So Jonas Palmer, bonded servant, was on his way to Philadelphia, where he would have to work for seven years for no wages whatsoever. He blamed it all on Rainbird; he felt sure it was the butler who had found out his guilty secret and reported it to the duke. He often thought of Rainbird and hoped the duke had thrown him out and the butler was starving to death.
Lizzie Gendreau put down the letter she had been reading and blushed guiltily as her husband came into the room.
She had finally achieved the proper status of a lady. At first, it had been very difficult managing her own servants and accepting her new status, but with a year of marriage nearly over, she had almost forgotten what she had felt like in those early days when she had first gone to Clarges Street as a scullery maid.
‘Who has been writing to you?’ asked her husband.
‘It’s from Mrs MacGregor,’ said Lizzie. ‘You remember, she was Mrs Middleton, the housekeeper. She thought it would be a famous idea if we had a reunion in a month’s time – at the inn.’
‘And no doubt that coxcomb, Joseph, will be there?’
‘Yes. But you must know you have nothing to fear from Joseph, and I would so like to see them all again.’
He looked at her pleading face. ‘Very well,’ he said softly. ‘I shall take you there and leave you with them for one day, but that is all. I shall come in the evening to fetch you.’
And so the former servants of Number 67 all made their way on a June evening to The Holly Bush in Highgate. It was odd to think that, after all their long discussions about names for their pub, the Mac-Gregors should have done nothing about changing it from The Holly Bush.
The pub had been closed for the whole day in honour of the reunion. They talked and talked. There was so much news to exchange. Joseph was more refined than ever and full of London Society gossip. The former chambermaid, now Jenny MacGregor, was shortly to be married to a local farmer. Alice was pregnant. Rainbird had gone from success to success, and Dave was very finely dressed and apt to put on airs. Angus told them all the dramas of their first year and bragged how his cooking now drew people from far and wide and that they were going to hire builders to turn the place into a posting-house. Joseph took out his mandolin and played the old songs. But by evening, the visitors were growing restless and anxious to be on their way.
‘It’ll never be the same,’ mourned Joseph as he stood outside with Lizzie. ‘We was all so close once.’
‘We all grew up, Joseph,’ said Lizzie softly. ‘And you are happy, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Joseph. ‘Yes, I am.’ He looked down at the chained dogs on the inn steps. ‘To think o’ the number of times I polished them things,’ he said.
The air was soft and warm and the birds chirped sleepily in the ivy on the walls of the inn.
‘I’m happy for you, Lizzie,’ said Joseph. ‘You’re a real lady now.’
On a sudden impulse, he hugged her close.
Paul Gendreau, arriving at that moment in a gig, made no comment, but he vowed, as he had once before, that it would be a long time before his wife was allowed to see her old companions again.
Rainbird drove Joseph back to Town in his spanking-new carriage and set the footman down in Clarges Street.
‘See you very soon, Joseph,’ he called. ‘See you very, very soon. We’ll all meet again.’
Joseph stood and watched until Rainbird’s carriage had turned the corner of Piccadilly.
He went to enter Number 69, but instead, he turned about and went and stood outside Number 67 and looked down at the dark basement.
He felt something important had gone out of his life. He found himself gripping the railings and wishing the candles would light up that darkness and Rainbird’s voice would be raised summoning him to his duties.
He went sadly into Number 69 and down to the servants’ hall.
‘Good evening, Mr Joseph,’ said a blushing housemaid. ‘We was just about to have supper.’
‘Thank you, Amy,’ said Joseph loftily. He sat down next to Blenkinsop and snapped his fingers as a signal that he was to be served.
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