The wooden stairs creak under my boots as I follow Mrs Derbyshire up towards the servants’ quarters. The stairway smells musty and I grip the box containing my meagre belongings a little tighter. It is the same box that belonged to my mother when she worked here. My stomach contracts. I’ve never been away from home before. I’ve never slept anywhere other than the little room next to my mother’s. What will it feel like to sleep somewhere else? What if I can’t sleep at all?
‘You’ll be sharing a room with Polly,’ Mrs Derbyshire says as we reach the top landing. I wonder who Polly is, what she is like, and whether she will like me.
Mrs Derbyshire seems stern and a little frightening at first. Everything seems frightening today and I’m not one for being easily frightened. I’ve never shared a room before – it has always been just me and my mother at home. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and although my room is tiny, it is my own. I’m trying to pull myself together a little when the housekeeper turns towards me and smiles kindly. Her face changes when she does, like a ray of sunlight breaking through rainclouds. My mother has already told me about Mrs Derbyshire, told me that her bark is worse than her bite.
‘I know it’s hard at first,’ she says. ‘I can still remember what it was like when I first left my parents’ home to come to work here, even after all these years. You’ll settle in soon enough – you’ll see.’
Cheered a little by Mrs Derbyshire’s words I look around the room that is to be mine. It is sparsely furnished, even more sparsely than the room I’d had at home – two single metal-framed beds with thin mattresses, a cupboard with a water pitcher on top of it, and a chest of drawers.
‘The bed on the left will be yours,’ Mrs Derbyshire says. ‘And the bottom drawer of the chest.’
I nod, still clutching my mother’s box in front of me as Mrs Derbyshire smiles again.
‘Don’t look so terrified, girl. We don’t bite.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘How is your mother?’ she asks. So she does know who I am then.
I nod again, my mouth dry. What is wrong with me? ‘She’s very well thank you, Mrs Derbyshire,’ I manage in a strangled sort of voice.
Mrs Derbyshire presses her lips together as though drawing a line under any sort of reminiscence and I realise that it would not be the done thing to ask what it was like when my mother worked here.
‘Now, there’s a freshly pressed uniform for you there on the chest. When you’re changed you can come down and meet the rest of the staff.’ The housekeeper indicates the stairway we have just walked up – my way back down to the kitchens without passing through the house itself. I am burning to see the house that my mother has spoken of so often but assume I am not to get a guided tour. I try to remember my place, like my mother told me to. I try to remember why I have to do this. I need to earn my living and find my way in the world.
After Mrs Derbyshire has left, the heels of her sensible black boots clunking back down the creaky stairs, the large bunch of housekeys jangling at her belt, I place my box on the narrow iron bed that will be mine for the foreseeable future. I wonder again what Polly will be like as I slowly undo the buckles and take out my few belongings – underthings, woollen stockings, a few other clothes, and one very precious item that I stow away in the bottom drawer wrapped in a scratchy blanket taken from home that I hope my mother won’t miss. I couldn’t be without this big grey book that I inherited from my father, even if I probably won’t have much time to read it. I won’t be separated from Shakespeare’s Complete Works even if it does seem a strange thing for a housemaid to cherish.
Before I change into my uniform – a grey dress, made of material that looks almost as scratchy as the blanket, a white apron and cap – I look out of the window at the blue patch of sky I can see. A flock of birds flutter past and I envy them their freedom, wondering where they are going. My room, like all the servants’ rooms, is in the eaves of the house, but if I crane my neck I can see the sunlight glinting off the famous Haverford Lake. Beyond it lies the village I have come from, the village I grew up in. I wish, just for a moment, I too were a bird that could fly over the lake and back to my home.
But life has changed as I always knew it would. I must stop dreaming now – dreaming about a life other than this, one that does not have me following in my mother’s footsteps. I have known that Haverford House will be my future for most of my life and now that time has come.
I’m sixteen years old and it’s time to grow up.