Untitled (6 page)

   She sets to work tugging the hair from the brush and coiling it into the small pot on the dressing table. Next she turns her attention back to the bed and its sheets, which are already smudged with the blacks that have come through the window, then to the carpet and the grate, where the fire has shrunk to a few livid embers.

   In the course of her work, this is what she discovers: that the woman who has slept in this room has long, brown hair, that she has a liking for lavender scent, that she sleeps on the left side of the bed by the window and has been reading a book in French—at least, Jane suspects it is French, because she cannot make out a word of the title—and that she is having her monthlies, because there are dark clots of blood in the chamber pot.

   From the landing she hears voices on the floor below. A woman's raised in a question, a man's answering. A door closing. Then nothing more.

   She carries the chamber pots down to the basement to empty in the water closet—Sarah has warned her not to use the one on the half-landing. Servants mustn't go in there except to clean. She brings down the cinder pail and carries up coal for the scuttle in the bedroom. Next she gathers up her box and the bucket she used for the coal. There's a door standing closed. Another bedroom? She isn't sure. How many people are there in this family? Are there children? She hasn't heard a baby crying, hasn't heard young voices or quick feet thumping hard across the floor. She's asked Mrs. Johnson, but she hushed her and told her to keep her mind on her work. As for Sarah, she was quicker with her own questions—Where was Jane from? Why had she left Devon?—until Jane was relieved to be sent back upstairs to sweep the drawing room.

   So now she leans towards the door and listens. Nothing. To be sure, she raises her hand to knock, but it meets with air as the door jerks open.

   The woman with the long nose. "Well," she says, "what's this?"

"I'm on the bedrooms. Does this one need doing?"

   "Oh you are, are you?" She gives a smile that shows only her front teeth. "Fancy that. And you just happened to be cleaning by the door. Well"—she leans close, her breath full of a strange, fishy smell—"don't let me catch you with your ear up against any more doors or I'll be having a word with Mr. Cartwright. You hear me?"

   There's a weak cough from deep in the room, and the woman glances over her shoulder. If she meant to keep Jane from seeing, she has failed, for between her head and the door frame Jane catches sight of an old woman—at least, she thinks it is an old woman—lying in a large bed. The room is dim, the air stale. A chair by the bed holds a tray with a bowl and a spoon and a jug of water, and brown-glass bottles of medicine.

   In the couple of seconds it has taken Jane to see all of this the woman has turned back. "Already sticking your nose in where it's not wanted?" she snaps, and she pushes the door closed in Jane's face.

        
A
t two o'clock Jane is summoned to meet Mrs. Robert Bentley—not
Mrs. Bentley,
who is ill in bed, Mrs. Johnson corrected her, but her daughter-in-law, Mr. Robert's wife. She hurries to change into a clean dress, to put on her only other apron, to make sure her cap is spotless and set straight on her head and that her hands are as clean as they can be. Traces of soot and blacking are caught around the nails, and although she knows that they are faint enough to be invisible from a distance, she closes her hands around them as she stands at the drawing room door, ready to knock.

   The first time she taps too softly and there is no answer. She waits, but her neck prickles. If Mr. Cartwright sees her standing here like this, he might think she is eavesdropping. So she raises her hand and raps more loudly.

   "Yes, yes, come in."

   The room is so high and long that it takes Jane a moment to see that on a sofa by the fireplace sits a woman in her late twenties. Her face is a little browned by the sun, as though she has only recently arrived in London; and she has a small nose; a stern, flat mouth; and long brown hair pulled up so that, somehow, it makes a gentle halo around her face. So this is the woman who likes lavender scent and books in French, who is having her monthlies. Knowing what is going on in this woman's body seems terribly wrong, and Jane looks away from the light brown eyes that are watching her.

   Mrs. Robert gestures her to come closer. She stands on the rug by the fire, amongst all the pretty things of the room, feeling large and not quite clean enough. She half expects that when she moves her feet she will see dirty marks left by her boots. But she can't look down now. Mrs. Robert is talking to her. Her journey—how was her journey?

   "It was fine, ma'am."

   "And Mr. Smee found you without any difficulty? The stations can be so crowded."

   "The carter? Yes, ma'am."

   "Isn't he from your part of the country? He has an accent like yours."

   She frowns. "Oh, I don't know, ma'am. I didn't ask."

   The woman gives a small nod. "I'm sure you had other things on your mind. Now, have you settled in a little?"

   "Yes, ma'am." Though even as she says it she thinks how very unsettled she feels, how she does not know anything, not even who lives in this house. "Yes," she says again because the enormity of having left Teignton and coming here, to London, to this household, swamps her. A tremor that begins in her gut and rises through her chest threatens to reach her throat and make her voice shake. She swallows and tries a smile.

   "And is this situation to your liking?"

   "Oh yes, ma'am." But this doesn't seem enough—Mrs. Robert is waiting for more. "Not that I wasn't happy with Mrs. Saunders," she announces, "but I wanted to better myself."

   Her mistress gives a small smile at that, a smile that seems more for herself than for the young maid standing on the rug in front of her. She says, "Ambition is a worthy motivation. Still, I hope this does not mean that you will be thinking of leaving us anytime soon."

   "Oh no, ma'am, of course not." She realizes that she sounds too horrified to be sincere, and that she cannot imagine staying. This place feels too far from everything she knows to be her life, or how life should be.

   "Well, then, Jane, if you work hard and are obedient and loyal, I will be a friend to you for as long as I am here."

   "Thank you, ma'am."

   "I'll see to it that you are trained up properly so that you are a credit to this household, and to yourself. And of course"—she smiles—"to your husband one day, should you marry."

   Jane's face turns hot and she looks down at her feet. "Thank you, ma'am, I'm sure."

   When she lifts her head her mistress is gazing through the window. She looks sad, Jane thinks, as though she is weighed down with worries. "We have had a difficult time of it of late," she says.

   "Yes, ma'am?"

   She touches the side of her face with one hand. "You don't have to flatter my sense of propriety. I find it difficult to believe that the other servants have not told you everything they think you need to know about this household."

   "Oh no, ma'am. There hasn't been time for that sort of thing."

   For a moment Mrs. Robert simply stares at her. "I see. Well, before there is time for that sort of thing, let me make a few things plain. Since Mrs. Bentley fell ill, this household has slipped into lazy ways. To take advantage of an elderly mistress who is unable to seek out deceptions—that is the worst sort of dishonesty, wouldn't you say?"

   "Yes, ma'am."

   "A mistress can only do so much. She can set an example, she can have high expectations of her staff. But she cannot watch them from sunup to sundown, nor should she. Servants who cannot be trusted cannot be kept."

   Jane's shoulders stiffen. Her breath catches, and it is all that she can do to reply, "Yes, ma'am."

   Mrs. Robert leans forward. In the pale light coming through the window, her face looks strangely eager. "You are to be my ally below stairs, Jane. You will tell me if you come across anything in this household that strikes you as—as not as it should be."

   "How do you mean, ma'am?"

   "You will be my eyes and ears. I'm putting my trust in you, do you understand?"

   "Oh yes, ma'am." But even as she says it, Jane wonders what she has promised. To tell tales on Elsie, Sarah, Mrs. Johnson, and Mr. Cartwright? And if she does, will they tell tales on her?

   "You're a good girl, Jane." Mrs. Robert nods for her to understand that she should leave now.

   Jane walks unsteadily through the doorway and along the hall. Then she sits abruptly at the top of the stairs that lead down to the kitchen and presses the weight of her chest onto her trembling legs.

        
M
ina lets her head sink back against the chair and closes her eyes. The girl, she thinks, is scared of her—of her! But then she is barely sixteen and new to London. And she embarrassed the poor girl with talk of a husband when she only meant to be kind. The next time she will have to tread more carefully, for this Jane is not like Sarah, whom nothing seems to embarrass. Sarah. She has seen her march boldly up the area steps, then along the street in a hat with too many feathers, at times of the day when she should be helping with the mending or cleaning the dining room. Even this afternoon—when Sarah should have been helping this new maid— Mina saw her push the area gate closed and stroll off as though the afternoon was hers to do with as she liked. Maybe she has a follower, probably one of the young men who delivers meat or bread to the house.

   She has said nothing. Not yet, not like with Lizzie. But then Lizzie was more dangerous. Not a flirt, not a girl likely to have a follower, yet Mina had seen her at the top of the area steps talking to a thin stick of a man in a tall hat who'd thrust something into her hand and hurried off. There was something about the way their faces had been tilted together: this was not love but business, she was sure. Lizzie had hidden whatever he'd given her in her apron pocket and had glanced about her as she came back down the steps. Guilty. Mina was certain of it. Guilty of selling the secrets she'd found from prying through her things.

   Yet what was there to find? After she had thrown Lizzie out of the house, she couldn't think what the girl might have discovered. There was nothing of her old life here, nothing to give her away. Now Mina worries that dismissing Lizzie so suddenly and for so little reason looks suspicious, like the actions of a woman with something to hide.

   She will have to be more careful with Sarah. She knows Sarah goes through her things too. But what of it? Don't most servants pry? And perhaps her outings are innocent enough. Still, she must say something. No mistress can turn a blind eye to servants taking advantage. She'll mention it to her. Tonight, when Sarah is unfastening her dress and can't escape until the job is done. She'll catch her eye in the mirror and tell her what she's seen of her jaunts down the street. Maybe she'll deny it—or maybe she'll explain that Mrs. Johnson sent her out on an errand. What then? Will she call Mrs. Johnson upstairs to her bedroom? Or will she give Sarah a warning that will mean nothing? Even with a new maid just arrived, Sarah knows she can't easily be dismissed, especially since Price insists that Robert's mother is fond of her—of Sarah!

   She'll watch her. She'll have to be careful. But she will not let herself be brought down by a maid who spies on her, all for a little bit of money.

   From the mantelpiece the clock—an ugly thing, all gold and curlicues with a self-important tick—chimes the quarter hour. With a sigh Mina gets up, glances at herself in the mirror, then leaves the room. The silk of her dress rustles as she crosses the hallway and starts up the stairs.

   She knocks gently. Without waiting for Price to answer, she opens the door and walks over to the bed. "How is Mrs. Bentley today?"

   Price comes close. "She took half a cup of broth. And she has a better color today, thank the Lord."

   Mina opens the curtain a little and looks down at her mother-inlaw asleep with her dry lips slightly parted and her grey hair spilled around her face. "In my opinion she looks much the same. We can't expect much."

   "Oh yes, ma'am," says Price. "But we can hope—and we can pray. The Lord can work miracles and we should appeal to Him for Mrs. Bentley's recovery." She reaches down and tucks the sheet more snugly around her mistress's shoulders.

   Mina lets the edge of the curtain drop. "We should never forget our place so far as to ask the Lord to grant our own wishes. We must all of us accept when our time here is over. Don't you agree, Price?"

   "Oh yes, ma'am." She gives a cold smile. "We should all of us accept our place in His order."

   "This room needs fresh air, Price. And a thorough cleaning. We cannot expect Mrs. Bentley to do well with dust everywhere like this. I will send Jane up directly."

   "Not Jane, ma'am—Sarah, I think you meant."

   It happens this way every time: her instructions countered, her warnings to Price that the doctor holds out little hope ignored. This woman is like a gnat, always too close, her thin voice whining, relentlessly stinging as though it's part of her nature.

   "No." She walks to the middle of the carpet. "I meant Jane. Cleaning grates and such like are the duties of the second housemaid, now that we have one to replace Lizzie."

   "You must excuse me," says Price, "but this room has always been the work of the first housemaid, on the specific instructions of Mrs. Bentley. She has taken a liking to the girl." She knots her hands together. They look pale and blind, like strange sea creatures. "What's more—excuse me taking the liberty of mentioning it—but the new housemaid was not hired by Mrs. Bentley. To have a person who—"

   "I looked into her character myself. So far I have been very well satisfied with her work."