VALENTINE’S DAY, TODAY, AND THEY’RE ALL IN A FLUSTER this morning. Well, the women are. Susan and Mary are a-scuttling up and down the stairs like they were juniors, not first and second housemaid who should have a bit of dignity about them. It’s the excitement, though, with Susan’s plan. Susan told Grace about it yesterday, or rather asked her to join in, and by that she meant pay money. Grace has been here almost a month now, and it was the first time Susan’s done more than order her around. Yet Susan was pleasant as anything to Grace yesterday asking for the ha’penny for the card, only a ha’penny, but Grace is counting them. Anyways, she’s not out of sorts over it, a ha’penny is the price of being accepted down here, and this morning she’s all brisk with the secrecy, being on the inside of matters rather than out.
There’s no first post until Mrs Wainwright is satisfied, says Mr Bellows, and they’re hard at it. Slow and careful today, just brush, brush, brush and get it done. Make sure there’s no spots for Mrs Wainwright, she’s looking at them all as though she knows they’re scattered in the head this morning, but the work still needs doing up to the standard it always is. The first floor’s easy as pie, a large pie, mind, but everything in its place. There’s been no cigars in here, only two armchairs sat on, in the red drawing room, and the sofas are still as puffed up as she and Mary left them yesterday. Besides, when Grace opens the shutters, all the early morning sends in is a wall of cold. In this half-light there is not much dust to see. Pray that Mrs Wainwright checks it sooner rather than later.
Downstairs, though, well, Grace has never seen anything like it. She’s smelt it, though, opened the door to the billiards and if she’d a lit a match it’d’ve burnt high. Like a public house, no, worse, it’s the spirits in here, the glasses are still half full, most of them, and imagine the waste with that.
It’s not just the smell, either; you’d cough on the smoke if you weren’t choking on the brandy all around. The fire is still going; it can’t be more than an hour or two gone since Master Edward’s friends left. What time was poor Joseph up until, waiting to let them out?
Joseph. Yesterday, they’d passed on the stairs, Grace looking to the wall because she was too shy to meet his eye.
‘Grace?’
‘Yes.’ She had to stop, didn’t she? It would’ve looked too strange if she didn’t, and then she wanted to, wanted to pause.
‘Grace, you look nice today.’
Grace near gasped. You can’t say it’s anything but a pleasure, to be told that by a man you like, and she’d admitted it to herself now, hadn’t she? But you can’t let yourself have feelings like that, Grace Campbell, so shut them away.
He was waiting for an answer though, so she said, ‘Thank you, Joseph’, and he flushed from his collar to his forehead. Then he stood back to let her pass, which she did, eyes on the wall.
There are coals all around the grate, shovel’s on the edge of the carpet too. Look at that, it’ll be black underneath and it’ll take something to get that out. How’s she to clear this room up quick? Susan will be a razor with her, but Grace will take it in the right way today. Susan just wants what she thinks is in the post. And Grace wants the post, too, for he’s hardly going to hand it to her across the table.
They did the other rooms too quick. Mrs Wainwright knew what would happen, she’s making a round at half past seven, just as it lightens outside. The sun is coming in now and the light shows dust that you couldn’t see a half-hour before, or so Grace guesses when Mrs Wainwright comes down to call her back for it.
At morning break Mr Bellows says that the post won’t be until noon, that being the earliest Mrs Wainwright can now be sure that all will be finished. In any case, the second post will have arrived by then. ‘That’s cruelty,’ whispers Mary. ‘Then all of us at table will see who has a card and who hasn’t one. Not that we don’t know it already, but handing out the letters like that, in front of everyone, is rubbing it in.’
Grace is standing at her place near the far end of the table when Mr Bellows leads in the Pugs’ Parade, she’s learnt to call it, all the senior servants together. Grace, as usual opposite Joseph, stands behind her chair looking at the floor, unsure of how she’s to go right through dinner without looking at him. Mr Bellows pulls back his chair and a grind it makes on the stone, but that’s the signal for the rest of them to sit and watch him carve the joint into fine pink slices. Rump it is, not the fillet they have upstairs, but Grace has never had meat so many times a week. Every day it is, twice most days, and even though she’s rushing around heaving, stretching, elbows pumping, she’s already having to lace her corsets looser, and that skirt waist’ll keep the breath out of her soon. Grace’ll have to eat less as how’s she to buy a new one? Then Joseph brings the plates down the table and Grace moves her eyes straight ahead. Just murmur a thank you, now. She doesn’t want to be too friendly in front of the other servants.
The treacle dumplings steam up the room on their own account, so it seems, or maybe it’s all of them at the table puffing away with the wait. Too many in here and not able to relax just the slightest today; they’re as heated up as kettles about to whistle.
Grace can see a small bunch of envelopes in Mr Bellows’ hand. He lifts one towards his monocle and says the name right out before passing it down. Grace glances around; the necks she can glimpse have come out in blotches.
Susan has a card; she has a suitor to send it. She can expect a visit and a posy too, once he finishes at the bank at lunchtime, being Saturday. Susan’s not shy about this but, Grace’ll give it her, not too flashy either. Still, Susan slips the card only part back into the envelope, and they can all see it, pale white card against cream.
Mary is less careful with hers. She giggles and blushes and near as swings her shoulders.
‘How do you know,’ Grace whispers to her, ‘that it’s from someone you’d like it to be?’
‘Any of them is fine by me,’ Mary replies.
Mr Bellows opens his. Susan said they’d be safe, he’ll never admit it, not let go his dignity as butler. Mr Bellows doesn’t pinken. He quietly slips the card back into its envelope, looks down the table and asks for the teapot just as though he receives a nameless Valentine every day.
Grace has a card, too, at least she thinks it’s a card. She hasn’t seen the writing before, but it looks how she’d expect it to be, not a good hand, but that’s not what she likes him for. She pushes it into her apron pocket – she’s not opening it in front of the others, and it is only when Joseph vanishes down the passageway to clear the kitchen staff’s dinner that Grace looks up.
Grace is going out tonight with Mary. It’s her first night out since she arrived. It’s Valentine’s Day, Saturday, Mary said, you can’t sit in by yourself. Grace has spent all day hoping Joseph would ask her instead, after the card. Just a question mark it had in it, but when she caught his eye in the servants’ hall that afternoon, his neck reddened. But he says nothing to her. Maybe he doesn’t like it that she’s still going out with Mary and her sorts. More fool Grace for accepting; not that Mary gave her much choice. Mary’s been building up to this for more than a week and she needs Grace, she begged, he’s bringing a friend and four’s a good number. Grace couldn’t let Mary down now. Still, all day Grace has been thinking of the countryside and Joseph’s farm in Somerset. Well, his da’s farm, and then it’ll be his brother’s, that’s why Joseph’s in service, to make a better life, he’d told her. But Grace can’t think of much better than a farm, all fresh grass and milk, golden-brown cows and a whitewashed square of a farmhouse, smoke coming out of the chimney, smell of fresh roast ham, too, from the door. But where’s she to use her shorthand there? Grace pushes the thought out of her mind, and goes on dreaming, for that’s as close as she’ll get. Another letter from Ma and she’ll be popped like a string drawn too tight.
Mary found Grace a dress from a friend. You can’t go out in those, she’d said as she turned through Grace’s drawer of the office clothes Grace and Ma had stitched; looks like you’re going to church. Grace couldn’t go near a church in the dress she’s been pulled into. She’s not worn a showy colour like this before. It’s a shade of dark pink, not that there’s much of it at the front; she wants to cover her chest with her hands. Mary’s wearing rouge too. Come on, Grace, don’t you want to look your best? Paint my face! Grace is shocked at the thought of it. Not that she needs to paint her face to shock herself this evening. When she looks in the mirror she sees another person. Let’s be out of here before Joseph sees, she thinks. The night out won’t cost you a penny, Mary tells her, real gents, they are. But Grace has Ma’s words in her head, Never go anywhere you can’t get home. Grace turns to her drawer and reaches into her purse for a bus fare. She stills, then takes a deep breath and lifts out all she hasn’t yet sent home, just in case.
It’s Mrs Wainwright that calls her in as she and Mary are leaving. Oh, Grace, moans Mary, can’t it wait? Not up to me, thinks Grace.
Mrs Wainwright is all honey and sweet and tells Grace to sit down so that Grace thinks there’s some terrible news coming and it runs through her head, from Michael to Ma. Only address they have is here, or rather the mews at the back, but it’s all the same.
‘Grace,’ says Mrs Wainwright. Maybe, thinks Grace, maybe it’s just the dress I’m wearing, and her cheeks feel as though they are pinkening to match the colour of it.
‘Grace, we all, from time to time, have feelings.’ Here Mrs Wainwright pauses, and Grace looks over her shoulder at a photograph she’s not seen down here before. A handsome man, not young, Grace’d have him at near forty, but military. You can imagine the buttons shining, even just from looking at the picture. ‘But,’ Mrs Wainwright continues, ‘you’re a heady young girl, and these feelings may somehow overcome you.’ My word, what does Mrs W. think Grace and Mary are up to tonight, and why isn’t Mary in here too? ‘However, it is not always,’ Mrs Wainwright hesitates again, ‘appropriate to show them.’
Mrs Wainwright’s hands move down to her desk. Grace follows them. There’s a card, there, a Valentine’s card. So Mrs W. has an admirer, too. She’s picking up the card, taking a breath to speak again. ‘Mr Bellows,’ she continues, ‘is a widower. He is old enough to be your …’ And Grace tries to shut out what’s coming, it’s ever so much worse than a scolding and she can feel shivers of embarrassment as though she’s stuck in this dress till Kingdom Come. Grace has had her card in her apron pocket all day, touching it from time to time like a lucky charm, but right now, she never wants to think about a Valentine again.
‘And there’s the question of the order of things down here. I don’t imagine it’s a joke, Grace; that would not be particularly pleasant.’ Either Mr Bellows thinks she loves him, or he thinks she’s making fun of him. Oh, Grace Campbell, oh. If Susan can do this when Grace has done nought to her, then the thought of what she might do if Grace tells on her makes Grace shiver. However, Grace can’t work in a house where she can’t look the butler in the eye without going crimson, and she needs the position. It may not give her thirty shillings a month, but it gives her a good deal more than nothing. Nor does she want Joseph’s smiles to vanish.
‘It wasn’t me.’ When Mrs Wainwright asks her if she knows who it was, Grace shakes her head so as it might fall off.
Grace isn’t drinking, which puts her out between Mary and the two men, and they’re in a dance hall, all red velvet and smoke and a smell to the crowd that isn’t a smell but makes Grace think that dancing is not what it’s about here. Still, the band is playing the latest tunes, all animal dances they are, and Mary made Grace practise in their room, with the footsteps from the newspaper. Now Mary has danced off with her fellow and Grace has been left with Mr Pointer.
Call me Will, he’d said, but the familiarity sticks in her throat. He’s not a tall man but his limbs are steel wire and he has sharp narrow eyes that were darting from side to side at the beginning of the evening, but are lolling a bit now as the middle of his moustache dampens with beer. Grace can’t hear a word of what he’s saying, not with the band, and now he’s his arm tight around her shoulder and walking her on to the dance floor. It’s not one of the dances she knows. ‘I don’t know how to do this, Mr Pointer,’ she says, not knowing if he can hear her or not, but he keeps moving her on.
The couples around them are dancing closer than she’d like and Mr Pointer’s body’s near against hers. Grace tries to draw back, but he’s holding her tight as a trap, and coming in close so that there’s hot beer in her ear. It feels as though there’s a barrel-band across her chest and her lungs are only moving a little now, panting she is, and Mr Pointer goes ‘Oh’ and moves closer. Lord knows what she’ll feel of him next. ‘Come on,’ he says, but the thick air, the bodies, Mr Pointer’s locked-stiff arms are all making her feel ill. The dance floor’s so crowded there’s not a chance of keeping your distance, not that anybody on it looks like they want to. You’d’ve thought someone would put an end to it, in public, but it’s too dark, isn’t it, for anyone to see if they don’t want to. It’s the new dances, too, pushing you towards each other every few steps.
Grace puts her heel on the toe of Mr Pointer’s boot. The edge, quite careful, so as all her weight’s on just that tiny bit, and he steps back. She smiles, mouths ‘Pardon’, then ‘Excuse me’. He nods to the bar, with ‘I’ll see you there’. Grace wriggles into the crowd fast as she can, knocking through the elbows, she’s fetched her coat in a flash, then out the door into the strange street. They came here in a taxicab and what bus, or where the stop is, she doesn’t want to spend the time looking for. A taxi draws up and a group of men fall out, with one lady screeching with laughter. Good Lord, Grace thinks, the extravagance, what she earns in … but Grace looks back over her shoulder and thinks she can see Mr Pointer coming out the door. It is him, and he’s walking towards her. Grace’s heart is pounding and she knocks on the taxi’s front window a flutter of times in a second, until the driver looks at her as if she’s half crazed. Park Lane, she says, and he raises his eyebrows. Then she’s on that empty seat quick as she can, grabbing the leather strap inside and pulling the door shut. Once she’s moving, she looks back at Mr Pointer and waves at him. At least he might tell Mary she’s gone, if Mary’ll notice anything.
The cab is shaking from side to side as though the ground’s rumbling underneath, and each time it comes up behind a horse Grace is thrown forward as the driver brakes. Once she’s back in her seat, her eyes are fixed on the taxi meter as it clicks higher and higher. This is her sending-home money and she’s trying to think what else she can do without. It’s a while before she knows where she is, then she’s by Victoria Station, that’s ten minutes’ walk, and she knows the way. Grace leans forward and asks the driver to stop. ‘Thought you said Park Lane,’ he grumbles. ‘Remembered where you really live?’
Sunday again. Michael takes Grace to the far side of the park. The damp chill of the last few weeks is fading and the freshness of the air begins to take her mind away from last night. Every minute she sat in church she was wondering if God forgives girls who encourage men. It must have been her fault that Mr Pointer behaved liked that. Is that what London has done to her, and so quick? The thought comes to her that Joseph may be seeing that too and it makes her feel slightly ill, so she fixes her eyes on the building ahead, dark red brick and windows the size of small trees.
‘Looks like a palace, Michael.’
‘It is a palace.’
‘Who lives there?’
He doesn’t reply.
‘There must be dozens of them.’
‘Only dozens of servants, and thought little of. The rich keep their eyes shut and their hearts empty, Grace. They don’t give a damn about us. I’d do away with the lot of them.’
Grace jolts back with this, almost as if he’s been speaking about her, which he is, in a way. When you’re in service it feels as though what happens to the family you work for is happening to you, too. She thinks of Miss Beatrice, and Lady Masters; would Michael want to do away with them? Surely they care about Grace and the rest of them downstairs, what with the questions they ask. She feels a little hollow. No, she thinks, this mustn’t be true; she’s not going to let Michael make all that friendliness untrue. There’s enough bad thoughts she’s had this morning and she’s not having him take away the good ones she might have left.
‘No, Michael,’ she says. ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘Turning your head, is it? Mayfair and all that money? You’ll be on their side, soon … If I had my way I’d never give them a civil word. Some day I won’t have to.’
‘No, Michael, it’s simply not fair to say all of them are like that.’
He grunts.
She continues. ‘Some of them have the money not to be,’ and as she smiles at this wry comment of hers, Michael laughs out loud.
‘But it’s true,’ he says, ‘you have to be able to afford to be kind. Remember that: what you can afford to do and what you can’t. Not just money either, Grace. Don’t give anything away lightly.’
They hover by the Round Pond, watching the miniature yachts trying to make their way across. A few feet from them a man so wide that he looks as if he would be better bouncing along rather than walking, struggles to lean over to launch his wooden boat.
‘He’s going to go,’ says Grace, ‘right over.’ And Michael laughs again. There it is: she knew the old Michael was there. Whatever she’s said to him, it’s working and, slowly, the wrongs of yesterday begin to right themselves.
‘They’re feeding you, sister.’
Grace blushes. She looks across at him. He’s drawn, not eating what she is. She’d thought of him when she saw the leftovers in the pantry were turning.
‘That’s not a thought even to have,’ Mary had said. ‘It’ll set Mrs Wainwright on your tail. She’ll say that Lady Masters can’t be feeding half of London.’
‘I thought she did?’
‘Did?’
‘The dockworkers. When they were on strike.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Oh, no one.’
‘Message from God?’
‘Joseph.’
‘Oh.’ Mary’s oh was long drawn out. She looked at Grace sideways. ‘That was before his time. Best not to know it.’
‘Got all you need, Grace? I worry about you.’ Really, Michael is on gentle form today, Grace is beginning to feel that this is her moment to tell him any one of those things burning inside her. She needs someone to tell her that nobody will think she really sent the card to Mr Bellows, that it is usual to feel funny after last night, that that is not why Joseph likes her, and how to find thirty shillings a month. He could do all these things, could Michael.
But instead she answers, ‘Yes, I have all I need.’
‘Sure of that, Grace?’ Michael can tell that all’s not as it should be. Reassure him, Grace Campbell. She pulls her gloves higher up over her wrists.
‘I’m all right, Michael.’
Now he’s looking at her and catches her eye and makes her look back him and hold his gaze. He raises his eyebrows.
‘If you say so, Grace.’
It’s Grace’s turn to worry, at the tone of his voice. He knows she’s lying, she thinks.
‘What are you needing then, Michael?’
‘Grace, can you type something out for me?’
Her breath stops in her.
‘On the machines, Grace. At your office.’
Her reply comes quickly now, too quickly.
‘It’s not allowed, spending work time on a personal matter.’
‘You could go in early.’
What’s she to say to that? This is it, thinks Grace, I’ve told a lie and I’ll burn for it even before I’m in my grave. But something comes to her.
‘There’s the paper,’ she says, ‘and the ribbon to pay for.’
‘I’ll give you those,’ he says.
Grace sticks to it, she has to. No, not for personal use, she says, there was another girl, she’s been told, as took in her own ribbon and was given the sack on the spot. Out on her ear and not even that week’s pay. ‘It’s the rules, Michael.’
Michael doesn’t believe her, but Michael doesn’t believe in rules, or rather, he doesn’t like them. The corners of his mouth are down and his eyes are half closed, looking at her sideways. He thinks she’s shirking, she’s sure of it. He turns away and hangs his head.
‘I would have thought,’ he says, ‘that you would do this for me.’
At that moment she has a fear that it mightn’t take Michael finding out for Grace to lose him, and that there are other ways in which she can disappoint him. He may be her brother, but he’s all too ready to turn his back on a person and never talk to them again.
‘Oh, Michael. I’ll do anything I can for you. You know that. Just not that.’ What can she do, she thinks, what can I give my brother that he might need?
‘Can,’ he snorts, ‘can? If we only do what we “can” nothing in this cursed world will change.’
He is silent now.
‘What about where you work, Michael, in chambers?’
‘You can’t come in there.’
‘No, I mean you do the typing.’
He looks at her as though she’s simple.
‘I’m not a typist, Grace.’
She’s too flustered, though she’s hiding it, to ask him what needs typing, and she can’t now. Any case, she wants to talk about anything but typing. In a minute she may trip over her tongue.
Michael is continuing. ‘Besides, I have reading to do in order to know what to write. That’s if I can find the books.’
‘What books?’
Michael rattles out a few names. Philosophy, Grace, Michael tells her. Call it politics if you must, you should know about that. Grace knows about politics, she reads the Daily Express once the others have finished with it, and of course Miss Sand told them about the government. Why, a young woman like Grace, even if she is working as a maid at present, should be thinking about politics too, she tells herself.
Mrs Wainwright knows that Grace likes doing the library. Grace has told her she enjoys her elbow pushing into the wood and bringing the shine back up, that smell of polish everywhere. Grace spends as much time as she can there, breathing in old paper and leather. Today being a Monday she’s more time to enjoy it, for the family is still in the country and there are no bedroom fires to be lit.
It’s on the ground floor, tucked away in a corner and only the double doors tell you it’s a place to go into. They’re plain dark wood, none of that white and gold of upstairs. Grace likes the plainness: it adds to the surprise when you walk inside.
There’s not much light from the side window. It’s lamps they use to make the room glow, all wood and leather book spines lining the walls. There’s enough of them in red and green to give it a feel of Christmas year round. This morning, as she’s standing and looking, polishing a spine or two, Joseph comes in and stands beside her. It’s just one man who collected all these, he tells her, the first Sir William Masters. He’s the man who built this house fifty years ago. He travelled all over the world. Grace could tell that herself of course from the titles when they’re in languages she doesn’t understand, and she tells Joseph this. Joseph tells her that Sir William couldn’t read them either, not a word that wasn’t English. They were for his wife. She could speak all the languages for him.
Then Joseph says, ‘Look, Grace, look what’s in here.’ He opens a cupboard and takes out a long leather tube. ‘See the paper inside, Grace? That’s plans for the railways he built before he became Sir William and built this house. He didn’t start off Sir William,’ Joseph says, ‘he was a builder; maybe I’ll become a builder, Grace.’ Joseph is standing right next to her, so as she can feel the heat from his body, and he reaches an arm out for a book but when it brushes past her shoulder, he pulls it back. Grace feels a flush rising through her collar and she holds herself in at the waist, her shoulders back, even though it makes her chest go forward, pushing it closer to him.
Joseph’s fixing his eyes straight ahead, poker-necked but full-lipped, and pretending not to look. Grace is sure he knows how close he is and it feels as though he is drawing her towards him, and she has an impulse to kiss him. Her body starts to move, and before she knows it her face is right by his; then, just as suddenly, a fear comes over her, and she sees her life going one way, rather than the other. She stops and holds her breath in, for it’s going tell-tale fast, and says, ‘I must get on.’
He gasps; at least she thinks it’s a gasp she hears. His mouth is half open and his eyes look as though he’s been pinched.
He is still for a moment, and looks at the far wall. Then, eyes to the floor, he says, ‘See you, Grace,’ as though it’s the last thing he wants to do. As the door clicks shut behind him it feels like it’s cut a piece of her in two.
Her impulses: Grace can control them but look what good that does her. She has an urge to swear out loud but Grace can’t swear, she’s had it so drummed into her that swearing is the beginning of the end, though what she’s about to do now is going to lead her straight there, in one leap. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says, in not much more than a whisper but it’s out there nonetheless. Then Grace looks over her shoulder to check that nobody has slipped in behind her, double reason to check that.
The library steps are heavy – the trick is to roll them forward rather than try to swing them to the side. They’ve been left at the end by Z, at the window, giving the impression that someone has read their way through the lot. The wheels rumble on the floorboards, and Grace starts at the noise. What if Mrs Wainwright … But she should be moving them to sweep underneath. Though perhaps not so far all at once for there’s folding steps she can use to reach the books from, with the feather duster she’s left leaning against the side. She’d think of something though, she’s always been quick at that, and she’s grown quicker recently, had to, lips tight as they can be every Sunday. Now she’s stopping and starting, searching the letters. Fr, Fl, Fe … Grace likes the orderliness of the library, nothing unexpected can happen here. Fa … Ew, there was an E, wasn’t there, one of the books Michael told her the name of. E, there you are, Grace, ladder into the side and up she goes, clutching a dusting cloth in case anyone comes in, and searching the Es for a name that rings true.
As she climbs her head grows lighter and by the time she’s at the top she feels as though she is flying, not quite herself. She finds it up there, the book she’s after. Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England, that’s the one Michael said, and how can you forget a name like that?
The books are packed tight as six in a bed up here, takes all of a tug, and not easy with the duster too, and she’s near tipped off, and with her hovering ten foot up what would she have broken first? They wouldn’t keep her here then, not all crippled, when she’s as good as just arrived. And if she said she was dusting behind the book, just that one, nobody would believe her.
Once she’s down she lifts up her skirt, pulls her stomach in and squeezes the book up above her waistband. She’d left her apron loose especially: now she ties it as tight as she can and still breathe.
She’s moving the steps on to A to make it look as though she’s gone right round with the duster. She hurries, worrying that some-one’ll start wondering why she isn’t in the saloon yet, and moves the ladder too quick. There’s a thundering from the wheels, enough to make her jump. In the silence she can hear pointy-heeled steps ringing towards the room.
‘What in God’s name?’
‘Ever so sorry, Mrs Wainwright,’ and Grace bobs.
‘You could have shaken the devil awake. What were you doing?’
‘Just saw a bit more and nipped back to catch it.’
‘Well, you should’ve caught it the first time. And don’t try nipping anywhere with those steps. That feather duster can reach from the folding ones, if I’m not mistaken.’
Please go, thinks Grace. Go, so I don’t have to walk past you with this book under my pinny.
‘Is it all done, now?’
‘Yes, Mrs Wainwright.’
‘Well, then, straighten the steps and into the saloon.’
From behind the ladder, Grace bobs another curtsey, clutching her stomach as though there’s a baby in there, hoping Mrs Wainwright doesn’t think that, that’s just the sort of trouble she’d be on the lookout for. But anyone who knows Grace … but they don’t, do they?
The service stairs are on the far side of the hall. She walks fast, wants to trot, but the book’ll be banging around the bottom of her bloomers. She goes up the stairs, her hand pressed against her. When she’s in her room, she loosens her apron and lifts her skirt and petticoat before easing the book out. As she holds it out in front of her, her head empties and she feels as if she’s going to fall. If she had any breakfast in her, it’d be on the floor. Where’s she to put it, this book, and keep it, all week too? If she had any sense, she’d’ve waited until Saturday. If she had any sense … Well, too late now, Grace Campbell.
The chest of drawers. There’s Mary, though. The first week Grace was here she came in to find Mary going through her drawers. Without a flush of embarrassment, Mary had come out with Oh, my drawers are at the top now, easy to forget. Grace imagines finding Mary holding up the book and her stomach turns again – and she needs to be back downstairs, minutes ago. There’s her suitcase, the edge of it coming out from under her bed, no lock on it, but if Mary’s already looked in it, she’ll think it’s empty still. Grace takes an armful of clothes from her drawers and burrows the book inside them and into the case.
She’s out of the door when she turns back to check the case. She can see it as though it reads Open Me across the front. She rushes back to her drawers and pulls out her woollen shawl. She’ll be cold without it but it’s the thickest thing she has. Her mattress is so thin a child could lift it, and up it comes. Grace wraps the book in her shawl to protect it from the wire netting underneath, and slips it under the pillow end.
As she comes downstairs again, Grace jumps. Mrs Wainwright is standing to the side of the staircase as though she’s been waiting for Grace, and Grace’s chest tightens. Imagine, just imagine if she’d seen Grace going up with the book. She feels white, and red, and Lord knows what else, her face must look like a convict’s already. Smile, Grace Campbell, she tells herself, take that look away.
‘Where have you been, Grace?’
‘Upstairs, Mrs Wainwright.’
‘Upstairs?’
Grace folds her hands over her belly and dips her head.
Mrs Wainwright pauses.
‘Well, we all have to get on, you know. I can’t have every one of you off for a couple of days each month. Anyhow, keeping moving will take your mind off it. Into the saloon; you can take a hot water bottle after luncheon. And, Grace …’
‘Yes, Mrs Wainwright.’
‘I expect more of you, Grace. You know that.’