Charles Palliser (133 page)

“What’s the time?”

“I dunno. Between five and six.”

So, though tired and unbreakfasted, I had to carry baskets of coals up from the cellar, help Nellie to lay and light the fires in the scullery and the servants’-hall and get the kitchen copper boiling, and then, having completed these indoor tasks, go out into the cold yard coatless as I was. The acrid smell of burnt coal that hangs over London in the winter and lies like a thick blanket on foggy mornings pinched my nose, filling me with a sense of the earth as something ancient and inimical to men. Now I had to pump water into the cistern (later in the winter often having to unfreeze the pump by pouring hot water over it) and then carry it upstairs in buckets to pour into the boilers.

After an hour or so other servants appeared and began to start work. Bessie was the first and I learned that she had been at work even longer than I, A FRIEND ON THE INSIDE

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making ready everything for the female upper-servants’ morning toilet and breakfast.

Towards seven o’clock Bob came into the scullery, yawning and stretching. “You’ll do a full day’s work today,” he said reflectively. “No half-holiday like yesterday, my lad.”

Bessie and I had to serve breakfast in the servants’-hall a little after seven, clear it away and wash it up. Then I had to carry breakfast to the butler’s pantry on a tray for the male upper-servants while Bessie served the same repast in the housekeeper’s room for the women. I had to clear that away and wash up the utensils. After that, under Bob’s guidance, I had to go upstairs and carry down the chamber-pots that the maids had left outside the doors, and empty them into the privy. As I did so I noticed without surprise that the dust-hole had been freshly bricked up and an iron grille clamped across it. I cleaned and polished them and when they had passed Bob’s inspection, took them back to leave outside the bed-chamber doors for the house-maids to restore. Then, just as on the day before, I had to clean the boots and after that set to work on the pots and pans from yesterday’s dinner. The rest of the day unrolled on the pattern of its predecessor.

During the first week I learned that this was the almost unvarying daily routine except for Sundays and holidays, and I came to understand how the day was divided up. But most important of all, I grasped the way the different areas of responsibility were shared amongst the various upper servants. The butler presided over the men-servants in livery and had charge of the serving of meals in the dining-room and of everything to do with wine (and other drinkables) and the wine-cellar. He also controlled the state-apartments on the ground-floor and the first-floor. The housekeeper was responsible for all the female livery-servants (except those within the cook’s domain) and the rooms on the floors above the ground and first floors. The cook — slightly but crucially lower in the hierarchy — was responsible for everything to do with the kitchen, scullery, still-room, larders, and so on, and had charge of the four kitchen-maids, the two stillroom maids, and the scullery-maid, Bessie. These were the three great areas of indoor responsibility, and like great neighbouring empires jealous of each other’s power, they fiercely contested their rights and areas of prerogative amongst themselves, forming alliances that shifted as rapidly and shamelessly as those of the European Powers. Below these three members of the staff — but only in the sense that they had no underlings for in other respects they were, or regarded themselves as, at least the equals of the three just mentioned — were the lady’s-maids and the valet. At the next level were the servants responsible for out-of-doors functions: the head-coachman and the head-laundress (and, I understood, when the family was at Hougham this included the head-gardener) who, since they were liveried servants and yet had underlings, occupied a niche that was in uneasy relation to that of the body-servants. This was the cause of a great deal of friction — though I may say that the head-coachman, Mr Phumphred, was never the originator of it — and Lady Mompesson’s lady’s-maid and the head-laundress particularly detested each other.

Above the upper servants in a dizzy region I knew nothing of directly was the steward, Mr Assinder, to whom the butler, the housekeeper, and the cook were responsible for the smooth and economical running of the household. He ate in his own apartments —

this was the “steward’s table” I had heard reference to —

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or sometimes with the family. On certain gala days, however, he was the guest of the upper-servants and I heard these mentioned as occasions of considerable delicacy when his hosts had to steer a narrow course avoiding either miserly parsimoniousness or extravagant indulgence. On the same level as the steward but of negligible importance within the economy of the household, there were also the governesses and tutors who existed in a hideous limbo and, as an outward token of their insignificance, usually took their meals alone on trays in their rooms.

Apart from Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson, Mr David, and Miss Henrietta, the only other member of the family in residence was an old lady usually referred to by my fellow-servants (without rancour) as the “old cat” but more formally as Miss Liddy. The first three had apartments on the second floor, as did Mr Tom who, as I knew, was out of the house, and the two latter on the floor above that, on which were also the rooms of the steward, Mr Tom’s tutor and Miss Henrietta’s governess.

I felt increasingly, as the time dragged by, that though I was tantalisingly close to my goal, yet I might never reach it for the profundity of the gulph that still divided it from me. For example, one of the duties that Bob and I discharged was to spend two mornings a week cleaning in strict rotation various of the ground-floor and first-floor rooms. On Tuesdays we cleaned the Great Parlour, and since this was the only occasion on which I was permitted to enter the room, I hoped to be able to make use of the opportunity. When Bob had set me to polishing everything that was visible — rubbing the brass fittings with lemon-juice, cleaning the fireplace and grate by scouring the bars with brick-dust and black-lead and then brushing this off — he took charge of the more skilful work of sweeping the dirt and dust out of sight beneath the floor coverings. I learned some useful things for when we opened the shutters I saw that there were now bells on spring-handles secured to them against burglars, which would make that mode of exit very difficult. If nothing else, I was able to record in my memory the precise appearance of the entablature and its mocking design for it fell to me to clean it. This involved smearing it with a compound of verdigris, finely-powdered pumice-stone and newly slacked lime mixed with soap-lees, and then washing all this off with soap.

Knowing how essential it was to comprehend the workings of the household if I was to achieve my design, I worked out as quickly as I could the principles that regulated the structure of the day — or, at least, the normal week-day, for Sundays and holidays were different. The first division of the day — the forenoon — lasted from dawn until the moment when the dressing-bell for luncheon rang as the signal for the footmen to don their livery and make ready to serve that meal. During the forenoon they were in

“undress” livery and I could be above stairs so long as I was under the control of Bob.

Now all the work above stairs was completed: cleaning the rooms, making the beds, changing the linen, lighting the fires, and so on. The family either breakfasted late in their rooms and remained there, or kept out of the way of the servants in the breakfast-room, the morning-room, or the library. No visiters were admitted except those on business to Sir Perceval who received them in the library, where he was often closeted at this time with Mr Assinder or his legal advisers.

Once the dressing-bell for luncheon rang shortly before one o’clock, the “afternoon”

had begun. This meant that no unliveried servants — kitchen-maids, laundry-maids, and so on — or livery-servants in “undress livery” could be A FRIEND ON THE INSIDE

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seen above stairs. The evening began when the dressing-bell for dinner rang at half-past seven o’clock. The rules forbidding access above stairs were even stricter now, for liveried servants had to be in evening livery. One of the effects of these rules was that Bob and the other footmen spent a great deal of time dressing and undressing.

Tea was served to the family and guests at half-past nine. This period ended — unless there was a late dinner or supper — at half-past ten when the house was locked up in the ritual I have described. During this brief in-between period we lower servants were allowed once again to venture above stairs to perform our duties: carrying up lamps, candles, warming-pans and heated bricks. But after about eleven o’clock it was, in principle, part of the nightwatchman’s responsibility to ensure that no servants were moving about the house. In fact, since he fell rapidly into a drunken slumber he was not able to enforce this, and I soon became aware that quite a lot of movement between the different sleeping-quarters of the servants took place up and down the back-stairs.

All of this made it difficult to imagine how I could get access to the hiding-place for long enough to find how to open it — and I still had no idea of how that might be done.

Night was obviously the only opportunity. Since I was fairly confident that I could pick the lock of the door to the Great Parlour, I would get Joey to bring me his father’s

“spider” — though how or where I could conceal it I could not imagine. (I had arranged to meet him in the back-lane of the mews on Sunday evening, since Nellie had told Mrs Digweed that that was the only time the most menial servants had any chance to be free.) However, I still had the problem of how to get out of the house after my attempt.

During that first week I discovered how very hard the work was. Bob often slept late —

and sometimes made me bring him his breakfast — so that the burden of his duties often fell very heavily on me. If I slacked then my share fell to Bessie, and if she got behind she received a worse drubbing from Mrs Gustard, the cook, than I did from Bob, so I tried not to let that happen. However, at least I became more adept at seizing food during the brief moment when I had the opportunity — the time when I was clearing the table after servants’-hall dinner and supper. But occasionally it happened that there was no food left and if I found any I dared not keep it for often Bob or Mr Thackaberry or even the housekeeper would, on meeting me in the scullery or the passage, stop me and almost absent-mindedly slip their hands into my apron-pocket. Once Bob found a piece of cheese that I must have put there quite without knowing it, and struck me fiercely on the side of the head.

So with the hard work and the near-starvation and the growing conviction of the impossibility of my task, I became increasingly dejected. How could I have been foolish enough to think I had any chance of securing the will? I was at the very lowest level of the household with the under-maids, the stable-lads, and the knife-boy, so that the life of the Mompesson family — their visiters, their dinner-guests, Mr David’s comings and goings down to Hougham for the game, and so on — impinged on me hardly at all. I felt myself to be like some low crustacean clinging to a rock on the sea-bed unreached by the ripples of the vessels passing high above me on the surface. All the difference I felt from the family’s comings and goings was that I had more or fewer boots to clean, coal-scuttles to carry, chamber-pots to empty, and knives to scour. Though 614 THE

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frustrating in some ways, my remoteness from them was fortunate in other respects, for I feared — perhaps quite irrationally after all these years — that I might be recognised.

Once, collecting the boots early one morning, I saw a lady come out of the door to the apartments which I had gathered belonged to the master and mistress, and recognised Lady Mompesson. Late one night Mr Thackaberry’s locking-up party found Sir Perceval still in the library and backed off respectfully after opening the door a little way.

He came out, affably remarking to the butler that he had not realized how late it was, and passed without even glancing at me.

And always it seemed there was more rather than less work, for my initial exhaustion did not decrease as I became accustomed to it but grew greater as I became worn down by it. I had not started from a basis of robust health and it was an abiding fear of mine that I would fall ill.

That first Sunday when I was due to meet Joey in the evening, I found that the Sabbath-day’s routine as it affected me was slightly but significantly different. Although I had to rise at the same early hour, almost everything happened later for nearly everybody else in the household. So, for example, Nellie did not wake me at about five for she had the forenoon as a holiday. I performed the same early morning tasks with Bessie while Bob lay in bed late, secure in the knowledge that Mr Thackaberry would not be seen before noon. The rest of the upper servants breakfasted at eight o’clock instead of shortly after seven, while the family — those of them who breakfasted at all on Sunday, for this rarely included Mr David — had trays brought to their apartments at half-past nine. Then at eleven the carriage was sent round to take the family to their devotions at St. George’s nearby, and most of the upper servants and some of the others accompanied them thither on foot.

However, if Sunday was a day of rest for some, it meant even harder work for the others — at least in the forenoon. For instead of the family and the upper servants taking a small luncheon at midday and then dinner in the evening, one large dinner was eaten in the afternoon both above and below stairs. The family dined at two and the servants

— both upper and liveried — had dinner together in the servants’-hall at about half-past three. This meant that while many of the household were at church, the kitchen-servants had to work particularly hard to prepare not merely parlour-dinner for the family who often had company, but also “hall-dinner” for the servants, as well as the cold suppers that would be required in the evening.