On a Clear Day (31 page)

The excitements and surprises of her birthday left Clare quite unprepared for a surprise of a quite different kind only a few weeks after her first visit to Drumsollen House.

When she got home from school on the Friday, Robert passed on a message from John Wiley. Could Clarey help June out by going up to the house an hour earlier in the morning? There must be something on, but as John had Senator Richardson in the car when he ran up to the forge and was in a great hurry to be somewhere or other by three o’clock, he wasn’t able to give any details.

Clare set Robert’s alarm clock for herself, had a quick breakfast and left him still in bed. She arrived at Drumsollen by seven-thirty and found the kitchen warm and June already baking.

‘What’s up, June?’ she asked as she took off her coat.

‘Oh, bad news, Clarey. Andrew’s Uncle Edward’s died of a heart attack an’ the funeral’s at two-thirty at Grange Church. We’ve got forty for tea around four o’clock and there’ll be some staying overnight. The Missus hasn’t told me about that yet. She gave me a list of the scones and cakes she wanted last night that she might well have given me yesterday mornin’.’

‘But, why isn’t Edward being buried in Caledon where he lives?’

‘Family vault,’ replied June shortly, as Clare donned her apron and cap. ‘Are you any good at making sandwiches?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Not bad,’ Clare replied honestly. ‘I have an aunt in the championship class. She’s taught me a thing or two.’

‘Thank God for that. I hate making them,’ June admitted unsmiling, as she began to grease baking trays. ‘Could you go and dust and tidy the drawing room and dining room now, before the Missus is up. You can dust the guest bedrooms while I give them their breakfast an’ find out which ones she wants. After that, it’ll take the pair of us all our time to get the food done and the rooms set up for four o’clock.’

June had forgotten she hadn’t taken her to see the ‘big rooms’, as she called them, the previous
Saturday, but one look at her face told Clare she was just about coping. With only herself to help, it was hardly surprising she was anxious about the amount to be done.

She collected up her cleaning equipment and made her way cautiously up the nearby wooden stairs, past the maid’s pantry and the estate office and on into the front hall.

‘My goodness,’ she whispered to herself, as she looked around in amazement. Lit by two tall windows and a fanlight over the massive front door, the hall was as large as the bigger classrooms in Beresford Row, rooms that had once been the sitting rooms of the gentry.

From the walls, previous generations of Richardsons in heavy gilt frames looked down on a Pembroke table covered with glossy magazines and decorated with a massive table centre of cut glass positioned exactly below a chandelier of the same design.

All the doors leading out of the hall lay open revealing yet more ancestors filling up the wall space in the heavily-furnished drawing room and dining room. A smaller room, only a little larger than the big kitchen at the Grange, its walls completely clothed in bookcases full of leather-backed volumes of all shapes and sizes, had a smoking fire in the grate and a table already laid for breakfast overlooking the garden.

Clare turned away and got to work on the huge, empty drawing room. At least there was space to move around and there was somewhere to put the statuettes in plaster and bronze, the silver dishes and ewers, the bizarre carvings in very dark wood, the cases of coins, and the displays of medals while she did her dusting. Unlike the cluttered guest bedrooms, not every inch of dust-laden surface was covered with the acquisitions of former centuries.

With a sideways glance at a full length portrait of Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who appeared to be watching her, Clare gathered up the scattered remnants of dead flowers that had shed their wrinkled leaves all across the floor and scattered pollen and sticky residues on the tables where they’d stood. She turned to the hearth. The ash had already been removed but the fire had not yet been laid. She swept up a fall of damp soot and passed on. Her hands numb with cold already, she worked her way round the massive pieces of furniture just as the smell of bacon and eggs wafted up from the kitchen below.

‘Poor old June,’ she said softly, figuring out how much work June must have done before she’d even arrived.

She listened carefully at the drawing room door. She didn’t much care for being an unseen and unknown creature referred to as ‘staff’, but she wasn’t going to let June down. Not a sound.
She walked briskly into the dining room, shutting the door behind her.

‘If I’m required to be invisible, then invisible I shall be,’ she said firmly, to a hard-faced woman with sausage-shaped ringlets and a powder blue gown, who loured down at her from the wall over the yards-long sideboard.

The morning sun was just beginning to slant through the tall windows overlooking the garden. To her surprise, there was still real warmth in its rays and she paused for a few moments in a patch of light, grateful to escape the deep chill of the unheated room. It was then that she heard voices, a man, soft-spoken and indistinct, and a woman whom it would have been impossible not to hear, her tone so high and clear.

‘Thank you, Mrs Wiley. Mr Richardson will serve for us. I’ve made a list of those who have to stay overnight. I’m afraid my daughter-in-law is not coping at all, despite the generous domestic help she has, so we’ll have to rally round instead. I hope that girl of yours is doing her stuff. There are five couples and perhaps …’

The voice was cut off as they went into the morning room and shut the door.

‘Doing my stuff,’ Clare repeated, mimicking the high tone, as she wiped the tiles of the fireplace and brushed up the sawdust that had fallen from the enormous wicker log basket.

After what she’d heard, she could have made up her own mind about the Missus even without June’s sharp comments. All she can think about is her daughter-in-law’s failure to run her Caledon home as a hotel for the weekend. How dare she say she
wasn’t coping
when the poor woman’s second husband had just dropped dead, in his early fifties. Her own son, too.

She finished the room, made sure all was quiet outside in the hall and retreated at speed to the kitchen. June was nowhere to be seen, but there was a stack of mixing bowls and dishes by the sink and a mouth-watering smell of baking scones from the oven. She got stuck in to the washing up and had just finished when June reappeared.

She dropped down into a chair, sniffed the air and jumped to her feet again.

‘That was close, Clarey. Another few minutes and they’d have burnt,’ she said, as she unhooked the cooling racks from the wall.

‘No they wouldn’t, June. If you hadn’t come when you did I was going to look at them. But don’t they drop if you open the oven door too soon?’

‘They do indeed. Good girl yerself for thinking of that. You always think about things, don’t you?’

‘I try,’ said Clare, honestly. ‘I think the Missus is asking too much of you, June, but if you want to do this tea party I’m sure we can manage between us.’

June nodded and began transferring the fresh
scones to the wire cooler. Clare watched for a moment, then took up a tray and followed suit.

‘It’s not the Missus I’m doin’ it for,’ June began. ‘It’s poor Mrs Edward. That woman’s had nothing but bad luck in her life an’ she’s a good sort. An’ sure Edward was a good-hearted man hi’self. He’d never a cross word for me when I was only a house maid and made my mistakes as we all do. No, it’s not for the Missus, Clarey. To tell you the truth, if it wasn’t for the Senator I’d look for an easier billet with decent hours. I’m not fussy. I’d go to the apple peeling up at Gillis if I could be sure they’d have enough work the year round.’

‘I wouldn’t blame you. You’re doing about three people’s work here.’

June nodded and smiled for the first time that morning. She was about to say something else when she dropped a scone.

‘It’s an ill wind,’ she laughed, gathering up the warm fragments onto a clean plate. ‘Here, love, put a bit of butter and jam on that one and eat it up before you do the bedrooms. It wou’d freeze you up there.’

Despite the news that forty guests had become fifty, the preparations for tea went well. June produced tray after tray of scones, fairy cakes and rock cakes. She creamed and iced a couple of sponge cakes and buttered batches of fruit tea
bread while Clare set up a sandwich production unit that would have done credit to her aunt.

A little before three-thirty, John Wiley, in his best suit, put his head round the kitchen door and said that the Richardsons were back and he was away to collect some other mourners who had come to the service in hired cars.

‘But it’s not near four o’clock. They told me four,’ June cried, as John disappeared.

She turned hastily to the kitchen table, reached out for the next silver salver of sandwiches to take upstairs and let out a howl of pain.

‘June, what’s wrong?’ cried Clare in alarm, as June fell against the table and slid to the floor.

‘I’m all right,’ she gasped, tears of pain springing to her eyes, as Clare fell to her knees beside her. ‘My own fault entirely,’ she went on, ‘I’ve twisted my ankle on that damned bad bit of floor. It’s been like that for years, as if I didn’t know. My own fault, my own fault,’ she muttered, as tears streamed down her face.

Clare helped her to sit up with her back to the leg of the table. Then she ran cold water on a clean tea towel.

‘Here, try that, while I make an icepack.’

As Clare knocked ice cubes from the tray, she heard June use the chair to struggle to her feet. She turned round and saw her standing on one foot, holding on to the table.

‘Is there a bag I can put these in, June?’ she asked.

‘Aye. Muslin one,’ she said, with an effort. ‘With the jam making stuff. Bottom right,’ she said, lowering herself on to the chair, her leg stuck out in front of her.

She winced as Clare put the bag of ice against her ankle. She leant her head in her hands despairingly.

‘What in the name o’ goodness will we do now? I can’t put it t’ the groun’ it’s that sore.’

‘Nothing for it, June. I’ll have to take the rest of the stuff up and pour the tea, unless some of the women offer to do it. It’s not your fault. It was an accident. Could you manage to finish buttering the scones if I take up the sandwiches?’

June nodded weakly and let Clare help her turn back to the table.

‘I don’t know what she’ll say if she sees you,’ she said anxiously, as Clare picked up the silver salver.

Clare managed to carry three more trays of food upstairs without being noticed, though dark figures were now standing in the hall watching as a stream of cars drew up to the front door. They unloaded men in mourning dress and women in black suits and furs, before driving off to park in the stable yard.

The dining room table with the urn and teapots
had been set up hours ago, the teacups inverted in their saucers, lined up like an army about to go into battle. The plates and salvers of food had been placed on other tables in both drawing room and dining room.

It was as she slipped into the drawing room with the last large salver of sandwiches that Clare found herself face-to-face with a dark figure who stared at her in amazement.

‘Clare, what are
you
doing here?’

It was just as obvious from Clare’s apron and cap, as it was from Andrew’s black suit and pale face, what they were both doing, but before either of them had recovered their wits enough to speak, a familiar high voice cut across the room, which was now beginning to fill.

‘Andrew,
qu’est ce que vous dites a la domestique?
’ it demanded. ‘
Viens ici, immediatement
,’ it ordered. ‘
Dites a la bonne de retourner a la cuisine a cette instant et envoyer Wiley a moi
.’

Clare could hardly believe her ears. Speaking French in front of the servants in this day and age, referring to June as Wiley, never mind herself as a domestic. She took one glance at Andrew. He was rooted to the spot, his face flushed scarlet with embarrassment. She handed him the sandwiches and walked across to face the Missus, who stood fiercely upright in front of the marble fireplace.

‘Madame,’ she began, speaking rapidly in French, ‘I regret that my presence displeases you, but there are some things I must say to you. Not all those who engage in domestic service are to be classed as ‘domestique’. And even where this label might seem to apply there is still the question of courtesy to which even mere servants are entitled,’ she went on, her voice heavy with emotion. ‘Mrs Wiley has been working under pressure since very early this morning and has now sprained her ankle. If you will promise to apologise to her for your unfair behaviour towards her, then I will do all I can to ensure that your guests are looked after. If not, then I shall be happy to leave your service this very instant,’ she concluded, snatching the Miss Muffet cap from her dark curls and holding it out to the startled lady.

As Clare stood before her and met her hostile stare without flinching, she thought the Missus might take it and slap her across the face with it. But she did not. For what seemed an age, she stood quite still and then sat down abruptly on a high backed chair.

‘Have you studied in Paris?’ she asked, reverting to English.

‘No, not yet.’

The Missus held out the cap.

‘I apologise to you and I shall apologise to Mrs Wiley when tea is over. Do what you can.’

Clare replaced her cap and nodded.

‘I shall need some help from your grandson and perhaps some younger members of your family. You won’t object, will you?’

The movement of the older woman’s head was imperceptible, but the hostility in her eyes had disappeared. For a few seconds, Clare caught a glimpse of a sad woman who had just lost her second son. She felt her own anger cool and became aware of Andrew standing close behind her. He was still clutching the salver of sandwiches.

‘Andrew, is there anyone who would pour tea if I make it?’

‘Mrs Clarke from Caledon, Auntie’s housekeeper. Her daughter, Olive, is here too.’