to know. Mr Titus is Mrs Crozier’s brother-in-law and a bachelor gentleman. It’s only right that she should see to things for him when he’s poorly.’

  ‘She’s a secretive cat,’ said Nanny Nagle, pondering. ‘She dodges papers under her blotter when I come in too sudden. And she sits for hours in that bedroom of hers, writing in her diary. She keeps it locked up, too. And once, when Mr Titus called on her in the afternoon, I found her with her eyes red and she turned away so as I couldn’t see she’d been crying.’

  ‘I don’t hardly like to think of the lady crying,’ said Henry guiltily, but Nanny Nagle was relishing the idea too much to be parted from it.

  ‘The virtuous woman is far above rubies, the Good Book says. Life may be a Vale of Sorrow, but there’s One Above as sees all. Poor folks can be good Christians, and rich folks no better than Heathens. Take her worldly goods away from her and I could tell you what’s left – though I wouldn’t soil my lips on the word!’

  Their stomachs were distended with fruit tart, but a cheese-board was not refused. Appetites whetted by defamation they set to willingly, except for Kate.

  ‘She’s thought about it, even if she hasn’t done it,’ said the nanny, wiping cream from her mouth and helping herself to a hunk of Cheddar and three pickled onions. ‘Sinned in her heart. I know her.’

  ‘Still,’ said the cook, disturbed by the vehemence of her ally’s arguments, ‘there’s no signs of anythink being wrong. It’s eight year since Miss Blanche was born.’

  ‘There’s ways and means,’ said the nanny. ‘He’d know even if she didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t like to think of Mrs Crozier being upset,’ said Henry helplessly.

  ‘Don’t you?’ cried Kate Kipping. ‘Then why do you say ill of her? I’ll tell you who’s no better than he should be, and that’s Mr Theodore. Why should there be talk of her and not him. He’s out at nights often enough, and it isn’t work that keeps him, I’ll swear to it. Because Mr Titus called once or twice, expecting to see him, and Mrs Crozier was by herself. Don’t smile like that, Miss Nagle, I won’t bear it!’

  ‘Prove it, Miss!’

  ‘I can prove it, for I was clearing away the coffee, and Mr Titus said, “Where’s Theo?” And the mistress said, “I thought he was with you, in the city, on a matter of business.”’

  ‘Ah, they fooled you, Miss,’ said the nanny knowingly. ‘They’re up to many a trick of that sort.’

  ‘No more they did, for he went ten minutes after, and she sat by herself until well on eleven o’clock. She hardly spoke a word while I was helping her to bed. Just after three in the morning – I heard the clock strike – the master let himself in.’

  ‘And where was you, to hear all this from the top of the house?’

  ‘I’d left the attic door open, because the mistress looked ill and I wanted to hear her if she called for me. I told you, if you remember, Harriet?’ The housemaid nodded, for they shared the same room. ‘Well, I crept on to the landing and saw him down below, mounting the stairs. You call her secretive, Miss Nagle, but you should have seen him. Smiling to himself. Then he went in as solemn as a vicar, and she was awake, and for once she let fly. I could hear them quarrelling and then her crying. And I say it’s the master you should be gossiping about!’

  ‘Gossiping?’ cried Mrs Hill, enraged. ‘You’ll hear no gossip in this kitchen, Kate Kipping.’

  ‘What do you call this, then?’

  Cook and parlourmaid faced each other. The one with social, the other with moral, authority. After a brief pause, Mrs Hill gave way and rescued her dignity in one sentence.

  ‘Here,�
� she cried, in loud good-nature, ‘if we aren’t a-talking away and forgetting that silly Annie Cox in the scullery!’ She turned from Kate and shouted, ‘Annie! Annie! Come back here, you silly girl. You’ll be froze to an icicle!’

  The kitchenmaid, chilled in bone and pink of nose, emerged.

  ‘And what do you mean by this sort of behaviour, Miss?’ the cook said briskly. Then, as the child wondered what new outrage she had committed, Mrs Hill gave her a little push towards the polished range. ‘Get yourself warmed on that stool. And, Harriet, cut her a piece o’ pie. I daresay you like apple pie, don’t you, Annie?’

  ‘I ain’t never had it, Missus – Hill – as I recollect.’

  ‘Then eat up. Pour her a spoon o’ cream on it, Harriet. I can see it’ll take me a month o’ Sundays to make any think of you, Annie!’

  The kitchenmaid, perplexed and comforted, applied herself to the pie.

  ‘Come now, girls, let’s clear these things off,’ said the cook, ‘and I’ll read the Cards.’

  ‘On a Christmas-day, Mrs Hill?’ Harriet asked uncertainly.

  ‘It ain’t a Sunday, and it’s nearly over anyway.’

  ‘Well, I thank you for one, Mrs Hill,’ said the nanny. ‘It’ll be an education and a pleasure to us all. Be quick now, you girls, for Mrs Hill!’

  Among the farthing novelettes in the kitchen drawer, underneath a book on the Understanding of Dreams, the cook found a sleazy pack of cards. Harriet washed up, Annie dried, and Kate whisked crumbs neatly and folded the cloth. Then Mrs Hill, in her best black dress, shuffled and dealt the pack. Between the reading of tea cups and the reading of cards lay a chasm of difference. Little fortunes to be found among the leaves shrivelled in comparison to the magnificence of the Public Armageddon predicted through pasteboard.

  In the grip of Fate, Mrs Hill prophesied sufficient financial disaster, adultery and peril, to undermine the entire British Empire.

  *

  Upstairs, the two boys lay awake in the dark and re-explored the world that pressed hardest upon them. Lindsey had just completed his first term at Rugby and found it a rough baptism. Edmund, in his second year, contemplated the Scylla and Charybdis behind him and prepared to negotiate the rocks ahead. A dark, sturdy boy, with an uncanny resemblance to his father, he also possessed his father’s silent stoicism. But Lindsey was his mother’s son, delicate of frame and gentle of eyes. He could be emotionally pillaged, and Edmund feared for him. The fear and the knowledge were a double burden for a fourteen-year-old lad to bear, but he sought to smooth Lindsey’s path.