by Caro Peacock
‘Excuse me,’ I said to his back. ‘Can you please tell me who Mrs Quivering is and where I can find her?’
He turned wearily.
‘Housekeeper. Straight on and last on the left.’
He disappeared through a doorway. The passage was a long one and the door at the far end was green baize, marking the boundary between servants’ quarters and the house proper. At right angles to it, another door marked Housekeeper. I knocked, and a voice sounding harassed, but pleasant enough, told me to come in.
Mrs Quivering reminded me of the nuns. She looked to be in her thirties, young for somebody holding such a responsible position, and handsome, in a plain black dress with a bundle of keys at her belt and smooth dark hair tucked under her white linen cap. But her eyes were shrewd, twenty years older than the rest of her. She looked carefully at me as I explained my business.
‘Yes, you are expected, Miss Lock. I understand there was an accident on the drive.’
‘I’d hardly call it an accident. What happened –’
‘You are unhurt?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘I’m sorry that I can’t allocate you the room used by your predecessor. We are expecting a large number of house guests shortly and I am having to set rooms aside for their servants. You might share with Mrs Sims, or there is a small room two floors from the schoolroom that you might have to yourself.’
I had no notion who Mrs Sims, might be. I said I’d take the small room two floors up, please, and she made a note on a paper on the desk beside her.
‘I’m sure Lady Mandeville will want to talk to you about your duties, but she’s occupied at the moment. I shall let her know you’ve arrived.’
She rang a bell on her desk and a footman appeared, not the one from the carriage. His wig was perfectly in place, the gold braid on his jacket gleaming.
‘Patrick, this is Miss Lock, the children’s new governess. Please show her to the schoolroom.’
He bent silently to pick up my bag. We’d gone no more than halfway along the corridor before he dropped it like a terrier discarding a dead rat and gave a low but carrying whistle. A boy appeared from nowhere. Patrick nudged the bag with his foot and the boy picked it up. It was clearly beneath the dignity of a footman to carry servants’ bags. The boy looked so thin and exhausted that I’d have spared him the burden if I could, but he followed us through a doorway and up two flights of uncarpeted stairs. There was no lighting on the stairs, except for an occasional ray of sunshine through narrow windows on the landings. It reminded me of the times I’d been allowed backstage in theatres when calling on my father’s actor or musician friends. Out front, palaces, moonlit mountains and magic forests; behind the scenes, bare boards, dim light and people scurrying quietly about their business. I tried to keep note of where we were going, aware that much might depend on knowing my way round this backstage world. On the second landing, a maid with a chamber pot stood aside to let us past.
‘How many servants are there?’ I asked the footman.
‘Fifty-seven.’ He said it over his shoulder, adding, ‘That’s inside, not counting stables or gardens, of course.’
We went from the landing into a carpeted corridor with sunlight at last, streaming through a window at the end. The footman knocked on a door halfway along it.
‘It’s the governess, Mrs Sims.’
The door was opened from the inside, on to one of the most pleasant rooms I’d seen in a long time. It wasn’t as grand as I’d feared, much more on a normal domestic scale. A square of well-worn Persian carpet softened the polished wood floor. The windows were open, letting in the mild air of a late summer afternoon. A doll with a smiling porcelain face lolled on the window-seat, alongside an old telescope. A dappled rocking horse stood on one side of the window and a battered globe on the other, next to a cabinet of birds’ eggs. Three small desks were lined up along the wall, blotters, pens and inkwells all neatly ranged. Three children, two dark-haired boys and a yellow-haired girl, were sitting at a table with bowls of bread and milk in front of them, a vase of marigolds and love-in-a-mist in the middle of the white tablecloth. Overseeing them was a grey-haired woman in a navy-blue dress and white cap and apron. She turned to me, smiling.
‘You’ll be Miss Lock. I’m right glad to see you. I’m Betty Sims, the children’s nursemaid.’ Her accent was Lancashire, her welcome seemed genuine. ‘And these are Master Charles, Master James and Miss Henrietta. Now, stand up and say good afternoon to Miss Lock.’
The children did as she told them, obediently but with no great enthusiasm. The older boy, Charles, at twelve years old, already had his father’s black bar of eyebrows and something of his arrogant look. His brother James was three or four years younger and more frail, glancing at me sidelong as if weighing me up. The girl, Henrietta, was between them in age, masses of fair ringlets framing a round face with plump babyish cheeks. Betty Sims told them they could sit down again, so they resumed spooning up the soft paps of bread, though not taking their eyes off me.
‘Did anyone offer you a cup of tea?’ Betty asked.
I shook my head. My throat was parched and I was so hungry that I even envied the children their bread and milk. She told me to take the weight off my feet and keep an eye on the children and went out. I sank into a chair by the window, upholstered in worn blue corduroy.
‘That’s my chair,’ Henrietta said. ‘But you can sit in it for now if you want to.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you know Latin?’ Charles said.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t suppose you know as much of it as I do. Do you know about Julius Caesar?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was the greatest general who ever lived, apart from Wellington. Did you ever meet the Duke of Wellington?’
‘No.’
‘Papa met the Duke of Wellington.’
James dropped his spoon with a clatter and wailed, ‘Where’s Betty? I feel sick.’
‘He doesn’t really,’ Henrietta said. ‘He’s a terrible liar. Did you know you’ve got dust all over your shoes? I have fifteen pairs of shoes.’
‘You’re a lucky girl.’
‘A red leather pair, a green leather pair, pink satin with bows, pink satin without bows, white brocade …’
She was still reciting her wardrobe when Betty came back carrying a tray with tea things and half a seed cake.
‘I feel sick,’ James said. ‘I want some cake.’
Unperturbed, Betty cut thick slices for herself and me, thin ones for the children. When they’d finished them, she said they should go to their bedrooms and be quiet. She’d come along in five minutes and help them change.
‘Change for bed?’ I asked her, when they’d filed out of the room. It wasn’t yet six o’clock.
‘No, changed in case their mother and father want them downstairs before dinner. They usually do, but they might not this evening because of Sir Herbert only just getting back.’
‘Getting back from where?’
It felt mean, commencing my career as a spy on a person who’d been kind to me, but I had to begin somewhere.
‘London, I expect. He’s always up and down from London. Sir Herbert’s an important man in the government.’
She said it with simple confidence, but if Blackstone and Miss Bodenham were right, any importance he might have had was in the past.
‘So he has a lot of business to attend to?’ I said, finishing my second cup of tea.
‘Yes.’ But her attention was on something else. She was staring at the draggled and dusty hem of my dress.
‘If the children are sent for, their governess and I usually take them down together – when there is a governess, that is.’
She was hinting gently that I wasn’t fit for company. My heart lurched at the thought that I might soon be standing in the same room as Sir Herbert Mandeville.
‘But you do look tired out, Miss Lock. If you like, I could make your excuses for you …’
<
br /> She sounded worried about that.
‘Thank you, but of course I must come down with you. I’ll go and change at once, only …’
‘Did Mrs Quivering say you were to share with me?’
She was obviously relieved when I said I’d opted for the little room two floors up.
‘I hope they’ve got it ready for you. It’s through the door at the end and up past the maids’ dormitory. Shall I ring for a boy to take your bag?’
I refused out of pity for the over-worked boys, so my bag and I made the final stage of our journey together, up two steep and narrow staircases. The room was small, no more than eight steps in either direction, with a tiny square of window at shoulder height looking on to the back courtyard. It was clean and simply furnished with a chair, a table, a wash-stand with a large white china bowl, and a bed made up with clean sheets. I had to go down to the maids’ floor to find a cubicle with a privy and water to wash myself. Water pails stood in a line, but most of them were empty. I found one quarter-full, carried that upstairs, stripped off my dress and stockings and sponged myself as well as I could. The green cotton dress I’d bought in London would have to do, along with my lace-trimmed fichu pelerine for a modest touch of style, and the stockings and black shoes. There was no looking glass in the room, so I couldn’t judge the effect, but it was good to feel clean again.
I went down to find the children changed into their best clothes – boys in breeches, waistcoats and short blue jackets with brass buttons, Henrietta in white-and-pink striped silk with frills and a ribbon in her ringlets. She’d reclaimed her chair and was whispering in her doll’s ear, the boys looking at a book. Betty Sims was on the window-seat, eyes on the little bell on its spring over the door. She seemed nervous.
‘They usually ring about now if we’re wanted.’
‘Do the children always have to dress up, even if they’re not wanted downstairs?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So if they’re not, they just have to get undressed again?’
‘They’re wanted more often than not.’
‘When did the last governess leave?’
‘Three weeks ago. I’ve been trying to teach them a bit on my own since then, but I can’t keep all the tables in my head, and if I make a mistake Master James goes running to Mrs Beedle.’
‘Mrs Beedle seems a holy terror,’ I said.
I’d overstepped the mark, I could see that in her face.
‘Mrs Beedle might have her funny ways, but she takes more notice of the children than anybody else does. Several times a week, she’ll be up here hearing them recite their lessons.’
‘They have regular times for their lessons, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I get them up in the morning and washed at half past six, and they have a glass of milk, then an hour with their governess for prayers and reading. Then, if it’s fine, we usually take them out for a walk in the flower garden or the orchard. Breakfast is sent up for all of us at nine o’clock, then it’s studying from ten o’clock till two. Their dinner’s at half past two, then Master Charles usually has his pony brought round. Master James hasn’t cared for riding since his pony bit him, so he and Miss Henrietta play or work in their gardens. They’re supposed to be in bed by half past eight, but it’s not easy these light evenings.’
‘And then we have the rest of the day to ourselves?’
I was secretly appalled at the amount of work demanded.
‘I usually mend their stockings and things of an evening. Lady Mandeville sometimes calls the governess down to play cards if they need an extra hand. But she – There you are.’
The bell over the door had started ringing, bouncing up and down on its spring. Betty Sim’s expression was precisely that of a nervous actor about to make an entrance, and perhaps mine was as well. The children stood up obediently at the sound of the bell, but I couldn’t help thinking they didn’t look overjoyed at the prospect of seeing their mother and father. No backstage this time. The Mandeville children belonged – for these occasions, at any rate – in the other world on the public’s side of the backdrop. So the five of us went quickly along the corridor, through a proper varnished wood door instead of green baize, down a flight of carpeted stairs. We paused on the first-floor landing outside another grander door, painted white with gilt mouldings, while Betty checked the boys’ neckcloths and re-tied Henrietta’s ribbon. When she was satisfied, she tapped quickly and nervously on the door and it opened inwards, apparently of its own accord.
It seemed at first like magic, but there was a footman on the other side of it – a different one, the fourth I’d seen so far – who must have been standing there waiting for the signal. Betty gave Charles a nudge on the shoulder and he walked through it, with his brother and sister following him, then Betty, then me. I was reciting in my mind, A man’s a man for a’ that, to remind myself that I was my father’s daughter. In spite of that, I was dazzled and breathless. We were standing at the top of a double staircase, level with a chandelier that sparkled rainbows in the sunlight coming through a glass cupola several storeys above our heads. The staircase curved down in a horseshoe, left and right, to a circular hallway. The floor was white and blue mosaic, the family coat of arms with its three perched birds by the far door. A carved stone fountain played in the centre of the floor, surrounded by real hart’s tongue ferns. Orange and lemon trees alternated in bays round the walls, their scent rising round us as we went down the left staircase, treading an aisle of soft carpet between expanses of white marble. We crossed the hall. James wanted to linger to watch the fountain splashing into its bowl, but Betty urged him on.
On the far side was another white-and-gilt door, with yet another footman waiting to open it to us. It led into what they called the small drawing room, as I found out later, the one the family used when there were few or no guests in residence. Still, it was at least twice as large as any room I was accustomed to, at the front of the house overlooking the terrace and parkland. Plaster oak leaves and acorns flourished across the ceiling and grew down in gilded swags to frame the many mirrors round the walls, so that everything in the room was enclosed and reflected in a kind of frozen glade, beautiful in its way. The furniture looked mostly French of the previous century, not a straight line anywhere, all curves and gilding and ornate gold hinges.
Lady Mandeville was sitting on a sofa by the window, with her mother Mrs Beedle sewing on an upright chair beside her. Lady Mandeville smiled when she saw the children. James went running to her and buried his face in her chest. Charles followed at a slow march over the blue-and-red Turkey carpet. Henrietta stood just inside the doorway, very much aware of her own reflection in the mirrors.
‘Good evening, Papa.’
She dropped a grand curtsey. Sir Herbert Mandeville had been standing by the fireplace, talking to a grey-haired man I hadn’t seen before. He broke off what he was saying when he heard Henrietta’s voice, smiled and kissed his fingers at her. I had to fight the impulse to go straight over to ask him if he knew he’d nearly killed me that afternoon and whether he made a habit of killing.
‘Say good evening to your father, James,’ Lady Mandeville said, gently pushing the boy upright. He glanced towards his father and mumbled, ‘Good evening, sir.’ Sir Herbert nodded but hardly looked at him.
‘What about you, Charles?’ he said. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Good evening, sir.’
Charles stood stiff and straight, as if for inspection. His father looked him over and gave a more approving nod, as if he’d passed muster this time, and turned back to his conversation with the grey-haired man. I saw Lady Mandeville blow out her cheeks in a look of relief. There was only one other person in the room. She wore a pink and grey satin dress and was standing close to Mrs Beedle’s chair but with her back to the company, looking out over the terrace, and hadn’t turned when the children came in. Her red-gold hair was swept up and held with a pearl-studded comb. Would Celia recognise me from the hotel at Calais? Pos
sibly not. Servants are invisible. Lady Mandeville was looking in my direction, signalling with a lift of the chin that I should come over and speak to her.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Good evening Mrs Beedle.’
I could see Lady Mandeville struggling to remember my name.
‘Good evening Miss … Lock. I hope you had a pleasant journey.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
I was tempted to add that it had been well enough until I encountered her husband. From the way Mrs Beedle was looking at me, I guessed she’d heard the story of the phaeton, but perhaps she hadn’t told her daughter. I was trying to look over her shoulder at Celia Mandeville. She still had her back turned, but she seemed tense, as if it took an effort of will not to turn round. Then, while I was looking at her, she did turn and our eyes met. There wasn’t a shade of doubt about it. She’d recognised me, possibly had known from the time I opened my mouth. Mrs Beedle turned.
‘Celia, this is Miss Lock, the new governess. Miss Lock, my grand-daughter, Celia.’
Celia murmured something, gracious enough, I think, and I suppose I replied in kind. I was looking at her eyes, seeing first puzzlement, then the dawning of a question. She opened her mouth to say something else, closed it again. If she had thought of saying, in front of the family, But I met you at Calais, the thought died in that second. Henrietta came bouncing across to her mother.
‘Mama, may I have a pearl comb like Celia’s?’
‘When you’re older, darling.’ Her mother ruffled her ringlets with a hand that trembled slightly. ‘Have you been a good girl today?’