At the end of July Lady Prunella announces that she’d like to go to London.
‘Whatever for?’ Lady Cecily asks in a bored voice. ‘London is so tedious with everyone down for the season.’
‘Another season stuck up here at Haverford,’ Prunella replies sadly. ‘Thank God for Thomas and the play and for a handful of friends nearby.’ I know that she hates this life she has. I know she feels trapped at Haverford, unable to live the life she was supposed to live because of one stupid mistake in a jazz club and her father’s dwindling funds. She would do anything to escape and she is pinning all her hopes on Thomas. ‘Anyway,’ she says, brightening a little. ‘I just wanted a little shopping trip, to buy some new clothes before Thomas’s parents get here. You’ll come won’t you, Cecily?’
‘No, I shan’t. I really don’t need to go shopping. You’ll have to go alone. I’m sure Papa will let you use Montagu House.’ Montagu House was the family home in London that, these days, remained shut up for great parts of the year.
‘Well, I won’t be alone,’ Lady Prunella says, turning back to the mirror so I could continue with her hair. ‘Annie will be coming with me, won’t you, Annie?’
‘Yes, my lady, of course,’ I reply, glad really to be getting away from Haverford for a few days, away from Thomas, away from any chance of bumping into Polly again, and most importantly away from Ned who I absolutely do not want to see right now. He frightened me in the kitchen garden the other night and now I have met Thomas I don’t know how I ever thought Ned was attractive. Not that Thomas will ever be mine either. All of it feels a little too much, too confusing, and the chance to escape for a few days with Lady Prunella seems too good an opportunity to miss.
‘We’ll leave first thing tomorrow. Can you get everything ready by then, Annie?’
‘Yes, my lady,’ I reply, wondering what would happen at tomorrow’s play rehearsal without Prunella. I also wonder why she wants to leave so quickly.
‘And while I’m shopping you can have some time to yourself, Annie,’ Prunella goes on. ‘Is there anything special you’d like to do?’
‘Well,’ I say quietly. ‘I’ve always wanted to go the British Museum.’
‘Then you shall.’ Prunella claps her hands together gleefully. ‘I’ll arrange it all for you.’
I don’t say any more but I’ve always wanted to see the Rosetta Stone. I don’t know why particularly but ever since I read about it in one of the old newspapers in His Lordship’s library I’ve wanted to see it. Every summer when I’ve gone to London with the girls I’ve thought about it, but until now haven’t had an opportunity to visit. I smile to myself. Without knowing it Lady Prunella has done me two small favours.
That evening, before we go to London, I decide that I must speak to Mrs Derbyshire about Polly. I know it will be the last thing that Polly will want, but then I remember that she did come here mysteriously that afternoon – was that a cry for help? I know I need to do something. So much in my life feels, suddenly and ridiculously, out of my control. Lady Prunella, the play, Thomas, his parents, Polly, my mother. At least talking about Polly with someone else will ease my load a little. A problem shared and all that, or so they say. Not that I’m doing this for only selfish reasons to lighten my own load – I am worried about Polly and there must be something we can do.
That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous about seeing Mrs Derbyshire. There is something about standing outside the door to her parlour that always makes me nervous and reminds me of the time when I was new here and she asked to see me and I was sure I was going to be sent away. It turned out she was just wanting to know how I was getting on, but that feeling has never truly left me. I knock hesitantly.
‘Come in,’ she calls from behind the door. As I open it, she looks up, sees that it is only me and smiles. ‘Oh, Annie, come and sit down. I thought it would be Mr Prentice fussing about this party again.’
I smile too as I sit. The butler has still not calmed down from the impending staffing disaster that the party next month will, according to him at least, inevitably bring.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Mrs Derbyshire asks.
I shake my head. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘About London tomorrow?’
‘No, no, that’s all organised.’ It’s the first time I’ll be going to London alone with just one of the girls. Usually in the summer we travel in a pack but, presumably because of Thomas’s arrival, the household did not go to London this year. ‘It’s just that I saw Polly in the village the other day.’
‘I see.’ Mrs Derbyshire sits back in her chair and gives me all of her attention. I can see the shift in her. ‘And how is she?’
‘Not good,’ I reply.
‘Did she say something?’
‘Nothing specific, but she was wearing a coat on a warm summer’s afternoon, as though she was trying to cover up something and when I touched her arm she nearly jumped out of her skin and…’ I falter. Should I be telling the housekeeper any of this?
‘And?’ Mrs Derbyshire prompts.
I lower my voice as though imparting a dark secret. ‘She had another bruise along her cheekbone.’ I run my finger along my own cheek to show her where.
The housekeeper nods slowly.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say.
‘I’m not sure there is much we can do, Annie. I didn’t say as much when she came to visit, but you and I both know that Polly was not a clumsy girl prone to accidents about the house as she claimed. To put it bluntly I think the bruises are from her husband’s fists.’
I say nothing; my mouth feels dry. I’d worked out that was what Mrs Derbyshire thought but hearing her say it out loud shocks me. I know it shouldn’t and I know this sort of thing goes on – there are men in the village who, when I was growing up, we all knew were all too handy with their fists after too many drinks, but nobody speaks of it, not out loud.
‘I’ve shocked you I can see,’ Mrs Derbyshire says.
‘No,’ I say, finding my voice. ‘I knew what you meant last time, when she came for tea but… well… nobody really talks about this sort of thing do they?’
‘No, more’s the pity.’ She tightens her lips and looks away from me. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing too many times before, but mercifully never here at Haverford. I didn’t expect this at all. How did she seem in herself?’
‘Jumpy, as though she didn’t want to see me, didn’t want to stop and talk. She seemed scared.’
‘You’re worried about her aren’t you?’
‘I knew things would change after she got married. I knew I would never really see her again, but I thought at least she’d be happy.’
‘As I said, I’m not sure there is much we can do until Polly herself asks us for help. People don’t talk about this sort of thing and in general what happens behind closed doors is considered to be very private.’
‘You don’t think that, do you?’ I ask.
‘Not in circumstances like this,’ she replies. ‘But I’m limited in what I can do. Mr Prentice would tell me not to interfere but I will go and pay her a visit if I can. I’ll have to think of a reason.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, really meaning it. ‘It’s been playing on my mind.’
‘Now go and get a good night’s sleep,’ Mrs Derbyshire says, smiling again. ‘Forget about everything for a few days and enjoy yourself in London.’
That is exactly what I intend to do, to immerse myself in the busy capital and forget about Haverford for a few days. However, fate has other ideas for me. When Lady Prunella and I arrive at Montagu House the next afternoon, there is a telegram waiting for us, a telegram full of devastating news summoning us straight back to Yorkshire.
*
‘Is there anything I can do Annie?’ Lady Prunella asks for the fourth time since we boarded the train, and for the fourth time I shake my head. I can’t speak. I haven’t been able to eat anything since I heard the news – I forced down a small cup of tea this morning on Prunella’s insistence – but all I want to do is get back to Yorkshire, to understand what has happened and, hopefully, for it all to turn out to be a terrible mistake.
But I know deep down that the news is true, that there has been no mistake.
My mother is dead.
I feel as though a carpet has been pulled from under my feet, but instead of crashing down to earth I am floating above it, untethered. I have felt like that since Lady Prunella read the telegram last night, summoned strong tea and sat me down in the sitting room. It felt strange to sit on that high-backed chair in a room I rarely had need to go into. It felt as though I had got above my station. But I can’t think of that without thinking of my mother.
Lady Prunella had telephoned Haverford, just as the telegram had asked her to do. She spoke to her father, who told her that my mother had been found dead in her chair by the baker’s boy who’d peered through the window when nobody had responded to his knock. The doctor had been told and His Lordship informed. Mother has no family other than me so it was to Haverford that everybody went when they wanted to find me. His Lordship, having been fond of my mother – that was after all the reason I got the job in the first place – took over from there.
‘Do you want to talk to him?’ Lady Prunella had whispered to me, her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.
I’d shaken my head. I could barely string a sentence together in front of Prunella. Of course I couldn’t talk to His Lordship on the telephone. I’ve never spoken on a telephone in my life.
‘The doctor thinks she had a heart attack,’ Lady Prunella had told me when she’d ended the telephone call. ‘Papa said to tell you that the doctor told him that she would have passed peacefully. He hopes that will be of some consolation.’
It was of no consolation at all either yesterday evening or now as I sit on the train, which seems to be moving much more slowly than it had when it was going in the other direction the day before. It doesn’t matter to me how my mother died and there is nothing anybody can do, although obviously I don’t tell Lady Prunella any of this. What matters to me is this. Yesterday was Wednesday. On Wednesdays I always take my afternoon off and go to see my mother.. But this week, instead of taking that half-day, or even questioning it at all, I had jumped at the chance to escape the confines of Haverford for a few days in London. Lured by Lady Prunella’s promise of a trip to the British Museum and desperate to escape the eyes of Thomas and Ned and my constant nagging doubts about Polly and my future, I hadn’t given my afternoon with my mother a second thought. I’d simply sent her a note to tell her I wouldn’t be there.
All I can think about now is that maybe, if I’d gone to see her yesterday afternoon, I’d have been with her when she took ill and I might have been able to do something, anything, to help her. At the very least she wouldn’t have died alone to be found, later, by the baker’s boy. I curse my selfishness the whole way back to Yorkshire.
Andrews meets us from the station and I sit next to him up front as usual for the journey back to Haverford. We are halfway back before he quietly asked me if I’m all right and if there is anything that he can do. Once again I shake my head.
It is Mrs Derbyshire’s sympathy that finally breaks me, that finally allows me to cry the tears that have somehow been blocked inside me since Lady Prunella first read the telegram. She can see, as soon as I arrive back at Haverford, that I am uncomfortable with the fuss everyone is making of me and I am relieved when she takes me into her parlour for a warm drink. The tea she gives me smells distinctly of Mr Prentice’s brandy.
‘I thought you would need a pick-me-up,’ she says.
And that’s when the tears start to flow.
Mrs Derbyshire sits with me as I cry, her hand quietly resting on my back – supportive without being intrusive. She always knows the right way to be, the right way to behave in any situation and I know, as I sit there, that in years to come I will gauge my own behaviour on Mrs Derbyshire’s and that she will be a person, much like my own mother, who will be with me long after she has gone.
‘She was the only family I had,’ I say once I find my breath and my voice. ‘It had always been just me and her. I don’t really remember my father.’
‘We were so fond of her here,’ Mrs Derbyshire says. ‘We all loved her, even His Lordship, and Her Ladyship – God rest her soul – always called for your mother when she wanted mending doing.’
I smile sadly. ‘She was incredible with a needle and thread.’ I have always been rather embarrassed that I didn’t inherit her sewing skills and I think, briefly, of Lady Prunella in her mother’s wedding dress wondering if I can let it out. This makes me sad all over again.
We talk for a few moments about my mother’s time at Haverford and Mrs Derbyshire tells me about how she met my father at the back door and their strange courtship. It’s a story I know well but one I never tire of hearing. I remember when I first came to Haverford how I wondered if I would meet my future husband there just as my mother had done. I dreamed of what it would be like. Perhaps that is why I spent so much time with Ned at first, wanting to believe that I would have a story like my mother’s. But instead I fell in love with Thomas Everard. I should never have allowed that to happen, just as I should never have led Ned along for such a time.
‘Katy and I will take over your duties until the funeral,’ Mrs Derbyshire says. ‘To give you some time to grieve and settle.’
‘The funeral!’ I blurt out. ‘What do I need to do? Where do I…’
‘Now now, don’t you go worrying about that. His Lordship has everything in hand.’
And doesn’t he just.
His Lordship must have had a bigger soft spot for my mother than I realised as five days later Haverford closes for the morning as the entire household makes their way to the village church, the same one that Polly married in, for my mother’s funeral service. I walk down arm in arm in with Mrs Derbyshire.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.
‘I’ll be glad when today is over,’ I reply. But in truth I don’t know how I feel. Still untethered and unable to see a future without my mother, without my Wednesday afternoons spent with her. When I wake in the mornings, I wonder how I can go on without her, but here I am already one week after her death, carrying on. I suppose it is just what people do.
To my surprise Polly is at the church when I get there. She presses my hand when I arrive and sits at the front with me. The church is packed to the rafters – the whole of the village is here along with everyone from Haverford and all the shops have closed for the morning.
‘Quite the turnout,’ Polly whispers.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I reply.
But she rushes off again after the funeral service, not staying for the burial or the wake that His Lordship has paid for at the pub.
‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ she says. ‘I have to get back.’
I scan her face for fresh bruises but can’t see any. Perhaps things are settling down. Perhaps I don’t have to worry.
Later, after the burial, when everyone has either returned to Haverford or gone to the pub for sherry and sandwiches, His Lordship finds me standing by my mother’s fresh grave. It is the closest he has ever stood to me.
‘I just wanted to pass on my condolences,’ he says stiffly. ‘Your mother was very popular at Haverford and a great favourite of my wife’s…’ He trails off as he talks about his late wife before turning around and walking away.
I understand a little then about why he is like he is.
Loss changes everything.
*
‘Please don’t think this insensitive, Annie,’ Lady Prunella says two days later. ‘But how do you feel about coming back to rehearsals as our prompt?’
I look at her in the mirror and catch sight of my own reflection, pale and hollow-eyed. This is my first day back at work since we rushed home from London and neither Prunella nor Cecily have mentioned my mother at all. It’s uncomfortable for them I suppose. I am after all just a servant, and no doubt the situation has brought back memories of their own mother.
I remember standing here before we went to London, looking at Prunella in the mirror, and making an important decision. I had vowed to stop seeing Thomas in the kitchen garden, to stop daydreaming of America, and to accept my lot in life until I could work out what I wanted to do next. The decision had been based on my mother, my inability to leave her here in Cranmere when she had always been there for me.
Except my mother isn’t there for me anymore. I’m entirely on my own.
‘I’ll be there,’ I say to Prunella now. ‘I’ve missed rehearsals. It’ll be nice to get back into it.’
‘The quicker we get back to normal after tragedy the better, I’ve always found,’ Cecily says quietly from the corner where she is sitting. I don’t respond; I don’t acknowledge. I don’t want to talk about my mother with anybody.
Prunella starts to tell me about rehearsals, about how much better they all are, but I barely listen. Instead I think about seeing Thomas again. I haven’t seen him since the night I told him it was over, that I couldn’t go on, that I couldn’t go to America. This afternoon at rehearsal I will stand next to him again, catch his eye.
At least I hope I will, because there is something I want to talk to him about.
When I arrive at rehearsal that afternoon, a little late and flustered after helping Mrs Derbyshire with some starched tablecloths, he is the first person I see. The only person I see. My breath catches in my throat for a moment as he stands in front of the cast, jacket discarded and shirt sleeves rolled up in the heat, talking to them about the play, about how important each scene is. He is so passionate about it, but he has lost most of the cast members who are sleepy and far away on this hot afternoon. The only person hanging on to his every word is Lady Prunella. Poor Prunella, is she still holding out hope of a proposal?
When he looks at me, I can feel my heart beat faster. Ridiculous I know, like a breathless heroine in a terrible novel. He smiles then, and he is even more devastatingly handsome than I remember – not that I’ve been allowing myself to remember him. It hurts too much.
‘I’m so sorry about your mother,’ he says to me quietly as the cast of the play begin to find their places in a rather chaotic way that makes me think that they haven’t improved as much as Lady Prunella thinks they have. ‘And I’m so sorry that I haven’t been able to say that to you before. I haven’t seen you – perhaps you’ve been avoiding me.’
‘I’ve had some time off,’ I reply.
‘Well, it’s lovely to have you back.’
I feel nervous suddenly, as though I don’t want to say anything else. Perhaps I should leave things as they are, keep Thomas Everard at a distance, get on with my own life, my own job.
But I know now that I cannot do that. And I know that Thomas’s family arrive in just two days’ time. I might not get another chance.
‘Can we meet?’ I ask. The words come out fast and breathless. ‘This evening, in the usual place.’
‘But I thought…’
‘Please,’ I interrupt, almost desperately.
He says nothing, turning back towards the cast, back to directing the play. I can only hope that he will be there.
*
The evenings do not stay as light for as long now we are in early August and I stumble a little on my way to the kitchen garden. I am still clutching His Lordship’s copy of David Copperfield – not that I’ve had much chance to read any of it this summer and not that I could see to read it anymore if I did. I wonder if the other staff notice that I’ve gone, if they wonder what I am doing. I’ve always had a tendency to spend time alone, to disappear with a book whenever I can. That has worked in my favour now.
I am sick with nerves, have been all afternoon and was unable to eat any of my tea.
‘You must eat, Annie,’ Mrs Derbyshire had said. ‘I know it’s hard.’
She thinks that my lack of appetite is down to grief.
The nerves don’t go away as I walk as fast as I can to the kitchen garden. I have no idea if he will be there, or if what I said to him last time we were here has changed his mind about me completely. Alternatively, what I’m about to say might change his mind too – it leaves me looking fickle, unable to make a decision.
But my whole life has changed since we last spoke. Everything is different now.
He is there when I arrive, leaning against the shed blowing smoke rings into the gloomy, sticky air. I watch him for a moment before I say his name.
‘Thomas.’
He turns immediately, dropping his cigarette and standing on it. Ned will know we’ve been here I think to myself, when he sees that stubbed-out cigarette. I realise that I no longer care. I have nothing left to lose.
He walks towards me and stands as close as he can without touching.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I say, my voice a rushed whisper. ‘I want to come to America.’
He doesn’t say anything for a moment and the air stills as though fate itself is making a decision.
And then I feel his hands on my arms, his lips on mine.
He tastes of cigarettes and champagne.
He tastes of my future.