Polly is sitting at the large table in the servants’ hall when I walk in. She has her back to me but I know it’s her straight away. I am delighted to see her and rush to the table.
‘Polly,’ I exclaim. It’s been a month since her wedding and I’ve missed her so much more than I thought I would. ‘You should have said that you were coming. We could have had Cook make a cake and everyone could have…’ I trail off as I look at her face. ‘Where is everyone?’ I ask.
‘Polly just wanted to see you,’ Mrs Derbyshire says. ‘I shall fetch some tea.’
I sit next to my old friend and she reaches over to take my hand. ‘I’ve missed you, Annie,’ she says. ‘I can’t stay long but I have missed you.’
As she turns her head I can see her face more clearly and I know then that what I thought I saw wasn’t a shadow. She is sporting a black eye fit for a boxer.
‘I missed everyone,’ she goes on, barely letting me get a word in. ‘I even missed the house and my duties.’ She smiles sadly and looks away but that surprises me.
‘You missed Haverford?’ I ask. ‘But you hated it here.’
‘It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it?’
We sit in silence for a moment and I wonder how to bring up her bruises. How did that happen? A dark thought comes into my head that I hope is not true and my mouth feels dry.
Mrs Derbyshire saves me by returning with the tea.
‘What happened to your eye, Polly?’ she asks, just like that. I wonder if that confidence comes with age. If I will ever be able to be as forthright as Mrs Derbyshire.
Polly laughs, but the sound is hollow, echoing off the walls. Nothing like her old laugh that rang through the house at inappropriate moments.
‘Oh, I walked into a door,’ she says, ducking her head so we can’t see her eye anymore. ‘Imagine that, me who has worked in the big house for so many years, having accidents in her own house!’
‘Accidents?’ Mrs Derbyshire repeats the plural that I had noticed as well. ‘You’ve had more than one?’
‘Oh, I burnt myself in the kitchen too, but it was nothing,’ she goes on, still not looking at either of us, but I notice her hiding her hands inside her sleeves.
I decide to change the subject. ‘Come on then, Polly,’ I say, my voice unnaturally cheerful. ‘Take your hat off and relax and tell me all about married life and I’ll tell you all about the play that Mr Everard is putting on. Lady Prunella is…’
‘Oh, I can’t stay,’ she interrupts, snatching up her teacup and gulping down what must still be scalding-hot liquid. ‘I have to be home before my husband gets back from work.’ She glances at me then and I’m sure, just for a moment I see fear in her eyes. ‘I just wanted to see how you were.’
Mrs Derbyshire stands up. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she says.
‘I’ve missed you, Polly,’ I reply. ‘Can’t you stay a little while longer?’
She shakes her head, her lips pressed together, almost bloodless.
‘Not today,’ she says. ‘Maybe another time.’ She stands suddenly, the legs of her chair scraping on the stone floor.
‘Polly, please.’ I stand too and face her. ‘Is something the matter?’
She takes my hands then and finally looks at me properly. I can see that the bruise on her face is beginning to yellow, which means it is a few days old.
‘I just wanted to be sure you were all right, Annie,’ she says. ‘I wanted to be sure of you, that you were still here.’
I smile. ‘Oh, Polly, I’ll always be here – you know that. Where am I going to go?’ I want to tell her about Thomas Everard and about how in America everybody has the same opportunities. I want to tell her about how handsome he is and how, if she was still here, we would giggle about him. I want to tell her all about the play and about my role as prompt but she is already pulling away from me.
‘I must go,’ she says, glancing towards the door.
‘You’ll come again?’ I ask. ‘Or I could come and see you on my afternoon off. My mother can be without me for one week.’
‘No,’ she says, that slightly panicked look coming back into her face again. ‘Don’t do that. I’ll come here again soon. I promise.’
‘Do,’ I say as I walk her out toward the courtyard. ‘I’ve so much to tell you.’
When she smiles then it seems genuine. ‘I can’t wait,’ she says. And then she’s gone, hurrying away, her heels clicking on the cobbles.
When I return to the servants’ hall Mrs Derbyshire is clearing the tea things.
‘Go on now,’ she says. ‘Get back to your play before Mr Prentice finds you something more useful to do. He was mumbling this morning about the silver needing cleaning.’
I hesitate, fingertips touching the table. ‘Did that seem strange to you?’ I ask.
Mrs Derbyshire pauses and brushes imaginary dust from the table. ‘Yes, Annie, it was strange. You will keep in touch with her if you can, won’t you?’
I nod.
‘And I’ll tell you something for nothing,’ she goes on as she takes the tea things out. ‘It wasn’t a door that caused that bruise.’
It isn’t until I am lying in bed that night that I realise what she meant.
*
The next morning as we are finishing our breakfast the bells start ringing, each one summoning one of us from downstairs to assist in various locations upstairs.
‘Chop chop, everybody,’ Mr Prentice calls. For one reason or another none of us seem very interested in things this morning.
Neither of the bells from the girls’ bedrooms have rung yet and I’m wondering if they have both overslept when a bell rings that I have never seen ring before. I watch Mr Prentice and Mrs Derbyshire exchange a glance.
‘Her Ladyship’s old room,’ Mrs Derbyshire says quietly.
Mr Prentice clears his throat. ‘That’ll be the girls, Annie. They must be in their mother’s old room for some reason. Why don’t you take their tea up there and see what’s what? You know where it is?’
I do know where Lady Haverford’s room is, but I have never been in there. Polly used to tell me that it had been kept exactly as it was on the day she died. Nothing had been moved or changed on His Lordship’s instruction. She would try to make me believe that it was haunted. Nonsense of course. I’m not easily fooled but I try not to think, as I carefully carry the tea tray along the corridor, that this was also the room in which she had died.
‘Oh, there you are, Annie,’ Lady Prunella says as I push the door open and place the tea tray down on a nearby table. ‘You’ve found us. I hoped you would.’
Lady Cecily is sitting in her dressing gown on a chair in the window, smoking a cigarette and looking out across the grounds. She doesn’t say anything as I enter.
‘How can I help, my lady?’ I ask.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Lady Cecily says, snapping out of whatever trance she was in and stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Let’s not stand on formality here. You have, after all, just entered Cloud Cuckoo Land.’
‘Help me with these buttons will you, Annie?’ Prunella asks, ignoring her sister.
‘You will notice that my sister, having gone completely mad, is trying on a wedding dress,’ Cecily says, her tone dry. She lights another cigarette.
‘Is there to be a wedding?’ I ask tentatively. I have seen very little sign of Mr Everard showing any interest in Lady Prunella. He shows more interest in me than he does in her. Only yesterday he had sat next to me during rehearsals and told me that my knowledge of Shakespeare was second to none. I had felt myself blushing and had to look away. I try to push that thought out of my mind. Now is not the time or the place. Perhaps one of Lady Prunella’s friends who has been spending so much time at Haverford because of the play has proposed.
‘According to Pru,’ Cecily goes on, ‘wedding bells are imminent any day now.’
‘Are they?’ I say, forgetting myself. It is not my place to ask such questions but it seems so unlikely.
‘Nobody has proposed yet,’ Lady Prunella says, her voice joyful and on the verge of laughter. ‘But it is only a matter of time.’ I set about helping with the rows of tiny buttons up the back of her dress, simply to give me something to do and to stop me asking any more questions.
‘This is Mama’s wedding dress you know,’ Lady Prunella goes on.
‘And Mama was a damn sight slimmer than you judging by the struggle Annie is having with those buttons,’ Cecily snaps waspishly from the corner and unfolds herself from the chair. Even in just her dressing gown she is more beautiful than her sister will ever be. ‘Leave it, Annie, for heaven’s sake,’ she goes on.
I step away from Prunella as Cecily starts to unbutton the wedding dress again.
‘It is a little tight,’ Prunella admits, her voice sounding flatter than it did. Does she really think that Thomas Everard is going to propose to her? I wonder, for a moment if I have the courage to ask him next time he talks to me at the play rehearsals. As I’m thinking about this I hear my name and I look up.
‘Do you think you could do something with it so that it would fit?’ Prunella asks, her face hopeful.
I have no idea at all, but Mrs Derbyshire might. ‘I’ll try,’ I say.
‘Let’s have some music,’ Prunella suggests as Cecily helps her into her dressing gown again. I notice a dusty gramophone in the corner of the room. The girls walk towards it and put one of the shiny black discs on the turntable. Music begins to fill the room, music I recognise as ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. Gramophones astonish me. Where does the music come from? There is so much I don’t know about the world and I seriously think, in my daydreams at least, that I could make it to America. I am as much in Cloud Cuckoo Land as Lady Prunella.
‘This was one of Mama’s favourites,’ Cecily says. ‘She used to sing it when we were little and twirl us around.’
‘Let’s dance now,’ Prunella says. Her cheeks are flushed and her voice sounds as though it might break.
‘Are you all right, my lady?’ I ask.
Cecily looks up at me. ‘Can you wait for me in my room?’ she asks. ‘I’ll come to get dressed shortly.’
As I leave I hear her trying to get Prunella to drink some of the tea I brought up. It is not my place to wonder what is wrong of course, but I can’t help being curious.
*
By the time we begin the rehearsal that afternoon, Prunella seems her normal self again, or as normal as she ever gets at the moment. When I first started working at Haverford, when I first met her on the stairs and we were both sixteen, she seemed like any other sixteen-year-old girl. But recently she has become what my mother would call ‘highly strung’ and what Mrs Derbyshire has called on more than one occasion ‘worrying’. I think I can see what is wrong though, as I feel some of those feelings myself. She is lonely, desperate for companionship and, I suspect, would marry anyone to get away from this life at Haverford.
I can’t know this for sure of course – I am just an observer – but I’ve been thinking a lot about leaving myself recently, about a life outside of the Haverford estate, outside of Cranmere. Polly thought a lot about leaving too. She married her solicitor to do just that and now she has a bruise on her face and has lost her laughter.
Lady Cecily on the other hand always seems much more content to be at Haverford, especially now Hannah is here. Despite her beauty, despite her lofty monologues about women’s rights, despite her time at Cambridge, she doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere or do anything else. Perhaps she knows there are worse places to be trapped than the Haverford estate. I wonder if she will marry, if she will be forced to do so in the end, because of course there is the question of an heir, the next earl. Even us servants know that. Without an earl, who knows what will happen to the house and the title when His Lordship passes away. Mr Prentice says the house will go to Lady Cecily but he doesn’t know who would inherit the title.
After the rehearsal is finished, Lady Prunella invites the whole cast to stay for dinner. ‘We’ll have a party,’ she announces in a voice that is becoming, once again, worryingly like the overexuberant voice of this morning, before the tears began. I see Cecily and Hannah exchange a look.
Cook is not best pleased about the impromptu party of course. She fusses about and shouts at Lucy the scullery maid. But Cook tends to perform her best work under pressure and creates a feast fit for a king.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘These young people and their impromptu dinner parties. It never used to be like this…’
‘Times are changing,’ Mrs Derbyshire interrupts, ‘and I for one am glad about it.’ The housekeeper is a huge embracer of the new, unlike Mr Prentice, and it is a bone of contention between them. Mrs Derbyshire has always been a quiet supporter of women’s rights and she has seen so much in her lifetime. But then I remember the sadness in her face the other day when she spoke about how long she had been in service, how long she had worked at Haverford and how, for her at least, not much has changed.
I’m very aware of how easy it is to stay somewhere for too long, to not realise that the best years of your life have passed until it’s too late. The times might be changing but, with the exception of the hot running water, the electricity and the telephone system, much has stayed the same at Haverford since Queen Victoria was on the throne. Will I be stuck here for decades like Mrs Derbyshire? Or can I escape? I think about America again, of things Mr Everard and Andrews have spoken about. I wonder if Andrews will get there in the end.
But as for me, I won’t be going anywhere other than in my dreams. How could I go anywhere? How could I leave my mother all alone?
There is no formality to dinner that night. His Lordship disappears from the dining table as quickly as he can, shutting himself in his study with Mr Prentice, as James and I clear. There is no port and cigars, the ladies do not leave the dining table early, and Lady Prunella announces that they shall have dancing. James is sent to bring the gramophone down from Lady Arabella’s old bedroom, and I send Katy to open up the windows in the ballroom as it is a stifling night and everyone is in need of some air. Lady Prunella insists on the ballroom being used as though this is a huge party when in reality there are so few people they will be rattling around in there like peas in a colander. But I can tell that Prunella is in the sort of mood where not even her sister will argue with her.
Knowing that everyone is busy and looked after, I let myself into the library after everything is cleared away. Lady Cecily has been encouraging me to read Dickens – his books have always rather intimidated me before due to most of them being so very long.
‘Annie, you’ve read and enjoyed Woolf and Hardy,’ Cecily had said. ‘And you know Shakespeare better even than our resident Shakespearean actor, so I think you’ll manage Dickens.’
I started with Great Expectations and then Oliver Twist, my copy of which I am bringing back to the library tonight, careful to use His Lordship’s meticulous checking in and out process. I’ve come to collect a copy of David Copperfield. As I slide it off the shelf I see how thick the book is, his longest novel so Lady Cecily tells me. I try not to balk at the length of it and instead remember how Cecily’s eyes lit up when she talked about it.
I go back to the servants’ hall and ask Mrs Derbyshire if I can take my book into the yard for a little while. It’s quieter there and nobody interrupts me to ask questions about what my book is about, and at this time of year it’s still light enough for a while longer.
‘Of course, but be ready for when the girls need you,’ she says. ‘And don’t strain your eyes out there. Come in as it gets dark.’
I settle onto the bench by the wall, and begin to read.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
I have barely got past the first sentence when I hear the strike of a match and smell the smoke of a cigarette. I look up, expecting it to be Ned. We meet here in the evenings sometimes, although I haven’t seen as much of him since Polly’s wedding. Perhaps he is tiring of me and my excuses about always being busy. Perhaps I should never have encouraged him in the first place.
I watch somebody step out of the shadows and I stand up.
‘Hello, Ned,’ I say.
‘It’s me,’ a soft voice replies. ‘Thomas.’