by Helen Peters
His face brightened a little. “They’re well, so I hear. They’re all at the spinning factory in the village now.”
“Even little Thomas?” asked Mrs Hardwick. “How old is he now?”
“Just turned four, missus. He’s a good little worker, they say.”
Alice appeared and set down a tray with a jug and several grey metal mugs on it. Thank goodness.
William poured the honey-coloured drinks and Alice handed them round, shooting me an evil look as she slammed mine in front of me. I took a big gulp and instantly spat it across the table.
“Ugh!” I spluttered. It was bitter and horrible, like nothing I’d ever tasted. Had Alice poisoned my drink?
Everybody was staring at me.
“Sorry,” I muttered, wiping up the mess with my napkin.
“What is wrong with the beer, young lady?” asked Mrs Hardwick in an icy tone. “Are you used to better?”
Beer? For breakfast?
“It’s just … I normally drink water,” I said.
“You drink the water? In London?” said Mary.
“I expect she lived near a spring,” said George. “There do be springs in London, some places.”
Mrs Hardwick shuddered. “Nasty dirty place, London. I wouldn’t touch a thing from there. The food’s all poisoned.”
“Drink up your beer,” said William. “Give you strength, it will.”
I took another sip. It was really horrible. But I was so thirsty I had to drink something. Then I remembered what Polly had said about tea leaves.
“Excuse me, Mrs Hardwick,” I said in my politest tone. “Could I please have a cup of tea instead?”
The footmen stopped their conversation and gaped at me. The girls giggled. Mrs Hardwick pursed her lips very tight.
“I don’t know what sort of household you’re used to,” she said, “but in this house, tea is for family use only. It is not to be consumed by servants.”
“Mrs Hardwick,” said George in a high voice, “this beer is not to my taste. Could I possibly have a glass of your finest champagne?”
Betty and Mary roared with laughter. Even serious-faced William smiled.
“Leave off, you lot,” said Polly. “Evie’s come down in the world. It’s not her fault she’s used to better things.” She turned to me. “Take no notice, Evie. Eat your bread and butter. You’ve a long morning ahead of you.”
“Keep a close eye on her, Polly,” said Mrs Hardwick, “and make it clear exactly how we do things in this house.”
“Yes, Mrs Hardwick,” said Polly. “I’ll train her up in no time, don’t you worry.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Coal Scuttles and Chamber Pots
The coal buckets banged against my legs as I heaved them up the stairs. They were so heavy that I had to keep stopping to rest.
“Hurry up,” said Polly. “We won’t half catch it if they see us.”
“Who?”
Polly sighed with impatience and picked up my bucket as well as her own. “The gentlemen, of course. We’re not supposed to be seen. It embarrasses them.”
“Why?”
“They might feel they should offer to help. They’re brought up to be polite to ladies. They don’t like to be reminded it’s ladies what carries their coals.”
“What, so we’re supposed to keep out of sight so as not to embarrass the lazy rich men we’re waiting on?” I said.
Polly gave me a frightened glance. “You mustn’t talk like that, Evie. It’s them what pays our wages.”
“Well, they should be reminded of what we do. Why should we be invisible?”
“Listen, Evie,” said Polly, setting down the buckets at the top of the stairs and turning to face me. “You may be used to better things but you’re a servant now, just like the rest of us, so you’d better forget these airs and graces and knuckle down to work if you want to keep your place.”
I had no intention of keeping my place for longer than a day, but I liked Polly a lot and I didn’t want to annoy her, so I nodded silently in a humble and servant-like manner and picked up my coal bucket again.
The coal had to be poured into copper scuttles and the scuttles polished with another gritty mixture that stung my hands and scoured them red-raw again. Then the fires had to be stoked up. I managed to put out the first fire I touched, by smothering it with coal.
“Oh, Evie,” Polly sighed. “Look, you just do the scuttles, and I’ll stoke the fires. Go and do the Great Parlour. I’ll come in and do the fire once I’ve finished in here.”
The Great Parlour – I remembered doing the fire in there earlier. I lugged my coal bucket downstairs.
The door to the Great Parlour stood ajar. The rattle of crockery and the smell of coffee drifting into the hall meant the family must be having their breakfast in there. I peeped around the doorframe.
At the table in the centre of the room sat Sophia, with her father, frowning over a newspaper, and Mrs Bailey, her aunt. George, now in the full splendour of his livery, stood as still as a statue at the side of the room.
The table was laid with a snowy-white cloth. On the cloth sat coffee pots and teapots and a feast of cakes and breads that made my mouth water. So this was where those lovely rolls went.
“And Madame Perrault informs me,” Mrs Bailey was saying to Sophia, “that your petticoat was simply covered in mud yesterday. And your boots, she says, were practically ruined.”
“A few spots of mud was all,” said Sophia. “I took a walk in the wood. The bluebells are so beautiful and their scent was so heavenly after the rain, and they last for such a short time that I couldn’t bear to miss them.”
Her aunt shook her head. “I simply cannot approve of this solitary walking and riding. I wonder that you indulge your daughter in such activities, Sir Henry. Surely it is not right that she should wander the country unchaperoned in this wild manner?”
Sophia’s father didn’t seem to have heard. He was too busy slurping coffee, stuffing toast in his mouth and muttering at the newspaper, which was enormous, and covered in columns and columns of tiny print, with not a single picture.
Sophia glared at her aunt. “I am already forbidden to read,” she said. “You have banned me from speaking to the servants. Am I to be forbidden from walking in the grounds of my own house too?”
Sir Henry looked up from the newspaper. “More toast,” he barked at George.
As George moved to the table, he noticed me lurking outside the door. He looked so shocked that I panicked and blundered into the room with my bucket. “Polly said to fill the scuttle,” I blurted out.
There was a deathly silence. Mrs Bailey looked horrified. Sophia looked startled, then afraid. Did she think I was about to tell her father what I’d seen earlier?
Sir Henry glared at George. “What’s the skivvy doing in here?” he growled.
George flapped his hands at me, hustling me from the room as though he was swatting a fly. I stumbled out, the bucket banging against my shin. I heaved it up the stairs and along the first floor corridors, until I found Polly, blowing at a fire.
“Why did you tell me to go to the Great Parlour?” I said. “They were having breakfast in there and I got shooed out as though I was a flea-ridden rodent. Was that your idea of a joke?”
“Oh!” said Polly. “You daft ha’porth, you didn’t go to the Great Parlour, you went to the Great Chamber. Oh, dear, did you get in trouble?”
“Oh no,” I said in my most sarcastic tone. “They were delighted to see me. Sir Henry called me a skivvy and his sister looked at me as if I was a nasty smell.”
“She looks at all of us like that,” said Polly. “Don’t fret about it.”
“How do you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“Working so hard for people who look down on you like that?”
“You just have to get on with it,” said Polly, “and not think about it too much. There’s a lot of people far worse off.”
Seeing the look of dis
belief on my face, she said, “I know we’re drudging all day, but at least we get paid for it. And we have our own beds. There was four of us in the bed at the workhouse. Crawling with bugs, it was. Though four bodies do warm the bed up. I’ve never been so cold as I was last winter. But I don’t get beaten that much here. And we get fed too. I’ll never forget my first meal in the servants’ hall. When I saw meat on my plate my eyes nearly popped out of my head. I’d only smelled meat before, never tasted it. It was the best meal I’d ever had in my life. And when Mrs H asked if I’d like a second helping, well, my jaw nearly hit the floor. You was lucky to get a first helping in the workhouse. We thought it was only royalty got seconds.”
“It must have been horrendous.”
“It weren’t much fun. I’m glad I had the guts to run away.”
After we’d prepared all the living rooms, I wearily followed Polly back up to the bedroom floor.
“This is Mrs Bailey’s bedchamber,” said Polly, opening a door into a large, gloomy, stale-smelling room. “First you open the windows and turn back the bedclothes to air the bed.”
She walked to the far window and I drew back the curtains of the nearer one.
“Oh!” I gasped.
I undid the catch, flung the window open and leaned my head out. Under a perfect blue sky was a bright-green lawn surrounded by tall trees just coming into leaf. Beyond the trees, I caught glimpses of flowerbeds and statues and bushes cut into shapes, and paths that led to archways in hedges, and painted wooden doors in curved brick walls, and a hundred other things I wanted to explore. And beyond the gardens lay fields and farmyards and woods and valleys and hills, stretching on and on until they faded to a soft blue in the far, far distance. And from far and near, high and low, the air was filled with layer upon layer upon layer of birdsong: chirruping, calling, singing, twittering and chirping.
Wait. Could that really be what it sounded like? I’d never heard one in real life.
“Polly,” I said, “is that a cuckoo?”
Polly listened. The call came again. “Yes, that’s him. That’s the first I’ve heard this year. It’s properly spring now then.”
“They really do say ‘Cuckoo’. That’s amazing.”
“Come and help me turn back the bedclothes,” said Polly. “We’ll never get everything done if you keep dawdling.”
“Do we ever get the chance to go into the gardens?” I asked her.
“We get an hour off in the afternoon,” Polly replied. “If the family aren’t using the gardens, we’re allowed to walk in the kitchen garden and the orchard. Not the formal gardens, mind. They’re out of bounds to servants.”
Of course they are, I thought. Heaven forbid that servants might pollute the grass.
Two men carrying garden tools emerged on to the lawn from a tree-lined path. The younger one, I was sure, was the boy who had been drawing with Sophia this morning.
“Is that Robbie?” I asked.
Polly sighed and walked across.
“Yes, that’s him. With Mr Masters, the head gardener. Now, will you just come and help with these bedclothes.”
As we wrestled with the surprisingly heavy bedclothes, I decided that I would make it my business to go and find Robbie during my hour off. I reckoned there was more chance of him listening to my warning than Sophia, and he might be able to talk some sense into her.
“Right,” Polly said as we finished the bed. “Chamber pots next.”
“What’s a—” I began. Then I stopped as the memory came back. I looked warily at Polly. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a chamber pot under every bed. You carry it down to the laundry – I’ll show you – empty the slops, scour it out and bring it back.”
“No way am I doing that!”
Polly laughed. “You didn’t think they emptied their own slops, did you?”
“But that’s disgusting! I’m not doing it. I can’t. I’d be sick.”
Polly’s face tightened. “So you want me to empty them all?”
“No, of course not. I just…” I tailed off.
“Or you want them emptied by magic, is that it? Do you think some good fairy’s going to come and do it for you?”
“No,” I muttered. I wished I’d never said anything. Polly was the only friend I had in this world, and now she hated me too.
Polly sighed. “Look, I know you’ve come down in the world, Evie, and I know it must be a shock. You’re used to having servants yourself, not serving somebody else. But you’re a housemaid now, and that’s what we do. So pick up the chamber pot, I’ll go and get his lordship’s and we’ll take them down together.”
I hated that she thought I was some awful spoiled brat. I wished I could tell her that I’d never had a servant and that my whole flat in London was smaller than this room. But if I told her that, then my uselessness as a servant would make no sense to her at all. So I meekly said, “OK. Sorry, Polly.”
“OK?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, it’s just a London word. It means ‘all right’.”
Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself to look under the bed.
Oh, thank goodness. Mrs Bailey’s chamber pot had a lid. I’d never been so grateful for anything in my life. As we trudged downstairs again, I tried to pretend I was doing something perfectly ordinary which didn’t disgust me at all. Polly opened a door at the foot of the stairs and at last we were outdoors in the sunshine.
We were standing on a gravel drive, facing a neat, cobbled stable yard. A beautiful chestnut-brown horse looked out of a stable door. In the distance, chickens squawked and sheep baaed. In the centre of the yard was a well with a low wall around it and, over the well, a rope wound around a cylinder, with a handle at the side.
A boy who looked a few years older than me, with straggly blond hair and a sulky-looking face, appeared around the corner, carrying a bundle of hay. He looked at me curiously.
“Jacob,” muttered Polly when we were out of earshot. “Stable boy. Bad-tempered so-and-so.”
I glanced back at Jacob and found to my surprise that he was still staring at me. I turned away quickly. There was something in his expression that made me uncomfortable. I was glad to follow Polly into the building on the far side of the yard.
“This is the laundry,” she said.
The laundry was a long, low building, warm from a coal fire in the corner. On one side of the fire was a big copper like the one in the kitchen. On the other side was a flat metal surface, with five black irons sitting on it. A vast stone sink with long wooden draining boards stood under the window. Washing was soaking in two huge wooden tubs on the stone floor.
From the yard came the sound of a girl’s voice, singing. The door opened and Mary walked in, carrying an overflowing basket of muddy clothes. She broke off singing and smiled at us.
“Tip those in here, girls,” she said, pointing to a bucket in the corner of the laundry. “I’ll be needing all I can get, with this lot to wash.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Polly grinned. “The family don’t get told this, but there’s nothing better than a bit of stale pee for getting the dirt out of riding clothes.”
Mary burst into laughter and pointed at me. “Look at her face!”
I didn’t want Mary to think I was a spoiled brat too, so I tried to look as though I thought that washing clothes with stale pee was a completely normal thing to do.
Then a truly horrific idea crossed my mind. “But what if it’s … you know … not just pee in the chamber pots?”
“Then it goes on the dung heap in the garden,” said Polly.
The thought of emptying chamber pots on to a dung heap piled with human waste made me feel sick. Turning my head away to avoid smelling or seeing any more than necessary, I lifted the lid of Mrs Bailey’s chamber pot and tipped the contents into the already half-full bucket. As Polly and I left the laundry, Mary started to sing again, picking up exactly where she had left off.
“Sings all day, she does,” said Polly. “Says it makes the time go quicker.”
“Does she work all on her own in there all day? She must be lonely.”
“Well, not that lonely,” said Polly with a wink. “Not with the stable lads and the gardeners right outside, and no housekeeper watching her like a hawk.”
Jacob was grooming a horse outside the stables. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his gaze lingering on me as we crossed the yard. Even after we’d passed him, I could tell his eyes were still fixed on me. It was a relief to get inside and shut the door.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the Housemaid’s Closet
Once we had emptied all the chamber pots, scrubbed them out and returned them to the bedrooms, the dressing rooms had to be cleaned again. The dirty water in the washbowls had to be emptied and the bowls scrubbed out and returned to the rooms. Then the bedroom and dressing-room fireplaces had to be cleaned out and relaid, ready for new fires in the evening. My wrists ached, my knees throbbed and my hands were rubbed raw.
“I can’t believe we have to do the fires again,” I said.
“I don’t know why they’re still wanting fires in this weather,” said Polly. “We’re waiting every day for the master to give the word. It’s a lot easier once the fires stop.”
A little clock on the mantelpiece struck the half hour. It was still only half past ten in the morning, and I felt as though I’d done a lifetime’s work already.
“Now we need to change our aprons and do the bedrooms,” said Polly.
“But we’ve already done the bedrooms.”
Polly roared with laughter. “I’d love to see her face if we left them in that state.”
We traipsed up to our attic room. I was surprised to see a copper can of steaming water on the floor beside the washstand.
“Did you bring this up here?” I asked Polly.
“No, Nell does the servants’ rooms.”
So poor Nell had to carry hot water cans up four flights of stairs from the basement to the attic.
“Imagine a world,” I said, “where nobody has to scrub fireplaces or carry coals and water. Where water comes out of taps by magic, and you just flick a little switch on the wall and the whole house heats up.”