Longbourn (6 page)

Then, at half past four, Mr. Hill went out into the hall and rang the dinner bell. From all around the house came the sound of doors being opened and shut, the clattering of footsteps, and voices animated in anticipation of another of Mrs. Hill’s good dinners.

The two men, with Sarah to assist on this first attempt of James’s, carried the dishes up to the dining room, and if she had not had a tureen of buttered leeks in her hands, she would have tugged on his queue—it bounced along on his back so temptingly—just to get some kind of notice out of him.

She could see, though, that Mrs. Bennet already looked upon him with considerable satisfaction. He didn’t have to do anything very much at all, just set the sauce boat upon the table without splashing the tablecloth or jostling anyone, and the mistress would gaze around the assembled family to gather up their admiration, her eyes wide, as if to say,
See what a clever fellow we have got ourselves here!
Sarah would admit that he was an improvement on the rustics they had been obliged to rope in on occasion in the past, but that was all she was prepared to admit. His hands might be nice, and his nails neat and clean, but that hardly made him Beau Brummell.

When the servants were dismissed, Mrs. B. very pointedly said, “Thank you, James.”

Unseen in the hallway, Sarah rolled her eyes. First Mr. B., and then
Mrs. Hill, and now Mrs. B.: why was everyone so bowled over? The only thing of note about him was that he was a
man
. And under fifty, and with nice hands.

“So how do you like it here, Mr. Smith?”

“I hardly know yet.”

He slipped past her, and kept on going, his stride long. She skipped a step to keep up.

“You will find us very dull, I expect, after the kind of thing that you are used to.”

He did not reply.

“I doubt you’ll find anything of interest to you here.”

They were at the kitchen door now. He pushed it open, then stepped back and held it for her. She was utterly wrong-footed. Already a good way gone towards being properly out of humour with him, she had fully intended to continue in that course until she loathed him heartily. Now, she was obliged to shuffle past him, and nod her thanks, and consider to what degree she had already been uncivil, and if he had warranted it or not. Her discomfort was not, however, sufficient to prevent her from pushing home her point: “You will hardly think us worth the trouble of talking to at all, I should say.”

He looked at her now. She met his look, and raised her eyebrows. Then she spun away, and strode off to help Polly lay the kitchen table. She had succeeded in drawing his attention at last. It gave her surprisingly little satisfaction.

Mr. Hill said Grace, and they started dinner.

Polly watched from under lowered eyelids: James ate as though each mouthful was a thing of great importance that must be considered with all seriousness and respect. It was very interesting, Polly thought, that he should eat like that, when most men of his sort ate as though they were shovelling coals into a furnace, or hay into a barn.

Mrs. Hill passed him the bread, and the butter, and the salt, and kept refilling his cup with small beer.

“May we have more milk, please, Mrs. Hill?”

Mrs. Hill pushed the jug across to Sarah; Sarah filled Polly’s cup and then her own with thin blue buttermilk. Polly did not notice, so
fascinated was she by this new manservant. She peered at him; she asked questions; she nodded eagerly along with the answers.

Where had he learned his craft?

He had done similar work before.

What work exactly had he done, though, Polly wanted to know, and where had he done it?

Mrs. Hill shushed her.

He said he didn’t mind, and that Polly was a clever girl, and this made her blush and smile, and slowed down her questioning for a little while. He had worked on a farm, he said, and then as an ostler, and then as a general servant in a house much the same size as this.

“Which house, though—I mean, whose? Maybe we know them—maybe the Bennets visit there.”

The house was beyond the neighbourhood, of course; the farm was just over the distant hills; the inn where he’d worked as an ostler was out past Ashworth, and on a few more miles. All of it was just out of reach, Sarah noted: all the places he mentioned were just a little too far away, for there to be any connection or shared acquaintance between his previous situations and his new one, here at Longbourn.

This was what Sarah had always wanted: something—anything—to disturb the quiet, to distract her from the sounds of Mr. Hill’s revolving mastication, and the prospect of another spiritless evening, and the monotony of her own voice reading three-decker novels and three-day-old news. But now change had come to Longbourn, and Polly was staring at it as if she were a simpleton, and Mrs. Hill kept topping up its glass, and even Mr. Hill was smiling and glancing at it and then shyly away, and Sarah was left heartsunk and ignored, and wishing that this change, with its dark hair and its hazel eyes, and its skin the colour of tea, had never come to Longbourn at all.

Sarah felt even lower the following morning, when she stumbled her way down to the kitchen, Polly dragging along three steps behind. The warm glow of her candle illuminated the stairway, the bare treads and the green distempered walls, the candle’s own greasy drips, and her cracked hand carrying it, the skin dark with dried blood and patched with chilblains that she must not scratch however much they itched.

First chores: fuel and water to be fetched, the hearths swept and the range to be blackleaded, and then her hands scrubbed free of blacking and soot before the day’s work could properly begin. Outside, the iron chill of the pump-handle awaited her: she’d almost rather pluck hot coals from the fire.

Polly sat down at the table and rested her cheek on her folded arms. Sarah, still dozy herself, took up the hearth brush and was about to hunker down and sweep the fallen cinders, but then she stopped short. The hearth was clean, the range gleamed, the fire was bright and crackling with new wood. She glanced at the log basket: it was full.

Someone had been up early.

Water next. She leaned into the scullery to lift her yoke. Candlelight fell through the open doorway, and caught on the inner shells of the wooden pails. She crouched to touch: her fingers came away wet. Straightening, she brushed her hand down her apron, then crossed over to the water-tank and laid her hand on the lead. She could feel the cold weight of water pressing out against the metal skin. Someone had mended the fire, and then fetched the water; they had filled the tank right up to the brim.

A brownie. A helpful little lubber fiend. They’d never had one of them at Longbourn before.

“Polly—”

But back in the kitchen Polly had fallen asleep again, head on her arms, curls falling across her face. Sarah stood, hands on hips, looking around the room. For a moment she was lost. Because there was nothing, for the next little while at least, for her to do. An hour had been freed for her, had been presented to her like a gift.

She grabbed the old pelisse that hung by the back door, and ducked out into the peppery-cold morning. Pulling on the coat, her fingers fumbling with the frogging, she strode out of the yard and across the paddock, the frosted grass crunching and the rime kicking back up over her toecaps. She slipped through the side gate and turned up the lane; birds hopped and peeped in the hedgerows. She ducked into blue-black woods, and then back out into the starry morning. The sleeves hung low over her hands; she tugged up the collar and dipped her face into it; the old velvet smelt musty. She came to where the lane crested the hill, and met the drovers’ road.

The drovers’ road was ancient. It swept along the ridge, and was not surfaced or shaped like modern roads were, with their gravel and their ditches. The drovers’ road was just a ribbon of grass worn short by the passing of the herds. The openness, the prospect here were striking; you could see steeples, villages, woods and copses miles away, and the smooth distance of far hills. And she knew that if she just turned that way, and kept on walking long enough, she’d end up at the first city of all the world, and that in itself was a kind of miracle. London was everything that could be imagined; and plenty more, no doubt, that as yet could not.

She wrapped her arms around herself. A curlew cried. The sun nudged itself up above the hills, flushing the blue morning through with orange. A sheep called; a lamb replied. Shadows reeled out like ribbon; there was green now in the meadows and on the trees. Somewhere, off down the valley, a cockerel crew, and there was a whiff of woodsmoke on the air. And at Longbourn the kettle should be filled and put on to heat because soon enough everybody would need a cup of tea. And she could hardly expect the pixie, however helpful he might be, to think of that.

As she made her way back down the lane, the house was still dark, its windows glassy and blank. A few sheets hung on the line; the linen was a white flicker through the hedgerow’s weave. And she felt a little inward shift: she saw herself standing down there where the washing lines were slung, saw the flicker of movement that she would be making now, as she passed behind the hedge.

It hadn’t been a scotchman, of course, she saw that now: it had been James Smith.

He must have been coming down from the drovers’ road that day, just as she was now. That noise from the stables that evening: that had been him too, sneaking in, honey-talking the horses, like he honey-talked everybody—finding himself a nice warm spot, and bedding down for the night. And in the morning he had somehow contrived to see Mr. B. before anybody had seen him. Why the master had been persuaded to employ him in such circumstances, Sarah had already conjured: it was a matter of economy, no doubt; a bargain so tempting that Mr. Bennet could not bring himself to refuse it.

But the thing was: if he had come down from the drovers’ road, he hadn’t come from that house out past Ashworth like he’d said, or from
the farm over the far hills. He could have come from anywhere. He could have come from London. From half a world away.

The kitchen glowed with firelight when she glanced in through the window; Polly was still asleep, head on folded arms. Sarah could hear Mr. Smith moving around in the stables; she should really just go indoors, wake Polly, and get started on their day. But instead she crossed to the stables, and stood on the threshold, looking in at the warm scene there, lit by a hanging lantern. He was rubbing down the mare with a currycomb, and seemed absorbed and peaceful. The horse noticed the newcomer first, and swung her head round to fix a big soft eye on Sarah, buffeting James and making him stumble back and laugh, and then glance round to follow the horse’s look, his face closing when he saw her, like a box.

“Thank you,” she said, shifting on her cold feet, her arms wrapped tight around her. “For doing all that work this morning, I mean.”

He turned back to the brushing. “That’s all right.”

“It’s mine—and Polly’s, really, but she finds it hard to wake up early. So.”

“I was awake anyway. I like to keep busy.”

He did not so much as glance at her.

She squeezed her arms the tighter. “What are you doing here?”

He paused in his work. “What?”

“I mean, why here? I mean, if I were you, I wouldn’t have settled for this. Hidden away like a pike in a backwater. Hardly knowing you’re alive.”

He shifted the currycomb in his palm, straightening the strap across the back of his hand. He didn’t look up.

“I saw you walking down the lane the other day. It was you, wasn’t it?”

He stiffened, and turned to look at her. She was struck again by those light hazel eyes, the darkness of his weather-tanned skin.

“Where did you come from?” Her voice dropped. “You must have travelled. Have you ever been to London?”

“London’s only twenty miles or so from here, you know.”

She flushed, kicking one boot heel with a hard-capped toe. He went back to his work.

“I don’t know what to make of you at all,” she said.

“Please don’t trouble yourself to try.”

She spun away, and clumped off back to the kitchen. He was such a frustrating mixture of helpfulness, courtesy and incivility that she could indeed form no clear notion of him. Of one thing, though, she was certain: he was lying. He was not what he pretended to be. He might have fooled everybody else at Longbourn, but he did not fool her. Not for a minute.

The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news
.

Mrs. Bennet’s dressing room: her inner
sanctum
, her retreat from the pressing demands of family life; a place of bulging upholstery and swags and cushions and drapes and Turkey-rugs; a place heaped with worn-once gowns, abandoned shawls, spencers, pelisses and bonnets; a place of rose-petal mustiness, of striped and flowered wallpaper, of surfaces trinked out with all the porcelain her pin money could supply, and all the paper flowers and shellwork and scrollwork and embroidered panels and painted china her daughters’ nimble fingers could furnish, and all of it decomposing now and peeling and gathering dust, and driving Mrs. Hill’s ordered, governable heart to distraction.