Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  Lottie tapped on the door and entered as she was bid. She tiptoed across the room with her tray as if this was a hospital ward and the housekeeper a patient. It was too much, thought Parkinson.

  ‘Thank you Lottie, no need to creep so.’

  ‘Sorry Mr Parkinson,’ she said, though in a whisper and still, when she left, she crept. The butler smiled at Mrs Powell-Hughes.

  ‘Poor Lottie,’ he said. ‘She’s quite unequal to any occurrence beyond the strictly predictable. Now. Let me pour, and while I do, tell me your concerns.’

  The housekeeper, already soothed to some degree by Mr Parkinson’s calm manner, was beginning to feel like herself again. ‘Oh, well. I feel a little silly now. I don’t quite know what came over me.’

  ‘We’re all entitled to mild panic every so often,’ he said and he smiled warmly. ‘What are the specifics of the case?’

  ‘Oh, the smell of paint and turpentine, mostly,’ she said. ‘Nothing that can’t be dealt with, I expect.’

  ‘Ah, that sounds like the Mrs Powell-Hughes I know so well. We shall open all doors and windows to admit what little breeze there is, and I’m sure you’ve asked Ruth for more of her still-room concoctions? Pot pourri can work miracles.’

  ‘That’s my next job,’ she said. ‘That’s where I was going.’ She blew across the top of her cup of tea and steam briefly clouded her spectacles, giving her the misleading appearance of utter helplessness. ‘Really, Mr Parkinson, the new sanitaryware has been the principal difficulty. If it had only been installed a little sooner—’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said delicately. ‘The timing was challenging.’

  This was tricky ground and the two loyal servants trod carefully, for neither of them wanted to openly criticise the countess, whatever private thoughts they might each entertain regarding her excessive demands.

  ‘The redecoration of the bathrooms, you see, had to wait until Mr Motson had replaced everything. And a job that size can’t be rushed.’

  ‘But I gather the result is—’

  ‘Oh, absolutely splendid,’ said Mrs Powell-Hughes, eager to return to safer territory. ‘Quite magnificent. I can’t imagine the king will have anything better at Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ said Parkinson. ‘But being the king, he doesn’t have anyone to impress, does he?’

  Mrs Powell-Hughes understood him perfectly. The king’s penchant for visiting his society friends at their own country homes had begun a frenzy of expensive restoration by the aristocracy: Lady Netherwood’s rigour in refurbishing throughout had been matched many times over by those who had already played host to Bertie and his entourage.

  ‘You know, people have ruined themselves entertaining the king,’ said Mr Parkinson, speaking low and with a grave expression on his angelic face.

  Mrs Powell-Hughes tutted and shook her head sadly. She sipped her fortifying tea.

  The butler leaned in confidingly. ‘The chap he stays with during the St Leger is on his uppers, by all accounts,’ he said. ‘Quite spent up.’

  ‘My word, what a business. At least that’s not one of our worries,’ she said, as if she and Mr Parkinson were personally footing the bill.

  ‘Well, quite,’ he said. ‘And by the end of today I imagine you’ll find you and your staff have brought perfect order to the upper floors. If there’s anything I can do to assist you …’

  The housekeeper placed her cup and saucer carefully on the side table next to her. She might be stretched beyond all possible reason, but she wouldn’t have footmen and valets deployed in areas of the house where they had no business.

  ‘Oh, no thank you,’ she said, with a small laugh to indicate that not only was his offer unnecessary but that she could find amusement in it. ‘We shall soldier on until we triumph.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Parkinson. ‘Now, back to the battlefield?’

  Parkinson’s prediction was quite correct. By the time the countess emerged from her darkened rooms, refreshed from the effects of the compress and a restorative afternoon nap, she found there wasn’t a corner of Netherwood Hall that wasn’t fit for the king’s inspection. Even the smell of turpentine had been all but obliterated by the fragrant combination of dried orange blossom and damask roses, and still there was all day tomorrow to clear the air completely.

  Alone, feeling contemplative and with a vaguely unsettling sense of fragile calm, Lord Netherwood wandered through his home. His wife’s disregard for expense was evident in every room he entered. The royal quarters had been cleverly arranged in the East Wing from a series of interconnecting rooms that the king would share – according to a discreet communication regarding protocol – with Mrs Keppel: they were magnificent. The dark Victorian wallpaper had been replaced with pastel stripes in rose and cream, and elegant furniture – modern pieces, newly commissioned – now replaced the heavy dressing tables and age-spotted mirrors. Pale buttermilk satin adorned the royal four-poster and at the windows hung new drapes in rose-coloured shot silk. There was a chair by the bed, low and wide and upholstered in the same silk as the curtains: this was for the king’s fox terrier, Caesar. The dog, it seemed, enjoyed the same privileges as Mrs Keppel: certainly they had shared a protocol memorandum. Lord Netherwood wondered if anyone had yet told Mrs Powell-Hughes that Caesar was to be allowed the run of the place.

  Downstairs he found Clarissa.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Tip-top.’

  ‘Even the new bathrooms?’

  ‘Especially the new bathrooms. We’re better appointed than the Savoy.’

  The countess smiled. She was pleased with her husband: not a single purchase had been queried, not a single expense spared. He had even conceded – briefly baulking but swiftly capitulating – the necessity of giving up his study because the king demanded a telegraph room wherever he stayed, in order that he might be in touch with his government.

  ‘I’ll wager he never sets foot inside,’ said the earl now, opening his study door and looking rather glumly at the sight of his own desk cleared of books and papers to make room for the contraption that now occupied it.

  ‘Well, anyway, you wouldn’t have been able to slope off here yourself,’ said Clarissa. ‘The host must be always on hand. So, you see, your study is perfect for the job.’

  Just what he expected. His wife had added an eleventh commandment to the original ten: thou shalt not admit to inconvenience caused by the royal visit. He sighed. Speaking personally, he would be jolly glad when it was over.

  Chapter 9

  Whatever hit the mine owners hit the miners harder. This was and had ever been a fact of life. If supply outstripped demand and the market price fell, if cheaper coal was being sold on the Continent, if a colliery began to dry up and become less productive – always, always, the men suffered more than the masters. This, Amos said to Anna, was the principal injustice he wanted to see eradicated. There were others – widows’ pensions, sick pay, greater investment in safety – but these could follow when the basic human right of a fair day’s pay for a full day’s work had been enshrined in British law.

  They were sitting together on the wiry grass of Netherwood Common, looking down on Ravenscliffe. Eve had postponed the moving in until after the king’s visit – that is, until after the first dinner. She couldn’t, she said, think about the upheaval of moving until the royal puddings were behind her. Anna spent time at the new house all the same, measuring windows, walking the rooms, imagining them furnished and peopled and the sounds of family life ringing throughout. She’d coaxed Amos in today, though he couldn’t shed the uncomfortable feeling of trespassing. The house had seemed to him implausibly large: all he could think was how much coal they’d get through in the winter. But he smiled and nodded because he could see what it meant to Anna that he liked it.

  The two of them were making a habit of walking together, so their presence high up on the common wasn’t unusual, though there were plenty of people who considered it irregular
. It didn’t take a lot to get tongues wagging in Netherwood: if you were five minutes late opening your curtains, somebody would notice and pass a remark. So Anna Rabinovich and Amos Sykes, strolling together towards Bluebell Wood or Harley Hill or Netherwood Common – well, there was a topic you could get your teeth into. It wasn’t just the strolling, either – it was the way they talked, heads together, lost in conversation, trading words back and forth between each other as if there wasn’t the time in the world for all they had to say.

  Of course, if the gossips had been privy to what passed between Anna and Amos, they would have been disappointed. No tender words or compliments, no flattery or flirtation. They talked, as they did now, about politics, economics and the lot of the working man.

  ‘Y’see, t’earl looks at a miner and ’e sees a man who owes ’im a debt of gratitude,’ Amos was saying.

  ‘And perhaps they do,’ said Anna, the devil’s advocate with capitalist leanings. ‘Without earl, they would not have job or wage. They would starve.’

  ‘Aye, ’e employs ’em, granted. Then they risk their lives every day in a coal mine to create ’is wealth. If anyone should be grateful, it’s Lord Netherwood.’

  ‘Well, and perhaps he is,’ she said, determined to see the other side. ‘From what I hear, he is good man. Only you, it seems, think he should be horsewhipped.’

  Amos laughed grimly. ‘Do you know what, Anna? I’m sick to death of ’earing what a good man t’earl is. A good man would listen to what ’is men ’ave to say. Lord Netherwood is only good by comparison wi’ some of those bastards ’e calls ’is friends.’

  ‘Language.’

  ‘Beg pardon. But as far as goodness goes, you ’ave to admit there’s nowt by way o’ competition.’

  She frowned at him. Sometimes he spoke too quickly for her to grasp his meaning.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said and he continued more slowly. ‘What I mean is, t’standard set by landowners and employers in this country is so abysmal that Lord Netherwood looks like a saint by comparison. And yet ’e sits back and says nowt and does nowt in support of ’is men. I don’t call that good. I call that cowardly and complacent.’

  ‘But there are union members at his collieries now. Perhaps you ask too much too quickly. Perhaps you should slow down, give him time to adapt.’

  ‘You’re talking pigswill, if you don’t mind me saying. It’s taken nigh on an ’undred and fifty years to unionise New Mill Colliery. Slow down? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Pigswill,’ she repeated slowly. ‘So that means nonsense?’

  He grinned at her and nodded, then turned serious again: ‘There’s change in t’air, Anna. Real change, not just small pockets o’ triumph. Balfour’s looking weak over tariff reform, t’Liberals are listenin’ to Labour, and Lord Netherwood is a fool if ’e doesn’t know it. We ’ave working men in Parliament these days and there’s plenty more where they came from.’

  ‘You, for example,’ she said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘You. Amos Sykes, MP. Doesn’t that sound fine?’

  He threw back his head and roared with laughter at the absurdity of the idea that he should take himself off to Westminster at the behest of the voting public. Anna, however, was entirely serious and she looked at him with an unsmiling face.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He didn’t answer, but his laughter tailed off in the face of Anna’s stony disapproval. Then he said: ‘Enough of this. There’s work to be done and I’m sat on my backside in t’sunshine.’ He picked up a sheaf of papers from the ground by his side then, standing, offered Anna a helping hand, which she took, though she was still displeased with him. Vision and ambition were dearly held tenets to Anna Rabinovich: to waste one’s talent, to limit one’s horizons – these, to her, were cardinal sins. She had much more to say to Amos on the subject, but he seemed in a hurry, so she put away her mental ammunition for another day and restricted herself to pleasantries.

  ‘Busy, then?’ she said, standing and brushing the dry grass from her skirt.

  ‘Aye. Meeting at New Mill. What about you?’

  She delved into a pocket of her skirt and produced a rolled-up tape measure.

  ‘Curtains,’ she said.

  They set off down the hill, walking slowly. Anna wore a straw hat against the sun but she pulled it off suddenly and shook her head, letting her hair fly about her. She’d had it cut shorter in this hot weather and it fell only to her shoulders now: it made her look younger than ever. He had a good fifteen years on her, although her wisdom and experience often closed the gap. Today though, by her side, Amos felt positively ancient.

  It still felt like going home, walking the cinder track to New Mill Colliery. Since boyhood he had trodden this route: he remembered his fear as a lad among grown men on the day he started. He remembered, even, the feel of the new snap tin that banged against his chest in the inside pocket of his old wool jacket. Two slices of bread and dripping and when the time came to eat it he felt sick to his stomach. There had been a big, simple-minded boy, a few years older than Amos, working next to him on the screens. At his age he should have been down the pit, but he wasn’t all there: picking rock and shale out of the coal as it passed on conveyor belts was all he was deemed fit for. Anyway, this boy had watched to see if Amos, the new lad, was going to be able to manage to eat and, when it became clear that he’d gone into first-day shock, he helped himself, delving uninvited and bold as a magpie into Amos’s jacket where it hung on the peg. Through his fog of misery Amos thought, he can’t be all that daft, then.

  This memory, for some reason, came back to him as he approached the pit yard. The big lad’s name was Bert Wilson and he’d died of typhoid fever, along with about twenty-five others from the same row of houses. They said the water from the spigot in their street was coming through the midden first, and folk were dying like flies. Bert Wilson. He had loomed large – literally – in Amos’s first dreadful days at the pit, then had, just as suddenly, disappeared. It was probably twenty-five years since the lad had even crossed Amos’s consciousness, but he reckoned he could still pick Bert out in a crowd.

  ‘Now then, comrade.’

  A familiar voice broke his reverie and Sam Bamford fell into step beside him.

  ‘Sam,’ said Amos. ‘’ow do.’

  ‘If you’ve come to incite us to revolution, you’ve wasted your time,’ said Sam. ‘We’ve all got t’day off tomorrow to wave flags at t’king, so you’ll find no malcontents ’ere.’

  Amos laughed. ‘Very glad to ’ear it,’ he said. ‘’ow’s things?’

  ‘Middlin’. Another rockfall by Wharncliffe seam, no casualties, but it’s still not cleared. ’ow’s things wi’ thee?’

  ‘Busy. More members every week. Strength in numbers, as they say.’

  ‘Did you know Sparky were killed?’ Sam said.

  ‘Ah no, don’t tell me that.’ Amos stopped in his tracks, wholly distracted from the working-class struggle by this bleak news. It was always a black day at a colliery when a pony had to be destroyed; grown men had been known to cry like babies. Sparky must’ve been near retirement age, he thought now: poor old soul, denied his last few years out to grass in the daylight.

  ‘Aye, bad do,’ said Sam. It wasn’t news to him and he spoke in a brisk, matter-of-fact voice. ‘Isaac Chandler ’ad ’im settin’ new props, shiftin’ old uns. Summat went awry, not sure what. Sparky got trapped under a piece o’ timber, broke ’is back.’

  They were in the yard now, inhaling the sharp, sulphurous smell of the pit, standing by the time office, which was full of men clocking on for the afternoon shift and Amos felt a pang of something like regret, though it wasn’t that exactly. That he hadn’t known, until now, about Sparky’s death suddenly seemed inexpressibly sad because time was when nothing happened at New Mill without Amos Sykes knowing about it. He watched Sam walk into the office, exchanging a word here and there with his colleagues; he heard the rise and fall of miners’ voices and the occasi
onal bark of laughter and he felt on the very periphery of what had once been his world.

  But the melancholy didn’t last. Don Manvers, the colliery manager, hailed him from his office and Amos crossed the yard, papers tucked under his arm, for their meeting. And the miracle of this – that he was here at the Earl of Netherwood’s colliery in the interests of democracy and socialism – was more than enough to put a spring back in his step.

  Chapter 10

  The luggage arrived at Netherwood Hall ahead of the guests so that by the time they, too, made their stately progress up Oak Avenue, their belongings would be waiting upstairs for them, ready to be unpacked by the visiting valets and ladies’ maids. Mrs Powell-Hughes had rallied superbly after her brief collapse and the house was in a state of perfect readiness. Twenty-two guest rooms would be in use in addition to the king’s apartments, and each one was supplied with fresh flowers, new writing paper and ink, a basket of exotic fruit from the hothouses, and colognes and toiletries from the still-room. The names of the guests had been handwritten on cards, which were placed in brass frames on each door. As usual, Mrs Powell-Hughes, in consultation with the countess, had made a skilful job of allocation, her decisions on this occasion based on diplomacy and tact as much as on hierarchy. The Duke of Knightwick, for example, was billeted in comfortable quarters in the East Wing, while his wife the duchess was some distance from him but conveniently – and significantly – close to the dashing financier Sir Wally Goldman. Similarly, Lady Hartwick, widowed last year at the heartbreakingly tender age of twenty-nine, was merely a hop, skip and a jump from the very eligible Frank Ponsonby: there were high hopes that one more weekend in close quarters might produce the longed-for proposal of marriage. It had all been beautifully managed by the peerless Mrs Powell-Hughes: a question, quite simply, of the judicious and discreet application of inside information.