We are to have a house party in August when Mr Everard’s parents arrive, although how we will cope with so few staff nobody knows. Mr Prentice is in paroxysms about it all. His behaviour is easy to mock and Andrews does a wonderful impression of the butler in full flow.
‘We haven’t got time for this messing about,’ Mrs Derbyshire says when she catches us laughing. ‘And Mr Prentice is right. I’ve no idea how we’ll cope with a houseful again. You’d all better hope that we find some agency staff who know what they’re doing.’ She sighs. ‘And you’d better get back out to the garage, Andrews, before Mr Prentice catches you. You know how he hates you being in here in the daytime. What if His Lordship needs driving somewhere?’
Andrews nods, pressing his lips together to stifle his laughter, and leaves us.
‘You should know better, Annie,’ Mrs Derbyshire says to me. ‘Mr Prentice has been nothing but good to you and your mother before you. He’s devoted his life to Haverford since he first came here as a footman. He’s been here even longer than me.’
There is a sadness in her face when she speaks of this and I realise for perhaps the first time the loneliness of a life spent in service. No husband or wife, no family, no children, just the people that you share the servants’ hall with, random strangers thrown together. I suddenly feel desperately sad for both Mr Prentice and Mrs Derbyshire and the lives they could have had. I remember the butler’s tears on Polly’s wedding day as another member of his makeshift family left him.
I’m alone in the servants’ hall after Mrs Derbyshire goes. I know I have duties about the house but I relish these tiny moments of solitude that happen so very rarely. I press my hand against the dresser and close my eyes, wondering what it would be like to not be below stairs, but instead one of the ladies upstairs. Wondering what it would be like if somebody dressed me every day.
My mother would tell me that these daydreams are a slippery slope. That if I wasn’t careful I would be ‘getting ideas above my station’. And it’s only a few detrimental steps from that to ‘forgetting my place’. My mother is very strict about this sort of thing. There is barely an afternoon when I go to see her that she doesn’t mention it. But I’ve never been convinced about this idea of hierarchy, that some of us are better than others simply by way of our birth. Surely only fate decides that, and we are all the same really. We all deserve the same opportunities. I know my mother is proud of the fact that I work at the house as she once did, but I don’t want to stay here forever, getting to Mrs Derbyshire’s age and looking sad because I’ve missed out on so much in my life.
My mother would also say I was forgetting my place if she saw the way that Mr Everard looks at me, or if she knew how much pleasure those looks give me.
Don’t misunderstand me, I may never have left Cranmere but I’m not completely naïve. I know what happens when men like Thomas Everard wink at the maid and I’m not intending to ruin myself for him, but oh, when he smiles it’s as though the whole world lights up.
Oh, listen to me. I sound like Katy.
Mr Everard has a lot of opinions on British hierarchy, opinions that are more in line with those of Andrews than of His Lordship.
‘In America,’ he says one luncheon (he starts many sentences with the words ‘in America’ to which His Lordship responds with a sniff), ‘everyone has the same opportunities to rise up through the ranks, no matter their lowly beginnings. My father himself came from very little.’ I want to find out more about Mr Everard’s father and his lowly beginnings but Mr Prentice chooses that moment to usher me down the stairs and back to the servants’ hall.
‘I’ve read about it,’ Andrews tells me later when I relate what Mr Everard had said. ‘Some of these wealthy American financiers that the British aristocracy now rely on came from bugger all like us. Of course half of them lost everything in the crash but…’
‘Not the Everards,’ I interrupt.
‘No, not them. Imagine, Annie,’ he goes on, his eyes lighting up, ‘in America even you or I could be wealthy.’
‘What about me?’ James pipes up.
‘Even you, James.’ And it is then that Andrews tells us he is saving up his money for his passage to America. ‘I don’t just want to drive these cars,’ he says. ‘I want to own them and that’s never going to happen if I stay here.’
‘Enough,’ Mr Prentice’s voice echoes through the servants’ hall. ‘All of you back to your duties. I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense.’
*
Rehearsals for the play are underway and His Lordship disapproves wholeheartedly of it all. He absolutely refuses to let the servants join in, although we are secretly helping downstairs with the sewing of costumes and the making of scenery.
The performance will be held when Mr Everard’s parents arrive and it will be a way for the Everards to meet some of the local families. Rehearsals are taking place in the grounds and I watch surreptitiously from the sidelines, wishing I could be part of it. Everyone looks as though they are having so much fun and I think again about another life, where I was born under different circumstances. And I think about what Mr Everard and Andrews said about America. Can it be true? Can anyone make it over there?
But if anyone can make it, then anyone can fall too. There are no guarantees in life, not for even the wealthiest people. Even His Lordship grieves every day for his wife and son.
I have been reading Twelfth Night again from my father’s Complete Works of Shakespeare – just a few lines every night before I sleep. I tried to interest Katy in it but she has said it is the most boring thing she has ever heard. But I know almost every line off by heart and this afternoon as I watch the rehearsal I mouth the words along with the actors.
I use ‘actors’ in the loosest possible way. They are terrible. Local friends of Prunella’s have been summoned to play the smaller parts and Cecily’s friend, Hannah Rivington, is here, staying indefinitely in the blue room, to play Malvolio – an odd choice for a woman, perhaps, but she apparently feels more comfortable in men’s clothes and appears to have almost perfect comic timing. She is also the only one who has learned their lines. Everyone else is still reading from the script that Mr Everard has provided.
‘You should be our prompt,’ Lady Cecily says, suddenly appearing at my elbow.
‘Beg pardon, my lady,’ I reply. ‘I was just…’
Cecily laughs. ‘It’s all right, Annie. I know you wanted to be in the play. I wish Papa were less stubborn and stuck in his ways. It’s 1933 for goodness’ sake. The servants should be able to have some fun.’
‘I don’t think Mr Prentice would agree, my lady.’
‘No, I’m sure he wouldn’t.’ She looks up at Mr Everard who is walking towards us across the lawn, leaving his actors in chaos behind him.
‘I told you Annie knew more Shakespeare than any of us,’ Lady Cecily says. ‘She knows the whole play by heart. I was saying she should be our prompt.’
‘God alone knows we need some help,’ he says, speaking to Lady Cecily but looking at me. ‘Will you be our prompt, Annie?’ he asks. ‘Please.’
‘I’m sure His Lordship would never…’ I begin. I realise I’m staring at Mr Everard again, at his dark blonde hair and blue eyes. And I realise that he is looking at me in the same way he looked at me in the dining room.
‘You leave Papa to me,’ Lady Cecily says, leading me towards the actors, such as they are. ‘As Mr Everard says, we need all the help we can get.’
*
July continues much as normal. The weather is warm and sunny, the days are long but as I go about my duties, I have a little light inside me that wasn’t there before – I am the official prompt for the Haverford House production of Twelfth Night.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, it isn’t much really, but it’s something to me. Something glamorous and exciting. Something that is just mine. Lady Cecily must have spoken to her father, as she promised, as there have been no more grumblings from him and I know that she spoke to Mr Prentice, who reluctantly agreed. He always has had a soft spot for Lady Cecily. I have kept the secret from my mother, however, even though I am so tempted to tell her. She didn’t approve of the play in the first place when I mentioned it and if I tell her that I am now the prompt that will definitely be an idea above my station.
Every afternoon I join the cast on the lawn for rehearsals and as I prepare to leave the servants’ hall Mr Prentice tells me to be careful in that fatherly way of his, although what trouble I can possibly get in, sitting on a bench in plain view calling out lines I do not know. And there are so many lines to call out as the cast, with the exception of Mr Everard and Hannah Rivington, still barely know a word.
‘Lady Prunella,’ Mr Everard calls loudly one afternoon. ‘How do you still not know your lines?’ There is a moment of silence then as though nobody can quite believe that an American with no title has spoken to the daughter of an earl in such a way. But he is unperturbed. ‘Even your sister knows her lines now.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I hear Lady Cecily mutter to herself. ‘Even dull old Cecily.’
Prunella has insisted that she take the part of Viola, and there are a lot of lines to learn. ‘Perhaps I can help,’ I say quietly, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself.
‘Yes of course,’ Prunella gushes enthusiastically as she always does when she is in the vicinity of Mr Everard. ‘You can help me learn my lines, can’t you, Annie? We’ll start tonight and…’
But I don’t hear any more of what she says because I see Mrs Derbyshire beckoning me from the side of the house. I close my copy of Twelfth Night and hurry towards her, as I’d promised the play would not get in the way of any of my duties.
‘We have a surprise visitor,’ she says.