Untitled (24 page)

   "Curiosity killed the cat," whispers Sarah as she draws close. "We've all got secrets, haven't we?" She gives Jane a wink and a sharp pinch on the arm.

   By the sideboard Cartwright stands to attention, his hands tucked behind his back, staring into space as though he has not noticed the silences that seep into the conversation. At least he sent Sarah downstairs—she fidgeted and coughed and sighed as though disappointed that what little talk there was did not entertain her.

   The cod has turned tepid and soft in the time it has taken to load it onto a serving dish, carry it upstairs, and ceremoniously lift it onto their plates. Mina, he notices, has barely touched hers, and is frowning as she pushes her potatoes around with her fork. As for the widow, she is not making any pretense about having an appetite and has arranged her knife and fork on the side of her plate. Why, he wonders, is he bothering? The mere thought of the cold fish in front of him while his mother lies dead in her coffin makes him gag. He pushes away his plate and reaches for his glass again. At least the wine is good.

   From the front door comes the double
rat-a-tat
of the postman with a telegram. Robert listens, hears footsteps coming along the hallway, then the dining room door opening. Sarah whispers something, and Cartwright steps outside. He's back in a moment with a silver salver bearing a telegram.

   The thought of more bad news makes Robert hesitate before he takes it. He cannot make out the first few words. They make no sense until he has read them twice and then—suddenly understanding who this is from—an "Ah!" escapes him and he lifts the telegram closer to his face. A reply from Cyril, who has, it seems, already made some enquiries. He has an acquaintance who knows the registrar in Bombay: there is no record of a marriage between Henry Bentley and Victoria Dawes. Further, although he has found many people who knew Henry, he has not yet found a single person who remembers a Miss Victoria Dawes, or indeed any young lady with whom he formed an attachment. Should he, he asks, pursue the matter?

   Mina sets down her knife and fork and takes a sip of wine. "Good news?"

   He looks up. Not only is she watching him, so too is the widow. He nods, says gravely, "Oh yes. For us, it is good news."

       
H
is voice comes from nowhere. Jane stands in the cold afternoon air looking about her. "Up here," he calls before whistling a long, graceful note. And there he is, outlined against the railings around the area and the pale sky above.

   All of a sudden she remembers herself—her filthy apron, her untidy hair, her face probably flushed and shiny from helping Elsie stir the copper full of laundry. "Teddy," she hisses back. "What on earth are you doing here?"

   He gives a broad smile. "Couldn't wait to see you again."

   With a glance over her shoulder, she starts towards the steps. She feels lighter, thanks to seeing Teddy amidst all the cleaning and carrying that began long before dawn. "You're going to land me in it," she says, "turning up like this. Anyway, how's it you've got the time to walk over here?"

   "Master's out this afternoon. Got everything ready for when he gets back, and here I am."

   Already she loves the way his cheeks crease when he smiles, and his way of lifting his hand to his face when he talks. Most of all, to hear someone who speaks the way she does, who was brought up by the sea, who knows Teignton, even if he's only been there once. And to think—if not for her buying that bun and finding nowhere to eat it, they'd simply have passed each other on the street and never spoken!

   From the kitchen window comes the clatter of pans, and Mrs. Johnson calling for Elsie.

   He beckons her closer. "Can you get another afternoon off ?"

   She glances behind her and comes up the first few steps. "Doubt it," she says, looking up at him. "The mistress just died."

   "So I heard."

   "It was the shock of Mr. Henry being drowned, that's what they say. One funeral already, and another any day now."

   He nods. "Better to get them over with all together like that. Not as hard on the family, I reckon."

   Maybe he's teasing. There's that about him, a tone she's not sure of, that makes her a little nervous.

   "Come on up here," he whispers. "Quick now, before someone sees us."

   "Why?"

   He simply beckons with one long finger and, when she's close enough, he bends forward over the sharp ends of the railings and puts a kiss right on her lips.

   "That's so you don't forget about me," he says. "Besides, it means you're mine now. So you watch yourself."

   "Teddy!" The blood rushes to her face, and she turns away, down the steps. She hurries off without another look at him, though the unexpected softness of his lips stays with her for the rest of the day, and when eventually she goes up to the cold bedroom under the roof—later than usual because Price is still in bed and needs to be seen to—she summons it up so that it will be the last thing she remembers before she falls asleep.

   Yet it's not Teddy's kiss that she dreams about, but Price lying in her narrow bed with her hair all undone, Price calling out for her mistress though she's nothing but a corpse.

Chapter 17

C
artwright clears his throat. The others turn to him, forks raised, slices of bread held aloft. However, he merely scoops up another forkful of hashed mutton and says not a word.

   Things, he announced at the start of their lunch, have been getting too informal. With the mistress gone, it is their duty to act impeccably. He repeated that word for effect, then told Mrs. Johnson to serve up, which she did, lips pulled tight. All he has said since is that the hashed mutton isn't up to Mrs. Johnson's usual standard.

   From outside comes the rattle of carriage wheels, then a man shouting, "Larry! Larry!" Down in the kitchen, though, there's nothing except for the angry roiling of hot water in a pot, the occasional hiss of drops onto the stove, the dull clatter of forks against plates. Even the knock of a mug being set down on the table draws attention.

   Jane stares down into her plate. At times it's hard to breathe in this house, let alone eat. This is what you sell when you go into service, she thinks, freedoms that the family upstairs can't imagine being without. To talk when you choose to, to go out when you like, to decide what you will eat, to sit down with a book and spend a whole afternoon reading simply because you want to. A servant is not supposed to mind every minute of her day being laid out for her—this is what she will do at six in the morning, this is where she will be at half past nine, this is what she will eat for her supper, this is how she will spend the time before bed. Do ladies think their servants don't notice how they spend
their
time? Or that the very things servants are warned away from—reading novels, eating rich foods, making themselves beautiful so the men notice them—are the very occupations of their lives? But Mrs. Robert, she thinks, is different. Jane has found out enough about her to know that she lived in Paris for years and this, she has decided, is the reason why.

   Though the hashed mutton is cold now, she shovels up a forkful. At the orphanage they had lessons between the sewing and cleaning— mopping the dormitory floors, sweeping the matron's rooms, for they were the only ones with carpet in the whole place and a servant must know how to do more than wash down a bare floor. They learnt to write, and to read—just enough to make themselves useful—and a little history. She remembers Mrs. Dougall with her hair the color of old leaves and her long jaw like a sheep's. She told them about kings and queens. All those Henrys and Georges so that it's hard to tell who's who, except for the Henry who had his wives' heads cut off so he could marry new ones. And there were wars upon wars so that the history of the country seemed little more than a succession of rulers who had to protect England with the blood of its men.

   In all of this there came Mrs. Dougall's story of the wicked peasants in France who sliced off the heads of their king and queen. The girls were sewing as they listened, for their hands could not be idle even while their minds were being improved. But it also meant they could pretend to be intent on the aprons they were sewing as Mrs. Dougall's voice lilted its way through what happened. The king dead, his queen loaded onto a common cart—like so many lords and ladies before her!—and driven slowly to the square so that everyone could see her, the way she stepped on someone's foot and apologized—apologized!—as though she were on her way to a ball, not her execution. What dignity! What self-control! Jane glanced up to see Mrs. Dougall holding a handkerchief to her mouth, her cheeks trembling. She stood and looked around her. "Yes, girls," she said. "It was one of the greatest sins ever committed on this earth."

   Beside Jane a girl shook, and it wasn't until she glanced into Jane's face that Jane understood the girl was barely able to control her laughter.

   Mrs. Dougall's voice rose. "The terrible sinners who took up arms against their king and queen will burn in the fires of hell for ever more. Let it be a lesson to you girls; you already have a stain on your souls, but you can redeem yourselves if you make yourselves useful. You must serve your betters, because in doing so you are serving Our Lord. The consequences of not doing so—the terrible,
terrible
consequences—imagine . . ."

   She couldn't finish. Instead she rushed from the room with her hands against her cheeks.

   It took a moment for all those faces turned towards the door to find one another. But when eyes met eyes the girls could contain themselves no longer, and they rocked themselves on their benches, slapping their hands on the tables in front of them, reaching up to wipe tears from their eyes, pressing sleeves against mouths so that barely a sound escaped to ring out between the bare walls—after all, you never knew who'd be listening in the corridor.

   As for Jane, she'd made herself laugh into her hands like the rest of them.

   That was easy when her throat was tight and her eyes were stinging. To think of those noble people, dead. She'd carried the horror of it with her for days and imagined how she could have saved them. Maybe the queen could have been led to safety, or her execution stopped by someone—by her, but not her exactly, for Jane imagined herself as a young man who jumped onto the scaffold and made a speech that stirred the better nature of the crowd.

   It was Mrs. Saunders who made her think differently. All that talk of how servants served their masters and mistresses, and how masters and mistresses served the queen, and how the queen served God, and this was the way it had been ordained by God—she remembers that word,
ordained,
for there seemed to be something dreadful to it— while she was mending Mrs. Saunders's linen and Mrs. Saunders was sipping a cup of her orange pekoe that she kept locked away because the cheapest tea was good enough for the servants, no matter that it tasted of dust. On and on she went, those white hands of hers holding that delicate teacup, her feet up on a footstool because she had been
rushing around half the day
—meaning she'd walked to the neighbors' to gossip—telling Jane that laziness was a sin she could not abide, that girls of her class must keep to their station, for there was nothing worse than taking on airs when they couldn't carry it off and they only made themselves look ridiculous. Jane had stabbed her needle into the cotton though she risked pricking her finger. She dragged the thread through it so quickly that she broke it, and Mrs. Saunders snapped at her to watch what she was about. So she'd forced herself to loosen her grip on the needle and pull it through the fabric gently, push it, gently, all the while imagining Mrs. Saunders in a cart being driven into the center of town and an angry crowd throwing horse droppings at her, and her being led up onto the platform, not with her head high but crying and pleading to no avail as no one was inclined to show her any mercy.

   In France things must be better for servants, she thinks. Mistresses know what happens when they push them too far. Maybe that's why Mrs. Robert is different. Yet it is not that she is more considerate—no, she is more clever, more distrustful. She is a woman who understands deception, who doubts the word of a young woman nearly drowned in the wreck that killed her husband. What sort of a woman can she be? A woman with secrets? Without a doubt, yes, for when they discovered the burglar's intrusion, she'd turned deathly white. Anyone would think she has something to hide. And that could make her dangerous.

   Is this why Jane hasn't told her about Teddy, even though Mrs. Robert has asked several times if she has a sweetheart? Even though she knows that Mrs. Robert will be angry to find out she's been lied to? And she will find out, for how can a secret be kept in a house like this? Just because Jane is supposed to be Mrs. Robert's eyes and ears does not mean she'll be safe from her. Mrs. Robert is clever, and despite her genteel manners, there's a hardness to her. So Jane will say nothing of Teddy until she's found out. At least until then, she will have a place to let her thoughts go when she is blacking grates and scrubbing floors—the warmth of his breath on her face, the press of his lips, the promise that her life will be more than this.

   Above their heads a bell rings and startles her out of her thoughts. The study. No doubt it's Mr. Robert—or Mr. Bentley now, as he should be called. Jane notices Sarah smile into her plate, for Cartwright will have to answer it. He takes his time—chewing his mouthful of mutton, pushing back his chair, fetching his jacket and pulling it on so that the cuffs are aligned just so, walking deliberately to the door. This is not insolence, merely a way of showing Mr. Bentley that, at mealtimes downstairs, his calls intrude.