The Diary Of Pamela D. (5 page)

‘And through here,’ said Mrs. Pascoe, leading
her through the kitchen to the back door, ‘is the staff dining
room.’ The long, narrow room was an obvious add-on built of heavy,
crude wooden planks; it was a drafty, pleasantly musty and cool
room, heated by a wood-stove. The room was dominated by an
appropriately crude but sturdy-looking wooden table which looked as
though it could seat at least twenty, or at need serve as a heavy
workbench. Around the perimeter of the room were wooden benches,
and at various points, between windows and to either side of the
back door, were mounted sturdy clothes’ hooks from which an
assortment of outdoor clothing hung. Through the tiny panes of each
window Pamela could see the fields and farm buildings beyond. She
found that she instinctively liked this room, and it must have
shown because Mrs. Pascoe said, ‘It’s not much, but we like it just
the way it is. Young Mr. Dewhurst- Theo, that is- wanted to tear it
down and build something more modern. You should have seen the look
on his face when we started squawking!’ Her laughter prompted
Pamela to smile, and to feel good about herself for no apparent
reason. ‘All right, then,’ she told Pamela, ‘hurry upstairs and
change into one your new uniforms. It’s about time we set ourselves
to making supper. An extra pair of hands is always welcome.
There’ll be company coming tonight, six or seven guests, with the
seventh an open question. Which, as it turns out, works out
perfectly because you’ll be able to meet all the household staff in
one go. That includes the outdoor staff who mind the animals. I
hope you’re not offended by the smell of sweat and muddy boots- I’m
afraid we’re rather a rustic lot around here.’

Pamela found as she went upstairs to change
that she was very much looking forward to meeting the household
staff, and to being part of . . . the thought made her smile . . .
part of her new life!

The second uniform she tried
on fit very well in all the right places. But the hat, the
bonnet
, as Mrs. Pascoe
called it, didn’t want to sit right on her tight, dark curls. When
she came downstairs and showed Mrs. Pascoe the difficulty she was
having, the woman burst out laughing.

‘For one thing, you’ve got it backwards,’ she
said, straightening it out. ‘For another, you’ve got to put your
hair up. That’s going to be a bit difficult, I can see. Your hair’s
just a little too short- come! I’ve got just the thing.’ She took
Pamela upstairs to her own room and with the use of a liberal
number of hairpins got the girl’s unruly hair under control enough
to fit the hat snugly on her head. ‘There! Come see what you
think.’

For a long moment, Pamela
stared at her own reflection as though she had just met a stranger.
Once again she had an uncomfortable feeling of
déjà vu
. She had seen this vision
before as well- in the same dream. Yet she had never known that it
was herself she was looking at.

‘Better be careful, luv,’ Mrs. Pascoe said
with a teasing smile. ‘Young Mr. Theo might take a great liking to
what he sees.’

Pamela paled, a pang of fear momentarily
taking her voice away. ‘I hope not. Servants aren’t supposed to get
too friendly with their employers, are they?’

‘
Servants
!’ Mrs. Pascoe said, raising
an eyebrow in mock-irritation, giving Pamela a playful swat,
drawing an unwilling smile from the girl. ‘You’re not a
servant
, dearie! You’re
an
em-ploy-ee
. You
can quit and walk away any time you like. This isn’t the Middle
Ages, you know.’

As they made their way back
to the kitchen, Pamela found herself daydreaming that she
was
living in the Middle
Ages, that she
was
a servant, that Theo
could
simply decide to take her, his passions getting
the better of him. That he would . . . she suddenly found herself
flushed with embarrassment. Her mind would not allow her to
consider what he might do with her, should his passions become
aroused. Her imagination wouldn’t go there simply because it
couldn’t. She had no experience with men. In the past, she viewed
such entanglements as leading to a life of poverty
with
children. She was not
about to suffer
that
fate.

She tried to tear her
thoughts away from what she wanted but couldn’t have. ‘I’m just
lucky to have a nice job with food and a roof over my head,’ she
thought to herself. ‘I’m living in a
palace
, so what more could I want?’
But she found her thoughts unwillingly drawn ever and again to
Theo, the man who had so intimidated her, the man her unreasoning
instincts were so
certain
was the same as in her old dream.

As Mrs. Dewhurst had said, the other
household staff were either getting on in years or were already
rather ancient. Two of the male members, old Mr. Smith and old Mr.
Pritchard, merely sat conversing together in the kitchen on wooden
chairs and watched the women work. Pamela gathered that their
presence was more a social ritual than having any practical value.
But she found herself enjoying their company. They were funny and
irreverent, exchanging quips with the women in what was obviously a
timeworn and comfortable routine.

Besides Mrs. Pascoe and her husband Brian,
there were three middle-aged women who Pamela had only seen in
passing before. There were the two Moor sisters, tall thin women
with sharp faces, named Ellie and Doris, and there was plump,
forgetful Mrs. Noreen Smith, Mr. Smith’s wife, or Norrie as she was
called. She was easily a decade and a half younger than her
husband, and wore a permanently baffled expression, as though she
couldn’t quite make out what life was about.

‘I’m sure one of us should
bring Mr. Dewhurst his
apéritif
,’ she said as though the
matter bore some urgence.

‘Mr. Dewhurst has been dead these past
eighteen years,’ said Ellie in a fruity, bombastic, matronly sort
of voice which was most incongruous with her appearance. She was
grating Parmesan, and didn’t blink an eye.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Norrie. ‘I’m afraid it will
go to waste, then.’

‘It would if you’d poured
it,’ put in Doris. ‘Now Norrie, do be a lamb and go fill this with
water.’ She handed the vacant Norrie a large, battered, aluminium
pot. ‘Now,’ she said to Pamela, ‘if you’ll be so kind as to
julienne those vegetables by the cutting board. You
do
know how to julienne,
do you not?’

When Pamela nodded, she was mystified by the
broad smile the two sisters exchanged. But only momentarily.

‘Mrs. D. was quite right,
you know. She
is
a
breath of fresh air. She’s so
young
.’

‘She’ll have to watch out for young Mr. Theo,
though,’ Ellie said, in a voice obviously pitched for Pamela to
overhear.

Pamela couldn’t help but notice the ironic
stress in her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

The two sisters exchanged a
humorous look. ‘What we mean,’ said Doris, ‘is that you’d have to
club Mr. Theo over the head just to get his mind off his work! Even
then, I’m not sure you’d have his full attention. But we
do
hope that you’ll help
him regain his sense of humour. He seems to have misplaced it-
you’re not done already? By Heaven, so you are! Well, see if you
can find out what’s happened to Norrie. She’s probably forgotten
that we have indoor plumbing and made her way to the stream, poor
thing!’

Suppertime, when it came, was organized
chaos. The staff dining room filled up with hungry men dressed in
rain gear and muddy Wellingtons. They varied in age from a boy of
twelve to a pair of men in their late fifties. They were a rustic,
rugged-looking bunch, quiet and soft-spoken for the most part.
Despite what Theo had told her, they greeted Pamela with friendly
interest when Mrs. Pascoe introduced her. One fellow, huge, hulking
and blonde who appeared in his late twenties, ran his eyes
appreciatively over her form in a way that made her withdraw
quickly, her face scarlet, making the older men chuckle and rib the
fellow.

Moments later Pamela was struggling with a
heavy tureen into the dining room, doing her best to appear to make
light of the burden. As she set it on the table her eyes were
caught by Theo, who watched her with an odd expression. Mrs.
Dewhurst, who was sitting beside him, gave her a surreptitious
wink. Tearing her eyes away with what seemed to take great physical
effort, she fled to the safety of the kitchen, her feelings a
confused turmoil.

The rest of the meal passed without incident.
Almost two hours later, the kitchen staff, after having removed the
dishes from the dining room, sat down to eat in the staff dining
room after the outdoor workers had left.

‘Well, Pamela,’ said Mrs.
Pascoe, ‘you did very well.’ There were mutterings of assent and
approval from around the table that made Pamela flush with . . . it
took her a moment to realise that she was
accepted
. This fact gave her a warm
feeling inside, a feeling she had never dared to
experience-

It wasn’t until Mrs. Pascoe
put an arm around her shoulders that she realized she was crying.
To her relief, no one said anything or plied her with unwanted
attention. When she finally regained her composure, the looks she
got from the others were kind, understanding, and
unaffectedly
warm
.

It was only her first day, yet already the
place was beginning to feel like home.

When the washing and cleaning up were
finished, Pamela was dismissed for the day. Instead of going to her
room, however, she began the task of tackling the kitchen’s grimy
shelves and discoloured pots and pans. It didn’t take her long to
discover that places either very low or very high were badly
neglected: something she had experienced before when working with
ageing volunteers and hotel staff. She began to suspect, as well,
despite her first impression, that the rest of the mansion was
likewise hiding a patina of neglect. She was just cleaning out the
contents at the back of one of the cupboards when a voice caused
her to react with alarm, to withdraw too quickly, bumping her
head.

‘Determined to become useful, are you?’

She stared at Theo whitely, her heart
pounding.

With a disapproving quirk of his lips, he
said, ‘Come, I have a job for you, seeing as how you seem bent upon
proving your worth.’

She followed him upstairs to his study, which
unlike the rest of the house was very modern.

‘Have you ever used a word processor?’

She nodded.

‘Excellent! Perhaps you could make a dent in
my correspondence. It’s there, in that wire basket. If you need to
ask me any questions, I’ll be downstairs.’

There was a fair bit, but
not all
that
much.
It was all pretty well straightforward: letters with suggested
replies attached. She went to work. The word processing program was
of a type she hadn’t used before, but was so similar to those she
knew that common sense soon smoothed things out. Within two hours
she was done. She was about to print out the replies when she
noticed how Theo had organized his files.

‘What a mess! Nothing’s categorized!
Nothing’s . . . well, I might as well fix it now.’

An hour later and she ran off copies and
duplicates of Theo’s correspondence. Once this was accomplished she
took a look in his filing cabinet. ‘Brand-new and completely
unused!’ she said to herself in annoyance. She made a mental note
that should she be required to do such work for him in future, she
would make hard-copy of all the files on his hard drive-

‘Still at it-
what
the
devil
are
you
up
to
?’

She retreated from his naked rage, afraid he
was going to hit her. ‘I . . . you’ve made no hard copies, so I
was-’

‘You’re going to have to
learn to do
just
what you’re told,’ he said, his voice menacing. ‘That is, if
you wish to stay here under this roof. What . . . what have you
done to my files?’

Her hands shaking, she showed him. Then,
unable to help herself, she burst into tears and fled to her
room.

Still angry, he took the mouse and began
examining the small handful of boxes she’d replaced his voluminous
menu with.

Pamela got undressed and lay on her bed for
some time, trying to regain her composure. Why couldn’t she do
anything right where Theo was concerned? She should have asked
before meddling with his business files. He had a perfect right to
be angry. He was probably still trying to put things back into his
own sense of order, cursing the day his mother had brought this
foolish, interfering girl into his home without so much as
consulting him. No doubt, in the morning she would find herself on
the first plane back to North America.

‘I want to stay,’ Pamela said as she cried
herself to sleep. ‘I promise I’ll never want anything else as long
as I live. I just want to stay.’

-3-

To Pamela’s surprise, Theo said nothing more
about what she’d done to his word processor. In fact, after
breakfast the following morning, he led her to his study and opened
the closet. Sitting on the floor was a large cardboard box.