by T E Kinsey
‘Don’t be so silly,’ I said. ‘Come on in and join me. I’m the interloper, if anyone is – this is usually your room. To be truthful, I’d relish the company. I’d been enjoying being on my own, but the attraction soon pales. I rather fancy having someone to talk to.’
‘Oh,’ she said, sounding slightly surprised. ‘Well, if you’re sure, then I should like that very much. Will you be going down to supper in the servants’ hall?’
I could see she didn’t relish the idea. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I took Mr Spinney up on his kind offer to send supper up here for us both.’
She relaxed. ‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said. ‘I’d have come down with you, of course, but I really do prefer to be up here, away from the noise and the chaos.’
‘Me too,’ I half fibbed. I actually don’t mind a bit of noise and chaos, and have been known to seek out boisterous company to liven things up a bit, but for this week I, too, was glad of the peace and quiet. ‘Oh,’ I added, ‘and I also accepted his kind offer of a bottle of champagne. He said Lord Riddlethorpe wouldn’t notice it missing, but from what I’ve seen of his lordship, it was probably his idea.’
‘Gracious,’ said Betty with a girlish giggle. ‘How wonderful. I’ve never had champagne before.’
‘You’ve never . . . ?’ I said incredulously.
‘Never been offered it before,’ she said.
‘Does Mrs Beddows not drink it?’
‘She guzzles it down as if it’s about to go out of fashion. But it would never occur to her to offer me any.’
‘Well, we’ll soon set that straight. I only hope you like it after all that anticipation.’
She sat on her bed and began unbuttoning her boots. She was still struggling with the second boot when there was a knock at the door, so I rose to answer it rather than simply call for whoever it was to come in.
I found Patience standing there, holding a very large, heavily laden tray. I couldn’t see an easy way to take it from her so I stepped hastily aside. ‘Come on in,’ I said. ‘Pop it on Miss Buffrey’s bed and we’ll sort it out from there. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, thanks, miss,’ she said, struggling towards the bed as Betty hopped out of the way.
‘It’s really very kind of you to bring us this,’ I said. ‘Thank you so very much.’
‘My pleasure, miss,’ said the young kitchen maid cheerfully. ‘Gets me out of the kitchen for a bit, don’t it?’
‘It does, indeed. Would you care to linger? Join us in a sandwich, perhaps?’
‘No, miss,’ she said. ‘Better not. Mrs Ruddle is lovely and all, but it don’t do to take the mickey, eh?’
‘No, Patience, I suppose it doesn’t.’
‘Patty, miss.’
‘Righto, Patty,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you again for the supper. And thank Mrs Ruddle, too.’
‘Will do, miss,’ she said as she all but skipped out of the room.
Betty, now finally free of her other boot, had just come over to help me examine and unload the tray when there was another knock at the door.
‘Come on in,’ I called. ‘The party’s just beginning.’
The door opened, and in came Mr Spinney with his own tray, this time holding two bottles of champagne, glistening with condensation, and two glasses.
‘Here you are, ladies,’ he said, setting the tray down on the bed beside the food. ‘A little treat for you both.’
‘Gracious, Mr Spinney,’ I said. ‘Two bottles?’
‘Well,’ he said with a wink. ‘No point in being stingy with it, is there?’
‘It’s jolly nice of you to bring it all the way up here yourself,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure, miss,’ he said. ‘Adds a bit of mystery and tension if I go missing for a few moments on a busy evening. Keeps everybody on their toes. “Where’s Mr Spinney got to?” they say. “Better make sure everything’s perfect – the old codger could be anywhere. Don’t want him to catch us shirking.” Works wonders.’
Betty and I both laughed. ‘You’re welcome to linger,’ I offered. ‘Join us for a sip or two.’
‘A kind offer,’ he said. ‘But I’d better be getting back. The trick only works if I really do appear out of nowhere once in a while. If I play the Charley-wag for too long, they get complacent.’
‘Right you are, Mr Spinney. I hope everything goes smoothly this evening.’
‘It’s certain not to, Miss Armstrong,’ he said. ‘But the test of our mettle is how well we cope with the inevitable disasters, I always say.’
‘Then I hope all your disasters are little ones.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Have a pleasant evening, ladies.’ He left, closing the door behind him.
‘Well,’ I said, indicating the two trays. ‘It seems supper is served. What do you think: a picnic?’
‘A what?’ laughed Betty.
‘A picnic. We’ll set the tray on the rug, then we’ll sit on the floor and eat as though we’re on a riverbank somewhere, enjoying the sunshine.’
She laughed again. ‘Mrs Beddows and her friends reminisce with tales of midnight feasts at their school, but this sounds much more fun.’
We cleared a space on the rug in the centre of the room, and set about laying out our feast. Morgan had said Betty was a quiet one, but it seemed she was happy enough to open up when she was safely away from the household staff.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said as I set out the plates and cutlery. ‘I’d heard they were at school together.’
‘Yes, one of the early girls’ schools. Mrs Beddows, Miss Titmus, and Lady Lavinia—’
‘Jake,’ I said.
‘Jake,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘What a horrid name. I think it was Mrs Beddows who came up with that one. But those three were “the best of chums”, they say.’
‘And remain so to this day, it seems.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Although between you and me, I’ve never quite been able to work out why. They don’t seem to have very much in common apart from having all been to the same school.’
‘Those are the experiences that bind us together,’ I said, pleased with myself for this display of apparent sagacity.
‘Like being in the army?’ she said.
‘Or prison. Actually, it’s probably more like prison from everything I hear about these schools. Have you read Tom Brown’s Schooldays?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, it’s no wonder the ruling classes are so peculiar, that’s all I can say.’
She laughed. ‘They do have access to nice things, though,’ she said, holding up one of the chilled champagne bottles. ‘How do you open these things?’
I took the chilled bottle from her, and removed the foil and cage. She ducked back and put her hand in front of her face.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘One thing I do know about champagne is that the cork pops out and flies around the room.’
‘Only if it’s opened by an idiot,’ I said. Gripping the cork firmly in my right hand and twisting the bottle with my left, I eased the cork out with a soft ‘pop’ and began to pour.
‘I say,’ she said delightedly. ‘That’s not at all how Mrs Beddows does it.’
‘That must be because,’ I said, topping off the glasses, ‘Mrs Beddows . . .’
‘. . . is an idiot,’ she said gleefully. We clinked glasses.
For the best part of an hour, we grazed our way through a selection of Mrs Ruddle’s finest buffet food as we supped champagne and put the world to rights. As we neared the end of the first bottle, and I coached Betty in the arcane art of champagne opening, my previously quiet and slightly reserved companion became increasingly garrulous.
‘Do you ever wish you could just jack it all in and go off somewhere on your own?’ she said through a mouthful of smoked salmon.
I thought for a moment. ‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think I do.’
‘What, never?’ she said incredulously. �
��A woman like you is happy to just be someone’s servant for the rest of your life?’
‘I’m not completely certain I know exactly what a woman like me is,’ I said. ‘But yes, I think I am. Lady Hardcastle and I have been through a lot together over the years, and I think we’re more than just employer and servant by now – we’re friends. And I’m more than happy to look after my friend.’
She sighed. And then hiccupped. ‘That must be nice,’ she said sadly. ‘I can’t imagine ever being friends with Mrs Beddows. Nor wanting to be, I must say.’
‘It does make a difference,’ I said. ‘I can’t say that many people approve, but I’d like to meet the people who could live the life that we have and still maintain the “proper” social walls between them.’
‘The lives that you’ve lived?’ she said. ‘In Gloucestershire, or wherever it is? Are there stories to tell?’
And so for the rest of the evening I treated her to tales of our past. Over many retellings, I had honed versions of the stories that skirted around the delicate matter of our employment as agents of the Crown, but I told her as much as discretion would allow. I told her of my journey to Shanghai as Lady Hardcastle’s maid when her husband was posted there by the Foreign Office. I told her of Sir Rodney’s murder and our flight into the heart of China. I judged (correctly as it turned out) that she would be impressed by the story of my mastery of the Chinese fighting arts under the tutelage of a monk who had helped us to the Burmese border. And by the time we had sailed down the Irrawaddy in a rickety boat and then found our way on to a steamer bound for Calcutta, she was positively agog.
‘Blimey,’ she said when the story had finally brought us back to England. ‘Well, no wonder you’re close. What amazing women you are. I couldn’t imagine doing half of what you managed, and Mrs Beddows would have been shot very early on for being vile. Probably by me.’
We both laughed. ‘The more I hear of your mistress,’ I said, ‘the less I like the sound of her.’
‘Oh, you just wait till you meet her,’ she said, waving her glass at me and slopping champagne on to the rug. ‘Then you can tell me whether you’d have shot her, too.’
‘Oh, I’m a dreadful shot,’ I said. ‘Lady Hardcastle, on the other hand . . . Now, there’s a lady who can shoot the sweat off a fat man’s forehead at a hundred paces. I prefer more . . . personal methods of dispatch.’
She grinned. ‘Perhaps you could take care of her for me.’
I laughed. ‘She can’t be that bad.’
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it,’ she said. ‘Just you wait and see.’
I steered the conversation towards less homicidal topics, and we were soon trading stories of our childhoods. Once again, though, she confessed herself disappointed that her life in Norfolk hadn’t been a patch on my life as one of the children of a circus knife-thrower and the wife he’d lured away from the Valleys. We were on safer, common ground, though, when my family returned to South Wales so that my mother could care for my frail grandmother. And when I entered service as a housemaid in Cardiff, our lives were parallel at last. Even if only briefly.
By now, the second bottle of champagne was empty and there was nought but crumbs on the tray, so we retired to our beds and left the mess until morning.
Chapter Five
Lady Hardcastle and I had agreed that the morning after the party would be a leisurely one, and that we should neither of us bother to rise early. It was something of a disappointment, then, when there was a soft but insistent knocking on the bedroom door at seven o’clock.
‘Who is it?’ I said, in what I hoped was a friendly tone, but which I feared might betray the irritation I felt at being denied my lie-in.
The door opened and Patty peered timidly round it.
‘Sorry to disturb you, miss,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Mrs Beddows; she wants Miss Buffrey.’
‘Not your fault, Patty,’ I said. ‘Betty? Betty!’
Betty mumbled, but didn’t seem to awaken, even though she was in the bed nearer the door and lay between Patty and me as we spoke.
‘Betty!’ I said more insistently. ‘Mrs Beddows wants you.’
‘Tell Mrs Beddows to go and . . .’ she murmured.
‘Betty, sweetheart, you’ve got to wake up and—’
With a gasp, Betty sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Oh my goodness!’ she said, a look of near terror on her face. ‘I’ve just had the most horrible nightmare. I dreamed Mrs Beddows was trying to awaken me, and I told her to . . . Oh.’ She noticed Patty standing in the doorway.
‘Sorry, miss,’ said Patty. ‘It’s Mrs Beddows. She rang down, but when Lily went up to her, she sent her away with a flea in her ear and insisted we get you.’
In a state of near panic, Betty pulled on a dressing gown and hurried from the little bedroom, brushing past Patty with a muttered, ‘Sorry, Patty, must dash.’
I flopped back on to my pillow.
‘Can I bring you up a cup of tea, miss?’ said Patience.
‘No, dear, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be down to the servants’ hall in a minute. I’ll get myself one then, before I take a tray up to Lady Hardcastle.’
‘It’s no bother, miss, really.’
‘You’re very kind,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be fine. I don’t suppose you could take one of these trays back down, though, could you?’ I indicated the wreckage of our picnic on the rug. ‘I can’t manage them both.’
‘Of course, miss,’ she said, and set about stacking the empty plates. ‘I reckon I can fit it all on one,’ she said.
And in no time at all I was alone again. I contemplated trying to get back to sleep, but there really wasn’t much point, so instead I set about getting up and ready for the day.
After a hearty breakfast in the servants’ hall, I took a tray up to Lady Hardcastle. I knocked and entered without waiting for a reply, which I didn’t think would be forthcoming anyway. To my amazement, she was sitting up in bed, writing in her journal.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘How was your evening?’
‘Very enjoyable, thank you, my lady,’ I said, putting the tray down on the writing desk by the window. ‘And how about yours? You’re rather more . . . upright than I had anticipated.’
‘It wasn’t that sort of do, sadly,’ she said. ‘Plenty of nibbles and a good quantity of rather nice champagne, but I rather felt I needed to keep my wits about me. Wouldn’t want to give Fishy’s new venture a bad name by having a drunken old biddy making a show of herself while the gentlemen of the press looked on.’
‘How very thoughtful of you, my lady.’
‘Well, quite. As it turns out the role of Lord Lushington was expertly played by Fishy’s Uncle Algy, so I needn’t have worried.’
‘Did we know there was another Codrington in the house?’ I asked.
‘He’s Fishy’s uncle on his mother’s side, a Garrigan rather than a Codrington. Apparently, he’s part of the fixtures and fittings, and Fishy inherited him when his parents died. Lovely old chap, probably a bit of a lad in his day – he got blotto and tried to get some party games going before Fishy ushered him out.’
‘Poor chap,’ I said. ‘Sounds like he would have been the life and soul.’
‘On any other occasion, he might, but poor Fishy was trying to act the grown-up, so he had to go. What did you do?’
I told her about the picnic in the bedroom as I poured her tea and handed her a round of toast.
‘Can’t say I’ve seen anything of the fair Rosamund that would give the lie to Miss Buffrey’s assessment of her as a nasty piece of work,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘I say, you couldn’t do me an enormous favour, could you? I think I left my reading glasses in the great hall.’
‘Have you considered wearing them around your neck, my lady?’ I suggested.
‘I suppose I could,’ she said absently. ‘But it’s much more fun to have you fetch them for me. You make such entertaining noises when you’re huffy.’
I tutted, a
nd set off in search of the missing optical aids.
Ignoring protocol, I used the main stairs and hang the consequences. In truth, it wasn’t so much an act of rebellion as an acknowledgement that I had absolutely no idea where the great hall was, and I didn’t believe I had any chance at all of finding it using the servants’ secret passageways. The staircase was wide, and swept in a gentle curve to the entrance hall. I got the feeling it had been designed for grand entrances and exits by the earl and countess. What a shame there was no countess for Lord Riddlethorpe to sweep down it with.
Despite my initial uncertainty, it turned out that the great hall was very easy to find – I just followed the sounds of bottles and glassware being put into crates.
It really was a great hall. Thankfully, the hunting in this part of the country was limited to fox, so the walls were free of the usual racks of antlers, but Lord Riddlethorpe wasn’t ashamed to show trophies of his own. In a delightful display of eccentricity, he had placed motor car badges, a radiator grille and even a wheel, complete with tyre, where his ancestors might have hung banners and trophies of war or the hunt.
I said a cheery good morning to the housemaids who were working their way through the wreckage wrought by last evening’s party. They had their work cut out, and I assured them that I wouldn’t be getting in the way, but wondered if any of them had spotted a stray lorgnette anywhere.
‘Over there, miss,’ said a plump little girl with mousey hair and a smudge of soot on her nose. She nodded towards a table by one of the huge windows.
Sure enough, the stray glasses were exactly where she had indicated, sitting atop a sheet of foolscap paper. I picked up the lorgnette and folded it, slipping it into my pocket. I was about to leave, but curiosity got the better of me and I had a quick look to see what was written on the paper. It was a list, written in Lady Hardcastle’s neat hand.
Ladies’ Race:
1. Lady Hardcastle
2. Mrs Beddows
3. Lady Lavinia
4. Miss Titmus Miss Armstrong
Gentlemen’s Race: