Kept (15 page)

The letter lay unopened in its stout white casing. Reaching the drawing room, where the fire she had laid five hours before blazed cheerfully, Esther busied herself with the paper knife.

“Who is it then?” Sarah wondered in a paroxysm of nervousness. “It cannot be from Joe, for I know his hand. Oh do tell me, Esther!”

Esther scanned the single piece of foolscap beneath the glare of the gas lamp. Written in the flowing copperplate of an official hand, it begged to inform Miss Sarah Parker that her brother, Lance-Corporal
Joseph Parker of the——th Regiment, had died at Canton on the twenty-ninth of August, of enteric fever, that the Secretary of the Army Office had heard of this sad fact with regret, as he was sure would Miss Parker, &c., &c.

“Oh, Esther,” Sarah said. “It is bad news about Joe, I know it is. He is dead in battle or crushed by an elephant, I know it.”

For some reason that she could not fathom, Esther hesitated.

“No, he is not dead. But he has been injured.”

“Thank God for that. Poor Joe. Poor boy. But what else does it say?”

“Only that he is recovering, though not fit to write himself. That is why you have been sent this letter.”

“I see. Thank you, Esther.”

When she had gone, Esther sat and looked at the letter, which in her excitement Sarah had forgotten to take with her. The words burnt into her brain. She could not imagine why she had done this thing, other than that in doing so she hoped to spare her friend pain. But what should she say if another letter came, or, worse, no letter at all? Her mind could frame no answer. She sat brooding in an armchair for a long while, as the wind rattled the panes in their sockets and the ivy beat upon the glass, until William, coming into the room with a sherry decanter and a tray of glasses, found her there staring into the depths of the fire.

“Here, Esther,” he said, “this won’t do. The master will be back in a moment. Besides, Mrs. Wates is wondering where you are.”

Esther made to rise up from the chair, taking care to conceal the letter in the folds of her dress. William stared at her keenly.

“Is there anything the matter, Esther? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

Esther shook her head. Silently, she allowed herself to be escorted back to the kitchen and the righteous wrath of Mrs. Wates. “Well,” that lady remarked, “I never knew such girls as there is these days. There is Margaret Lane ill in bed and the doctor to be sent for and Her Ladyship here taking her ease in the drawing room by all accounts.” Knowing that there was little point in defending herself, Esther merely bobbed her head and retired to the scullery, where last night’s crockery
lay in an accusing pile. Not, however, before she had crushed the letter into a tiny ball and cast it into the depths of the kitchen fire.

(
VII
)

W
inter came early to this bleak hinterland. Each morning Esther awoke to find a thin blanket of mist extending beyond her window to the tops of the trees. Laying the fire in the kitchen grate, her hands grew stiff with cold. Once, while she was hanging washing to dry, a gust of air plucked a kerchief from her fingers and sent it flying fifty feet above her. The wind blew down from Jutland, Mr. Randall said, and there were no mountains to take the edge off its chill; certainly not the fields of the West Norfolk plain, full half of which lay below the level of the sea. Though the house was perched on a hill, their lives seemed governed by water. Moisture dripped ceaselessly off the gables of the house. Fish and elvers, caught in the great dykes to the west, were brought up for them to eat. The pond beyond the kitchen garden swelled to such a size that it was no longer safe for the keeper’s children to splash through it in their long boots. It would be a hard winter, Mr. Randall said, for the rain presaged it. A travelling packman, speaking a dialect that could scarcely be understood, came and spread his wares on the kitchen table: handfuls of pins, green and yellow embroidery thread, an illustrated Bible over whose garish leaves Mr. Randall shook his head (here Jonah clamoured vainly from the whale’s mouth, and the sun smote off Abraham’s dagger as he bent to murder his son). It was but blasphemy, Mr. Randall said, to treat the Lord’s devisings in this way. “Ef ’n’ your honour says,” the packman demurred, “and yet them gays is onnerful instructive. Look, there’s the Devil a-temptin’ of Ave, and Balaam’s dicker a crunching of his master’s fut.” The maids bought cotton reels and ivory combs, and Mrs. Wates, as a preventative against indigestion, a tincture of peppermint oil that smelled suspiciously of gin.

In the evenings the old people sat by the fire in the servants’ hall and talked of past times.

Mrs. Finnie said: “When I was a girl I was kitchenmaid to Lady Ardley. This was in King William’s time, you understand. Half a dozen
footmen, and venison sent up each day from the estate. But gentlefolk were gentlefolk in those days. It is all very different now.”

Mrs. Wates said: “In my young days a girl that went into service wouldn’t think to get wages. No indeed. Her father would pay money himself for the comfort of knowing she was well apprenticed. There was a nursemaid at my first situation who had been with the family sixty years and remembered seeing the German king in his coach.”

Mr. Randall said: “My father was pantryman to a duke, and that is the truth. But I thought I could do better, fool that I was. I was apprenticed to a seedsman in Waterloo year, set up my own shop and failed. Times were hard in those days. Many’s the day I worked eight hours for a plate of bread and cheese and been thankful for God’s good mercy that I should get it.”

After this all the old people felt better. And Esther, sitting silently on the great window seat with only her face palely visible in the shadow, thanked providence that she lived in an age of railways, Miss Nightingale, Viscount Palmerston and Lord John.

Once, as they sat in the inglenook of the kitchen fireplace, Sarah said, “Did you ever think, Esther, that you should wish to be married?”

“It is what every girl wishes, I suppose.”

“I used to wish it. More than anything.” Esther noticed that Sarah’s fingers gripped white on the flat stone as she said this. “But now I think I shall be a companion or a cook. Indeed I shall have the best of both worlds, for cooks are Mrs. by courtesy, you know.”

“I should not care to spend all my life in service, I think,” Esther said seriously.

“And yet you may do so and not like it.”

Remembering the crushed ball of paper in the kitchen fire, Esther said nothing.

It would be a hard winter, Mr. Randall said.

(
VIII
)

O
nly once in these first months did Esther see her employer for any length of time. One autumn afternoon as the twilight fell
over the wood, she was standing in her scullery with her hands plunged in a basin of dirty water when she heard Mr. Randall’s voice in the hall. Seeing her through the open door, he came rapidly into the room, clasping and unclasping his hands as he walked.

“Esther, is that you? Where are Sarah and Margaret?”

“It is Sarah’s afternoon off, Mr. Randall. The last I saw of Margaret Lane she was at the linen cupboard with Mrs. Finnie.”

“Well, it cannot be helped. You had better bring a brush and pan and come with me now.”

Wondering at his agitation, Esther supplied herself with these items and followed the butler up the great staircase and along the corridor where she knew lay the master’s study. Halfway through its half-open door, Mr. Randall stopped and addressed her nervously.

“There has been an accident. A great deal of smashed glass. You must take care, Esther.” And then, raising his voice as they came into the room: “Here is Esther, sir, who can help set things to rights.”

Standing in the doorway, Esther saw immediately what had happened. A display case resting on one of the brass cabinets had become dislodged and crashed to the floor. Pieces of broken glass lay everywhere about with, here and there, the stuffed birds that the case had contained. Mr. Dixey stood a little way off with his back to the window. When he saw her he said, “You must take great care. Randall, we shall need a broom. You had better fetch one.”

Esther remarked the irritation in his voice, which seemed to her disproportionate to a shattered display case and half a dozen stuffed birds. Instinctively, she dropped to her knees and began to gather up the glass. She did not care to touch the birds but swept round them.

Mr. Dixey noticed her reluctance. “You should not be afraid of a dead bird. Look here!”

He laid one of the feathery bundles in his palm for her to inspect.

Esther thought that his voice croaked and was reminded of the rooks in the elm trees. Thinking that something was expected of her, she said: “Which kind of bird is it, sir?”

“What kind?” Mr. Dixey seemed surprised. “Why, it is a ruff. See the feathers bunched at the neck. Like a gentleman in an old painting.
And this”—he indicated a tiny orange corpse a yard away—“is
Upupa epops
. It is rare in these parts.”

He looked as if he wished to say something more, but the sound of Mr. Randall returning with the broom drove him to silence.

The glass was swept up and the cabinet taken downstairs to await the summoning of the carpenter.

“Ugh! A nasty thing to have to do,” Sarah remarked, when the incident was reported to her. “Gentlemen should not keep such things. I hope you told Mr. Randall so.”

Esther said nothing.

(
IX
)

S
arah,” Esther began, “who is the woman in the upstairs room?”

“I do declare, Esther, you say the strangest things. Which woman?”

“The woman who sits in the attic and has her food taken up to her.”

“Really, Esther, I shall think you are making fun of me, indeed I shall.”

They were sitting on the oak bench in the orchard, well wrapped up in their shawls against the wind and with pattens on their feet, for it was an afternoon in late November. Mist hung over the distant fields and the church tower, and the grass was wet underfoot.

Sarah looked hurriedly back in the direction of the house. “Look, here is that Margaret Lane come to find us.” She rose to her feet. “Poor Margaret. You know she has been making sheep’s eyes at Sam Postman, and him spoken for these two years since?”

Esther followed her glance but could detect no sign of Margaret. The kitchen garden and the patch of land that abutted the rear of the house were quite empty. Seeing no reason to move, she sat still on the bench and began to retie the strings of her bonnet.

“No, it is quite true. Last Tuesday I was coming through the front hall after I had been to help Margaret Lane move the table in the drawing room, as I was bidden by Mrs. Wates, and I saw Mr. Randall going up the back stairs with a tray with a lunch plate on it and a jug of water.”

“Really, Esther!”

“And then an hour or more later I happened to be passing back through the hall—it was you I was coming to find, I recollect—when I saw William coming down the stairs with the tray and the plate and the jug empty.”

“Why, Esther, what a goose you are! Hasn’t Mrs. Finnie been ill all week in bed and Mr. Randall taking up her meals?”

“Yes, but I remarked Mr. Randall as he climbed the stairs. When he reached the top, he turned not to the right, where the servants’ rooms are, but to the left. The west wing where nobody lives.”

“Well, if nobody lives there, how can there be a woman that never comes out?”

“And then again the other day I was walking around the eastern side of the house to take a message from Mr. Randall to the keeper when something caught my eye and I looked up towards the rooftops, and there was a woman’s face at the window. And yet when I came back five minutes later it was gone.”

“Or had never existed at all. I am surprised at you, Esther. How could a woman live in a house and nobody know?”

“Mr. Randall must know. And William. And Mrs. Wates, for it is she that prepares the food.”

“Well, you had better ask them then. Now, look, there is that Margaret Lane by the kitchen gate, really it is. And if you’ll take my advice, Esther”—and here Sarah gave a sharp look of a kind that Esther never remembered seeing in her face before—“you will forget about women in rooms and William with a tray, for it is an absurd fancy and will do you no good.”

(
X
)

U
pon my honour, Esther, you are looking uncommon fresh in that bonnet and dress!”

Esther pursed her lips but said nothing. Privately, having inspected herself in the mirror that hung in the servants’ hall before they set out, she agreed with William’s judgement. The dress, produced by Mrs. Finnie out of an ancient cupboard, was not new, but it had been worked up to look as if it might be; the bonnet had been similarly refurbished.

“I declare that when I saw you and Sarah Parker sat next to each other, I thought she looked a dowdy thing beside you, indeed I did.”

With this, too, Esther privately agreed, though she thought it unkind of William to say as much. Lifting her head from where it had been sunk in reflection on her breastbone, she said, “It is very ill-natured of you to say that of Sarah.”

“Oh, I meant nothing by it. You mustn’t have a down upon a fellow, Esther, because he speaks his mind.”

The wagonette having deposited them at the end of Watton High Street, they were proceeding along that thoroughfare to the rooms where the subscription dance was to be held. It was about eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and many of the shops were still open. A grocer’s window passed before her eye, lit by a flaring gas jet. Many of them, Esther knew, would not shut their doors until midnight in the hope of an order from one of the big houses in the district. Behind them, but some way further down the street, walked Sarah and Margaret Lane, together with Mrs. Wates, who had come, as she said, “to see fair play” and might, it was thought, stand up with a butler from one of the neighbouring establishments if such could be found.