Ravenscliffe (9 page)

Mrs Powell-Hughes had the unpleasant and unusual sensation of being not quite in control. Her reputation for running an immaculate house hung by a thread: if Edward VII arrived to paint fumes and dark patches of turpentine, then she might as well hang up her keys, pack her trunk and go and spend the rest of her days with her sister in Filey. She was rushing through the kitchens on her way to the stillroom when she ran full tilt into the butler. The shock of the impact threatened to overcome her as if here, finally, was the last straw she’d known was coming. She stared at Parkinson white-faced and wild-eyed and he was profoundly moved by her evident plight.

‘Now, now, Mrs Powell-Hughes, come and sit down for a moment,’ he said, responding to the extraordinary with the ordinary. Then, turning to the nearest kitchen maid, he mouthed ‘tea’ at her, before opening the door to his sitting room, his inner sanctum, and ushering in his unlikely charge. In itself, this act of kindness underlined the gravity of the situation. Mr Parkinson’s private quarters were so rarely breached by anyone other than himself; the trappings of his solitary leisure hours – a pipe, a tobacco tin, a Bible, a bundle of letters – lay about the place, and even the housekeeper, exalted among the staff, felt a little awed.

He sat her down in a brown plush chair, pushing her gently by the shoulders, as she looked likely to resist. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘Lottie will bring us a cup of tea – no, Mrs Powell-Hughes, it’s ordered, it’s on its way, it’s useless to protest – and we shall take five minutes together to take stock.’

‘But I really don’t have the time, Mr Parkinson, though I appreciate your concern.’ Her voice was strained from barking orders at the girls under her command.

‘A cup of tea and a moment to order your thoughts will make all the difference,’ said the butler. He was a good man
and he acted through genuine kindness. If Mary Adams had stood here ministering to her, or Florrie Flytton, the countess’s lady’s maid, they would have certainly, somehow, betrayed a consciousness of their own ordered existence and a smug satisfaction at the housekeeper’s distress. Both women were capable of kindness, but their kindnesses came with a subtext: you have deserved your present misery, yet I shall be magnanimous and comfort you. Mr Parkinson was different. His pale blue eyes were full of real concern, his face, oddly unlined for a man in his mid-fifties, a study in sympathy. He had always looked younger than his years: once, in the early days of service, he had thought he would be for ever a footman, hampered in his ambitions by his well-formed calves – as essential in a footman as his discretion – and an adorably cherubic face. Even now his looks didn’t quite suit his position: his wavy blond hair refused to thin or to turn grey, his face had no severity or pallor. He looked rosy and amiable: when he addressed his ranks he had their absolute respect but still it wasn’t hard to picture him in a cassock and ruff.

Lottie tapped on the door and entered as she was bid. She tiptoed across the room with her tray as if this was a hospital ward and the housekeeper a patient. It was too much, thought Parkinson.

‘Thank you Lottie, no need to creep so.’

‘Sorry Mr Parkinson,’ she said, though in a whisper and still, when she left, she crept. The butler smiled at Mrs Powell-Hughes.

‘Poor Lottie,’ he said. ‘She’s quite unequal to any occurrence beyond the strictly predictable. Now. Let me pour, and while I do, tell me your concerns.’

The housekeeper, already soothed to some degree by Mr Parkinson’s calm manner, was beginning to feel like herself again. ‘Oh, well. I feel a little silly now. I don’t quite know what came over me.’

‘We’re all entitled to mild panic every so often,’ he said and he smiled warmly. ‘What are the specifics of the case?’

‘Oh, the smell of paint and turpentine, mostly,’ she said. ‘Nothing that can’t be dealt with, I expect.’

‘Ah, that sounds like the Mrs Powell-Hughes I know so well. We shall open all doors and windows to admit what little breeze there is, and I’m sure you’ve asked Ruth for more of her still-room concoctions? Pot pourri can work miracles.’

‘That’s my next job,’ she said. ‘That’s where I was going.’ She blew across the top of her cup of tea and steam briefly clouded her spectacles, giving her the misleading appearance of utter helplessness. ‘Really, Mr Parkinson, the new sanitaryware has been the principal difficulty. If it had only been installed a little sooner—’

‘Indeed,’ he said delicately. ‘The timing was challenging.’

This was tricky ground and the two loyal servants trod carefully, for neither of them wanted to openly criticise the countess, whatever private thoughts they might each entertain regarding her excessive demands.

‘The redecoration of the bathrooms, you see, had to wait until Mr Motson had replaced everything. And a job that size can’t be rushed.’

‘But I gather the result is—’

‘Oh, absolutely splendid,’ said Mrs Powell-Hughes, eager to return to safer territory. ‘Quite magnificent. I can’t imagine the king will have anything better at Buckingham Palace.’

‘Almost certainly not,’ said Parkinson. ‘But being the king, he doesn’t have anyone to impress, does he?’

Mrs Powell-Hughes understood him perfectly. The king’s penchant for visiting his society friends at their own country homes had begun a frenzy of expensive restoration by the aristocracy: Lady Netherwood’s rigour in refurbishing throughout had been matched many times over by those who had already played host to Bertie and his entourage.

‘You know, people have ruined themselves entertaining the king,’ said Mr Parkinson, speaking low and with a grave expression on his angelic face.

Mrs Powell-Hughes tutted and shook her head sadly. She sipped her fortifying tea.

The butler leaned in confidingly. ‘The chap he stays with during the St Leger is on his uppers, by all accounts,’ he said. ‘Quite spent up.’

‘My word, what a business. At least that’s not one of our worries,’ she said, as if she and Mr Parkinson were personally footing the bill.

‘Well, quite,’ he said. ‘And by the end of today I imagine you’ll find you and your staff have brought perfect order to the upper floors. If there’s anything I can do to assist you …’

The housekeeper placed her cup and saucer carefully on the side table next to her. She might be stretched beyond all possible reason, but she wouldn’t have footmen and valets deployed in areas of the house where they had no business.

‘Oh, no thank you,’ she said, with a small laugh to indicate that not only was his offer unnecessary but that she could find amusement in it. ‘We shall soldier on until we triumph.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Parkinson. ‘Now, back to the battlefield?’

Parkinson’s prediction was quite correct. By the time the countess emerged from her darkened rooms, refreshed from the effects of the compress and a restorative afternoon nap, she found there wasn’t a corner of Netherwood Hall that wasn’t fit for the king’s inspection. Even the smell of turpentine had been all but obliterated by the fragrant combination of dried orange blossom and damask roses, and still there was all day tomorrow to clear the air completely.

Alone, feeling contemplative and with a vaguely unsettling sense of fragile calm, Lord Netherwood wandered through his home. His wife’s disregard for expense was evident in every room he entered. The royal quarters had been cleverly arranged in the East Wing from a series of interconnecting rooms that the king would share – according to a discreet communication regarding protocol – with Mrs Keppel: they were magnificent. The dark Victorian wallpaper had been replaced with pastel stripes in rose and cream, and elegant furniture – modern pieces, newly commissioned – now replaced the heavy dressing tables and age-spotted mirrors. Pale buttermilk satin adorned the royal four-poster and at the windows hung new drapes in rose-coloured shot silk. There was a chair by the bed, low and wide and upholstered in the same silk as the curtains: this was for the king’s fox terrier, Caesar. The dog, it seemed, enjoyed the same privileges as Mrs Keppel: certainly they had shared a protocol memorandum. Lord Netherwood wondered if anyone had yet told Mrs Powell-Hughes that Caesar was to be allowed the run of the place.

Downstairs he found Clarissa.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Tip-top.’

‘Even the new bathrooms?’

‘Especially the new bathrooms. We’re better appointed than the Savoy.’

The countess smiled. She was pleased with her husband: not a single purchase had been queried, not a single expense spared. He had even conceded – briefly baulking but swiftly capitulating – the necessity of giving up his study because the king demanded a telegraph room wherever he stayed, in order that he might be in touch with his government.

‘I’ll wager he never sets foot inside,’ said the earl now, opening his study door and looking rather glumly at the sight
of his own desk cleared of books and papers to make room for the contraption that now occupied it.

‘Well, anyway, you wouldn’t have been able to slope off here yourself,’ said Clarissa. ‘The host must be always on hand. So, you see, your study is perfect for the job.’

Just what he expected. His wife had added an eleventh commandment to the original ten: thou shalt not admit to inconvenience caused by the royal visit. He sighed. Speaking personally, he would be jolly glad when it was over.

W
hatever hit the mine owners hit the miners harder. This was and had ever been a fact of life. If supply outstripped demand and the market price fell, if cheaper coal was being sold on the Continent, if a colliery began to dry up and become less productive – always, always, the men suffered more than the masters. This, Amos said to Anna, was the principal injustice he wanted to see eradicated. There were others – widows’ pensions, sick pay, greater investment in safety – but these could follow when the basic human right of a fair day’s pay for a full day’s work had been enshrined in British law.

They were sitting together on the wiry grass of Netherwood Common, looking down on Ravenscliffe. Eve had postponed the moving in until after the king’s visit – that is, until after the first dinner. She couldn’t, she said, think about the upheaval of moving until the royal puddings were behind her. Anna spent time at the new house all the same, measuring windows, walking the rooms, imagining them furnished and peopled and the sounds of family life ringing throughout. She’d coaxed Amos in today, though he couldn’t shed the uncomfortable feeling of trespassing. The house had seemed
to him implausibly large: all he could think was how much coal they’d get through in the winter. But he smiled and nodded because he could see what it meant to Anna that he liked it.

The two of them were making a habit of walking together, so their presence high up on the common wasn’t unusual, though there were plenty of people who considered it irregular. It didn’t take a lot to get tongues wagging in Netherwood: if you were five minutes late opening your curtains, somebody would notice and pass a remark. So Anna Rabinovich and Amos Sykes, strolling together towards Bluebell Wood or Harley Hill or Netherwood Common – well, there was a topic you could get your teeth into. It wasn’t just the strolling, either – it was the way they talked, heads together, lost in conversation, trading words back and forth between each other as if there wasn’t the time in the world for all they had to say.

Of course, if the gossips had been privy to what passed between Anna and Amos, they would have been disappointed. No tender words or compliments, no flattery or flirtation. They talked, as they did now, about politics, economics and the lot of the working man.

‘Y’see, t’earl looks at a miner and ’e sees a man who owes ’im a debt of gratitude,’ Amos was saying.

‘And perhaps they do,’ said Anna, the devil’s advocate with capitalist leanings. ‘Without earl, they would not have job or wage. They would starve.’

‘Aye, ’e employs ’em, granted. Then they risk their lives every day in a coal mine to create ’is wealth. If anyone should be grateful, it’s Lord Netherwood.’

‘Well, and perhaps he is,’ she said, determined to see the other side. ‘From what I hear, he is good man. Only you, it seems, think he should be horsewhipped.’

Amos laughed grimly. ‘Do you know what, Anna? I’m sick
to death of ’earing what a good man t’earl is. A good man would listen to what ’is men ’ave to say. Lord Netherwood is only good by comparison wi’ some of those bastards ’e calls ’is friends.’

‘Language.’

‘Beg pardon. But as far as goodness goes, you ’ave to admit there’s nowt by way o’ competition.’

She frowned at him. Sometimes he spoke too quickly for her to grasp his meaning.

‘Sorry,’ he said and he continued more slowly. ‘What I mean is, t’standard set by landowners and employers in this country is so abysmal that Lord Netherwood looks like a saint by comparison. And yet ’e sits back and says nowt and does nowt in support of ’is men. I don’t call that good. I call that cowardly and complacent.’

‘But there are union members at his collieries now. Perhaps you ask too much too quickly. Perhaps you should slow down, give him time to adapt.’