Christmas at Queen’s Crawley was not like any Christmas Becky had known before. It didn’t involve one or both of her parents passing out drunk, for example, or Jemima Pinkerton wandering the streets of Southbourne in her nightie trying to find the Angel Gabriel.
Still, Becky wasn’t too fond of being woken up at the ungodly hour of five thirty in the morning, when it was still pitch black outside, by Artemis and Thisbe jumping on her bed and screaming that Father Christmas had left them stockings.
The stockings were from Rosa. They couldn’t have been from anyone else because they contained wooden toys made by amputee orphans in some godforsaken Third World country and organic, Fair Trade trail mix.
Becky shoved the iPad at them, Frozen already cued up and ready to go, then put the pillow over her head and managed another couple of hours of sleep.
At a more reasonable hour, she brought all five children, washed and dressed and vibrating with anticipation, downstairs to a proper breakfast. Sir Pitt had ordered one of his prize sows to be slaughtered, so there was bacon, eggs laid by the vicious chickens that ruled the kitchen garden with beaks of iron, and fresh bread.
Even better, Bute and Martha were intent on going to church, mainly so they could sit in the family pew with martyred but lofty expressions. Once they’d left to walk to church through the estate, as no Crawley had done for at least two generations, everyone else became quite giddy with relief.
After a long, leisurely breakfast, and the first bottles of champagne had been opened, there were presents for everyone, even Becky. Rosa had bought her a lump of rose quartz suspended on a silver chain, and Jane had stayed up half the night to knit Becky her very own moulting red corsage.
She hadn’t been left off Sir Pitt’s list either. He cornered her in the scullery before lunch. In honour of the most sacred of all days, the heating was cranked up full blast and Sir Pitt was swanning around in silk pyjamas and an ornate dressing gown, like some posh, English version of Hugh Hefner.
‘Little Becky,’ he crooned, closing the door softly behind him. ‘Have you been naughty or nice?’
‘Depends who’s asking,’ Becky said with a resigned note. Sir Pitt came up behind her so he could ghost hot breath over her neck and rest one of his hands on her waist, high up enough that the tips of his fingers grazed the underside of her breast. She let him have that much, because it was Christmas, then wriggled away from him. ‘No need to ask you whether you’ve been naughty or nice. You’re always a very naughty, naughty man.’
He chuckled appreciatively. ‘I have a very special present for you, but you have to turn around.’
Becky treated the scullery window to an exasperated grimace then turned round. ‘I can’t see any present,’ she said, because Sir Pitt was empty handed.
‘It’s in my pocket. No, I’m not going to tell you which one. You’ll have to have a feel for yourself.’ He smiled wolfishly then raised his hands above his head. ‘I’m entirely at your mercy.’
If the only present he was hiding turned out to be his ageing cock, then Becky was going to give it such a squeeze that he’d be bent double for the rest of the day. But after gifting him a few fleeting gropes as she investigated his dressing-gown pocket, she found something in the pocket of his pyjama bottoms that was also hard to the touch.
‘A family heirloom,’ he explained as Becky held up an art-deco-style diamond brooch, by which he meant that it had belonged to his first wife’s great-grandmother.
Becky didn’t know that but she did know that Sir Pitt was a cheap bastard, so she bit down on the brooch to test if the gold was real, then scraped the big central diamond against the scullery window where it left a pleasing scratch. She’d have to have it valued properly but it seemed that it was legit, so she gave him another grope and swirled her tongue lasciviously around the brooch.
Sir Pitt’s eyes darkened and he tried to put her hand back on his crotch. ‘Be kind to Little Pitt, Becky. He’s got all sorts of treats planned for you.’
This was starting to become a problem and one that Becky really didn’t want to deal with. It was a very delicate game that she was playing. One little hand job could upset the balance but maybe another gentle tug would keep him happy for a couple of hours.
‘Becky! Those brussels sprouts aren’t going to top and tail themselves! Oh, Sir Pitt, whatever are you doing in the scullery in your fancy dressing gown?’ Mrs Tinker asked, bursting into the small room and rescuing Becky in her hour of need.
‘It’s not a dressing gown, it’s a smoking jacket,’ Sir Pitt said sulkily and Becky, with a sigh of relief, vowed to avoid him for the rest of the day.
Mostly she helped Mrs Tinker in the kitchen while happily bitching about Bute and Martha, but she was expected to join the Crawleys for Christmas Dinner. It was served at five, by which time the whole Crawley clan was past pissed and heading for hammered. Even Jane was squiffy on the Baileys; only Bute, Martha and Becky abstained. Technically, Becky was working and not so technically, she was the child of two alcoholics and had so many balls in play that if she were to lose control of her mental faculties, then the whole lot could come crashing to the ground.
After dinner, the children, fractious from too much sugar and being awake since five thirty, were sent to bed. Becky gathered them up, hissed at them to sing a couple of verses of ‘Silent Night’ in French, then took them upstairs, little Artemis slung over her shoulder like a sack of spuds. Rosa dabbed a tear from her eye, Jane sighed and looked at Pitt Junior hopefully, and even Martha Crawley looked a little less boot-faced. It was as if Becky were a modern-day Maria Von Trapp, but beautiful, and without the least inclination to take holy orders or ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ with the head of the family.
When Becky came back downstairs after a protracted bedtime during which she had threatened to tie Thisbe (always Thisbe) to his bed, it was to find that the Crawleys had now relocated to what the family called The Den.
It wasn’t particularly den-like, more a dark and gloomy cave. The walls were hung with heavy brocade paper and paintings, not by Old Masters, but by well-regarded pupils of Old Masters. The room was furnished with threadbare Aubusson carpets and uncomfortable chairs and sofas upholstered in the slipperiest fabric known to man. The one TV set in Queen’s Crawley was kept here in a cabinet, which Sir Pitt was unlocking with some ceremony and unsteady fingers, because he’d been drinking all day.
‘What time does your programme start, Mattie?’ he bellowed, his face red from all the alcohol and his exertions with a lock and key.
Dame Matilda was uncomfortably perched on the slipperiest sofa, Briggs on one side, Rawdon on the other. All three of them had their feet planted firmly on the floor to stop themselves sliding off. Maybe that was why the old lady had such a peevish expression. She waved the hand that wasn’t clutching a large gin and tonic dismissively, ‘Let’s not, Pitt. Nobody needs to see me making a fool of myself in period costume.’
Pitt grunted in triumph as he managed to wrench open the cabinet doors. ‘Well, you force us to watch it every other year, so why should today be any different? Anyway, my house, my rules!’
Matilda and Briggs exchanged their seventeenth eye roll of the day as the television came to life and the familiar theme tune rang out. Becky had never seen Lyndon Place before, but it seemed fairly accurate from her experience of the strange hinterland between below stairs and above stairs. She was currently perched uncomfortably on an old footstool, out of range of the cosy, roaring fire and on the fringes. Among them but not of them. If it wasn’t for the way that Rawdon would occasionally glance her way, his gaze as smouldering as the logs in the grate, then Becky might just as well be invisible.
She pointedly looked away from Rawdon with a tiny, disapproving shake of her head; she’d pointedly avoided him all day and if she wasn’t mistaken, his interest was piqued. She turned her attention back to the television. There was a complicated storyline about the Earl’s hunting boots, which had gone missing, the chinless suitors of the daughters of the house all looked the same, and just as Becky was thinking that she might slip below stairs for more gossiping with Mrs Tinker, events took a dramatic turn.
On screen the family gathered for a grand festive dinner. The table was dressed with spotless white linen, sparkling glassware and much gilt-bedazzled china, very different from the yellowed tablecloths and napkins, cloudy glasses and mismatched crockery for the Crawleys’ Christmas meal.
Still, in art as well as in life, there were different factions within the family, all with their own agenda, and ruling over all of them, an iron fist in black-lace evening mittens, was the Dowager Countess. It was quite obvious that Dame Matilda had been typecast because there was absolutely no difference between her on-screen and off-screen personas. She gave the Earl’s second eldest and most whiny daughter a quite spectacular dressing down, which echoed the quite spectacular dressing down she’d given Rosa earlier when she’d asked not to be seated so close to the pigs in blankets.
The Dowager Countess banged her ornate cane on the floor as Dame Matilda muttered something to Briggs, who shook his head and could be heard to murmur, ‘I know. Unbelievable.’
Then the cane fell to the ground with a clatter as the Dowager Countess gripped her chest, slumped to one side and began to projectile-vomit blood all over the snowy-white tablecloth.
And that was the end of her.
Back in the den at Queen’s Crawley, there was a moment of shocked silence.
‘Well, I said to the director, “Nigel, dear,” I said, “please let me die with dignity.” But no,’ Matilda sniffed. ‘Now, shall we turn over to the BBC? Have we missed the Strictly Christmas special?’
But Sir Pitt was determined to have his pound of flesh. ‘Poor Mattie,’ he proclaimed with such a lack of sincerity that it was hard to believe that he’d ever won an Oscar. ‘From Lady Macbeth to that. Quite the letdown.’
He’d barely finished his gloating when he was interrupted by Martha rising to her feet to fling herself at a grim-faced Dame Matilda. Becky sat up straighter on her footstool: this was much more entertaining than watching the Dowager Countess spray blood all over the cheese plate.
‘Auntie! I can’t believe they’ve killed you off,’ she cried.
‘Absolutely appalling,’ Bute echoed, wringing his hands in faux agitation.
‘Get. Off. Me,’ Dame Matilda snapped. ‘Briggs, please …’
‘Get off her.’ Briggs jumped up to tug at Martha’s sleeve with a pained expression on his face, as if he couldn’t bear to touch something that had started off life in the Per Una department of M&S. ‘You don’t ever touch Dame Matilda. Really!’
‘Martha’s just upset on your behalf, we all are,’ Bute said, his cold grey eyes positively gleaming.
‘I’m sure you’ll be a shoo-in for a BAFTA,’ Pitt Junior piped up as Jane mopped at her streaming eyes. Her tears and the subsequent snotty blowing of her nose were the only display of genuine emotion in the room. Only two people in the room were unaffected by all the dramatics: Rosa, who was glued to her phone, lips moving soundlessly as she read a text message; and Rawdon, who was slouched so far down in his seat that it was a wonder that he didn’t slide to the floor.
To think that she’d almost excused herself to gossip with Tinker. Becky wouldn’t have missed this for the world, especially not when Dame Matilda struggled to her feet with Briggs’ assistance and cast a gnarled, trembling finger at the assembled company. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but I have no intention of dying in real life, so stop toadying to me,’ she said icily. ‘It won’t do you any good because I’m leaving everything to Rawdon, as you all know very well, so enough! Rawdon, can you take my other arm?’
Rawdon unfolded himself from the couch and said something in a whisper to his aunt, which made her face soften and her hand come up to stroke his cheek. ‘Horrible boy,’ she said fondly, as the three of them began a slow journey to the door, Briggs hissing a warning as Martha darted towards them again.
Becky was quite sorry to see them go, especially as Sir Pitt was now casting his lusty, drunken gaze in her direction.
‘Becky, a pot of tea, you can bring it up to my room,’ Dame Matilda demanded. Becky didn’t appreciate her peremptory tone, not even a please or thank you, but she did appreciate the rescue from Sir Pitt’s clammy hands and even clammier breath.
When Becky knocked on the door of the Queen Anne suite where Matilda had been installed, it sounded as if the mood had lightened because she could hear the dame laughing and Briggs saying, ‘Oh, stop it! I can’t breathe.’
She pushed open the door and almost choked on the fug of cannabis-scented smoke from the huge joint that Rawdon was passing to his esteemed aunt, while proclaiming in a not-too-shabby impersonation of his equally esteemed papa, ‘Dear Mattie, your death scene couldn’t hope to compare to my Hamlet. Did I mention that I played Hamlet? Several critics believe that my performance as the Danish prince was far, far superior to Sir Larry’s.’
Briggs clutched his sides and rocked with silent mirth while Matilda cackled and, if Becky hadn’t been lightning quick to set the tea tray down and whip out a saucer, Matilda would have dropped ash on the imported Italian silk bedspread, which she’d brought with her from London because, quite wisely, she didn’t trust that the bedding at Queen’s Crawley was regularly laundered.
‘Ah, Miss Sharp, and what did you think of my death scene?’ Matilda enquired, taking custody of the saucer so Becky could move the tea tray to her bedside table. ‘Don’t tell me a sharp-tongued little thing like you is shy.’
Becky looked up from pouring tea, caught Rawdon’s eye as he raised his eyebrows. She could rarely resist a challenge and she wasn’t going to resist Rawdon either. Not now she knew he was going to inherit all of Matilda’s millions.
‘You know, you’re quite a good actress,’ she said and felt the lightness of the mood puncture as if she’d disappointed them all with yet more toadying. ‘Have you been in anything else?’
Briggs sucked in a shocked breath, Rawdon turned away to hide his smile and Dame Matilda looked positively evil for one second until she threw her head back and laughed so hard that she burned a hole in her £5,000 coverlet with the joint.
‘You are a wicked, wicked girl,’ she pronounced a little while later, after Becky had shown her own acting prowess by impersonating Martha at her most shrill and obsequious. ‘And you have more brains than all of them stewing downstairs. If life was fair, they’d be waiting on you and not the other way round, but alas, life isn’t fair. You’ll come back to London with me, Becky. Can’t have you mouldering away down here and fighting off that randy old goat of a brother of mine every night. Rawdon’s shooting a film in town, so I’ll have my two favourite people with me.’
Becky dared to steal a glance at Rawdon from under her lashes. He was dealing out cards so the four of them could play poker for Quality Street. He returned her glance with such intensity, it was a wonder that the good dame’s bedspread didn’t burst into flames.
‘What about me?’ Briggs called indignantly from the en suite where he was brushing out Matilda’s wig.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Matilda said crushingly. ‘You’re not people, you’re Briggs.’