The Wages of Sin

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Bessie? I thought something smelt very good.’ I smiled down at her. It was hard to tell her age – if born into a family like my employer’s, she would be eight or nine, but poor children never grew so fast. Perhaps Bessie was twelve, a very tiny scared twelve.

  ‘I am sure she would be honoured if she could take one to your office to enjoy with your morning coffee.’

  ‘Please, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll take it directly. But please, Mrs Faulkner, ma’am, Mrs Arden has just made her ladyship’s special coffee, ma’am, and she says there is a good jugful left over. Would you like it?’

  Mrs Faulkner’s smile was immediate but very formal. ‘Yes, please, Bessie. Mr Rowsley? Would you care to partake? So, Bessie, please prepare a tray and take it to the Room.’ This was the term by which everyone, Mrs Faulkner included, referred to her sitting room, where all the senior staff gathered for late supper every evening. This was the first time, however, that I had ever been there with no other guests. But she added, ‘And invite Mr Bowman to join Mr Rowsley and myself. That will mean …?’ she prompted gently.

  ‘Three cups and saucers, three plates and three rolls, Mrs Faulkner. And knives and butter and jam and spoons for the jam and a butter knife.’ It all came out in a great rush. ‘And three napkins, ma’am.’

  ‘Excellent. There may be some cold beef, Mr Rowsley? No? Off you go, then, Bessie. Best ask Mr Bowman first. And don’t forget to knock his door very firmly.’ She busied herself smoothing the non-existent creases from the tablecloth. ‘When I need a new girl I try to take one from the workhouse, but …’ She shook her head. ‘They don’t even know the words for common kitchen objects, so they annoy Mrs Arden, and if I let them try their hand at dusting, the mortality rate amongst the china and crockery is alarming. The superintendents are supposed to educate their poor young female charges for a life in service but what they are taught – pff! Nothing! Nothing to the point,’ she corrected herself. ‘They deserve better, whatever Mr Pounceman says. Much better.’ Before I could reply that I often found it hard to listen to Pounceman’s sermons without standing up to object to his opinions, she turned decisively and gestured me towards her parlour.

  It was, as always, immaculately clean. But I had never known it immaculately tidy. There was always a book or two on the table beside what was clearly her favoured chair. Before I could ask her what she was reading, Mr Bowman appeared, his gait as ponderous and stately as if he were approaching the Queen herself. He bowed rigidly from the hips, an exertion that made his face even redder, his breathing more stertorous. But he sat with a certain grace, despite his bulk and height; he must have been a fine-looking youth, just the sort a household would want for a footman. Like all his fellow footmen at Thorncroft House, he was clean-shaven, leaving extravagant facial hair to outdoor workers. I myself also declined to be fashionably hirsute.

  Bessie came in with the tray, almost staggering under the weight. Under Mrs Faulkner’s gaze, she transferred everything to the table. Bobbing another flatfooted curtsy in response to the kindly approving smile, she scuttled away.

  For a moment perhaps, Mrs Faulkner tensed, glancing swiftly at her guests; should Mr Bowman or I take precedence? To me it mattered not a jot, but in establishments like these, triviality assumed staggering proportions. In terms of age and experience, I should certainly defer to him. On the other hand, she might reason that while he ruled the household, I ran the entire estate.

  The old man solved the problem, if indeed problem it was, by asking for coffee but refusing the roll before either was offered.

  As he sipped, very genteelly, I told him the good news. ‘Perhaps,’ I ventured, ‘his lordship might wish to send the family some port wine. I understand it to be very nutritious.’

  He creaked to his feet. ‘I shall see to it forthwith.’ He at least was prepared to admit that the Family left all their good deeds for their employees to carry out.

  I barely had time to ask Mrs Faulkner to pass on my compliments to both Cook for the coffee and Bessie for her bread when he returned with two dusty bottles sporting cobwebs which Mrs Faulkner flapped away with her napkin.

  ‘The best wine comes in old bottles, does it not, Rowsley?’ Somehow the observation sounded indecent, as if he had nudged me in the ribs.

  Mrs Faulkner, impassive, looked at both bottles. ‘Are they both for the Kentons, Mr Bowman?’

  I wondered too. They were the sort that used to grace my father’s table when the bishop dined. How many guineas’ worth was he giving away?

  ‘I think his lordship could spare them.’

  So, in fact, did I.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he was saying, ‘according to that milksop Pounceman, we should not encourage the lower orders to take strong drink. Did you know he wants his congregation to sign the pledge, as if they were Methodists?’ To my amazement he added, ‘Poor souls, they have little enough joy in their lives and now he wants to take away what they have. The servants here expect small beer with their meals. As for the workers, what harm does it do for a man to spend the odd evening at the Royal Oak nursing just half a pint of ale? Take one bottle now, Rowsley, and I will put the other aside for when Mrs Kenton has finished the first – for it must be for her, of course, while she is feeding the infant, and not for that hulking husband of hers.’ He produced a huge knowing wink. ‘Now, which would be more health-giving, ruby or tawny? Mrs Faulkner, which do you prefer?’

  ‘I have no opinion, Mr Bowman.’

  ‘Then you must taste them,’ he declared jovially – as if, indeed, he was in his cups. ‘All port needs to be decanted, of course, so I will bring some from my pantry that his lordship didn’t finish last night.’

  Mrs Faulkner’s face tightened further, as if she was not enjoying this interruption to her working day.

  ‘In my experience,’ I said quickly, ‘people who are not used to port prefer the sweeter tawny. Thank you.’ I put it on the table. ‘I will take it on my next visit.’ Then, as if as an afterthought, I turned to Mrs Faulkner. ‘Would you be kind enough to tell me what would be an appropriate gift from a bachelor like myself? Perhaps we could discuss it when I show you the developments by the lake this afternoon. Would three o’clock be convenient?’ I rose to my feet.

  She rose too, bobbing a curtsy. ‘I will jot down some ideas, Mr Rowsley.’ She looked with some ostentation at the big clock. ‘I fear, gentlemen, that her ladyship will be wishing to give me her orders for the day.’

  We bowed ourselves out, going in opposite directions.

  I

  I must be dead and have been carried up to heaven. The light! The sweet singing! But as my eyes get used to the glitter of the candles against the mirrors, and to the strange echo of all our voices, I know I am not dead. I am in the Great Hall. There beside Nurse is Cook, in her best cap and apron, there is Tom, the footman who often slips an apple into my hand because I remind him of his little sister back in Derby, and there Mr Drake, the butler. Mrs Baird, the housekeeper, looks nearly as grand as Miss Martha, her ladyship’s maid. But her ladyship and his lordship – yes, they might be angels, so beautiful do they look in their finery. His lordship stands beside her ladyship’s chair, all smiles. Young Master Augustus hands each of us a package, oh, so beautifully wrapped, some with ribbons – those are for the women and girls, of course. Everyone has their gift in order of rank, so I have to wait till the very last. The very, very last.

  At last it is my turn. I mustn’t snatch, however much I might want to. I must walk the length of the row of maids, past the footmen, past Mrs Baird and past Mr Drake. Curtsy. Three paces forward. Curtsy. Take the parcel with not a hint of a snatch. Three paces backwards. Curtsy. A slow walk back to my place. Then, line by interminable line, we troop back to the servants’ hall.

  Back to the places we have to sit at table.

  We sit.

  We are to undo the ribbons carefully. Mine is a lovely blue ribbon, just the colour of my mama’s eyes, as I remember them at least. Even though I know I
won’t be allowed to wear it, I long to put it under my pillow each night, where I can stroke it.

  The ribbons – pink, yellow, red, and my lovely blue – all have to be laid on the table. Mrs Baird walks behind us, taking up each in turn. No one says a word. We still have the paper to pull back, after all. There are no cries of joy. No cries at all.

  My present is a pair of pinafores, one coarse for when I carry the chamber pots, the other tough cotton for everyday use.

  At last a cry rings through the servants’ hall, as if a sick animal has been kicked.

  The howl comes from me.

  TWO

  It was another perhaps foolish whim of mine, having seen the world below stairs, to leave via the circular entrance hall, its height enhanced by the domed ceiling. Inside one had no sense of how inappropriate it seemed from the outside; all was elegance, indeed grandeur. I was halfway across, the footman hovering there ready to throw open the grand front doors, when I realized that my hat remained wherever young Maggie had hung it when I arrived. I could easily have walked back. But the footman would have thought the less of me if I had. Having despatched him on this most trivial of errands, I wandered round, looking at the portraits decking the walls. Had they been more easily visible under their years of accrued grime – I must be able to find an expert capable of cleaning them properly – perhaps they would have been impressive, though personal beauty did not seem to be part of the Croft inheritance.

  Raised voices were so out of place here that I felt it was my business to see what was going on. But the echo that characterized the hall baffled my ears – were the shouts coming from the top of the double staircase, or from the dining hall corridor? It was a man’s voice I heard most of, then the higher tones of a woman. Frustratingly the echo distorted them even more than the bass notes; try as I might I could not positively identify the participants in what seemed a very unpleasant argument. Surely they could not be his lordship’s and his mother’s? But here was the footman – Broomfield? – back with my hat. It would not do for me to ask him what was going on.

  When I had agreed to show Mrs Faulkner the work on the nearest part of the estate, I had forgotten about my appointment with the rector, whose belief in the perils of drink had clearly not endeared him to Mr Bowman. If I rode to the rectory, and if I cut short discussion of what I had to say, I should not be late. I told Luke to have Esau brought round.

  One of the no fewer than six servants I encountered at the rectory took Esau to the stables. Six! And no doubt more unseen below stairs. My parents would have been either amused or enraged at such pretension in a bachelor man of the cloth.

  The Reverend Theophilus Pounceman received me in his study, with a handshake fit to break my fingers; clearly he was a believer in muscular Christianity. He gestured me to sit opposite him as he retreated behind his extremely handsome desk. I did so, laying my papers between us. He must be roughly my age, in his mid-thirties. Like me he was a bachelor. Tall, broad-shouldered and handsome, with the most flourishing of lamb-chop whiskers, he surged through life as St George might have done, looking for a dragon to slay – but not perhaps for a maiden’s sake; I had a constant sense that no woman would ever be good enough for him. In one or two of his sermons he had been so disparaging about what he called ‘the weaker sex’ that I had had to point out after the service that more than half his congregation were women, who between them did a great deal of good, however poor they might be.

  ‘You have come about my plans,’ he said, observing the rolls of paper.

  I bowed, without irony, I trust, at his swift deduction of the obvious. ‘Yes. About Stammerton.’

  ‘St Stephen’s,’ he said in a tone of patient correction.

  Stammerton was a sad huddle of farm labourers’ dwellings scarce deserving of the term cottages. His late lordship had accepted Pounceman’s proposal that the workers should have their own church nearer to where they lived; in Mr Pounceman’s mind, it was clearly already dedicated to the first martyr. On face value, a new place of worship was a very generous idea, but I could not see why a building for the worship of the Almighty should have such lowly ambitions. It was to be built in the least desirable location in the village, with steep steps leading from a lych-gate to the rather perfunctory porch. The building itself was a simple rectangle, with a tiny bell-tower a couple of feet high, and a roof that reminded me of nothing more than a barn. At best, the edifice recalled the humblest non-conformist chapels, whose plainness reflected less the spiritual aspirations than the sheer poverty of the community devoted enough to erect it.

  It was only as I opened my mouth to condemn the meagreness of the design that Pounceman’s opening words took on any significance. My plans. Could it truly be he wanted such a dismal little place? Could he really believe it would raise hearts and minds heavenwards?

  ‘I am interested to see what can be done about the whole of Stammerton, including, of course, the church,’ I said. ‘I see that his late lordship was prepared to be very generous and I am sure that his heir will honour his commitments.’ He almost certainly would if I blithely assured him that his father had agreed the expenditure was necessary. ‘Those apologies for cottages – leaking roofs, earth floors, shared stinking privies – they must and shall be improved, replaced, for preference. Imagine it, Pounceman: two or three tidy rows of decent houses, all with pumps and privies, and each with a decent-sized garden. Or perhaps small cottage gardens, with allotments within easy walking distance, might be preferable.’

  Despite my passion – perhaps because of it – his face was impassive. I was implying a criticism, to be sure, but in his place I would have been more enthusiastic. A moment’s reflection would have told him that he was dealing not with the old lord and his lickspittle agent, but with the new lord and his equally new but very eager representative.

  ‘My interest is the villagers’ spiritual lives,’ he declared grandly.

  I bowed. My grandfather had taught me a variety of such movements. With a flex of his spine he could denote any emotion from gratitude to cold anger. I trust that my inclination showed a polite acquiescence but a hint that I did not consider the matter closed. ‘Of course.’ Grandpapa would have nodded approval if he’d heard the wealth of meaning behind those two syllables.

  But Pounceman seemed to have accepted them at face value. ‘I assume you are here to tell me when building can begin.’

  Grandpapa would have applauded my ambiguous smile. ‘I am here to ask if you might want to make any amendments to the design. Architects do not always put on paper what we who commission them actually envision.’

  ‘But you mentioned cottages and goodness knows what else.’

  ‘So I did. Let me show you.’ I unrolled another sheet of paper. ‘This is how the village is now, with the new church here.’ I pointed. ‘This is what I sketched out the other day – I hope you will forgive its amateurishness. I thought that in addition to the houses I mentioned we might turn that patch of mangled grass into a village green, with – why not? – a dew-pond for ducks just here. I would hope there is enough space for a game of cricket.’ I might not share my father’s somewhat extreme view that the fact that English gentlemen played cricket in the same teams as their hired hands prevented an English Revolution to match the French one, but I certainly knew from my own experience that the summer game enhanced the spirit as well as the body of those involved. ‘Decidedly a school, with a house for the master or mistress.’ My grandfather had changed village life when he had appointed a teacher; Stammerton deserved nothing less.

  ‘Surely that is not necessary.’

  ‘Reading and writing, Pounceman!’

  ‘And what might they read? The scurrilous notion that we are cousins to chimpanzees? Never.’

  ‘There are other things to learn,’ I said mildly, feeling that discussion of the eminent Mr Darwin’s theory would not be fruitful. The information that my father regularly corresponded with him would certainly not be.

  ‘Of c
ourse. And these children could learn them at Sunday school when not required elsewhere.’

  ‘They could, if there were one. But – correct me if I am wrong – there is no Sunday school here in Thorncroft, though there must be sufficient demand.’

  ‘Do you not recall the words of the charming children’s poem, sir?’ – I did not like his smile as he recited it – ‘“The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, And ordered their estate.”’

  ‘I do not recall reading those words in the Bible,’ I said repressively. ‘But back to the matter in hand. The village plan. Why not – forgive me, my dear Pounceman – why not place the church here, where it would add its benign presence to the village at all times? A clock on its tower. Some trees which would grow to provide comfortable shade—’

  ‘And where will the poor, benighted men and women worship while all these castles in Spain are built?’ he demanded.

  ‘Why, here, of course. Here in Thorncroft. As they have done for generations.’ If not, I had tacitly to admit, in great numbers.

  ‘Here? Amidst all the gentlefolk? No, Mr Rowsley, I venture to suggest that you fail to understand the dangers of envy. Think of Chartism. Think of Peterloo, of the Swing Rebellion, of the Tolpuddle Martyrs – we do not want their like here!’

  ‘Indeed we do not. This is why I contend that we need to attend to the bodily as well as the spiritual needs of these people. Pounceman, I have sprung all this upon you. Pray, cast your eyes – cast your mind! – on my poor scribbles and see what the future could be, in as little as five years perhaps.’ I got to my feet, picking up my hat. ‘I regret I cannot continue our discussion now. I have another appointment.’

  Mrs Faulkner appeared wearing not a bonnet to conceal her face but a flattish, wide-brimmed hat, which somehow offset the spread of her crinoline. She did not demur when I offered to carry one of the two baskets she had filled with necessities for the Kenton family. She handed me the heavier one, from which the neck of the bottle of port protruded. Hers contained linen and knitted garments, she said.