A Countess Below Stairs (4 page)

‘Any difficulties?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Anna.

‘Not really,’ said Louise reluctantly. ‘Except for that bloomin’ dog following her about. She’s as green as they come, of course, but she hasn’t stopped, not for a minute. And I must say you don’t have to tell her anything twice.’

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On her third day at Mersham Anna discovered that the butler, so regal and authoritative in the servants’ hall, suffered from a bedridden and deeply eccentric mother, with whom he shared a cottage in the stable block.

She had spent the whole day in the windowless scullery washing, piece by exquisite piece, the Meissen dinner service - a tedious and frighteningly responsible job with which Proom, rather to his own surprise, had entrusted her. Seeing her pallor and the circles under her eyes, Mis Park had sent her out to the kitchen garden with a message for the under-gardener, Ted.

Anna was on her way back, crossing the stableyard, when a pot of geraniums flew out of an upstairs window and crashed into pieces at her feet. Retrieving the remains of the shattered pot and going to investigate, she found herself in the presence of an ancient, ferocious old lady, glaring like a beleagured ferret at the end of a high brass bed. Mrs Proom’s appendix, removed ten years earlier in Maidens Over Cottage Hospital, stood in a glass jar on a shelf above her head; various lumps under the counterpane indicated that she had taken the silver to bed in case of burglars.

‘Who are you? Why are you dressed like that? Where’s Cyril? I want my tea!’ she began.

‘I am dressed like this because I am a housemaid. Mr Proom is decanting the claret and I will bring your tea if you permit,’ Anna replied.

Half an hour later, Mr Proom, noticing with foreboding the remains of the broken flowerpot and wearily ascending the stairs to his mother’s room, found her absorbed in a game of dominoes in which the new housemaid was cheating, with an expertise which shattered him, so as to let the old lady win.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mother,’ he began.

‘Sh! Be quiet, Cyril. I don’t need you,’ said the old woman, gleefully moving a piece.

Only when Anna had left did she ask again: ‘Who is that girl? Why is she dressed like that?’

‘I’ve told you, she’s the new housemaid, Mother.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Mrs Proom.

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Anna had been at Mersham for a week before she met the first member of the family. In addition to the Lady Mary Westerholme, the dowager countess, Mersham had for many years provided sanctuary for the present earl’s great uncle, the Honourable Mr Sebastien Frayne. It being Louise’s day off, Anna was instructed to take up his tea.

‘You want to listen outside the door,’ Peggy told Anna. ‘There’ll be some music playing on the gramophone. If it’s that stuff all loud an’ wailin’ an’ women shrieking and that, you want to watch out. Specially there’s one called the Libby’s Tott or something. If he’s playing that you want to keep the tray between you an’ him and put it down and run quick. But if it’s that stuff that sounds like church, you know, all on the level and not much tune, then it’s all right to have a chat. Not that it’s ever more than a bit of a pinch and a grope, but you not being used to it like…’

It was with a sinking heart that Anna, pausing outside Mr Sebastien’s door, heard the unmistakable sound of the Liebestod issuing forth. Isolde was dying and she was dying hard. Bravely, Anna knocked and entered.

Mr Sebastien Frayne was reclining on a large Chesterfield, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his hands folded over a large stomach. He was close on eighty and seldom left his room, which resembled the den of a musical badger, strewn with manuscript paper, ashtrays, music stands and books. There was egg on his dressing gown and his white hair was dotted with cigarette ash, but the eyes he turned to the door were the blue and candid eyes of a child.

‘I have brought you your tea, sir,’ said Anna, above the soaring voice of the soprano issuing from the huge horn.

Mr Sebastien’s eyes gleamed. A new maid. At first sight unpromising in her absence of curves, but on closer inspection not unpromising at all. In fact intriguing. How did she manage to get a dimple in a face so thin?

‘Put the tray down here,’ said Mr Sebastien craftily, moving closer to the edge of the sofa and patting the low table beside him.

Anna advanced. Suddenly the music surged and gathered force, its leitmotif transfigured in one of Wagner’s brilliant changes of key and, as the bereaved soprano prepared to fall ecstatically upon her lover’s corpse, Anna gave a deep sigh and said, ‘Oh, say what you will, but it is beautiful.’

Mr Sebastien looked at her sharply, his seduction campaign of tired lecheries momentarily forgotten.

Anna was standing in the middle of the room, the tea tray clasped to her breast, her huge, peat-coloured eyes shining. ‘Who is it singing? Not Tettrazini, I think?’

‘Johanna Gadski,’ said Mr Sebastien. The best Isolde in the world, without a doubt.’

‘My father didn’t care for Wagner. He found it too excited.’ The music had made Anna dangerously forget her status. ‘He and Chaliapin used to argue and argue.’

‘Come here,’ said Mr Sebastien, his eyes razor-sharp under the bushy white brows.

She came forward and put down the tray. The music was mesmerizing her; she had turned to the gramophone like a plant turns to the light. Now she was right beside him. He could put an arm round her waist, pull her down on to the sofa, give her a kiss…

‘Stay and listen,’ said Mr Sebastien, not touching her, ‘it’s nearly over. Sit down.’

‘I must not sit down,’ said Anna. ‘I am the maid.’ Even Wagner could not efface the thought of Selina Strickland’s views on a maid sitting down in the presence of her employers. But the music held her and, caught in its toll, she compromised and slipped to her knees beside the sofa, her elbows resting on the arm.

When it was over she sighed deeply and turned to him, her face mirroring the drowned look of someone returning from another world. ‘It is kind of you to let me listen,’

she said. ‘It is hard to live without music.’

‘There is no need at all for you to do so,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘I have a good collection of records. I would be delighted to play you anything you choose.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Were you a professional musician?’ she asked.

‘I wanted to be,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘I played the piano and the cello and composed a bit. I think young Rupert gets his love of music from me. But they wouldn’t let me. In those days, the aristocracy wouldn’t let their sons do anything sensible and I was too feeble to rebel.’

‘Oh, I know, it is monstrous!’ said Anna. ‘I also have suffered in this way. I wanted so much to be a ballet dancer and they would not let me. Although,’ she went on, anxious to be fair, ‘it would not have been possible in any case because my toes were not of equal length.’

‘I have some ballet music also,’ said Mr Sebastien craftily. ‘Casse Noisette … The Sleeping Beauty …’

‘And Stravinsky, do you have? Is it recorded already? The Rite of Spring?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘In my opinion The Rite of Spring is a work totally lacking in melody or sense.’

‘But no! Anna’s cry rent the air. For a moment it looked as though, Selina Strickland notwithstanding, she would stamp her foot. ‘It is not true. One must be modern!’

‘If to be modern is to be cacophonous, discordant and obscure,‘began Mr Sebastien…

Battle, most enjoyable, was joined.

Anna, coming down half an hour later, fearful of a reprimand, was greeted by an interested cluster of faces. The Russian girl was flushed and she was muttering beneath her breath.

‘He grabbed you, then,’ said Peggy. ‘Well, I warned you.’

‘No, no, he did not touch me,’ said Anna absently. Then the full impact of what she had just said hit her. ‘It is because I am not pretty!’ she said tragically.

And Mrs Park, who had taken less than twenty-four hours to forget that Anna was a foreigner and a lady, said, ‘Now don’t be foolish, dear. Just drink your tea.’

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For the Dowager Countess of Westerholme, Proom, who had stood behind her chair as second footman when she came to Mersham as a bride, would probably have laid down his life. Nevertheless, when about ten days after Anna’s arrival he was told by Alice, the dowager’s maid, that someone was to go to the village and inform Mr Firkin, the sexton, that his deceased wife did not want him to give away his top hat, he was not pleased.

The dowager was a small, vague woman in her fifties with silver hair, wide grey eyes and a penchant for the kind of tea gowns and flowing chiffon scarves which so often seem to go with a belief in spiritualism. Though somewhat lacking in intellect, she was a deeply kind and compassionate person who bore with fortitude the fact that none of the dauntingly trivial messages which she faithfully took down in automatic writing, came either from her revered husband or adored eldest son. Of late, instead, her boudoir had turned into a kind of clearing house in which the Deceased, unable to bypass so willing a recipient, made their wishes clear to her. And as often ‘ as not, these involved posting off to the vicar or the grocer or the undertaker with letters marked URGENT in the dowager’s sprawling hand.

‘I can’t spare any of the men today,’ Proom told Alice. ‘We’ve got all the pictures in the long gallery to re-hang and the music room’s not started yet.’

‘Well, someone’s got to go,’ said Alice.

‘Why don’t you send the tweeny,’ said Louise, who was mixing furniture polish in the pantry opposite. ‘She’s nutty on fresh air and it’d get that dratted dog out of the house for a bit.’

Entering the dowager’s drawing room half an hour later, Anna found herself in a familiar world. Her own mother’s apartments had contained just such a clutter of occasional tables, potted plants, embroidered screens and piled-up magazines. Only the planchettes and astral charts were different.

‘Come in, my dear. You’re the Russian girl, aren’t you? Now I want you to take a very important message. It’s for Mr Firkin, the sexton. Can you find his house, do you think? It’s just opposite the church with the walnut tree in the garden.’

‘Yes, my lady, I’m sure I can.’

‘Good. Now I want you to tell him that a message has just come through from his wife. At least I think it must be his wife. She said her name was Hilda and I’m sure Mr Firkin’s wife was called Hilda. Yes, I know she was because …’ She broke off and began to rummage in her escritoire. ‘Now where was I?’

‘You were going to give me a letter, my lady.’

‘That’s right; here it is. The poor woman really sounded desperately worried. For some reason she cannot bear the idea of him giving away his top hat. It’s strange how these things seem to go on mattering, even on the Other Side.’

Anna took the letter and bent to pick up the scarf that had slipped from the dowager’s shoulders. She was rewarded by a charming smile which changed, suddenly, to a look of intense scrutiny.

‘My goodness! Really that is most remarkable. Just stand over there, dear, where I can see you properly.’

Puzzled, Anna went to stand by the window.

‘Most unusual, really, quite amazing. You can be very, very, proud.’

‘Proud of what, my lady?’

‘Your aura. It’s one of the purest and most beautiful I’ve seen. Especially the orange. Only it isn’t orange so much as flame. But a very gentle flame. Like candlelight. Like starlight, even.’ She broke off. ‘Oh dear! What is the matter? What have I said?’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Anna, wiping away the sudden tears. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s something my father used to call me. I will go and find Mr Firkin straight away.’

Forgetting, for once in her life, to curtsy, Anna fled.

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And so, day by day, Mersham yielded to the energy and attack of its staff and grew more beautiful. The shutters were thrown open to the light, Ted brought tubs of poinsettias and lilies into the house. The silver table pieces, burnished by James to unbelievable perfection, were returned to the state dining room, the freshly washed chandeliers sparkled in the sunlight. The men took their liveries out of mothballs; new aprons were assigned to the maids.

Till, on a hot night in mid-June, Anna, who had that day polished the one hundred and thirty-seven banister rails of the great staircase, crawled along the interminable parquet floor of the long gallery with her tin of beeswax and turpentine and beaten fifteen Persian rugs, opened her attic window, leant her weary head on her arms and said to the absent earl:

‘It is ready now. You can come.’

And the next day, he came.

CHAPTER TWO

He came down by car, driving himself in the old black Daimler that had been his father’s and as the familiar landmarks appeared, his apprehension increased.

Rupert had neither wanted nor expected to inherit Mersham or the burdens of the title. It was George who had had all the makings of a landowner and a country gentleman: outgoing, debonair George whose bones now lay deep in the soil of Flanders. Rupert had seen his beautiful home as a place of refuge to which he might occasionally return, buthisambitionshadlainelsewhere: in scholarship, in music - above all in travel. The high, wild and undiscovered places of the world had been the stuff of Rupert’s dreams all through his childhood. That being so, it had been no hardship to grow up in his brother’s shadow. Shadows are cool and peaceful places for those whose minds are overstocked with treasure.

Rupert’s three years at Cambridge had seemed a glorious preparation for just such a life. He took a First in history and was invited by his tutor, a brilliant madman who specialized in North Asian Immortality Rites, to join him in a field trip to the Karakorum.

Instead, the autumn of 1914 saw Rupert in the Royal Flying Corps, one of a handful of young pilots who took off in dilapidated BE2s from airfields conjured up in a few hours out of fields of stubble, bivouacked between flights in haystacks and ditches. Two years later, when George was killed at Ypres, Rupert was in command of a squadron flying Camels and Berguets against Immelmann and the aces of the German Reich. The chance that he would survive to inherit Mersham seemed so remote that he scarcely thought of it.