Much has changed at Haverford over the last four years and yet, at the same time, nothing has changed. I still share a room with Polly and get up at half past five to begin my duties. The indoor staff remain largely the same, and each day passes in a blur of exhaustion and abject boredom. Not that I would dare to say that to Mr Prentice or Mrs Derbyshire. I get one half-day off a week, which I spend in the village with my mother. I look forward to it more than I ever thought I would, and it has become the highlight of my week. I never mention my feelings to my mother either. I let her think I am happy, that my time at Haverford is the privilege that Mr Prentice tells me it is.
Despite what I told myself on my very first day here, I am still dreaming of something else and I spend all my free time reading the books from His Lordship’s library, escaping into a world less mundane than this. I remind myself that I am lucky to work here, lucky to be able to be near my mother – but it doesn’t always feel quite enough.
I’ve got to know Ned – the gardener’s assistant – better over the last few years. I am older now, and slightly less bowled over by his looks although I still get that tingling feeling inside whenever he smiles at me. He has shown me around the grounds and lake and taught me to identify different plants and flowers. He’s also shown me all the different species of birds that live in the gardens of Haverford and now I can tell the difference between a thrush and a female blackbird, a coal tit and a great tit.
Outside of Haverford times are changing and of that I am hopeful. Andrews keeps us abreast of political issues – by us I mean me and James the footman. I feel as though, out of all of us, we are biding our time the most, hoping for something better, wishing that change would come more quickly. I know the days of this kind of servitude are coming to an end and there was hope when Ramsay MacDonald of the Labour Party became prime minister again in 1929 but the Conservative Party are back in power now. There are rumblings in Germany too, Andrews tells us, talk of an election and a new chancellor, and he wonders if there will be another war. James and I look at one another when he says that. James had been too young for the last war of course, but if war were declared again things would be very different.
‘Sometimes it takes great suffering to bring about great change,’ Andrews says in his soft Scottish accent before folding his newspaper and taking himself back to His Lordship’s garage. He doesn’t want Cook to catch him saying such terrible things after all.
It is fortunate that Cook doesn’t hear some of the things that Lady Cecily says either, some of the rather angry discussions she has with her father. I serve at table occasionally now, helping out Mr Prentice and James when His Lordship has guests – another sign of how times are changing and how difficult it is to find young men willing to go into service. Lady Cecily is down from Cambridge where she spent three years at Girton College studying for, but not actually being awarded, a degree in English literature. She is determined, however, that women at Cambridge should be awarded full degrees and she talks about it all the time, especially when her friend – a lady called Hannah Rivington whom Lady Cecily met at Girton – comes to stay at Haverford.
‘We can’t go on like this forever,’ Lady Cecily says at dinner one night when I am helping to serve. ‘Living in the past, expecting people to wait on us.’ I watch His Lordship’s eyes slide from his guests to his daughter, hear the grumble in the back of his throat. ‘You must know your servants are voting for the Labour Party, basically trying to overthrow you.’
I nearly drop the cutlery I’m carrying when I hear her say that, and Lord Haverford bangs his fist on the table.
‘That is enough,’ he says, and Lady Cecily shrugs and returns to her meal. She isn’t wrong though. I am to turn twenty-one in just a few days and intend to vote for the Labour Party at the next election now that the voting laws have been changed. As long as I’m allowed the time off to do so of course.
Lady Prunella has already turned twenty-one. There was a big party in the ballroom to celebrate. I was assigned duties in the kitchen on that evening, helping Lucy and the women who come in from the village as Cook barked orders at us. Polly reported back that Prunella had danced with everybody, had been giddy with celebration and champagne, but that Lady Cecily had stood at the edge of the ballroom with Hannah Rivington, smoking constantly and looking scornfully at anyone who dared to try to ask them to dance.
Polly had giggled about it as she’d told me while we’d been getting ready for bed, dreading the morning duties after only three or four hours’ sleep, but I hadn’t found it as amusing. Both of the Montagu girls had been out in society for years now but there had been no offers of marriage. I had wondered that night if there ever would be. The next morning when I’d ventured to mention it to Mrs Derbyshire she’d turned to me in a moment of candour and had looked me straight in the eye.
‘There are a few reasons,’ she’d said. ‘But mainly it’s because there’s no money. No man wants to marry the daughter of a penniless earl.’
She hadn’t said anything else but she knew as well as I did that in other parts of the country, houses like Haverford have become too difficult to run and have been shut up and the staff dismissed. What do people like Mrs Derbyshire do then? She has worked at the house since she was fourteen.
It’s not just Mrs Derbyshire either. Most of Cranmere are employed by or earn their living through the Haverford estate. If His Lordship were to shut up the house and move away what would become of everyone? What would become of Cranmere? It would have no reason to exist.
And yet even I, a lowly housemaid, can see how things are changing. Over the four years that I’ve worked here more rooms have been closed off, more furniture covered in dust sheets. I even know that one or two of the less important paintings have been sold at Christie’s, an auction house in London. Sometimes the Montagu family forget that their staff have ears and hear every conversation – even if I did have to ask Andrews to explain what an auction house was. Despite that though we all carry on as normal, as though nothing has changed.
As well as the money problems, there is the whiff of scandal that surrounds Lady Prunella – the reason she no longer spends the season in London, why her twenty-first birthday was heavily supervised here at Haverford. None of us are completely clear about the details although Carruthers claims to know all about it but intends to take the secret to her grave. This is typical of her, though, so who knows if it is true or not. She probably knows no more than us.
All I know is that Lady Prunella became embroiled with a married man. I have no idea who he was or what exactly happened other than His Lordship knew the man in question and, when he found out about it, went down to London with his valet Williams to hunt them out. They were found in a jazz club in Soho, dancing the foxtrot and drinking cocktails. There must have been more to it than that but whatever it was I certainly don’t know. What I do know is that a very strict eye has been kept on Lady Prunella ever since, and she feels as trapped up here at Haverford as I do. I wonder if she dreams of another life somewhere else, like I do?
There is more bad news coming for Mrs Derbyshire. A few weeks after Lady Prunella’s twenty-first birthday party, Carruthers announces that she is leaving. She is the first person to leave since I arrived.
‘I’ve done my duty to Her Ladyship, God knows,’ Carruthers says dramatically as she enters the servants’ hall. ‘And what with Lady Prunella turning twenty-one I’ve kept my promises.’
‘But where will you go?’ Mrs Derbyshire asks.
‘That’s no concern of yours, Mrs Derbyshire,’ Carruthers says, turning her back on the housekeeper.
I won’t be sad to see her go. Edna Carruthers is one of the most sour-faced, unpleasant people I’ve ever met and her waspish remarks, particularly the ones about my mother, will not be missed by me. Or by anyone I should imagine.
When I tell my mother the news on my next afternoon off, she raises her eyebrows.
‘I thought the only way Carruthers would leave Haverford would be in a six-foot box,’ she says in a remark almost worthy of Carruthers herself. ‘I have no idea what Lady Arabella saw in her but she brought her to Haverford with her when she married His Lordship. They’d known each other since they were teenagers apparently. When she didn’t leave immediately after Lady Arabella’s death I assumed she’d stay forever.’
‘She says she made some promise to Her Ladyship on her deathbed,’ I tell my mother. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
My mother rolls her eyes. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she says. ‘But she’s probably made it up to sound self-important.’
I walk back to the house through the gardens that afternoon. It’s a beautiful spring day and I want to see the bluebells that grow in the woodland around the lake. Polly had shown me this shortcut through the grounds of Haverford to the village when I’d been at the house about six months. I’d had no idea it existed. I’m hot by the time I’ve crossed the meadow and I stand for a few moments in the shade of the trees, listening to the thrushes and blackbirds and to the honking sound of swans and the ripple of water coming from the lake. The grass under the trees is carpeted in bluebells and I wish I could sit here until the sun sets and it becomes too cold to stay outside. But I know I have to head back to the house and after a few moments more I walk slowly over the bridge by the boathouse.
Mac and Ned are fixing the door of the boathouse that nobody uses anymore. Daniel Montagu had spent a lot of his time here when he was home from Harrow – rowing on the lake with his friends, fishing on the deck. Lady Prunella had told me once that when they were children the three of them would run away from Nanny and come up here to swim on hot afternoons. She had sighed and looked away when she’d told me. ‘Nobody uses the boathouse anymore,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow.’ It feels like a sad place now, and I know that neither of the girls come here very often. But the grounds staff keep it in good repair in memory of His Lordship’s only son.
The gardener waves at me as I pass and Ned comes over to say hello. He takes his hat off, running his hand over his hair, damp with sweat, and asks if he can walk me back to the house. Polly has been telling me for a while that Ned is sweet on me. ‘Why would he spend so much time with you if he wasn’t?’ she asks, but I don’t know how I feel about that. I let him walk with me to the house though, as he starts to tell me about his day.
We take a detour through the kitchen garden. Ned wants to check on the early peas and beans, he says. I love the kitchen garden where all the fruit and vegetables that the house consumes are grown. It amazes me that all that produce can be grown from such tiny seeds.
‘One day I’ll have a garden of my own,’ Ned says with his back to me as he turns towards the peas, which are beginning to flower. ‘I’ll be a head gardener like Mac, and I’ll have a little house and a family…’ He trails off. I know why. Ned has no family of his own; his parents died when he was still a child. He must long for one. I only have my mother but she is my whole world. I don’t know how people manage without anyone, although Mr Prentice would say that the staff at Haverford are family.
Ned turns to me and smiles his handsome smile. He steps towards me and I feel his fingers brush against mine. ‘I just need to find a nice girl who’ll put up with me,’ he says.
I suddenly realise what he is saying and why he is saying it to me. Polly is right. Ned is sweet on me, perhaps more than sweet. I don’t know what to say or do. I certainly don’t want to get married. I don’t feel old enough and I want to experience something, anything, outside of Cranmere before I have to settle.
‘I have to go,’ I say eventually. ‘I’m late getting back to the house and I don’t want to annoy Mrs Derbyshire.’
Ned steps away and I start to walk very fast, as though I’m trying to outrun his words.
When I get back to the house, Mrs Derbyshire calls me into her parlour. She stands with her arms folded across her chest and I think I am in trouble for being late back, for lingering too long with Ned in the kitchen garden.
‘You will be lady’s maid for Lady Prunella and Lady Cecily when Carruthers is gone,’ she says.
I’m astonished and stand staring at the housekeeper. I’ve not seen anyone promoted in all the time I’ve been at Haverford and I’m the one who had been here the least amount of time. Even little Lucy, the scullery maid, has been here longer than me.
‘Don’t stand there gawping, girl,’ Mrs Derbyshire says. ‘It’s quite normal that eventually one of the housemaids becomes lady’s maid.’
‘But Polly…’ I begin, my mouth dry.
‘Polly will continue her duties as housemaid and you will help her, but your duties looking after the girls will take priority. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mrs Derbyshire, but…’
‘There are no buts to be had,’ she replies. ‘Lady Prunella asked specifically for you.’ Had she? I wonder why? Since the day in the library when we were both only sixteen and she spoke about her brother and sister, I hadn’t been aware of her noticing me in any particular way. Which is as it should be of course. That is the natural order of things, as Mr Prentice would say.
‘Thank you, Mrs Derbyshire,’ I manage.
‘Well don’t thank me, thank Lady Prunella. I’m not sure if you’re ready for it at all. You’ll have a lot to learn over the next couple of weeks and you’ll have to listen carefully to everything Carruthers tells you between now and when she leaves if you want to do a good job, and I know you’ll want to do a good job.’
I nod, not really knowing what I’m agreeing to.
*
The last month that Carruthers is at Haverford, I spend almost entirely with her as she teaches me everything that Lady Prunella and Lady Cecily would need me to do. I try to silence the voice in the back of my head that wonders why on earth grown women need so much help getting ready every day, as though they are dolls rather than human beings. I put up with Carruthers’ endless nagging all day and then, in the evenings, I listen to Polly moan about all the work she has to do now I’m otherwise engaged.
Things improve after Carruthers is gone.
‘We’ll have so much fun together, Annie,’ Lady Prunella says one evening as I help her get ready for dinner and again I wonder why she chose me over Polly, or even a new and experienced lady’s maid. ‘I’m glad that old goat Carruthers has gone. She was only here because she’d made some promise or other to Mama. Apparently when Mama was on her deathbed, she made Carruthers swear to look after Cecily and me until we were both twenty-one. It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing Mama would have said if you ask me. It was just some ploy made up by that battleaxe so Papa wouldn’t dismiss her I suppose.’
I try to hide my smile but Lady Prunella must have seen me because when she catches my eye in the mirror she winks at me.
As we get ready for bed that evening I tell Polly that now Carruthers has left and isn’t insisting I shadow her every move, I’ll have more time to help her again.
‘I know the lady’s maid job should really be yours,’ I say. ‘You’ve been here longer than me after all. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she replies snuggling down under the blanket. ‘Brushing out their hair is the last thing I want to do. I’ve got bigger dreams than that.’
This is the first time I’ve ever heard Polly admit that she too dreams of a life outside of Haverford and I want to ask her what she wants, what she would do if she could. But I don’t ask, because then she would ask me the same question and I’m not ready to admit that to anyone yet.
Not even myself.