Authors: The Companion
Ann Granger (2 page)
‘What do you mean, a fresh one? It is an accident, then?’ I demanded of the workman.
‘They found a woman’s body,’ he returned with relish. ‘’Orribly murdered. She was in one of the ‘ouses they’re pulling down. They found ’er body hid under an old bedstead as was in there. She’d been there a few weeks, they reckon. She was as green as a cabbage and the rats—’
I felt myself blanch as the cabbie snapped, ‘That’s enough!’ and cut short any further unwelcome details.
But I think he was well satisfied that the few provided had proved too much even for my composure. He gave me a look which clearly added, ‘And serve you right, miss, for showing such an unladylike acquaintance with matters you ought to know nothing of!’
My loss of face was saved by the police constable who had been holding back the traffic. ‘Come along, there!’ he shouted at us.
The delay was over. Mr Slater scrambled back on to his perch and whistled to his horse and we went on our way.
I settled back, replacing on the seat beside me my hatbox which had fallen to the floor, and tried to put the workman’s grisly description from my mind. But in its place came the image of that other body I’d seen carted away in a similar rough and ready fashion, all those years ago. That, of course, had not been
murder. Or perhaps it depended on how you looked at it. As far as my father was concerned it might as well have been.
murder. Or perhaps it depended on how you looked at it. As far as my father was concerned it might as well have been.
I forced both memories away, although I couldn’t but reflect it was a violent introduction to London. I thought again of the scraps of curtain material fluttering in the breeze atop the bricks and the broken woodwork. Where had all the people gone? I wondered. Those who had lived in the demolished houses? Had they been given any say in their eviction? Probably not. They had been cleared away in the name of the unstoppable progress of the Railway Age and they had left behind something dreadful indeed.
The horse had broken into a brisk trot. The traffic was thinner and we were in a much smarter part of town, passing down residential streets fronted with elegant dwellings and turning at last into a quadrangle lined by town houses looking out over a grassed area. It was as though we had stepped aside from the hustle and bustle into a world where life moved at an altogether more manageable pace. We drew up before one of the houses.
Mr Slater appeared to open the door and assist me to alight. ‘This is the house, is it?’ he enquired as if I might have misdirected him. ‘Very smart. If ever I come into a fortune, which is not very likely, I should live in an ’ouse like this one. But, as they say, the probability of that is not very.’
His tone was philosophical. The horse blew gustily through its nostrils.
‘And what might you be going to do here, then?’ asked Mr Slater.
It seemed Mrs Parry had been right to warn me that London cabmen could be impertinent with single ladies. I opened my mouth to tell him it was none of his business, but I caught such a quizzical look in his eye that I burst out laughing instead.
‘I am to be paid companion to the lady of the house, Mr Slater.’
He sucked his yellow teeth and the horse stamped impatiently on the cobbles, striking a spark from its iron shoe.
‘I hope it may suit,’ said the cabman gravely.
‘Thank you, Mr Slater. Now, could you bring my bag, please?’
‘Very prettily put,’ he returned. ‘You’re a young lady what takes the trouble to be polite to a cabbie. That shows a very pleasant nature, to my mind, even if you do take a funny sort of interest in the lately departed. You know what?’ he concluded. ‘You’re a rare one, you are. That’s my opinion. You’re a rare one.’
He seized my bag, stomped over to the front door and rapped loudly with the knocker.
As footsteps approached across a tiled floor on the other side, the cabman suddenly added in a hoarse whisper, ‘Seems to me you’re all alone in London, miss. If you ever need help, you send a message to Wally Slater at King’s Cross cabstand. Anyone there will pass it on.’
I was so surprised by this offer that I had no answer and no time to wonder what had prompted it before the door opened.
THE GUARDIAN of the door was a butler of daunting impassivity. He received the news of who I was without comment and cast the barest glance at my plain walking dress and sensible laced Balmoral boots before directing me into the hall, there to wait one moment while he paid the cabman.
I could not see them from inside the house but I heard Wally Slater’s cheery, ‘That’ll do it!’ and, as the door was closed again, his whistle to his horse and the clatter and rumble of the growler’s departure. I felt that although I had been so short a time in London I had made – and been parted from – a friend.
I had taken the few minutes alone to look about me with a lively curiosity. The house appeared expensively furnished in the latest taste, as far as I could tell. My knowledge of such things was limited. There was a good deal of Turkey carpeting which I knew to cost a pretty penny. I’d struggled to find money to replace our parlour carpet at home and been obliged to settle for something much more modest. A profusion of plants grew in ornate jardinières. The walls were crowded with some, to my mind, out-of-place paintings of Highland cattle incongruously jostling watercolours of the Italian Lakes. Mingled scents of beeswax and pot-pourri combined with a lingering background presence which I identified when I saw the gas jet projecting from the wall. This was modernity indeed. We’d had nothing but candles and lamps at home. A long-case clock ticked quietly in a corner.
‘If you would follow me, miss?’ The butler was back, staring at me still without a flicker of any emotion. ‘Mrs Parry will receive you in her private sitting room.’
This sounded immensely grand. I was by now on the way to being a little overawed as well as tired from my journey.
I would afterwards go up and down that staircase many times and know it to be a short journey, but following the butler on the afternoon of my arrival in Dorset Square it seemed in the nature of a lengthy progress. He took his time and I was obliged to fit my step to match his. I wondered whether he always moved at such a snail’s pace and if it was due only to the seniority of his position on the staff or if, indeed, he was giving me time to observe my surroundings and be impressed. We abandoned my luggage in the hall; how pathetic and worn my bag and hatbox looked seen from above! I averted my eyes in embarrassment.
I had leisure to take in a gallery of more paintings on the walls. One or two were quite nice sketches of Italian scenes but, as below in the hall, they were inappropriately interspersed with moody Highland cattle and blue hills in a purple mist. There were no family portraits. Perhaps they were elsewhere. More jardinières littered the landing with more leafy fronds sprouting from them; and a statue on a pedestal reaching as tall as I was. It was the figure of a turbaned youth holding aloft a branch of candles with a graceful arm. The candelabrum-bearer’s sightless eyes were fixed on me, his full lips curved in a crescent. I felt quite grateful for that bronze smile.
The butler’s ploy had worked and by the time we reached the door of the first-floor sitting room I can’t say I had the impulse to flee – I had, after all, nowhere to run to – but I was apprehensive as to what I’d find. But as soon as I entered the room there was a rustle of silk and a small, stout but very lively woman scurried to meet me and embrace me warmly.
‘There you are, dear Elizabeth! Did you have a good journey? Was the railway carriage clean? There is always such a risk of
smuts from the engine to say nothing of having holes burned in your clothing by flying cinders.’
smuts from the engine to say nothing of having holes burned in your clothing by flying cinders.’
She looked me up and down anxiously for signs of damage.
She was a good deal younger than I had imagined she would be, scarcely three or four and forty. As I knew her husband had been a contemporary of my father’s, I had expected her to be much of an age with him. Her skin was very smooth, unlined and of that creamy quality which is sometimes found among country girls. Her hair was smoothed to either side of the central parting and mostly hidden beneath a frilled lace cap, just a glimpse of chestnut curls escaping at the nape of her neck. Though her figure was far from fashionable, her clothing came from the hand of an excellent dressmaker and, taken altogether, the impression was of an attractive woman of a certain age.
‘I am quite all right, ma’am, and thank you for your kind enquiry.’
My apprehension on the staircase had vanished. I did however feel as though I was being assailed on all sides. The sitting room was as cluttered with knick-knacks and pictures as the hall and stair walls. It was a bright day in late May and, though cool, not really cold. Yet a coal fire crackled in the hearth making the room, to my mind, overheated. Coming from a household where the decision to light the fire was taken daily on the basis of first assessing the temperature outside and the likelihood of being chilled to the bone inside, this seemed wasteful to me. But the sight of the coals was cheery. They also made me wonder where they had been mined and if by some chance they, like me, had made the journey from Derbyshire.
‘First we shall have some tea,’ Mrs Parry said as she urged me towards a chair. ‘I have told Simms to bring the tray as soon as you arrived. You must be very thirsty and very hungry. We dine at eight. Can you wait until eight?’ She peered at me. ‘Shall I ask Simms to bring some light meal as well as cake? Say, a pair of poached eggs?’
I assured her I could wait until eight and a slice of cake was all I needed.
She seemed rather doubtful about it, but cheered up when the butler reappeared, greeting the appearance of the tea tray with cries of delight and clapping of her podgy hands. For all the tray was a monster of its kind laden with two kinds of cake, seed and sponge, and a dish covered with a silver lid, Simms, still without flickering a muscle of his face, managed it dexterously. When he had set it down, he swept off the silver lid to reveal a stack of hot muffins dripping butter.
‘Only a plain tea,’ confided Mrs Parry. ‘But after your journey I dare say you are ready for almost anything.’
I was beginning to suspect I would need to be ready for almost anything in this house, and that food and the associated meals played rather an important role in Mrs Parry’s day. She certainly ate more of the muffins and cake than I did, all the time urging me not to be shy and dabbing her chin with her napkin to catch the trickles of melted butter. At last she sat back with a satisfied sigh and I saw that she was going to turn to business.
‘Now, Elizabeth, as my late husband’s god-daughter you are quite a member of the family already and not just a paid companion like—’ She broke off for a merest second before going on smoothly, ‘Some young women.’
I was sure that she had been about to say something else and wondered what it was that some prudence had made her decide to keep from me, at least for the time being. But I realised this was the moment to express my very real gratitude to her in offering me a home at a time when my situation had become desperate.
‘Now, now, my dear,’ said Mrs Parry, patting my hand. ‘I could not do less. Mr Parry always spoke well of your late papa – although lamenting his lack of a sound head for money. He was sorry, I know, that your father having set up as a medical man in such an out-of-the-way part of the country prevented him from visiting.’
I was not sure whether she meant that my father should have visited or that the late Mr Parry should have done so. Either way, I didn’t consider that Derbyshire was so very far out of the way, but Mr Parry’s business would have given him as little time to travel as my father’s calling gave him no time at all. Mr Parry, I knew because my father had told me, had made a good deal of money importing exotic fabrics from all corners of the world and also by some subsequent shrewd if unspecific investments. He had certainly left his widow comfortable.
‘I have given some thought,’ said Mrs Parry now, ‘to what you are to call me. In the circumstances, I have decided on Aunt Parry.’ She beamed.
I was embarrassed but thanked her.
‘Naturally,’ she went on, ‘you shall live here as a member of the family. But because you will need to keep up appearances, I realise you will require pin money and besides, you will also hold the position of my companion. You have no money of your own, do you, my dear?’ she added sympathetically.
I could only shake my head.
‘Then, shall we say …’ She ran a skilled eye over me. ‘Forty pounds a year?’
It was no fortune but I had not to pay for my food and lodging and I should be able to manage if I practised a little thrift. Although, if I was to ‘keep up appearances’, it might involve a good deal of thrift.
I thanked her again and asked a little nervously what my duties would entail.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Aunt Parry vaguely, ‘to read to me and make up a four at whist. You do play whist?’ She leaned forward to await my answer.
‘I know how to play,’ I said cautiously.
‘Good, good! I see from your letters to me that you have a neat hand. I am in need of someone to write my letters, a secretary. I find the keeping up of correspondence very wearisome. You shall
accompany me whenever necessary and be in this house when I receive visitors; perhaps run a few little errands, that sort of thing.’
accompany me whenever necessary and be in this house when I receive visitors; perhaps run a few little errands, that sort of thing.’
Mrs Parry stopped, eyed the remains of the sponge cake and appeared to enter into an inward struggle.
It occurred to me that I was going to earn my forty pounds a year. It sounded as if I would have little time to myself.
‘And talk to me,’ said Mrs Parry suddenly. ‘I do hope you are a good conversationalist, Elizabeth.’
I was immediately struck dumb but nodded, I hoped convincingly.
‘Now, I expect you would like to rest. Are your gowns quite hopelessly crushed in your trunks? Have you one that Nugent can iron out before dinner? I’ll tell her to go along to your room and collect it directly.’
‘Is there to be company at dinner, Mrs—Aunt Parry?’ I was beginning to worry, conscious of the meagre contents of my one bag.
‘It’s Tuesday,’ said Mrs Parry. ‘So Dr Tibbett will be with us. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the dear doctor’s evenings to dine here. He is not a medical doctor like your papa but a man of the cloth and most distinguished. Frank is still in town so he’ll be there, too. He knows I don’t like his choosing Tuesdays or Thursdays to dine with his friends. Poor boy, he is at the Foreign Office, you know.’
‘I didn’t – I mean, is Frank your son, Aunt Parry? Forgive my ignorance.’
‘No, dear, Frank is my nephew, my unfortunate sister Lucy’s boy. She married a Major Carterton who suffered a sad addiction to the gaming tables. Frank, like you, was left with nothing but, as I said, he’s making his way at the Foreign Office and there is talk that he will shortly be going abroad. If so, I do hope it will not be anywhere too hot or too cold, or anywhere dangerous. Besides, the food, you know, is very strange in far-flung corners of the world. They eat quite disgusting things and season it all with
peculiar condiments. While in London he generally makes his home here where he is at least able to enjoy a good English table.’
peculiar condiments. While in London he generally makes his home here where he is at least able to enjoy a good English table.’
Aunt Parry heaved a sigh and, giving way to temptation, helped herself to a final slice of cake.
Simms, the butler, had reappeared silently at some point during the latter part of the conversation.
He said, ‘If you would follow me, miss?’
He led me up to the next floor, along a corridor and indicated a door. ‘Your room, miss.’
That was to be it. He left me there and I opened the door. Someone was already there ahead of me, a sharp-faced woman in a drab dark grey gown of intimidating respectability. She had taken my clothes from the bag and laid them all out flat on the bed. She straightened up from this task as I entered and turned to face me.
‘I’m Nugent, miss, Mrs Parry’s personal maid.’
‘Thank you, Nugent,’ I said, ‘for unpacking my things. That’s very kind of you.’
It was also extremely embarrassing. She could hardly have missed the darns in my stockings, the scorch mark on one gown resulting from an instance of carelessness when a rapid movement had caused the crinoline supporting the fabric to swing too close to the fire, to say nothing of the fact that a tartan cotton gown had been painstakingly unpicked, the material turned, and the whole reassembled to serve another day. But if Nugent thought my wardrobe scanty and well worn she didn’t show it.
‘Shall I press this one, miss?’ She held up my best gown which I had intended keeping for special occasions.
‘Yes, please do,’ I said meekly.
Nugent whisked away with my gown over her arm. She had left in the bottom of the bag my few personal possessions. I took out my hairbrush and comb and a little ivory-backed hand mirror and set them out on the dressing table. The table itself was of old-fashioned style dating, I guessed, from the middle of the previous
century. It had originally been a pretty piece with marquetry inlay but several pieces of the pattern of flowers in a cornucopia were missing. I guessed that its dated look and dilapidated state had led to its being banished to this room for use by the companion. I put out next the little japanned box which contained my few trinkets; I could hardly call them jewels. I had only an amber necklace and a little ruby ring, both of which had belonged to my mother.
century. It had originally been a pretty piece with marquetry inlay but several pieces of the pattern of flowers in a cornucopia were missing. I guessed that its dated look and dilapidated state had led to its being banished to this room for use by the companion. I put out next the little japanned box which contained my few trinkets; I could hardly call them jewels. I had only an amber necklace and a little ruby ring, both of which had belonged to my mother.
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