The Secret Countess

by Eva Ibbotson

  ‘Yes, she is. And I like the way she talks and she told me a poem in Russian because I asked her. It’s about a crocodile walking down the Nevsky something. She’s going to teach it to me next time.’

  ‘Who is this girl?’ asked Tom, looking curiously at Rupert.

  ‘A new maid.’ Rupert was still brusque.

  ‘I should like to meet her.’

  ‘You will,’ said Rupert. ‘It’s almost impossible not to meet Anna somewhere in this house.’

  3

  On the following day Rupert returned to London to fetch his bride and Anna and Peggy were sent upstairs to make ready Queen Caroline’s bedroom, which had been assigned to Miss Hardwicke until the wedding.

  It was in the midst of these preparations that Anna received a letter from her beloved Pinny:

  My dear Anna, I am writing to give you some news which I know will delight you. Your cousin, Prince Sergei Chirkovsky, is safe! When the White Army was routed at Tsarytsin he managed to escape and reach Odessa and eventually made his way to London. He arrived last week, very exhausted, of course, but basically in good health. As you know, his parents are still with Miss King and their joy as he walked in may be imagined. Sergei wouldn’t stay more than a few days since it is true that Miss King’s flat is rather overcrowded and he has gone off to look for some kind of employment – out of London, if possible, since the grand duchess does not seem to have abandoned her scheme for marrying him off to that dumpy lady-in-waiting of hers. He called to see us and was particularly anxious for news of you. I told him where you were but not what you were doing. You know how protective he has always felt about you and I had visions of him posting off to Wiltshire and challenging your employer to a duel!

  Petya’s letter I enclose. As you see he is settling down very well and has made a friend who has invited him to stay after the end of term, so you need not be afraid about missing his return. As for your mother, she is reasonably well but a little vexed with me for refusing to buy six vats of buttermilk from the United Dairies. The Baroness de Wodzka has convinced her that she could market it as pregnant mares’ milk from Outer Mongolia at a considerable profit. I was obliged to tell her that in my view the koumiss cure is not sufficiently well known in West Paddington to ensure the success of the scheme.

  I hope that you are not finding your new duties too onerous and look forward very much to your return.

  Yours affectionately,

  Winifred Pinfold

  ‘What’s the matter with Anna now?’ enquired James, coming into the servants’ hall at lunchtime.

  ‘She’s happy,’ said Louise gloomily.

  ‘It’s because her cousin’s safe,’ said Mrs Park. ‘She thought the Bolshies had got him but they haven’t.’

  ‘Well, you can send someone else up there with her after dinner,’ said Peggy. ‘She’s like a bloomin’ tornado up there, getting ready Miss Hardwicke’s room. She’s had all the feather beds out in the courtyard an’ poundin’ the daylights out of them and now she’s at the mirrors with some brew she’s mixed from that dratted Selina Strickland and you can’t get her to stop for a minute.’

  The Honourable Mr Sebastien Frayne, padding past the door of Queen Caroline’s bedchamber, was arrested by a young and ecstatic voice trilling Mozart’s Hallelujah.

  ‘You seem in very good spirits this morning,’ he said.

  Anna turned, jumped off the chair and curtsied all in a single movement.

  ‘I am sorry, I shouldn’t sing, I think, though I cannot remember if Selina Strickland has said one may or not. But I am so happy!’ said Anna, added ‘sir,’ – and spoilt the effect completely by throwing her arms round the old gentleman’s neck and kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Uncle Sebastien, blushing and entranced at the first unsolicited kiss he’d had in twenty years. ‘And what has happened to make you so happy?’

  ‘My cousin, Sergei, is safe! He was fighting with Denikin in the Crimea and we had no news for so long that we thought he had been killed. He was exactly like a brother to me and to Petya and now, because I am so happy, I am going to make Miss Hardwicke’s room so beautiful that she will be amazed!’

  Anna was as good as her word. Queen Caroline’s room was one of Mersham’s loveliest, with its hand-blocked wallpaper of azure fleur-de-lis, its Venetian fourposter, white-curtained and white-valanced like a cloud bed on Olympus, and its exquisite view of the lake. Like all the rooms in the main block, however, it had been shut up during the war and now showed signs of neglect.

  Anna blackleaded the grate and annointed the bedsprings with sulphate of ammonia, she took down curtains and scrubbed drawers and, to add the final touch, she purloined from the other rooms, bringing in a finely wrought candlestick here, a Dresden shepherdess there, working for this unknown girl with skill and love. Nor was her task made easier by the fact that Baskerville, the earl being absent, was again persistently padding after her, only pausing with his customary howl of despair every time she disappeared down the service stairs and through the green baize doors.

  ‘Why are you so stupid?’ she berated him. ‘Why don’t you come through into the kitchen when I have finished so that I can scratch you properly, but now I must work.’

  ‘You’ll never get that dog to go through that door,’ said Proom, encountering her at bay with a bucket of suds. ‘He must have swallowed Debrett’s Peerage when he was a pup.’ Then, addressing her in a way in which so kingly a person seldom addressed a housemaid, he said: ‘Mrs Proom was wondering whether you’d have a moment to look in after supper tonight. Only if you’re not busy, of course.’

  Anna, whom he had at last trained not to sink to the ground every time he encountered her, smiled and said: ‘Yes, I shall like to come very much. Only . . .’ She broke off and looked shyly at the august figure of the butler. ‘I don’t know if it is permitted, but this afternoon I must polish the toilet set in Miss Hardwicke’s room and also the candlesticks and the inkwell . . . many things. And I have noticed that Mrs Proom has strong hands still and she told me she was once in service. So do you think I might perhaps take them over with the polish and a lot of newspaper so that there is no mess and we could do them together? She would truly help me, I think, and it would not take longer.’

  Anna stopped, misinterpreting Proom’s silence as one of disapproval. She had been foolish, the silver was valuable . . .

  Proom was fighting down a number of emotions. Gratitude to this young girl for detecting, behind his mother’s eccentricity and tantrums, her desperate desire still to be of use. Shame that he himself had so seldom made this possible.

  Clearing his throat, which seemed to have become a trifle choked, Proom said magisterially, ‘Very well. You have my permission. Just see that nothing is mislaid.’

  Mrs Bassenthwaite, inspecting Queen Caroline’s bedroom when Anna had finished, was moved to praise.

  ‘You’ve done very well, my dear.’

  ‘But who will do the flowers?’ asked Anna, knowing that everything depended on this.

  Mrs Bassenthwaite hesitated. She had always done them herself, but she was very tired these days and there was a niggling pain in her side which never quite seemed to go away.

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘Go to Mr Cameron. Tell him I sent you.’

  So Anna, her face screwed into what the other servants had learnt to call her ‘monkey look’, pondered massed delphiniums in delft-blue and white or low bowls of peonies in alabaster jars; but in the end as anyone who thinks of a bride in the month of July must do, decided on roses. Cutting short her lunch hour, she went to find the deaf and misanthropic old Scotsman who had ruled Mersham’s gardens for three decades.

  Walking with delight between beds of celery, nascent cauliflowers, strawberries nestling like little crimson eggs on their beds of straw, she came to a green door in a high wall, pushed it open – and stood, spellbound.

  The rest of the garden at Mersham, though incorrigibly beautiful, suffered from the neg
lect and understaffing caused by the war. But the rose garden was a miracle of husbandry and care. There were roses as dark as spilt blood and roses with the delicate pink of a baby’s fingernails. There were beige and blowsy roses and mysterious golden roses, tightly furled. Roses climbed the stone walls, rambled across arbours or stood in dark green tubs, as demure as Elizabethan miniatures. And as Anna started to sniff her way ecstatically from bloom to bloom, Mr Cameron, who had seen her enter with foreboding, began to hunt for his ear-trumpet, finally tracking it down in the bottom of a watering can, and to jam it into his whiskery ear, a rare sign that he was willing to communicate.

  ‘I thought they should be very pale and gentle, like flowers in a dream, you know?’ said Anna when she had explained her errand. ‘Not strong roses, not red – though of course his lordship will wish to give her red roses for passion and so on,’ said Anna, waving a dismissive hand. ‘But for now I want everything very soft and welcoming and a little loose, you know? Those roses that seem to be shaking themselves out a little?’

  Mr Cameron nodded. ‘You want the old-fashioned ones . . . The Bourbons and the Damasks. There’s Belle de Crecy; she’d do you fine. And Madame Hardy over there. Or Königan van Denmark – there’s no one to touch her for scent.’

  They wandered about in total amity, selecting, discussing, rapturously smelling, while Anna’s little Tartar nose turned yellow with pollen and her Byzantine eyes glowed with contentment.

  Arriving at a single bush, growing quite by itself in a centre bed of fresh-mulched earth, Anna stopped dead.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘How beautiful! I have never seen such a rose as this.’

  The old man’s eyes shone with pride. ‘She’s new,’ he said. ‘I bred her myself.’

  The new rose was white. At first sight it appeared pure and flawless white, and yet this was a contradiction, for somehow, most strangely and marvellously, the whiteness was irradiated as if from within by a hint, a blush of pink.

  The old man became technical, explaining fertilization problems and grafting, while Anna, who had lifted the other roses towards her with questing fingertips, knelt before this one, reverent and untouching.

  ‘I need a name for her,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult, that.’

  ‘She’s like snow in Russia,’ said Anna. ‘Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpenglühen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that; so pure and yet so strong.’

  Mr Cameron scratched his head. ‘I could call her that,’ he said. ‘“Russian Snow”. It’s a good name, that.’

  Anna’s face was sombre. ‘People wouldn’t like it. They are angry with us because we made peace too soon.’ Suddenly she straightened and turned towards him, her face illumined. ‘I have had such a good idea!’ she cried. ‘Why don’t you call her after his lordship’s fiancée? Call her Muriel Hardwicke? Or just Muriel? Consider the honour of such a thing!’

  ‘Hm.’ Mr Cameron was taking this in. ‘If it would please his lordship . . .’

  After Anna had left, with instructions to pick what she wanted dew-fresh at dawn, he jammed his ear-trumpet into a trellis to show that conversation was over for the day, and stood for a long time contemplating his much-loved new rose.

  Somehow she didn’t look like a Muriel? But why?

  Later that evening, Anna received a summons to the dowager’s room.

  It was a critical time below stairs, for Mrs Park was planning a brand-new dessert for Miss Hardwicke’s engagement party. This concoction, which had been stirring in her mind since the engagement was announced, was nothing less than a great swan made of meringue. But inside the swan – a challenge not to be denied – she wanted to put a filling of crème Bavaroise. And for this she knew (with her instinct and her fingertips, as she knew everything) she would need a cupful of Tokay. What’s more, not just any Tokay, but the 1904 Aszu puttonyos, which alone combined the necessary delicacy with a touch of earthiness. Proom was being uncooperative about supplying this admittedly priceless wine, declaring that it was absurd to open a whole bottle of the stuff just for a few spoonfuls.

  When she was compelled to do with lesser ingredients, Mrs Park never sulked, but she nevertheless suffered and her suffering was reflected in Win’s uncomprehending and adenoidal melancholy and a general ‘atmosphere’, which prevented Sid from whistling and James from giving his biceps their usual evening canter down his forearm.

  But when Anna’s summons came, the kind cook was able to put her own troubles aside for a moment.

  ‘Now don’t look like that, dear,’ she said encouragingly. ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of, I’m sure.’

  Mrs Park was right. The dowager had sent for Anna to inform her that she was to wait on Rupert’s fiancée till a new lady’s maid should be engaged.

  Anna stared at her, her huge, tea-coloured eyes turning quite stewed with despair.

  ‘But I do not know enough to do this, my lady!’

  ‘Nonsense, my dear, I’m sure you’ll do it splendidly.

  Mrs Bassenthwaite speaks very highly of your work.’ ‘But in Selina Strickland there are terrible things in the part concerning lady’s maids. Like . . . for example, gophering irons. I do not know,’ said Anna desperately, ‘how to gopher!’

  The countess was unimpressed. ‘I think that must be rather an old-fashioned book, dear,’ she said. ‘And anyway, my maid, Alice, will be only too willing to advise you. It’s just to help Miss Hardwicke dress and keep her room tidy and bring her breakfast tray. Proom will explain your duties, but I assure you there’s nothing that’s at all difficult.’

  Anna, however, was hard to console and returned to the kitchen in a state of dejection which it took the combined efforts of Mrs Park, James and Louise to overcome.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, it’s an honour,’ said Louise. ‘Why aren’t you pleased?’

  Anna launched into an explanation, from which the bewildered servants gathered that she was afraid of becoming like some character in a book who had been tossed up by the earth and rejected by the heavens.

  ‘Shall I still be able to have my meals downstairs?’ she asked tragically.

  It was Proom himself who disposed of Anna’s fears of a life spent in limbo, informing her that she was still a housemaid who would be expected to carry out her usual duties, as well as lending her services to Miss Hardwicke when required, adding that if she had nothing better to do she could go and see to the shutters as it was coming on to rain.

  It was not only in the house and in the gardens that preparations were being made to welcome the new bride. Potter, the head groom, had been entrusted by his lordship with a commission that brought a spring to his step and sent him whistling round the stables. He was to purchase a mare for Miss Hardwicke’s use. And not just any mare – but one of Major Kingston’s white Arabs from the stud in Cheltenham that was the envy of the world.

  ‘Pay anything you like, Potter,’ the earl had said before he left for London. ‘It’s the bridegroom’s present to the bride and to hell with being sensible. We may be broke, but we’ll hold our heads high over this one.’

  So Potter, leaving for Gloucestershire, was a happy man. Only the earl’s old hunter, Saturn, and the dowager’s carriage horses now remained of the fine stables they had kept before the war. Potter himself had been wise, refusing to join in the traditional battle of groom against chauffeur. He had learned to drive and been as willing to convey the dowager to the station in the Rolls as to drive her to the village in the brougham she still preferred when paying calls. But now he saw good times ahead for the new earl who, for all his quiet ways, was a brilliant horseman and, as he called in at the kitchens to say goodbye, there was pride in Potter’s bearing and a sparkle in his eye.

  ‘It is like a fairy story,’ said Anna, who had got over the shock of her promotion. ‘Three presents for the bride: a white rose, a dappled mare, a snowy swan . . . and now she comes!’

  ‘Let’s hope she’s a bloomin’ princess, then,’
said Louise, whose feet were hurting her, ‘or there’ll be ructions!’

  4

  Muriel Hardwicke had been, quite simply, a perfect baby. Born to parents already rendered wealthy by the gratifying sales of Hardwicke soups, Hardwicke sausages and a similar assortment of canned goods, her plump, pink limbs, golden curls and hyacinth-blue eyes were the wonder of all who beheld them. Her mother, an unremarkable and rather nervous woman, never ceased to be amazed at the physical perfection of her child; Muriel’s father, as though to prove himself worthy of what he had produced, redoubled his efforts at work, made mergers, formed companies and quite quickly became a millionaire.

  Only Muriel herself, gravitating naturally to the ornate mirrors in the plush Mayfair mansion where she grew up, was not surprised at the flawlessness of the image which greeted her. It was as though she knew from the start that she was not like other children. She hated to be dirty, could not bear mess or torn clothes and once, when a stray kitten brought in by the cook scratched her hands, she shut herself in the nursery and refused to come out until it was removed.

  She had reached a full-breasted and acne-less adolescence when her mother, as though she knew she could do no more for her lovely daughter, contracted pneumonia and died. Five years later, her father collapsed at a board meeting with a perforated ulcer and, at twenty-two, Muriel Hardwicke found herself sole heiress of a group of businesses valued at some three million pounds.

  She did not let it go to her head. She kept the Mayfair house, engaged a chaperone and – the year was 1916 – herself volunteered as a VAD. Her loathing of illness and her detestation of squalor were put aside in the interests of her grand design. For now was the chance to cross the great barrier between the nouveau riche and the aristocracy. In the war hospital, with a steady stream of wounded officers passing through her hands, she would – she was quite certain – find a worthy mate.

  In the event, it had taken two years; but when the Earl of Westerholme was wheeled in she had known her quest was ended. The title was an excellent one, the young man was undeniably attractive and his wounds, though severe, were not disfiguring. Nor did the fact that Mersham was impoverished displease her: it would make her own position more secure, for his family would welcome a bride who was going to restore their home.