Her Ladyship's Girl (8 page)

But for now I was just in the moment and it was good to be beside Mr Harding, to feel his body close to mine. My breath came faster as he moved his left hand inside my blouse and across my bare
back. I closed my eyes. He kept speaking all the time as if to reassure me and his voice was like velvet as he lowered me down to the carpeted floor. A strange apprehension that wasn’t fear
nor fretfulness came over me, until it felt like I was drowning in expectation, and my breath came in short gasps and my voice sounded like a distant animal – not really a voice, but a feral
whispering. It was growing dark in the library as the evening closed in and Mr Harding was unbuttoning my blouse and I was unbuttoning his shirt. Outside the locked door, I could hear the faint
sounds of my little world and I wondered why nobody had come looking for me yet. Then I remembered it was Mr Ayres who’d sent me up here and I couldn’t help feeling it was all arranged
and everybody knew where I was – lying on the floor in the library with Mr Harding.

I didn’t care. His hands were making patterns on my soul, and his body seemed to know mine so well, even though they’d never met before. All thoughts of who we were and our polarised
stations in life flowed away on the tide of passion and pleasure that was starting to wash over me. Until a rattling of the handle, followed by a loud knocking on the library door, brought me back
to rude reality.

‘William! William, are you in there?’

He stopped and moved himself away from me, with a shushing finger up to his lips. Then he quickly adjusted his clothes and went to the door. I lay motionless, afraid to move on the floor. Mr
Harding turned the key in the lock, and I heard the sound of his wife’s anxious voice.

‘It’s dark in there, William. What were you doing?’

‘Reading. I fell asleep.’

He eased her away from the entrance to the library and closed the door gently behind him. I jumped to my feet and pulled my uniform back into place. I cautiously checked the hallway outside,
before running back downstairs – forgetting completely about the dark reddish stain on the bookcase.

Next day, I was getting funny looks from the other girls and it seemed to me that the whole house knew about the encounter in the library – except for Mrs Harding. And
maybe she did too, for all I knew. Then I remembered the cleaning cloths and vinegar and polish, and I ran up there to retrieve them, but they were gone. And so was the stain. I concluded, in the
cold light of day, that it was lucky for me we were interrupted before any real damage was done, before I lost my maidenhead or even became pregnant. What a lucky escape! I saw Mr Ayres later in
the day, but he said nothing. It was as if there never was a stain on the bookcase and I never went up there to clean it and never met with Mr Harding. As the days passed, I began to think
I’d dreamt it all and it was just wishful thinking on my part – just my vivid imagination from reading too many romantic novels. Life returned to the drudgery of the scullery and the
never-ending scrubbing and scouring.

When domestic servants are portrayed in dramas and books, it’s always about the butler and the cooks and the housemaids and the groundsmen and affairs between the handsome gardener and the
lady of the manor – like in D. H. Lawrence’s
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, or
Jane Eyre
, where the lord of the manor falls in love with his governess. But
there’s never been any books or dramas about a seventeen-year-old scullery maid and the thirty-five-year-old master of the house. It would be a scandal, not a romance, especially in 1935. All
right, things were changing in the external world around the house in Hampstead – the Communist Party was demonstrating in Trafalgar Square and the Greenshirts were marching and throwing
green-painted bricks through windows in Downing Street. But things inside the big houses changed more slowly, and the people who lived behind those impervious walls would have been affronted,
whether trade or thoroughbred. Appalled. Outraged. So no novels were written about us poor skivvies, even though we had feelings like everybody else. We were the lowest of the low – ignored,
stepped over, trodden on and abused.

So what was I thinking of!

Anyway, I put the incident behind me and resolved never to be so foolish again. A few weeks later I was up early as usual and trying to light the monster of a stove. It was a temperamental beast
and you had to treat it with respect or you’d get nowhere fast with it. Little balls of rolled-up newspaper and then just the right amount of kindling and the ritual of drawing, to fetch
enough draught for it all to catch light. Once it had a good flame to it, I’d put on a few heavier logs and then some coal to redden it up and keep it going. I’d just finished and was
about to put the kettle on so Cook and the kitchen maids could have their cup of tea when I heard someone behind me. I thought it was Nora or Biddy down early, but when I turned I saw it was him
– Mr Harding – standing there looking a bit sorry for himself.

The early morning kitchen didn’t have the same ambience as the dimly lit library and I was dirty and busy and I knew Cook would be like a demon if she didn’t have her tea handed to
her as soon as she came through the door. So I wasn’t going to fall under his spell this time, and I resolved to clout him across the forehead with the poker if he tried it on – no
matter what the consequences. But he didn’t come closer, just stood in the doorway and looked at me all doe-eyed.

‘Sorry, Anwyn.’

That’s all he said. I was going to ask what for, but I decided not to say anything in case I inadvertently encouraged him. We stood there, looking at each other in silence for what seemed
like a long time.

‘Sorry.’

He said it a second time and then he was gone, disappeared from the doorway as quickly as he’d appeared. Like a ghost.

Later that day I was summoned to Mr Ayres’s office and he told me they were letting me go. I asked why and he said Mrs Harding wasn’t happy with my work.

T
hey were gracious enough to give me a week’s notice – which I had to work out, of course. All the girls were sympathetic and told me
it wasn’t fair and even Cook had a consoling word for me. Mr Ayres said he’d give me a written reference, and, although it was a catastrophe for me, I was also relieved. No matter what
happened, it would bring a change – and change was what I needed right then. Kathleen found a week-old page of classified ads from
The Times
and she told me to look through it for a
scullery maid vacancy. There weren’t any in there, but I did find one or two for live-in barmaids and I thought I might give that a try instead. But most of them wanted experience and I had
none, except for cleaning lavatories and collecting glasses. I was just about to resign myself to going back to Wales when I saw this –

The address was a private house in Belgravia and not an agency, so I thought I’d give it a try. Anything moaning Mona could do, I could do – I was sure of that. And
it couldn’t possibly be as hard as skivvying. I had nothing to lose. All they could say was no and, if they did, I’d go back to Wales.

I wrote a letter of application in my best handwriting and literary style –

I received a reply on the last Friday of my notice week in Hampstead, just when I was giving up hope. I was invited for interview on the following Monday at 1:00 p.m. precisely.
And so I worked through the weekend, counting the hours until I would have to go along to Belgravia and back up my lies. Though I didn’t consider them to be great lies – not huge, black
lies. No, they were more the product of invention than deliberate deception, and displayed a talent for creative thinking. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time.

Monday morning came and I collected my final week’s wages and added it to the few shillings I had saved. The servant girls all had tears in their eyes, but had to get on with their work
and weren’t given much time to say goodbye. Kathleen hugged me and Biddy kissed me and Nora shook my hand. Cook gave me some food wrapped in a piece of muslin cloth and Mr Ayres gave me a
typed-out reference. I didn’t see Mona or Lilly and I didn’t want to, because they’d only have sneered and said it served me right. But Bart the Brat was waiting outside and he
carried my bag down the street for me and kissed me goodbye on the cheek at the bus stop. It was early in the morning, before the rush and crush started, and I waited for a long time, thinking
about how I’d got myself to here and how this day might shape my future for some time to come.

Kathleen gave me directions and told me the right routes to take and it all seemed a big adventure at my young age of seventeen – all part of the life I was going through. So I waited to
see where the wind of change would blow me. I had to take the trolleybus through Chalk Farm and Primrose Hill, then a number fifteen tram down past Regent’s Park and Hyde Park and another
past Buckingham Palace to Pimlico. The last bus dropped me on the King’s Road and I had to walk the rest of the way. But I was far too early for my appointment, so I sauntered into a tea room
on the corner of Symons Street and Sloane Square. I was lugging my case and looking for a table in amongst the breakfast crowd of people making their way to work and a young nippy in her
black-and-white uniform came over to help me. Tea shop waitresses were known as ‘nippies’ because of the speed at which they nipped between the tables when serving customers.

‘Take this table here, love.’

‘Thank you.’

She looked at my case.

‘Just arrived?’

‘Yes . . . no, not in London. I’m going for a job.’

‘Is that right. Whereabouts?’

‘Chester Square.’

‘Very posh. You want a cuppa?’

‘Yes please.’

She returned with the tea things on a tray. I asked her how much and she said to pay her when I was ready to leave – just in case I wanted to order anything else. I took my time with the
tea because it was only eight o’clock and I had another five hours to go before my appointment. The rush hour passed and things quietened down in the tea shop and the nippy came back over to
my table. The pot was empty now, so she brought another and joined me on her break. She lit a cigarette and asked me if I wanted one.

‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.’

‘What job you going for?’

‘Lady’s maid.’

‘What, in one of them big houses?’

‘I suppose so.’

She looked me up and down and I could see her thinking I was a bit young to be a lady’s maid – and if I couldn’t fool her, how was I going to fool the toffs?

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Is that right?’

She was about seventeen herself and I could tell she was a kindly sort, even if she was savvy with it. I told her I couldn’t pay for too much tea and she said not to worry about it –
it was on the house.

‘What time’s your interview?’

‘One o’clock.’

‘It’s only half ten.’

‘I know.’

‘Let’s me and you go stretch our legs.’

She had a half-hour break before the mid-morning crowd came in. She put my case behind the counter for safety and we set off up Eaton Square, where the houses were white and snobbily superior
and bigger even than the one in Hampstead. They were mostly four storeys high, with attics and steps leading down to the basements and they all had columns and balustrades that leaned imposingly
out over the main road. We turned right into Elizabeth Street and then left into Chester Square. The houses there were almost as impressive as the ones in Eaton Square, but with black railings and
balconies, and the street was less ostentatious and more serene.

We found number twenty-four, where I was due at 1:00 p.m., and we stood on the opposite side and looked over at it. There was no sign of life and I was afraid someone might be peering out
through a window and spot me staring and recognise me when I came calling later in the day. They’d probably think I wasn’t the full shilling, so I said we should move on.

We walked up to Eccleston Street then turned into the other end of Eaton Square and headed back down towards the tea shop. The nippy told me her name was Lucy and I said I was Anwyn and she
asked what would I do if I didn’t get the job.

‘Go back to Wales, I suppose.’

‘And do you want to?’

‘Not really.’

She said I should come back to the tea shop if my interview was unsuccessful. They were looking for a girl and I seemed like the type who would fit in well.

‘But, Lucy, I have nowhere to live.’

She lived with her family down in Bermondsey and travelled up here on the tram every day to work. I could share her room with her and we’d be company for each other on the way. I was
slightly sorry I’d applied for the lady’s maid job now, because the tea shop seemed like more fun. But if I hadn’t gone for it in the first place, I wouldn’t be here now
– kismet? Or
wyrd
, to put it the old Welsh way. And there was little chance of me being taken on, so I thought I might as well keep the appointment – for the experience.