MARCH

Friday, 1st March

I’m on the floor in the pantry, so I’ll be out of sight if someone comes into the kitchen. There’s a drawer in the dresser there where I keep this book, but I’ll be finding a new place for it now there’s something in it to read. It’s so perfect and weighty in its green cover, so expecting of a better hand, I’ve been half afraid of it. I’ve been waiting for a minute’s quietness or for something to happen that’s worthy of disturbing the lovely blankness of the page, but there’s neither peace nor interest to be had at Finton Hall. So this is how I’m starting in earnest, hurriedly scratching out in pencil whatever comes to mind, sitting between a sack of beetroot and an old milk churn. Mrs B gave me the book in Gloucester Square, about a month before she died. She said I’d get better at writing if I kept a diary to show her. I thought she just wanted to hear servants’ gossip first-hand, but maybe I should’ve listened – my letters are so cramped and uneven, they look ashamed of themselves.

I’m supposed to be washing up, but when I came down there was no one here. Mrs Clarkson has a rest about now and Mary’s cleaning the upstairs rooms, as far as she cleans anything. Laurence slinks off somewhere – probably to lord it over the stable lad – when he should be ready to open the door to visitors. Not that anyone ever comes. He’ll be back before Mrs Clarkson shows her big round face again, that’s certain. She says her name in this voice – Meesis Clockson. It’s supposed to be from when she worked in France, but it made me smile first time she said it, especially as her face is so round, like a handsome clockface. I shouldn’t have done that. She said, ‘Something amusing you, Harriet?’ Though it sounded like, ‘Something amoosin oo, Arriet?’ which didn’t help.

Someone’s come into the kitchen, and I didn’t get up right away – my feet ache so, it’s as if they’ve been walloped – so now I can’t. I don’t know who it is. They are so quiet, I keep thinking they’ve gone, but then there’s a sigh or a shuffle again.

If I’m caught, there will be trouble. Mrs Clarkson doesn’t just look like a clock – all our timings are set by her. Somehow, she eats up the minutes like she’s always running fast. However hard I work, I’m behind time. Duncan, the coachman, says it’s her job to pick the household servants, and her nose is out of joint because the missus employed me without telling her. I can believe it. She loves telling us all what a wonderful housekeeper she is, and how the master hired her on the spot when he overheard her giving a knife-cleaner the scolding of his life in her last place. Whatever the reason, she doesn’t like me. She came tick-tocking around when I was scrubbing the floor in the morning room earlier and used her foot to point out where I needed to go over a bit, then gave me a sharp kick on the leg to hurry me up. I turned and looked at her, which she didn’t like.

‘Don’t slant your eyes at me like that’ – then something in French – ‘there is a deal of work to be done before the master gets home.’

All high horse. I told her I found it a deal easier to do my work quickly when I wasn’t being kicked. She narrowed her eyes at me then and gave a nasty, secret smile.

‘We won’t have to worry about you when the master’s home. You’ll find he won’t want your sort upstairs.’

She leered at me strangely and piled on three more jobs before I could ask what she meant. It’s not the first time she’s said something like that about the master. I don’t know what it is about me that he’s going to find so dreadful, but it casts a shadow over my time here. What always lifts my day and makes it all right is cleaning the nursery and taking up meals for the wet nurse, Lizzie. She’s friendlier than the others, and I get to see the baby, who has won my heart twenty times over—

They’ve just tried to open one of the sticky drawers in the dresser. Silence again.

The job itself is almost as hard as it was back at the Henshaws’, though a much grander place, of course, and I’d rather clean lovely things than their nasty dark old rooms. The things upstairs are lovely – every room has a different colour that rules all the others, so when I’m in the morning room I believe I could never live happily without yellow, and when I’m in the drawing room I can’t think there’s anything more beautiful to look at than blue – that blue that comes at dusk, deep and rich, but with light still in it. It covers the walls and sort of flows into ornaments and paintings. There’s a scene at sea with lusty blue waves crashing against rocks – ‘First Sight of America’, it says – and every time I look at it, I’m stumped by how easy it is for the likes of James Stanworth to set off and see such a place for himself while I’m stuck wiping the dust from a picture. I’m as likely to get to the moon.

At the moment we’re turning everything upside down, taking up carpets, taking down pictures and all that to clean properly, so I’ve been close enough to kiss some of the portraits – there’s a little black boy in blue livery with a silver circlet around his neck, and a gentleman with eyes nearly the same blue that I’d like to see in a real face. Only the missus’ portrait looks out of place – smaller, and she’s dressed in green—

It was her in the kitchen! The missus, Mrs Gethin. God knows what she was doing poking about in there. She started humming to herself – just as I started writing about her – a velvety sound, and I leaned forward enough to see a slice of her skirts. Dark brown silk, certainly not a servant. I felt like a mouse peeking out of a hole at a waiting cat. Heart going like a tiny hammer. She’s gone now.

I wrote before there is nothing of interest, but that’s not true, it’s just that I haven’t met her since I arrived, not since she visited Mrs B’s. The master’s away in London being a member of parliament, so there’s only the missus at home. I’m scared to death she’s forgotten all about me and I might never see her again – upstairs and downstairs are like two different worlds in this house – and I’ll only have her portrait to stare at like before. It used to hang in the drawing room at Gloucester Square, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it – in it she’s about sixteen, dressed in a green, gauzy thing and sitting in the corner of a garden in sunshine so lovely it warmed my skin just looking at it. But it was her expression that fixed me, looking a bit off to the side, behind my shoulder as it were, as if she was expecting to see something impossibly wonderful – like the end of a rainbow, or an elephant. I actually looked behind me once – not that I’d tell anyone – and was disappointed to see only the dullness of who-cares-o’clock and the sconces in need of a rub.

It was painted in Italy, which is why the light is so warm. Mrs B told me how the missus comes from a very old, noble family, who had to move abroad because they lost all their money, and when her parents died she went to live with Mrs B at Gloucester Square – they’re related somehow. It clutched at my heart a bit that the girl in green had ended up there. I didn’t want to picture her in the same rooms, looking out of the same windows as me. Not even ordinary rainbows to be seen. I think she might have felt the same way. Annie was cook there before I arrived, and she told me how the missus and Mrs B had a falling out because Mrs B didn’t think she should marry Mr Gethin. All I know is she never came back to visit after her marriage. Not until she wrote last summer and asked herself to tea.

Later

Someone else came into the kitchen, so I was sure to jump up quick and hide my writing things behind a trencher at the back of a shelf. I knocked a jug as I did it though, which rocked itself onto the floor. It didn’t break (thank God), but I couldn’t keep hiding. Mary – she straight away asked what I was doing, and I said I was looking for where the sand was for the big pans. She said there wasn’t any big pans to wash, which was true – so I said I’d just had the thought and was having a look so I’d be prepared – trying to get familiar.

Mary’s face is like a rat’s but very pretty – if that doesn’t sound too strange. Brown hair and a delicate, pointy nose with bright little eyes. Not a freckle on her, unlike me. I could almost see her snout and whiskers snuffling the air trying to work out what I was really about. She’s a bit younger than me – seventeen, I think – though head housemaid now I’m here, and always staring. It was her that showed me around last week. ‘Here’s the scullery,’ or, ‘Here’s the boot room,’ she’d say and look at me like she was saying something else. That’s been the way ever since – it’s like she can’t believe I’m here, which might be the case as she’s Mrs Clarkson’s niece.

It feels strange to be writing about her in this book when I’ve got to go up and share a room. Risky, like I’m telling these things to someone I know can’t keep a secret. I don’t even know whom I’m writing it for, now Mrs B is gone. This was my first chance to get it back – I’ve been creeping around in the dark with my candle, trying not to upturn anything. Everyone else has gone to bed, so it’s just me at the servants’ table in an unsteady pool of light – same as every other night as Mrs Clarkson always gives me extra jobs straight after dinner and then won’t let me leave the washing up until the morning. She says that any girl she had trained would have had it all done by nine, and the reason I’m so slow is because I’m clumsy. Truth is, I’m more like a general servant here than a housemaid. My hands are nearly as cracked and raw as they were at the Henshaws’. I’d be ashamed to button Mrs Gethin’s cuff now, though even at Gloucester Square, I noticed how red my fingers were against the white skin and blue veins of her wrist. I’d never been so close to a lady before and remember feeling as awed as when I was handed a doll as a child. To be allowed to touch the trim of its perfect dress and straighten its bonnet at will filled my little heart with almost religious fervour and a ferocious desire to protect.

Any visitor at Mrs B’s was a rarity. I think Annie believed actually having one – and twice, no less – was an injustice. There was a lot of huffing as she dragged down a recipe book for the fancy biscuits (I swear I saw cobwebs). Her outrage made me laugh, which was good because I was on edge about meeting the girl in the painting. I’d only worked in the boarding house before and had never served a lady (except Mrs B, who was mad as a twig so didn’t count).

It turned out all right; I didn’t drop anything or kick the furniture. Mrs Gethin as she’d become wasn’t sixteen anymore, of course. Nearer twenty-six and in a plain, loose, grey dress that almost hid her condition – I only noticed because, being shy, I kept dropping my gaze to her middle and eventually saw the slight roundness. What I did see of her face told me it was still striking and youthful, but there was worry in it. She was telling Mrs B about her lady’s maid when I brought the tea in – I didn’t hear what the trouble was exactly, but there had clearly been some misunderstanding, and the missus had come to London looking for her. I thought that was touching – that she should take such trouble.

When I went back in to clear the plates, Mrs B was plinking away unevenly on the piano, something forlorn – the story of the maid had moved her (though she later told me Mrs Gethin had been vexingly vague about what happened). Mrs Gethin herself had her eyes fixed on the rug. She looked quite pinched, but that might have been Mrs B’s playing. My own gaze flicked from her face to the painting; it was too much not to compare the same features in such different lights and years. She was so still, it seemed she wasn’t aware of me at all, but glancing back, I found her eyes were on my face. It flustered me so, I froze, half bent over the table to pick up the tray, and the words just fell out.

‘I’ve often wondered, ma’am …’

Her expression didn’t change.

‘I’ve often wondered what you were looking at in that painting.’

She turned her gaze to the portrait and looked at it so long I thought she’d forgotten me. When her eyes found mine again, something had changed in them, like black pools after a pebble’s been dropped in.

‘I don’t remember. What do you imagine I’m looking at?’

That made me even more flustered. My head filled up with just one awful word until it was either say that or say nothing. I mumbled it.

‘An elephant maybe.’

Her laughter – sudden and fiercely impish – jolted Mrs B out of her playing; the old lady looked over and giggled without understanding. I felt my face flush.

‘I mean something like that. Something you wouldn’t think of.’

I could hear my voice turning sulky.

‘I just … I’d like to see whatever it was, what made you look that way, that was all. Ma’am.’

I seized the tray as Mrs B began tottering towards us and escaped to the kitchen. Later, at the front door when she was leaving, Mrs Gethin shocked me by putting a hand on my arm.

‘Thank you for taking notice of my old portrait.’

Her face was less pinched, and her eyes still had that shimmer.

‘I feel I’ve had a friend all this time and not known it. As if I’m still …’

She didn’t finish, only smiled a little, as if at her own silliness. I studied the portrait even more closely after she’d gone. It bothered me that she couldn’t remember what she was looking at, but the idea that we were somehow friends unfurled inside me like a tiny rose, sweet and delicate.

A few days later she returned. Her missing lady’s maid was not to be found, and she looked worn out. By then I was out of sorts myself. William had written to say he was to have the head gardener position when Mr Noakes retires in the spring. It means we can marry much earlier than expected. Annie plundered Mrs B’s store of brandy to celebrate (I was sick in the wash basin next morning), but I couldn’t tell her his letter had come as a shock and not of the right kind – I was too surprised by it myself. Lying in bed at night, I turned all my thoughts over, trying to find out which one was at fault. At Easter I had felt no different – he was as he always has been: big, blunt, tender sometimes. I don’t remember a time without him. Like an older brother at first, and later – I don’t know when the change came about. It feels as if we have had an understanding all my life. One day, when he can support us, we will be married and have children. One day.

It was the girl in green, I think, that forced me to admit how unready I am to go home and marry. That expression in her face. I found myself for the first time unwilling to look at her. William’s letter should have brought the same bright hope into my eyes, but it didn’t, and for that I felt guilty. Still do, like I’ve failed at something important. When Mrs Gethin returned, I peered at her as much as I could, as if I might find an answer in the older version, something to explain my feelings or guidance as to what to do. Her careworn face didn’t offer much comfort, but it made me more curious as to what lay behind it. Seemed to me her burdens would be worth the trouble; they’d carry a greater weight and meaning than anything life in the Mill Lane cottage with William might bring. Mrs B was in bed when she arrived – she was ailing even then – and when I brought in the tea, Mrs Gethin was pacing the room and fumbling at the buttons of her left sleeve. I was bolder than I had been before.

‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

She stopped and looked my way. I gestured.

‘Oh.’

Abruptly, she sat down on the sofa and held her arm out. I had to sit too, perching on the edge, and was seized by that fierce, other-worldly feeling I’d had with the doll. The loop was stiff and tight and needed working over the button. Looking after Mrs B was a pleasure, keeping her warm and clearing the crumbs she couldn’t help dropping down herself, but this was different. The quality of Mrs Gethin’s person – her smooth skin and warm scents – seemed to agitate the air around her with hidden music. Tending to this tiny part of her wardrobe, I felt more like I was handmaid to a goddess.

‘Are you happy here?’

The question came out of nowhere. Now I think perhaps it was only because her mind had been so much on the troubles of her own servant.

‘Yes, ma’am, very much.’

I was too shy to look at her, but I could feel her eyes on me.

‘What will you do when Lady Berrington is no longer with us?’

No one had spoken openly about Mrs B’s death before. It shocked me a little.

‘I should go home, ma’am …’

I had been going to say ‘and marry’ but the words died in my throat.

‘Should?’

Her attention seemed to sharpen.

‘Is there a special reason?’

I took a breath and said it.

‘I am to be married, ma’am.’

The loop finally secured itself over the button, but I didn’t let go. Most people when I tell them burst into smiles and rain down good wishes. Mrs Gethin did none of that. She leaned forward slightly.

‘Do you not wish it?’

‘Oh, I do, ma’am!’

I let go of her cuff instantly and looked up. A sort of panic had seized me.

‘No, I do! It’s been a long engagement, and I … I just …’

My eyes, by some will of their own, turned to the girl in green. Mrs Gethin looked at the portrait too and back to me again. I was horrified to feel tears brimming. Next thing I knew she had taken my hand – hers felt as soft as silk – and moved closer along the sofa. After a moment, she spoke quietly.

‘Consider. Your life is yours. You must do with it as you wish. If something …’

She looked back at the portrait as if for inspiration. I held my breath, scared she might let go of my hand.

‘If you find yourself in a situation … painted, say, by others, and something beyond the frame calls you …’

She lifted her fingers to my chin and gently turned my face towards her.

‘For heaven’s sake, you must go to it.’

She looked at me with such tender earnestness, I think I should have sobbed and told her about William’s letter and my strange reluctance if Mrs B hadn’t chosen that moment to enter.

Mrs Gethin returned to Finton Hall after that, and I didn’t see her again. Her words buried themselves in my heart like treasure. I take them out sometimes to turn them over and wonder at their meaning, though I know I shall never spend them. My world is different from hers. I wrote to William that I couldn’t leave Mrs B in what was most likely her last illness and went to great lengths to keep the old lady alive – for her sake, of course, but also mine. Hours I spent reading Milton and relaying gossip by her bedside to keep her old mind from dimming. Annie thought I was angling for something in her will.

Then at around the same time she gave me this diary, Mrs B told me there was a housemaid’s place at Finton Hall. I remember smiling to myself – even dying, she wanted a part in other people’s lives. But when I perched on her bed and took her hand to talk to her, to remind her of William, I found there was none of the usual twinkle in her eye. She was looking at me with a directness that knocked my words flat.

‘She’ll be safe with you. You’ll look after her. You’ll make her better and bring her back to herself.’

It was an odd thing to say, even for her. I nodded as I always did, but she gripped my hand tightly; the strength of it was startling. Her eyes seemed not her own, they regarded me so strangely.

‘Promise me, Harriet.’

I nodded again. What else could I do? Her urgency sent a shiver of something like fear through me. I’ve thought about it often since. How can a lady like Mrs Gethin, living in Finton Hall, not be safe? And if she’s ill, how am I supposed to help her? Scrub the floors harder? But at the time, I was pulled into Mrs B’s spell. It brought back that sense of grace and purpose I had felt simply buttoning Mrs Gethin’s cuff, as if something had beckoned me that needed protection. I did nothing about it until shortly after Mrs B died when Mrs Gethin wrote herself with orders to send the portrait ahead – as if I’d accepted the position. She wrote that she’d be pleased to see both me and the painting again. A picture and an old lady’s whimsy are absurd reasons to take a place, I know. Going home to William is a matter of when, not whether, but the thought of packing up that face and not following it to the real woman at Finton Hall made the air turn ashy.

So here I am, and here the portrait is – in a much grander drawing room – and I haven’t seen a whisker of the missus before today. I begin to wonder if I imagined her kindness. If she’s not out in the carriage or walking, she usually keeps to her rooms. Mary says she’s difficult, always changing her mind and making up rules that have no reason – scrape this candle in her bedroom but never that one, don’t touch the books in the library, and so on. She looked like she was going to say more, something worse about the missus, but stopped herself. I didn’t bother asking more – waiting to see Mrs Gethin again has made me short with the other servants – they don’t interest me – and impatient with the work, as if I’d been promised more than a housemaid’s lot. I know how foolish that sounds. William’s bewildered letters only serve to make me stick to the place more stubbornly.

I can’t find the will to go to bed. It’s so quiet. At Mrs B’s there was always someone walking past or a carriage any time of night. And there’d be rattlings and clunks from next door. Here the silence presses in. It’s almost as if the world has hushed so I can hear my own thoughts. I have a fancy the silence has turned up just to listen.

I must be tired thinking that. These hours of writing will cost me. It’s the walk to the top I’m putting off – I’m still not used to the corners and stairs and long passages. From the outside Finton Hall looks like something out of a fairy tale. When I was driven here in the dogcart from the station, after miles and miles of nothing but small farms and humble cottages, I couldn’t take my eyes off all the turrets and chimneys and creeping ivy. It feels strange to be in a place so far from anywhere else. So still. Walking up to bed at night, I think my own movement could set something off – disturbing the darkness like it’s a riverbed. Makes me think of all the silt rising up and clouding the water while slimy mud creatures rush out of their hiding places. I’d rather curl up down here where there’s still warmth. So long as I can stay sitting down, I don’t care if ten monsters and a dozen lunatics jump out of the oven.

Sunday, 3rd March

Mrs B said if you give something beautiful your attention, it might just show you a secret – I don’t think she meant a secret that would give you a bloodied finger. There’s a cabinet of curiosities in the hall that I spend too long staring at when I’m cleaning. It even has a tiny elephant in it, carved in ivory, which made me splutter when I first saw it, thinking of what I’d said to the missus in Gloucester Square. There’s also an eerie miniature portrait, just of someone’s left eye and the area around it – Mary says it’s called a lover’s eye. The expression is unreadable without seeing the whole face, but I’m sure the eye follows me about in an unfriendly way. I’ve tucked it behind a glass paperweight with a real butterfly trapped inside and hope no one notices. And ever since I arrived, I’ve been wondering over a little lozenge-shaped thing, which is beautifully jewelled but seemed to serve no purpose. Today while I was cleaning it, I must have pressed something because a blade suddenly shot out, making me shriek and slicing my hand. Mary helped clean me up. She said it’s the master who collects all the things in the house – they’re from all over the world – and it was also him that made the house so pretty, long before he was married (he was in coal mining before he went into politics, and in Mary’s words – which always sound borrowed – had to buy himself a society wife). He must have chosen the pictures too, which, though beautiful, aren’t always pleasant up close. I don’t know why he would want to look so often at volcanoes burying people in hot ash, or bloody battle scenes, or hell itself with its tortured souls. All those faces screaming silently from the walls.

The master isn’t the only mystery. I asked about the lady’s maid at dinner tonight, the one the missus was looking for in London. Mrs Clarkson told me to mind my own business, and Mary put her knife into her meat so hard it screeched the plate.

Tuesday, 5th March

I hate it. The work, the people, the house even, with its miles of quiet corridors and wild, staring eyes. Sculptures of rearing horses or captured nymphs seem positioned on purpose to make me jump. The master’s got fine tastes, but he didn’t make it friendly for the servants who have to carry coal and water up and down all day. There are times I’d swear the steps inch higher as I’m walking up them. I’ve come up to write about it as there’s no one to talk to who’d care. If Mrs Clarkson sees the mess first, she can do what she likes. I was hauling a load of coal up to the morning room when I heard squealing and laughing, and Mary ran down past me. She should have been sweeping out the breakfast and dining rooms, which – strangely for a grand house like this – I’ve never seen used, but I notice she only really works when her aunt is watching. It was on the corner of the back stairs, and I’d turned in surprise when Laurence bounded around as well and knocked the scuttle with his leg. Cracked his shin – and I hope it hurt. Coal bounced and tumbled everywhere. The scuttle smashed and clanged its way to the bottom, so I was sure Clockface would come in a rage and accuse me of being clumsy again. Laurence swore and carried on chasing after Mary, who shrieked and ran off down the passage. I was so tired, I had to sit down and cry.

Clearing up is going to take an age. I picked up the coal – the stairs, walls and myself are all covered in black dust – and took the scuttle into the kitchen. They were there, making faces at each other behind my back, I could feel it. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed before. No wonder Mary’s always staring and twitching at me, jealous as a cat. And Laurence – well, he’s the same as any other footman. Tall and handsome, like the fancy fire irons that are a devil to clean in the drawing room, but a lot less use. He looked me up and down when I first arrived, taking me all in – his brows and lashes are so fair they’re almost white, it’s quite startling when he looks at you – and I was reminded of the under footman at Beechwood; William said he’d tup anything that moved, given a chance. Laurence is a dressed-up puppet compared to William. His green handkerchief soaked in cologne isn’t part of his livery, nor is the large ring he’s always swivelling on his little finger. And I know from Mary that the master scooped him out of some hovel when he was a child to train him up as a pageboy. I wish he hadn’t bothered.

Now I’ve got coal dust on the pillowcase. Another bloody thing to clean.

Later

Perhaps a good thing I don’t have anyone to speak my mind to. I’d be eating my words now. Still in a mood, I stomped down to start cleaning up the dropped coal and turned the corner to find Laurence already on his hands and knees halfway up the steps with buckets and brushes all around him. He was swathed from top to toe in white aprons and lengths of old linen to protect his livery from the coal dust – a besmirched angel.

‘Oh.’

I stopped. He sat back on his heels and raised an eyebrow.

‘A mighty mess you’ve made.’

‘Me?’

My blood was up, and I saw his smile too late.

‘Oh.’

It’s never been just him and me before. His handsomeness, even in such ridiculous clothes, is difficult to ignore. He has very fair, curly hair, and the way his brows and lashes almost fade into the paleness of his skin, he looks carved in marble like one of the statues. I felt my face flush and said the first thing to cover it.

‘I can help.’

He watched me make my reluctant way down the steps and wagged a brush at me.

‘Clean yourself up; you look like you’ve been tumbled by a miner.’

I hesitated, unsure what to say to that, and he swiped at my waist.

‘Look, he squeezed you there … And he pinched you fine there …’

Sounding – God help me – like Mary, I squeaked and flailed my hands about.

‘Stop it.’

Another stab with the brush.

‘There’s a tickle …’

‘I said stop it. I’m going.’

He laughed and turned back to the job. I trudged back to the attic, half-annoyed at myself for smiling.

Saturday, 9th March

I might not have fully seen the missus again, but I’ve heard her now. It’s Mary’s evening off, and she’s gone somewhere with Laurence, though she didn’t say that. I don’t know why she can’t talk straight. Too used to hiding it from Clockface, I suppose – I’ve seen how careful they are in the kitchen, barely looking at each other when the cat’s about. I’ve not been so quick to dismiss Laurence since he took care of the coal spill. For all his swagger, I’ve seen him warm a shawl for Mary when she comes in with freezing hands from scrubbing the steps, and he snatched a bone from the joint when Clockface wasn’t watching to throw to the old yard dog. Perhaps Mary has something to feel jealous over after all, other than fine features.

She was in the drawing room when I went to fasten the windows, putting rouge on herself in the big mirror. When she saw who it was, she went back to dabbing at her face and turning it this way and that like an artist admiring her work. The rouge was too thick, I thought, but she looked nice all the same – like a picture, one of the pretty ones with creamy-cheeked, pink-lipped ladies lolling about on daybeds or grassy banks. She said she had an appointment to keep, smiling all secretively. After she’d gone, I looked at my own complexion in the glass – more off-milk than cream, and freckled – and felt dull. I remember William stroking the line of my jaw once and saying it was a shame that between us we’d make square-shaped babies. It’s true, probably. My face is a built thing, not a painting – something to be put to use rather than admired. I don’t think rouge would help. Odd to feel I’m the only plain one for miles around. Usually, it’s the pretty servants that stand out. Perhaps that’s what Clockface meant by my ‘sort’, and the master prefers handsome servants to go with his handsome furnishings. I’ll bet money the lady’s maid no one will talk about was fair-faced too.

Mary being away meant I had to take the supper things up to the missus. Clockface took them in, which disappointed me sorely, but she made me carry the tray. As we came nearer, I heard singing and was so surprised I stopped on the stairs. Clockface huffed and hurried me along – she’s quicker to temper than Mother. There wasn’t any point in staying anyway as the song cut off as soon as Clockface knocked. I don’t know what it was – the words weren’t English – but the warmth of it slipped under my skin. It was like seeing the sun after months of gloom. There was so much feeling in it – sadness and sweetness at once – it threw beauty into all the dark corners of my day, like her portrait used to. Even this little attic room looks less bleak. I’m sitting on my bed – and with Mary out it doesn’t matter how much it squeaks – with a blanket around me and the candle on a chair. The cracked jug and tin bowl on the washstand and scrap of faded rug are not so miserable tonight. And it doesn’t matter that my hands are so stiff from cold that my letters are even worse. At least I can write this without Mary’s staring – she’s curious about what I’m writing, or that I’m writing at all. I don’t tell her what Mrs B said – that I should try and notice everything and write it all down so no precious thing slips me by. Our small window doesn’t have much of a view because of other gabled parts of the house, but tonight there’s a moon glinting in. I’m glinting back.

Sunday, 10th March

Met her! Met her at last, and I’ve been half giddy for the rest of the day. I was dusting the drawing room except I wasn’t because I was looking out at the view. The rooms at the front of the house have huge windows, and it’s a relief to look outside and see some distance. It’s been drizzling for days, and mists shroud the house, so it feels as if we’re lost in an eternity of fog. But today the rain clouds moving across the valley were like veils trailing over the green, and between them – golden light. Gilded patches of land. It all moved, light and dark dancing and turning together across a huge floor.

‘Good morning.’

I jerked like a hen. Think I might have squawked too. I never heard her come in, she was just there like a ghost watching me I don’t know how long. I forgot to curtsy and stared at her with my mouth open until I could bring up a ‘sorry, ma’am’. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. I thought, she must think me simple as well as idle – and what was I expecting? Her hand on mine? More talk of me being like a friend and breaking out of picture frames? That was almost nine months ago.

After a moment’s study of my face, she asked what I was looking at and walked right up to me to peer out of the window. Prattling on about gilded shadows and dancing colours while standing in an apron with a duster in my hands was impossible, but I could hardly claim to be doing anything useful.

‘The weather’s changed, ma’am. I was looking at the light.’

‘The light?’

She seemed struck by the idea, then nodded.

‘Yes, it’s a stirring sort of weather.’

I tried to take her all in again sideways. She’s about my height, though her hat added a foot, and was all feathers and flounce, everything black. Black silk dress with a black lace shawl around her shoulders. She was paler and thinner than before, but her features were still unsettlingly familiar from the portrait. The light caught on the very fine, very light hairs on her face, she was that close, and I thought – poetically, I think – how she was all dark and light shades like the weather. Her scent was of blossom and something else sweet but sweet in a minor key. She smelled fit to eat.

‘How long were you with Lady Berrington?’

‘Nearly two years, ma’am.’

‘And before?’

I paused, trying to think how to describe the Henshaws’ boarding house. How to say anything that wouldn’t sound stupid to her.

‘With another family in London, ma’am.’

She nodded faintly and – thankfully – didn’t ask anything more. I thought of the dank little room next to the kitchen where I had slept and the soot-coated cobwebs clogging the corners. They were the first thing I saw when I lit my candle each morning. Every day I promised myself I’d find a moment to clear them, and then didn’t think about it again until I crawled into bed at night. The spacious drawing room of Finton Hall with its clean air and gorgeous furnishings grew bright around me. I breathed in sharply as if my lungs had been clogged by the memory.

‘It looks well there, does it not?’

She had turned towards the wall with the portrait. I felt a surge of happiness – Gloucester Square was not forgotten then. But I paused. Agreeing with her would have been a lie. Her portrait is out of place in all the rich blue and gilt of the room, and it’s taken the hook of a larger painting so looks marooned. She didn’t seem to notice my silence.

‘There was music playing. Beyond the garden wall. Some street musicians had stopped in the road.’

She turned and smiled at me.

‘You asked what I was looking at, do you remember? And I couldn’t recall.’

I was flooded by her smile – my own face must have lit up. She turned back to the painting.

‘I was listening. It was music.’

I wanted more – I wanted to know how well she remembered Mrs B’s.

‘Not an elephant then, ma’am?’

Her laughter came instantly; she didn’t need to think about it. My fingers squeezed and worked the duster as if they could wring pleasure out of it.

‘No, I’m afraid not an elephant. The music coming so suddenly though …’

She closed her eyes, as if it was playing still. I took my chance to study her face openly, looking for any sign of the trouble Mrs B had hinted at. There was only yearning – for youth or Italy perhaps. Her eyes opened again directly onto mine, and I had the strangest feeling they had been watching me all the while through their closed lids. It made me forget myself.

‘Why did you not have the portrait sent here before, ma’am? It must remind you of Italy.’

She gave the picture a more considering look.

‘Lady Berrington liked it. And as I couldn’t stay with her myself …’

Her expression clouded, her mind gone elsewhere. I remembered what Annie had said about Mrs B wanting the missus to remain at Gloucester Square as her companion and the falling out that that had caused. The missus murmured to herself.

‘I believe it did me good to think of it hanging somewhere it would be taken care of and enjoyed.’

She smiled at me then.

‘I am very glad you have come to Finton Hall.’

The way she looked at me, I was sure she was remembering our last conversation about my going home to marry William. I felt confused and almost ashamed, as if my unbroken engagement might disappoint her. She told me I could continue, and I bobbed – up and down I went today. I wished she’d say more about the portrait – why it wouldn’t be enjoyed here – but didn’t dare ask. Also, I didn’t fancy the idea of working with her in the room. There’s a hoard of busts and vases above the fireplace, and I was industrious over them, not missing the dent of a nostril or curve of a handle. I didn’t stop for what felt like an hour, trying not to flinch as I usually do when wiping the duster over the blank, white eyes of the sculptures. All the while I hoped she’d start talking again, but when I did look around she was gone. As noiselessly as she came. If it wasn’t for the clear memory of her standing next to me so I could feel the warmth of the living off her, I’d think I’d seen an apparition.

Behind with the rooms again – short words from Ding Dong. She can tell it to the bedbugs as far as I care.

Monday, 11th March

I’ve found out about the man with the blue eyes in the picture in the drawing room. Laurence was collecting music for the missus when I went in there gathering up brass to clean. I wanted him to tease me like before, so asked about the picture. He barely glanced at it.

‘That’s the old devil that pays our wages.’

‘The master?’

It gave me a jolt, as if I’d found out he’d been watching me all this time. In the portrait he’s seated and there’s no background to speak of, so his face takes all the attention. There’s a delicacy to his features, which seems almost at odds with the steady blue of his gaze. Laurence tucked music sheets under his arm.

‘The honourable member himself.’

My stomach plunged.

‘Isn’t he … kind?’

He gave a sour sort of laugh.

‘Oh, he’s kind all right. A saint.’

He stopped abruptly, as if he’d been punctured, and left quickly after barely a nod. I don’t understand why he should be so bitter. It reminds me of Clockface’s threats about the master and makes me a little afraid.

Tuesday, 12th March

Letters from William and Mother on the same day. I had a job getting them off Clockface – she seems to think I’m obliged to tell her who they’re from. When she finally handed them over, she dropped them on purpose and tutted.

‘Clumsy girl.’

William’s first.

Dear Harriet,

I think it is time we spoke plain. I am sorry Lady Berrington passed away – I didn’t mention that before. She sounded from your letters a very nice lady even if I didn’t understand all of her ways like I told you. I hope you are not too cut up about it.

But I am more sorry that you didn’t come home to see us when you could and that you have taken a new place, particularly as it is outside of London and I thought seeing London was the big thing with you. I believed you when you said you couldn’t leave your mistress as she was ill and that was what kept you from coming back home. We have an understanding, Harriet. When I wrote to tell you about my new position and what I’ve saved, you knew what I was saying. I don’t think it is asking too much that you give your notice in a new place where you don’t even know anyone. I shall expect to hear from you that you are coming home by Easter.

Yours as ever,

William

PS you know you’re more to me than anyone else, and you know I’d be the happiest man in the county if you’d let me be the one to take care of you. Who else will say that, Harriet?

Strange writing out his words in my hand. Strangest of all writing my own name, as if it’s been stolen somehow. Here’s the other.

Dear Harriet,

As your mother, I am writing to tell you that you are very close to losing William, and it would be nothing less than you deserve. I don’t know what you were thinking, taking another situation when you know he is waiting. I have never felt more embarrassed. How can you risk displeasing him? Dorcas Harding is pretty and knows what’s good for her. Unless you’re foolish enough to want to spend the rest of your life in service – and you can expect nothing more from your father and me if you do – you will come home now and make amends before it is too late.

With love,

Mother

PS I expect it was that Berrington woman putting ideas into your head – you know Mr Bridges told Mr Noakes who told William that he had heard Lord S say that she was considered quite mad and a liability in society, especially since her husband died and failed to leave anyone in charge of her. See sense, Harriet. It would grieve me to see you ruin your chances.

PPS I enclose a newspaper cutting about the Quarrymen’s Association. They have won the right to work fewer hours, and the sick and injured are to be helped. It all comes too late for your poor dear father. If he weren’t so ill from that blessed quarry, he would fetch you home himself. You are breaking his heart, Harriet.

I know Father would never stir himself so much – he’d grunt and go back to his whittling. And what she means by not expecting more from them when I’ve been sending nearly all my wages home, I don’t know. At least now I know what William meant by ‘anyone else’. Dorcas is pretty and was always more well liked than me.

Sunday, 17th March

My half day off and it’s hammering rain. Torrential. Water is pouring off the gables and turrets and overflowing the gutters too, so it sounds like the second flood coming. The walk I planned is lost. Seems looking forward to something is a sure way to have it snatched from me. I’ve been no further than the yard yet. The most green I’ve seen so far is the baize on the servants’ side of the doors and the missus’ dress in the portrait – I was closer to trees in London.

I’ve not talked with the missus since last Sunday, though I’ve tried hard enough, finding reasons to go up and down that staircase. Twice I’ve heard her singing – worth the toll on my legs. I’d like to sink into her voice and be swayed about by it like seaweed under water. The work doesn’t feel so hard, knowing I’m doing it for her. There’s no reason for me to be near her though unless she wishes it. The most I do is curtsy or nod if she passes while I’m wiping stair rods or whatnot. If I had Mary’s job, I’d have to talk to her every day, but I usually see her from a distance when I’m rubbing windows or airing the guest bedrooms. She leans on Laurence sometimes when he helps her out of the carriage and says a few words to him as if they’re old friends. Mary says it’s the vicarage she goes to so often – they are very musical there, and the missus goes to sing. She made it sound shameful somehow. I’ve also seen the missus walking towards the woods at the back in her dark dresses. Any weather. That’s when I feel the distance between us most. I can’t imagine anymore what that’s like, stepping out into the fresh air whenever I feel like it. Clockface thinks if I’m not on my hands and knees scouring something, the sky will fall in.

As I couldn’t go out, I wandered towards the missus’ room again, hoping to hear her voice, but at the bottom of the stairs were Mary and Laurence, tucked into the corner beside the big dresser. They were pressed against each other and deep in a kiss so long and searching, it seemed bottomless. I stepped back before they knew I was there and stood in my own confusion, heart beating, aware of a sense of wanting and of loss. Me and William never kiss like that. It’s not that he lacks passion as such, but his eager lips and rough fumblings under my petticoat have always felt more to do with him than me. I was wondering what that meant – if I am destined never to know what Mary knows – when I heard them taking their leave of each other and had to flee down the passageway.

I took the east stairs instead, all the way up to the nursery and asked Lizzie if I could help with the baby. If I can’t see the missus herself, I thought, maybe I can find out more about her. Lizzie’s different from the others – always pleased to see me and so comfortable and patient, it’s soothing just to be near her. There’s nothing for her to do but nurse the little one, and she’s glad of any company she can get, I think. She must miss her own child. The nursery is on the third floor, the other side of the house from the missus’ rooms, which I thought was odd, but Lizzie says the missus has shown scant interest in Edward since his birth. The nursery is always ready for when she’s supposed to visit in the afternoon – she won’t allow him to be brought to her – but she hardly ever comes and, when she does, she rarely holds the child. Other times she turns up without warning and spends an age staring at him.

‘Does she sing to him?’

Lizzie shook out a linen with a snap and folded it deftly.

‘Oh yes, she does. Nothing you’d normally sing to a child. It’s … mournful.’

‘Is she kind to you?’

She considered.

‘She’s nothing at all to me, really. Or, I should say, I’m nothing to her.’

I laughed with her – that’s the way it is – but inside I felt a secret satisfaction that the missus had remembered me. Her treatment of Edward is a puzzle though. I leaned over the cot to watch his intent little face. Babies’ eyelashes make me tingle; I don’t know how a mother could resist him. Perhaps Mrs B knew. I remember how hard she had gripped my hand when she asked me to make the missus better. Maybe there was trouble already about the coming child, and she knew it. Edward frowned in his sleep and clenched his tiny fist. I had the fiercest urge to scoop him up and cuddle him against me. As that was out of the question, I walked to the window and stared at the drenching.

‘How far is the church?’

‘About four miles, in the village.’

I hadn’t realised we were so far off. The hall pressed in on me suddenly.

‘Is that why no one goes?’

Lizzie shrugged.

‘Mr Gethin takes the household when he’s here. He likes things done properly. It’s a credit to him.’

I was silent. Any mention of the master makes me uneasy. His arrival is an unknown, shapeless thing coming my way that can’t be put off, like an operation. If it’s my face he takes objection to, I can hardly help it. But Duncan is no picture either, and his leg is twisted from a mining accident. The master employed him here when he couldn’t work in the mine anymore, which doesn’t sound like a man who would dismiss a housemaid for having a square jaw. The more I handle and clean the lovely things in the house, the more I want to make a good impression when he arrives. Silly as it is, I find myself being most particular when working in sight of his portrait. His eyes follow me around like the lover’s eye in the cabinet used to before I hid it, but I don’t find the master’s gaze unfriendly. Lizzie took my silence otherwise.

‘You must go to church if you want to, Harriet. They can’t stop you.’

I wasn’t sure about that, but I nodded. Truth is, I’ve been too tired to think about it. Mrs B always said prayers and took us to St James’. Perhaps I’m sliding into bad ways, being here – though if I keep turning the other cheek to old Ding Dong, I’ll be black and blue. Just then I was thinking more that it would be a chance to see other people. Finton Hall seems cut off from the rest of the world. No wonder the missus escapes to the vicarage so much – I’d go a little odd sitting up here with nothing to do. But then I would spend all day with the baby. There’s Hill Court I’ve heard talked about as a neighbour, but it doesn’t sound close. The master must have wanted a house fit for a recluse when he bought it.

‘What’s he like? Mr Gethin?’

Lizzie shook her head.

‘I only saw him a few times when he came to look at the baby before going to London. He was interested at least.’

‘But he hasn’t come back to visit?’

‘It’s the war business keeping him in town.’

She sounded as weary of it as I am. There are battles in the kitchen about it. Laurence says we shouldn’t get involved and the politicians aren’t to be trusted. Clockface gave him an earful for that, seeing as the master’s an MP and in favour. She talks as if Russian troops were marching on Finton Hall itself, though I doubt she has any real scruples about what’s happening in other countries. She would go to war with her own shadow if the master said it was a good idea. All I know is, I’m glad if it keeps him in London a bit longer.

Thursday, 21st March

Letter from Annie.

Dearest Har,

I am married! It really happened, can you believe it? We’re in Margate and it’s as damp and soggy as that awful cake I used to make for Mrs B – do you remember? What a month for weather! But we don’t mind as we don’t care to leave our room very often. Please hurry up and marry William and we can compare EVERYTHING.

The wedding was a bore – you didn’t miss very much, except for the wine afterwards. Robert paid for it even though he’s so serious – you remember him – the constable with the birthmark who came to the kitchen a few times at Gloucester Sq? (He’s detective sergeant now and the darling of Scotland Yard.) Andrew has found us rooms in Lambeth with a yard so I can take in washing for the boys in his section house. No more working for loony old ladies for me.

You have to write and tell me everything. I still don’t know why you bolted off to Hertfordshire instead of going home – has William done something? I hope not – you made him sound like a prince.

What’s it like there? How are the other servants? Most importantly, when can you come and see us in London? WHEN?

Your ever affectionate MARRIED friend,

Annie

I’ve sat down to write to her twice, but I don’t know what to say. Did I make William sound like a prince? I suppose I must have. When that under footman from Beechwood clicked his tongue at us once and said, ‘Never mind, eh?’ – meaning me – William knocked him down. At the time, I thought one might call that chivalrous, but now I think he did it out of shame on his own account, not to defend me. I wish I could have an hour with Annie in the kitchen in Gloucester Square; I’d tell her everything then, and she’d sort out the wheat from the chaff and tell it back to me in a way that makes sense. Somehow, it’s so much harder to put it down on paper when she’s miles away.

I keep starting to answer William’s letter too, but each time my pen grinds to a halt and bleeds ink all over the paper. Seems I can’t write to anyone except myself. I know I should give him a date and be done with it, but there’s my promise to Mrs B, and I’ve barely seen the missus yet. I want the feeling of making my own choices a little while longer. We’ll be married long enough, and from what I’ve seen, the choice of a husband is the last real choice any woman makes.

I don’t count Annie in that. Poor Andrew never had a chance. She lured him down the steps into the kitchen at Gloucester Square with delicacies that poor Mrs B certainly paid for but never got a taste of. Annie gets what she wants and doesn’t mind how. Her marrying a policeman makes me snort.

Monday, 25th March

Seems to me the missus is more ghost than mistress, appearing suddenly at awkward times the way she does – always full of secrets and sadness. I’d been working hard on the grate in the library this morning, blackening it. The master uses the library as his study, and there’s a rumour he’s coming back, war or not. I heard Laurence tell one of the garden hands he’s expected in time for the Easter holiday. He kicked a clod of earth as he said it, which exploded instantly, nearly knocking him off balance and dirtying his boot. The news made my stomach turn over. I was out in the yard beating a carpet as it wasn’t raining – only time I can get into the fresh air, so I don’t mind it – and the lad had wandered in to get something from the stables. Laurence never misses a chance to strut about in front of the outdoor servants. He gave him trouble for coming so close to the house in his dirt, but the stable boy’s hardly in livery and all the mucky work of the house happens out there, me and my red face and rolled-up sleeves to show it. The lad knew it – seemed to be enjoying himself. He’s the one as has the same slow gait as William.

The library is a good room to work in. All those books are like very polite, very quiet company that don’t mind at all if you give them the time of day or not. I worked up another sweat blackening the grate and did it well. When I stood up, I saw in the mirror I’d got a smudge on my face but was loath to trudge downstairs just to wash. The books weren’t going to mind. Then I dusted and waxed as if the master was watching – brought up a tremendous shine on a table in the middle of the room. In the centre of that there’s a curious thing. It looks out of place and ugly amongst the other objects in the house. I felt a kind of kinship with it. There are two upright metal rings overlapping, one with teeth, and a wooden handle. I didn’t dare turn it, but once polished and reflected in the table, it began to look strangely beautiful. I sometimes wonder if it’s only housemaids who notice these things.

We’re not turning the room out completely, taking all the books off the shelves. In fact, we’re forbidden from shifting a single volume. It’s a strange rule. Clockface was particularly pointed about it.

‘They’re not for the likes of you, whatever airs you give yourself.’

Mary must have been talking about me writing. I dusted every ledge properly – gave the books’ bottoms a good pat. Then I ran my fingers along the back of the shelves to feel if anything was hidden behind the books, but nothing answered.

There’s a stepladder to reach the higher volumes. I was halfway up it, rubbing the spine of an ancient guide to breeding pigs, when I glanced at the next one and saw a volume of Milton’s poetry. It gave me a jolt, like when you meet a friend in town unexpected. The house on Gloucester Square and Mrs B came back to me – the evenings after prayers when she’d open up the Milton like it was the Bible itself and read us something or sing it. She was always turning poems into songs.

I only hesitated a second. My own fingers were just itching to flout Clockface. They tugged the book from its place, and I opened it with one arm around the upright of the stepladder. It fell open on ‘When I consider how my light is spent’ as chance would have it. That one always moved Mrs B to tears, especially the last line. I remember her singing voice – frail, but with sudden robust moments as if it had fallen through to a younger self. That line seemed to throw her in and out of it: ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’. In truth, it wasn’t pleasant to listen to, but I’d give anything to hear that cracked old voice again.

I remember the poem well. Milton has just gone blind, and he’s fretting that God will punish him for not being able to serve Him anymore. It mentions the parable of the talents from the real Bible – Mrs B liked to read that straight after – where the servant who looks after his master’s money by burying it in the ground is punished for not using it to make more money. I thought that seemed mean. Servants are always expected to do more than they’re paid for and given tasks that should be no one’s business but their master’s. In the poem, Milton thinks his blindness has buried his talent, which for him means not being able to write anymore. (Mrs B said, as it turned out, he kept working just as much and made his daughters write everything down.) The tune came back, and I started humming it as I read over the words. Then tried to sing them a little. It was so comforting I forgot where I was until another voice joined mine, picking up the song beautifully as if I’d summoned Mrs B back to earth as an angel.

I slammed the book shut without looking around, as if I could still hide what I was doing, and shoved it back in its place. There she was again, out of nowhere – dark grey dress in the softer, flowing style, hair simply done. She was standing by the table with the odd metal thing, I don’t know how long.

‘A pretty tune. Where is it from?’

She moved across to the fireplace, then turned and ran a finger over some of the spines I’d just dusted. I peered through the steps at her.

‘Sorry, ma’am.’

My apology didn’t seem to reach her. As she’d ignored everything else about me except the song, it didn’t sound reasonable either.

‘Mrs B made it up, ma’am. She used to sing it.’

She made a half turn towards me.

‘Lady Berrington composed it for the Milton?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She looked as if she was considering an unexpected piece of news – something challenging. She began reciting.

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days …

Then fell silent. After a moment, her expression hardened, and she jumped to the end of the poem.

Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.

‘Do you think that is true?’

There was a catch in her voice. She wasn’t looking my way, but the silence itself seemed to turn on me.

‘I don’t know, ma’am.’

Her head made a small, impatient movement.

‘Of course you don’t know. I asked what you think. Is it possible to do nothing and still serve God?’

I was stung. After the smiles and confidences of before, her tone was like a slap. I felt my nose go warm and tears prick the back of my eyes.

‘Doing nothing isn’t something I know much about, ma’am.’

I regretted it immediately. My hands gripped the rail of the steps as if the whole room was about to flip on its head. She looked up quickly, only meeting my eyes for a second, and away again. Her head lowered a little, shoulders rounded. I felt as if I’d done something terrible, ripped pages from a book or the hair from a doll. There are two chairs near the middle table, and she went and collapsed into one. It’s struck me since that she could have accused me well enough of doing nothing – or nothing I was supposed to be doing – reading a book I’d been forbidden to touch and singing. I don’t suppose God would be best pleased either – idle hands and the rest. But then I don’t know how dusting shelves is serving Him.

The ladder creaked as I climbed down, but she didn’t look up. I walked towards her, planning I don’t know what. It nearly burst from my mouth that I wanted to help her, if she would only tell me how, that that was why Mrs B had sent me here. But she spoke first.

‘Even when you have been given something – a talent – but are forced to bury it?’

She was still thinking about the poem. There was such unhappiness in her face, I drew nearer.

‘A talent, ma’am?’

‘Yes …’

I thought confusedly about Edward – could he be the thing she meant? She was looking at me with an odd mixture of appeal and distrust, as if she couldn’t bring herself to say more. I cast about for something that would help, and my eye fell on the metal thing with the handle – I remembered what Mrs B had said about beauty.

‘I think, ma’am, it might be true.’

She looked at me doubtfully, but there was also a sort of hunger in her eyes. I gestured at the object.

‘This does nothing. But it’s out for all to see, and I just spent several minutes cleaning it, and it looks – well, I think it looks lovely the way the light comes off it.’

The missus dropped her gaze to it.

‘It’s only a lifeless thing.’

For some reason, I felt I must convince her.

‘I don’t know what it is, ma’am, but it had a use once, didn’t it? Before it was put there?’

She nodded slowly. Her eyes darkened.

‘Yes, it had a terrible use. And now it’s here, polished and prized and useless.’

Her face seemed to sag. She made to speak again but stopped.

‘Never mind.’

She stared into space as if I was no longer there – like other servants are never really there. I had said the wrong thing – fallen through the floor and out of sight. With effort, she stood up and moved slowly towards the door. My mind raced, trying to think how to make it right, what to say to bring her back, but she left the room, and I was alone again. So much more alone than before. I knew she had meant far more than her words had carried, and I had missed it. It was as if she had come to the edge of the divide between us and called across, but I hadn’t understood, so she went away. She won’t seek me out again.

A sense of desolation spread around me. I saw myself from the outside, a housemaid wanting to play a part in the lives of her betters, blackening other people’s grates and enduring bad tempers, while a different life – respectable and comfortable – lies abandoned, growing more fragile by the day. Mother was right – Mrs B had been in a world of her own thinking I could help the missus. There is no point in my being here. I should go home. Out of these thoughts came another truth, too large to ignore.

I don’t want to marry William.

The clear fact of it fell at my feet, as if exhausted from running after me for so long. At the same time, a different thought formed, equally clear and certain.

I shall have to marry William.

A small sigh, almost a gasp, escaped me, a lonely sound in the quiet of the room. It’s true most people would think themselves lucky to have a comfortable bed, enough to eat and a plot in the same graveyard they walk through every Sunday. Any other girl would be overjoyed to be married and living in the Mill Lane cottage. Even I know only a fool would trade a husband for a life as a housemaid.

I wandered towards the fire – dusting shelves was now too awful to think of – and turned as she had done to put my finger to a book spine. The British Farmer; or, Sketches Of a Country Life. I was about to pluck it out, for no better reason than that she had touched it, when I heard someone else coming. Clockface doesn’t have the missus’ ability to appear out of thin air. I had time to grasp the duster and flick it towards the book trough.

She tutted when she saw me and let out a string of French words, none of them flattering by the sound of it. Mary’s in bed, claiming some malady, so I should have known I’d be a target. She looked wolfishly around the room and then peered at me again. Before I knew what she was about, she had put a clammy hand around the back of my neck and forced me in front of the mirror. I’d forgotten about the smudge on my cheek.

‘You’re not fit to be seen in a respectable house. What will Mr Gethin think of me for allowing you upstairs?’

She put her face so close to mine I could smell her breath, the breakfast of best bacon that none of the rest of us get a look at. I thought I was going to hear the story of the poor knife-cleaner again, but what she said was worse.

‘Don’t think I haven’t written to him and told him all about the nasty blot dirtying his house.’

She smiled at me in the mirror.

‘You think you’re special, don’t you? Wait until the master’s home. You’ll find out just how special you are then.’

She pushed a finger gently into the nape of my neck as she let me go, which made my skin crawl. I ran all the way up here and washed my face. For once, I am glad the mirror is so small – I don’t want to see my reflection. I don’t want to see what the missus saw. Now this page is smudged too with these useless, idiot tears. I shall write the letter to William.

Wednesday, 27th March

I didn’t tell Lizzie about what happened – I didn’t want to – but the nursery is always soothing, as if it’s in a different house, a house with pleasant people and normal pictures on the walls. I picked Edward up today – he’d brought up some of his feed, so Lizzie was busy cleaning herself, and he was wailing for comfort. She’s doing a good job – he’s as plump and soft as a cushion and smells as good as a pudding still warm from the oven.

‘He likes you.’

I think he did – he quietened right down and looked up at me with his blue eyes like he was pleased to make my acquaintance. Then she said a strange thing.

‘She never calls him by his name.’

I looked up at her.

‘The missus?’

She nodded.

‘She always asks about “the baby”, never Edward, and when she does find the time to talk to him, it’s like she’s speaking to someone else’s child.’

Edward started making baby noises – not crying, just finding his voice the same way he might find a toy that’s been put in his way or his own foot. Lizzie put her head on one side, watching.

‘I thought nothing of it at first. But then one day I asked her if she wanted to hold Edward – when I still asked those things – and she said … well, I didn’t think she was going to give me any answer at all to start with, but then she said, “Who?” in a quiet voice. It was so odd, I had to pretend I hadn’t heard.’

Edward produced a funny burble that made his eyes go wide in surprise. Neither of us smiled.

‘Why would she say that?’

She shook her head.

‘Never known anything like it before.’

I held the little boy close to me as if to protect him from something. It makes me shudder to think how helpless little ones are. It’s a wonder any of us survive long enough to find ourselves grown. At least he has Lizzie for a nurse. He’s lucky in that, and I said so.

‘Well, he’s an easy baby.’

She smiled and held out her arms, but I held him closer.

‘No, I want to keep him forever.’

She laughed, and I had to turn to the window, so she wouldn’t see the tears coming. They seem to rise in me for no reason at all. I whispered into his warmth.

‘Where shall we go, little one? Over the hills and far away?’

For comfort, I told myself that one day soon I’d have my own little pudding just like him.

Writing that stopped my pencil. My letter to William is still in my pocket – my fingers reached to feel for it, and I’ve found they’ve bent a crease in it. I haven’t given notice yet.

The nursery window looks out onto the front. It’s one of my favourite views as it’s possible to see across the countryside – meadows and woods. My heart tumbles out and rolls around the hedgerows. A tree-lined driveway comes straight at the house from a road that’s out of sight and then sweeps around a dry fountain. As I stood pointing out to Edward a crow that was crossing our view with determined flaps, a horse and cab trotted out from under the trees. My heart fled back into my body with a thump, though it was straight away clear it couldn’t be the master. Lizzie came over to look. An arrival of any sort at this house is an event.

‘It must be a delivery.’

The cab didn’t go around the back though. A boy jumped down from the box, opened the door and, after a moment of grappling with something inside, brought out a large, domed object, covered in a green cloth. He carried it out of sight towards the front door. I thought it looked like a birdcage, and Lizzie agreed.

‘A new pet maybe.’

‘New?’

‘She had a little dog before. It died right after Edward was born. I’ve never seen a soul so out of her mind over an animal. There used to be a little china spaniel in here – a gift for the baby – and she threw it right across the room at the wall.’

‘Here in the nursery?’

She nodded, lifting her eyebrows meaningfully. After a moment, she seemed to relent.

‘But then the timing was a shame. New mothers can have funny heads …’

She trailed off, looking at Edward.

‘She’s got you though, hasn’t she? If she wants a pretty little poppet to play with.’

She waggled her finger in his face, which astonished him.

‘Lizzie …’

I had another thought.

‘Do you know about the lady’s maid that was here? The missus went looking for her in London.’

She yawned and shook her head.

‘I never met a lady’s maid. It was before my time.’

‘It’s only … The others are … strange about it. They won’t tell me what happened.’

Her expression dropped into a knowing look, and she rolled her eyes.

‘Lady’s maids are always at the sharp end of kitchen gossip. Most likely that’s why she left. Anyway, servants are always looking for better places.’

I nodded, as if I agreed. The boy reappeared, and the cab set off at a trot back to the big wide world. I watched them go. Edward twisted his head to look at me as if jealous. I blew air through my lips, and he drooled and gurgled and turned back to Lizzie. We were still making fools of ourselves, competing for baby smiles, when there was movement on the drive below again. It was the missus. She marched straight across to the fountain, holding the birdcage (we were right) at arm’s-length. Resting it on the ledge, she sat next to it, apparently watching the little yellow thing I could just make out inside. Then she opened the cage door. Lizzie peered closer and clutched my arm.

‘She can’t want to let it out, surely?’

Turned out she did. She reached in and caught it, held it up to her face for a moment and then threw it into the air. It fluttered about in an urgent, scattered way before making a dash for the top of the fountain. Next thing, she had pushed the birdcage over into the fountain and was striding back towards the house. The bird took fright at the movement and became an unsteady speck, disappearing into the trees.

Me and Lizzie looked at each other, almost as wide-eyed as Edward. She whistled.

‘Well, we won’t be seeing that poor creature again.’

I agreed, feeling truly sorry for the little thing, lost and alone outside the safety of the hall. But turned out we were wrong about that too. I was rushing to get the fire lit in the drawing room a little later when I saw Laurence through the window. He was wandering around with the birdcage dangling from one hand, looking up into the trees. Come dinner, he was still out there. Clockface was taking her time with something in the pantry, but Mary was nearly in flames with the need to tell someone. I noticed there was no trace left of her mysterious ‘illness’. She even helped me lay the table and carry things from the kitchen so she could stick by me with her snout in my ear. It was a canary – a gift from the master. When the missus saw it and read his letter, she’d picked it up and taken it straight out as Lizzie and me saw. But soon after, she repented on account of the little thing not having much of a chance by itself outside.

‘What made her throw it out to start with?’

Mary rolled her eyes and shook her head in that way she has that looks not her own. Then she glanced at me like she was full of something big that I wasn’t supposed to know. Before I could ask, Laurence was in the room. He held up the birdcage like a trophy before dropping it onto the table. The canary fluttered and twittered. Clapping her hands, Mary asked how he’d done it, and he threw himself into a chair, sticking his legs out.

‘Cabbage. The little bugger likes cabbage.’

‘Mind your tongue at my table.’

Clockface was as cheerful as I’ve ever seen her, even humming a few notes as she kicked Laurence’s feet out of the way and put a jug on the table. She straightened and, with hands on hips, considered the canary.

‘I thought we were in for another fight when that turned up.’

Laurence made a smacking sound in his cheek.

‘It wasn’t that bad.’

Clockface bridled at him.

‘You weren’t there. She had the same look in her eye as when she saw her own portrait.’

He tore off a chunk of bread with his hands, which I know annoys her, and didn’t answer. I didn’t understand what they meant about the portrait – the missus seemed so pleased with it – and looked at Mary. She started to say something, but Clockface turned on her and barked a French word. She shrank back and didn’t meet my eye again.

‘Did she say where she wanted it?’

Clockface gestured at the bird. Laurence sniffed.

‘In a pie if it was up to me.’

‘Well, I don’t want it making a mess in here. Where is she?’

Mary found her voice again.

‘The drawing room.’

I set the last plate down with a thump.

‘I’ll take it to her.’

They all looked at me in silence. Then Clockface smiled almost sweetly.

‘May as well make yourself useful. While you’re still here.’

Leaving the room with dignity was challenging – the birdcage is heavier than it looks. I hobbled into the passage with it, trying not to upset its little inmate, and once I was out of sight, lowered it to the ground. I had told myself it would be better if I didn’t see the missus again. The canary gave a little chirrup, and I looked down.

‘Do you think she’ll let me back in from the cold too?’

It didn’t reply.

When I hauled the cage into the drawing room, the missus was sitting with sheets of music in her lap, but she wasn’t looking at them. She was staring at nothing, it seemed, quite still, as if she’d been there a hundred years. Glancing uneasily at the portrait of the girl in green, I cleared my throat.

‘Laurence found the canary, ma’am.’

Her head turned slowly my way, but her eyes remained blank and didn’t find me for a moment, as if she was blind. It made me feel quite queer. Then with a start she was back. She sprang up like a young girl.

‘I am glad. Now where shall we put you?’

She whirled around and settled on the table by the window, rushing over to remove a figurine I enjoy dusting and shoving it carelessly on the edge of the mantelshelf.

‘Here, here.’

She kept her eyes on the bird, hands clasped, as I made the awkward journey across the room. No trace of the woman who had pushed the birdcage into the fountain, no hint of how she had been in the library. Lifting the cage onto the table, I felt the muscles in my upper arms and back shout in disbelief after all the taking down and putting up of pictures recently.

‘Wonderful.’

She shifted it slightly from how I’d placed it and leaned down to look in at the canary with all the tenderness of a mother.

‘Hello, little one. Shall we sing together, you and I?’

She might have been talking to a small child. I stared at the side of her head, wishing I could break into it and rummage through her brain. How can a bird inspire such affection and not her own baby son? I was anxious not to disappoint her again, but I couldn’t leave without trying to understand about Edward. Even if it meant forgetting my place.

‘I’m sure the baby would enjoy seeing it, ma’am.’

She stopped murmuring into the cage. My heart beat faster. I remembered what Lizzie had said about her throwing a china dog across the room, and my voice went up a notch.

‘I could carry it up to the nursery for you …’

‘Did you know that little birds are sometimes used by miners, as a warning?’

She straightened and looked at me.

‘They take them down into the tunnels with them. If the bird can’t breathe, they know there are dangerous gases. They have more chance of escaping before an explosion.’

Her expression was expectant.

‘I didn’t know that, ma’am.’

She nodded.

‘Strange, isn’t it? A creature designed for the skies and for singing …’

The thought was left unfinished, though I took her meaning. It was hard to imagine the little feathered thing deep underground, to think of roughened miners relying on the beating of its tiny breast for survival.

‘You at least will have fresh air and freedom enough to fly, my pet.’

She was talking to the canary again, of course. I have thought since about what she meant by ‘freedom enough’; can a bigger cage be called ‘freedom’ at all? But too much freedom, at least for the canary, would mean death. At the time, I was merely relieved she had not ordered me out of the room or grown angry at my impertinence, only gently shouldered aside my question with one of her own. She spoke again.

‘Thank you for taking care of me.’

I looked up in surprise. Her face was turned to mine, serious. I became conscious – as if a bell had been rung – that she had returned to the edge of the divide between us and was signalling across. This time I met her gaze. We were like two question marks mirroring each other, I thought, though I couldn’t say exactly what the question was. Her eyes had the same shimmer as at Mrs B’s. I nodded, and she nodded back, as if something had been decided.

The two portraits caught my eye as I turned, and I felt a powerful urge to ask her why the master giving her the canary had upset her so much and what had provoked her about the girl in green, as Clockface said. Safe on the servants’ stairs again, I gave myself another moment to breathe. Some errands leave just enough room for pockets of peace, time to float in a space without words if only for a few heartbeats. Annie would have flapped her apron at me and told me I had fallen in love, but it’s not that. It’s more like meeting someone I recognise, as if we’re on the same path, though I don’t know how I imagine that can be with her being a lady and everything. Whatever it is, I don’t want to leave her.

I feel caught between two lives, each in its own way as impossible as the other.