London Pride (12 page)

The Reverend Beaumont, rector of the church of St James at Tillingbourne, had just taken assembly for the elementary school. Now he was praying.

‘Lord,' he said, looking down kindly at the rows of poorly-clad children fidgeting before him on that dreary December morning, ‘Lord, give us the strength to endure those things that ought to be endured, and the courage to change those things that ought to be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other. Amen.'

‘Amen,' the children grumbled, coughing and shifting their feet. It had been a long assembly and they were slummocky with boredom. Only Peggy Furnivall was really paying attention to him.

This was her third Christmas at Tillingbourne school and she was ten years old now and grown quite big. She knew all her tables and the capitals of the world and the Kings and Queens of England and how to do sums and how to write essays, and she had all her grown-up teeth and a long plait of straight brown hair to hang down her back, and she'd even learned to swim during that first hot summer.

Nowadays she kept out of the way when pigs or kittens were being killed, because it grieved her enough to know it was happening without having to witness it. She still fed the mother cat whenever she could and did her best to comfort the poor thing when her kittens were gone, and she still dreamed of her dear old Dad and London and the
Tower, and more than anything else in the world she wanted to go back and be a Londoner again. That was what she'd change if she only got the chance. But it would be three and a half years before she could get a job and look out for herself. So until then she just had to endure those things that had to be endured, the way the Reverend Beaumont said. But she added her own private prayer every day, after the Lord's Prayer and before ‘amen', even though she really didn't have very much hope that it would be answered. It was simple and to the point. ‘Please God make something happen so that we can go back to London.'

And that Christmas something was happening, and it was happening at Tillingbourne Manor.

During the two and a half years that Joan Furnivall had worked at the Manor, first as a kitchen-maid and then as a plain cook, she had changed from a gawky thirteen-year-old to a confident well-rounded sixteen. Good feeding had put flesh on her bones and given her something of her mother's foxy prettiness. Her hair, now neatly bobbed, was thicker, her eyebrows were more pronounced and her eyes were a darker brown. In fact she was beginning to fear she might be growing vain, her image in the bedroom mirror pleased her so much. She had grown skilled in the arts of the kitchen too, learning not to burn herself or cut her fingers, and discovering that she had a talent for fruit puddings, which endeared her to the rest of the staff, and that she was a dab hand at pasties, which pleased Cook, who said they were ‘nothing short of a bloomin' wonder'.

Now, buoyed up by their approval, and rather to her own surprise, she had followed Cook's trenchant advice and applied for a new and more important job. Miss Amelia Bromwich, the daughter of the house, was coming home from her finishing school in Switzerland to be ‘launched upon society' and according to Miss Quinn, who was the lady's maid and looked after both the ladies, she would need an extra maid whenever she was at the house, because she had asthma. So somebody would have to sleep in her dressing-room and keep an ear open in case she had an attack during the night.

‘Try for it, gel,' the Cook said. ‘Nothing venture, nothing gain, that's what I say.'

‘What else would I have to do?' Joan wondered.

‘Clean her clothes, do her mending, run her bath, make her breakfast,' Cook said. ‘All the ordinary sort a' things. Miss Quinn'll do the tricky stuff.'

So she'd applied and since then she'd been surreptitiously studying how to be a lady's maid, offering to help Miss Quinn when she was cleaning Mrs Bromwich's fine clothes, taking over the preparation of dishes she knew Miss Amelia particularly liked, learning how to use a steam kettle and make a nitre cone for the asthma, picking up tips from conversations. She was very determined so she'd learnt quickly. She already knew how to wash lace, how to remove grease from gloves and shoes with the white of an egg, and how to reduce mildew by soft soap and powdered starch mixed with salt and lemon juice. Oh, it was hard work trying to better yourself.

It would have been easier if she'd been able to talk about it at home before she'd made her decision, but Aunt Maud wasn't interested, and Mum was so vague and distant nowadays she hardly said a word to anyone, and although Peggy would have been pleased to hear what she was doing she was too young to give advice.

So she still hadn't said a word to anyone at home when Christmas Eve arrived. She sat beside the Christmas tree in the hall that afternoon, feeling presumptuous and uncomfortable and idle, because all her friends in the kitchen were hard at work preparing for Christmas dinner and all she had to do was wait to be called into Mrs Bromwich's parlour. It was the first time she'd been above stairs and the richness and lightness of the place made her feel exposed. Grandpa's cottage was so dark and drear, and Dad's house in the Casemates had been dark too, but here the walls were white and the stairs were covered in pink carpet and the banisters were made of a lovely light-brown wood and the windows were so big they were like brightly-coloured pictures on the walls. It was like sitting inside one of the new electric lights. She twisted her handkerchief in her chapped hands and licked her lips nervously, her head bowed, because it wouldn't have done to have someone
come out of the room and find her staring at things.

Which was how young Toby Bromwich saw her, as he came springing down the stairs two at a time.

Young Toby Bromwich was the only son and heir of his father's considerable fortune and as such he was spoilt, arrogant and self-centred. Although he was only sixteen he already had a portly figure and the beginnings of a double chin and jowls, but in his opinion, as he frequently told his school friends, a little rotundity was admirable and infinitely preferable to the scarecrow raggedness of all those awful smelly beggars you saw on the streets of London. Ex-servicemen and tramps and such. They oughtn't to be allowed. He couldn't think why the government didn't pass a law against them.

He liked his women plump too, as he expounded with equal frequency. ‘Good tits on 'em,' he'd say, while his friends admired his boldness. ‘Nice bit of flesh for a chap to get his hands on. That's what I like.'

Actually for all his lecherous talk he was still a virgin, which was a source of great annoyance and frustration to him. Girls were never allowed in school, that was the trouble, and at home his sister's friends poked fun at him and called him ‘little brother' because he wasn't in society yet, and all the servants were old and crabby and uninteresting, like Miss Quinn.

So he was roused and delighted when he reached the hall and saw a nice plump sandy-haired
young
servant licking her lips outside his mother's parlour. Good tits too. Things
were
looking up. And standing up as well, with a rush of happy pleasure.

‘Hello,' he said standing as close to her as he could. ‘D'you work here?'

As she sprang to her feet, her cheeks reddened. What fun! She was actually blushing. He'd never made a girl blush before. Better and better. ‘Yes, sir,' she said. ‘In the kitchens.' So that was why he hadn't seen her before, They might as well be buried when they worked in the kitchens. You never saw them above stairs.

‘Not in any trouble I hope,' he said.

‘Oh no, sir,' she said, blushing again.

‘Then what brings you here?'

She confided in him. He was being so friendly she felt it was permissible. ‘It's just – well, sir – it's just I've applied to be Miss Amelia's maid.'

‘Have you indeed?' he said. ‘Well I wish you luck. Hope you get it.' And if you get it, he thought, and it brings you above stairs, I might get what I want too. What a turn up for the books!

The door was being opened. He could sense Miss Quinn. Better scoot. His mother would hardly approve of him chatting to a servant. He dodged into the library, beaming at the girl as he went. But she was straightening her cap and looking anxiously towards the door.

It was a very quick interview, which was just as well, for by then Joan was in a state of such nervousness she hardly knew what she was saying. She walked into Mrs Bromwich's lovely blue and yellow parlour in a dream that focused all her attention on a single object to the detriment of everything else. She saw nothing of the room although she was acutely aware of her mistress, that her bobbed hair was bound with an embroidered fillet which flashed and glittered as she spoke, that she was wearing a silk dress with a three-quarter length jacket to match, that she was haloed in rainbow light from twin lustres on the mantelpiece, that she spoke beautifully and seemed kind.

Fortunately the questions she asked could all be answered with a simple ‘yes' or ‘no'. Joan agreed that she was quite prepared to sit up at night with her new mistress should that be required, that she would obey Miss Quinn in every particular, that she would return to her work in the kitchen when Miss Amelia was away from the house, that she would be happy with an extra one and sixpence a week for her services. And the matter was almost settled when Miss Amelia herself breezed into the room, a strong spicy perfume wafting before her, thin as a rake in a suit like a blue and green tube and trailing a fur coat along the floor behind her as though it was a mop, a vision of careless affluence.

‘You have a new maid, darling,' her mother said.

‘Oh yes,' the vision said without much interest.

‘Her name's Joan.'

‘She may start tonight,' Amelia said. ‘We're all going on
to Tufty's after dinner. Very swish affair. I shall wear my white satin with sequins, Quinn.'

And that, apparently, was that.

Joan had never been so busy as she was that Christmas, for her young mistress apparently required a change of clothes every two hours, for the morning, the afternoon, the evening, to hunt, to ride, to dine, to ‘go on', whatever that was. There was no end to it. But she liked the work for it took her out of the kitchen into the space and ease of life above stairs.

‘How the other half live!' she said to Peggy when she finally got home to see her family in the New Year. ‘You should see the way they eat. Nine courses last Saturday there was. Nothink short of a bloomin' wonder they weren't all sick.'

Peggy was interested in Miss Amelia's asthma. ‘What d'you have to do if she gets an attack, poor thing?' she asked. ‘When Peter-at-school gets his he turns all blue an' Mr Marshall has to carry him out.'

‘They all turn blue,' Joan said. ‘That's part of it. We've got nitre cones for Miss Amelia. Paper, you know, soaked in saltpetre. We light one and she sort of smokes the fumes. And a spray. We got two sprays, hers an' a spare. We soon get her over it.' Which wasn't quite true but it sounded good. ‘No, asthma's not a problem, leastways not when you're rich.'

The problem was Master Toby. Ever since that first day when he'd talked to her in the hall, he'd taken to lurking in Miss Amelia's bedroom when his sister wasn't there and jumping out on her as she came in through the servants' door, like some huge pink spider after a fly.

‘Hello!' he'd say, leering at her. It was really rather embarrassing. And he stood so close to her too. She could feel his breath on her face, all hot and puffing. She would duck out of his way, with a rapid excuse, ‘Just off to get this mended for Miss Amelia.' But now and then he'd put his hand on her arm and pin her to the wall, and then she didn't know what she ought to do, for there was something demanding and disturbing in the pressure of that fat hand of his, and his face looked really peculiar.

If only Peggy was just a little bit older she could confide
in her, but it wouldn't be fair to tell a ten-year-old things like that. Not things about – things about how boys went on. Sally would have listened all right but Sally was gone. She'd been a parlour-maid in the house until October and she'd enlightened all four of her room mates about all sorts of things, especially the monthlies when they'd first ‘come on'. They wrote to one another occasionally, but writing wasn't the same as talking, and in any case she couldn't find the words to explain what it was about Mr Toby that alarmed her. When she tried, it all seemed rather silly. Perhaps it was silly and she simply ought to put it out of her mind. As Dad used to say, never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.

Toby Bromwich was in his sister's sitting room, trying to smoke a cigarette without feeling sick. ‘Where's your maid, Melia?' he said casually. ‘I ain't seen her about.'

‘Day off,' Amelia said, propping her feet on the footstool so that her soles were facing the fire. ‘Can't see what she wants a day off for. They never go anywhere these village gels.'

‘So you'll have old Quinn to dress you tonight, I suppose.'

‘No. She'll be back in time for that. I gave strict instructions.'

‘Got anything planned, have you?'

‘You know I have, Toby. You don't listen. Derwent is picking me up at nine. We're going up west.'

‘Ah yes, I remember,' he said yawning. Now that he'd found out what he wanted to know he could pretend that the conversation was boring him. ‘I wish they didn't dine so late. I'm riding over to Dorking.'

‘In the dark?'

‘Why not?'

‘Because you haven't exactly got a good seat at the best of times.'

‘I shall do well enough,' he said smugly. In fact with Melia out of the way he might do very well indeed. Especially if that servant answered the bell when he rang. He had it all planned.

Joan was surprised to be rung for so late. The servants
had all had their supper and she was helping Cook with the aspic moulds when the bell jumped and jangled.