by Susan Gandar
‘But what if he doesn’t get better? What if he dies?’
It was out. She’d said it. She’d almost screamed it.
Mac took her hand. He held it tight.
‘Follow me.’
TWENTY-FIVE
June 1917
THE FIRST COURSE HAD been served and cleared, there had been no complaints, and now the Major, his wife and their son were eating their beef-steak and kidney pudding. Or even cat-steak and kidney pudding. Jess took her mother’s letter out of her apron pocket. There was a tinkle of a handbell from the dining room. Let them wait. Twenty seconds wouldn’t kill them.
She’d washed all the glass, got the Prince of Wales’ soup on – turnips, scooped out into balls, and then boiled in stock – and made the pastry for the bakewell tart when the Major’s wife came down to the kitchen to insist that Jess iron the napkins for a second time.
And then the silver cutlery, which had already been cleaned and polished, had to be cleaned and polished again. Then the roses were too short, the lilacs too tall and the delphiniums too blue. And the knives weren’t lined up straight, the wine glasses were all wrong and the damask tablecloth wasn’t white enough. She’d had to clear the table, search out another tablecloth, and then lay everything out, all the silver, the glass, the candles, the flowers, all over again. And so it went on all through the morning, the afternoon and into the early evening.
Just when she thought that everything that could be done had been done, the Major’s wife spotted a grease stain on the dining room carpet. What stain? Because thirty minutes later, and three trips up and down to the kitchen, the carpet looked exactly the same.
And, now, upstairs in the dining room, sitting at the perfectly laid table, with the candles flickering and the silver glinting, the son was telling his mother about her thief of a servant. But it didn’t matter. Tomorrow she would be gone. The Major’s wife’s hands wouldn’t be quite so lily-white after she’d stripped the sheets, turned the mattresses, cleaned the grates, brushed down the carpets and scrubbed the saucepans.
Jess tore open the envelope, read the letter and then folded it once, twice, three times, before tucking it back up her sleeve.
She slid, eyes fixed firmly on the floor, through the doorway into the dining room.
‘How can I expect my men to do their duty, to go out there and die, when the country they’re supposed to be dying for doesn’t give a damn. They come to me, men twice my age, with wives and children, a family to keep, to ask for help, to see if I can do anything and there is nothing I can do…’
The Major put down his glass.
‘Tom, please…’
He picked up the decanter of wine.
‘There has always been and will always be the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the less fortunate.’
He filled his glass.
‘That’s how it is.’
She darted in and out clearing dirty dishes and cutlery.
‘And, to “do your duty”, for something, a way of life you believe in, that you hold dear to your heart, is an honour…’
She leant forward to take the son’s plate. ‘Honour?’
His hand slammed down. She jumped back. A tear splashed down onto the table.
‘There’s nothing honourable in being herded over the top like animals being sent to the slaughter, to be ordered to walk directly into the fire of a German machine gun, and to be left screaming in agony, ripped to pieces, hanging on the barbed wire, begging for someone, for your best mate, to put a bullet in your–’
‘Tom, that’s enough.’
The son closed his hand into a fist.
‘While the folks back home, your masters and betters, are sitting comfortably, smugly dining on their Prince of Wales’ soup and their beef-steak and kidney pudding followed by bakewell tart with custard, your children are dependent on the kindness of a passing stranger for a husk of bread. That’s not “society”. At least not a society, a way of life, a set of so-called civilised rules that I or my men either believe in or are prepared to die for…’
The son picked up his plate. His hands were trembling.
‘Thank you, Jess.’
She took it.
‘Ah, Jess.’
Was this her dismissal? Until a few minutes ago, until she’d read the letter, it had been something to look forward to. Now it was something to dread.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She bobbed a curtsy.
‘Your letter, from your mother, how is she? Well I hope?’
Please don’t let the Major’s wife see that she was crying.
‘Yes, ma’am, very well.’
Jess bobbed a curtsey.
‘I’ve set the fire in the parlour, ma’am …’
She ran from the room, wiping the tears from her eyes, her mind following her body, up the stairs, to the first floor of the house. She pulled down blinds, closed curtains, turned back bedclothes. She then went up the stairs to the second floor and along the corridor, pulling down blinds and closing curtains in the nursery and the two empty bedrooms until she reached the youngest son’s room.
A notebook was lying open on top of the bed, and, on a page of that notebook, there was a pencil sketch of a girl. She was so alive, so real, Jess half expected her to walk off the page and out into the room. She looked up and caught a reflection of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. The girl in the notebook stared back.
TWENTY-SIX
SHE WAS STANDING THERE, on the bridge, looking down at the river below. And then she jumped. The water closed in over her head and she was sinking down, down and down. Strands of weed entwined themselves around her arms and legs. She clawed at it, fighting to free herself, but the weed’s vice-like grip only tightened, pulling her down, down and further down into the black depths below. She gasped and gulped. Water, not air, filled her lungs.
‘Wake up, Jess, wake up.’
It had been a dream, a nightmare, nothing more. She was in the cottage, with her mother and father and her baby brother, and it was a hot summer’s morning. She could already feel the heat of the sun on her skin. They were going to walk, the four of them, along the path that led through the meadows down to the river for a picnic.
‘Wake up, Jess’
She jerked upright. She wasn’t with her mother and father by the river. She was in the basement of the Major’s house and, standing opposite her, on the other side of the table, was the Major’s son.
‘I’m sorry…’
She pushed her aching body up out of the chair.
‘Would you like some coffee, sir?’
‘No. Thank you.’
He was here to dismiss her.
‘Your parents…’
‘They’ve gone to bed.’
The gaslights on the wall flickered, rising and falling, twice in quick succession.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a warning, sir, to expect an air raid.’
The range was piled high with dirty dishes. It would take her half the night to scrub, wash, dry and put them away. And then she would have to get the range stoked up and the copper filled ready for the morning. But it was a job that had to be done if she was going to try and get the Major and his wife to agree to keep her on.
‘Where do we go? Is there a shelter?’
‘Your father refuses to take notice of them, the raids, sir.’
‘But, Jess, you don’t have–’
‘And he insists that everyone else in the house does the same.’
Whatever the son of the house had to say, why didn’t he just say it, get it over with and then go upstairs to his bed and leave her alone to get on with her work.
‘But what about you?’
She was more tired than frightened. At least if a bomb came she would get some rest – even if it was the sort of rest you never woke up from.
‘If it’s going to hit you, then it will hit you. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s nature’s way, that’s what my fath
er always said…’
‘Your father? Where is he now?’
A game was being played; he was the cat and she was the mouse, and she had no choice other than to go along with it.
‘He’s dead, died in France, nearly three months ago now, sir,’
‘I’m sorry, Jess, that was thoughtless of me. My father mentioned it, in a letter, when he told me that your mother had written asking if you could come here…’
A plane hummed overhead.
‘Sir, about the bread and what I said, I’ll make it up. I’ll work extra hours…’
She had to convince him.
‘I’ll do anything, anything at all to keep my place here. Sir, I’ll do extra–’
‘My name’s Tom. And there’s nothing to make up. You did the right thing giving that boy the bread. You just never gave me a chance to say it. Jess, look at me…’
She kept her eyes to the floor.
‘Look at me, please, that’s an order.’
She raised her head.
‘Please, sit.’
It was another order but the way it was said made it something else. They sat, together but apart, on opposite sides of the table.
‘Jess, upstairs, you were crying. You were trying to hide it from my mother but I could see. Please tell me what has upset you so much.’
She wanted to talk but could she trust him?
‘Our local vicar wrote to me…’
She pulled the letter out of her sleeve.
‘He got this address from the letter your parents sent to my mother offering me the job here. He found it in the cottage…’
She put it down on the table between them.
‘My mother’s dead. She killed herself…’
A woman in a neighbouring village, back at home, lost not only her husband but also her two sons out in France. She hanged herself from the roof beam inside her cottage. Jess overheard her mother whispering to her father that it was an offence before God and that the woman would go to hell. And now she had done the same thing herself.
‘Do you know how it happened?’
His voice was very quiet, very controlled. It was also kind.
‘Her body was found in the river.’
Whether her mother had just waded in, her pockets filled with stones, or had thrown herself off the bridge, she didn’t know. But she guessed it must have been at or near to the bridge where the river flowed over the weir before turning, deep and fast, out towards the sea. But what she couldn’t guess was how her mother must have felt. That terrible choice that she’d had to make, in those seconds, before she threw herself off the bridge.
‘People who kill themselves go to hell. That’s where my mother is. In hell–’
‘No, Jess, she’s not in hell. It’s the people left behind, who stood there watching, listening to the cries for help, without doing anything, they are the ones who go to hell, a hell of their own making, filled with fear and guilt, not the people who are–’
‘I did what I could. I didn’t have any money. If I had I would have sent it…’
Was it a sudden decision, made in a moment of desperation? Or had her mother known all along, from the moment she wrote the letter to the Major and his wife, and then sent Jess away into service, exactly what she was going to do.
‘She knew that. You know that. You must never feel guilty. She was a good wife, a good mother, to you and your brother, and to me, much more so than my own mother, when I was a very young boy, growing up in this house. A kind, brave, generous woman, who deserves peace, not punishment.’
Peace could be the signing of treaties and the silencing of guns or the certainty that when you went to bed at night you would still be alive to wake up the next morning.
‘When are you going back?’
But peace wasn’t only about the end of war – it was having a roof over your head and food on your plate and knowing that the people you love would always return.
‘To France? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week, I really don’t know. When the telephone call comes, that’s it, I have to go.’
‘What you said, about the guns, the wire, the bullet in the head. My father, did he die like that?’
‘Don’t think about how he died, Jess. Just remember how he lived. Think about the good times, the two of you, you and your father, had together.’
Something stirred inside her. Was it hope? And, if it was hope, hope for what?
TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY CLEARED THE DINING room and then washed and dried the glasses, the decanters, the china and the cutlery. Standing, side by side, they scrubbed, dried and polished the saucepans before hanging them back on the hooks above the range. When they talked it was a whisper, a question, an answer, a word here and there.
And now the clocks were chiming two o’clock and all that could be done had been done; everything had been put away, either on shelves or in cupboards, the kitchen sink and table scrubbed, the floor swept and wiped down, the range stoked up and the copper filled.
‘Go and get some sleep, Jess, you must be exhausted…’
She turned off the gas lamps, lit a candle, and then, together, she in front, he following behind, they climbed the narrow stairs from the basement up to the ground floor of the house. They slid the bolts across the front door, switched off the electric lights and then walked together, side by side, the candle flickering, up the wide, wood-panelled staircase towards the first floor landing.
A floorboard creaked. The Major was a heavy sleeper; the two double whiskies he had after dinner guaranteed that. But, over breakfast, the Major’s wife would complain that her husband’s snoring had kept her awake, tossing and turning through most of the night, until, exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep just as Jess arrived with their morning tea. They waited, nothing, the Major snored on.
They continued on up to the second floor. Eyes down, she bobbed a curtsey and turned to walk away. She had one more flight of stairs to climb. His hand slipped into her hand, gently pulling her back.
‘Jess, you will always have a home here.’
His fingertips slid over her fingertips.
‘For however long you want it…’
And they parted. Tom, the son of the house, to his bedroom, squeezed between the bedrooms of his two dead brothers. And Jess, the maid-of-all-work, up the stairs to her room in the attic where her mother, now her dead mother, had once slept.
She’d left the window open when she got up that morning, over twenty hours ago now, but the room was still unbearably hot. She stripped off her clothes and threw them down on the chair. She pulled on her nightdress and blew out the candle. She lay down on top of the bed and looked up, out of the window, at the stars in the night sky.
This room, this house, the people in it and Ellie next-door were all she had. There was no one else. No brothers, no sisters, nobody. She was quite alone. Everyone she had ever loved, her father, her brother, and now her mother, was gone. She would never see them again.
But she still had a job, food on her plate and a roof over head, and she owed all that to her mother – and Tom. He had said nothing to his parents about what had happened, her rudeness and the loaf of bread she had given away, that morning.
Just under three hours later, as the clocks started to chime five o’clock, she dragged herself off the bed, stumbled over to the washstand, poured water out of the jug into a bowl, picked up the cloth, soaked it and washed her face. She unbuttoned the top of the long-sleeved nightdress and, reaching down inside, gave each armpit a good scrub. She did the same between her legs. She dragged a comb through her hair and then tied it back in a ribbon.
Her clothes lay in a crumpled heap on the rickety chair beside the bed where she’d thrown them the night before. She rolled first one thick, black, wool stocking, then a second, up her leg and over her knee. She pulled on her knickers, took off her nightdress and then tugged the slip over her head. She stepped into the corset, jerking it up, bit by bit, over her hips until the metal stays wer
e digging into the skin beneath her breasts. She tightened the laces, forcing her chest out and her waist in, and then knotted and tied them together in a bow.
The long-sleeved brown dress had ten buttons. She did them up, one by one. She tied the floor-length apron securely around her waist and then slid her feet, one at a time, into the lace-up, black leather ankle books lying on the floor next to the chair.
She straightened the sheet and blanket, plumped up the pillow, and walked over to the door. She opened it. The narrow, low-ceilinged, windowless corridor, running along the length of the attics, normally smelt of sweat and dust, of mould and mildew. Today it was filled with the scent of roses.
She looked down. On the floor, directly outside her bedroom door, was a glass jar. Inside the jar was a single white rose. She leant down. She picked it up and carried it into her room. She placed it on the chair beside her bed.
When Tom had insisted on helping her to clear up last night, downstairs in the kitchen, he was just being kind. But going out into the garden, picking the rose, putting it in the jar, and then creeping through the house up to the attic, in the middle of the night, to put it outside her bedroom door, was something altogether different.
Back home, in her village, it would only have meant one thing. Her parents would have smiled and, when she asked them, would have agreed that she and the boy could walk out together. But, up here in London, working as a servant in the Major’s house, there was a line between those who lived upstairs and those who worked downstairs. And that line should never be crossed, not by anyone, whether master or servant.
That day, and the day after, when the master’s son walked into a room, she walked out of it. When she had to ladle out his soup or pour over his gravy, she kept her eyes firmly down. But the harder she worked at ignoring him, the harder he worked at getting her attention.
She’d never ever seen or eaten a chocolate. But there they were one morning when she came down to the kitchen, three of them, nestled up together on a plate in the larder. And beside them was an envelope with her name written in ink on the front. It was from the Major’s son. The chocolates were a gift. And could she, please, eat them quickly before they melted away in the summer heat.