The Secret Countess Page 3

  The kitchen at Mersham was a huge room, high and vaulted, with a battleship of a range, a gigantic dresser full of gleaming pewter and a wooden table large enough to be a skating rink. Standing at the table now, crumbling pastry like small rain through her deft, plump fingers was Mrs Park, the soft-voiced, gentle countrywoman who had replaced the chef, Signor Manotti. The fact that she was in every way unworthy to succeed so great a man was Mrs Park’s continuing despair. No cook ever had less ‘temperament’ or more skill. Unable to pronounce the French names of the exquisite dishes she sent to the table, she could never believe she was not failing some culinary god with her Englishness, her simplicity, her female sex. Everyone loved her and she had made of the kitchen, so often a forbidden and defended fortress, the place where all the servants came to rest.

  Beside Mrs Park sat the first footman, James, one of the few who had returned from the war. Under the guidance of Mr Proom, whom he revered, James had worked himself up from lamp boy to his present eminence. He had started life as a scrawny and undersized Cockney and it was Proom, seeing in the lad a real potential for self-development, who had brought him a pamphlet describing the body building exercises used by the current Mr Universe. Since then, James had never looked back. The state of his gastrocnemius and the progress of his wondrously swelling biceps were matters of continuing concern to the maids, who bore with fortitude the knowledge that the real glories – the fanning of his trapezius across the small of his back, the powerful arch of his gluteus maximus – were, for reasons of propriety, forever lost to them.

  Next to James sat Louise, the head housemaid, and below her the under housemaids, buxom giggly Peggy and her younger sister, Pearl. Sid, the second footman, sat opposite James; Florence, the ancient scullery maid, was filling her bucket by the boiler; Win, the simpleminded kitchen girl, who nevertheless understood Mrs Park’s lightest word, was perched humbly on a stool near the foot of the table. Even Proom, who habitually took tea in the housekeeper’s room, had lingered by the dresser, busy with a list.

  Light footsteps were heard coming down the flagged stone corridor and Anna appeared in the doorway.

  Louise, the pert and acerbacious head housemaid, was the first to see her.

  ‘Here comes the tweeny!’ she said.

  ‘Now, Louise,’ admonished Mrs Park gently, removing her hands from the bowl of pastry. ‘Come in, dear, and have a cup of tea.’

  But Louise’s gibe had in any case fallen flat. Anna smiled with pleasure, came forward to curtsy to Mrs Park and, when bidden to sit down, slipped into a place below Win’s at the very foot of the table.

  The servants exchanged glances. Whatever was going to be wrong with the new housemaid, it had to be admitted that it wasn’t snobbery or ‘side’.

  The next day Anna began to work. It was work such as she had not known existed: not as a nursing orderly in the hospital in Petersburg, not as a waitress in the transit camp in Constantinople. Between the myriad, airless, servants’ attics tucked away beneath the balustrades and statuary, and the kitchens, pantries and cellars that ran like catacombs under the body of the house, was a world which knew nothing of either. Here were the great state rooms: the famous library, the picture gallery with its Van Dykes and Titians, the gold salon and the music room. It was to the spring cleaning of these rooms, shuttered and shrouded during the war, that Proom had assigned Anna.

  ‘She won’t last two days,’ prophesied Louise, the ginger-haired and prickly head housemaid. ‘You’ll see, she’ll be back in London with her tail between her legs before the week’s out.’

  But Peggy and her sister Pearl were not so sure. There’d been a sort of look about the Russian girl.

  That first day Anna rose at five-thirty, snatched a piece of bread and jam in the servants’ hall, and by six, clutching her housemaid’s bag, had followed Louise, Peggy and James, loaded with buckets, stepladders, druggets and mops, up to the library.

  Mersham’s library was world-famous. Its satinwood bookcases, its pedestal desk and writing tables were made by Chippendale and reckoned to be among his finest work. A sumptuous, moss green Aubusson stretched to the windows of the south terrace and on the barrel-vaulted ceiling the Muses swam most decoratively.

  ‘Oh, what a beautiful room!’ exclaimed Anna, only to get a sour look from Louise, who was briskly pouring soda into a bucket.

  ‘’ere,’ she said, handing Anna a bucket of steaming water and a cloth. ‘Start on this geyser, and don’t drip!’

  ‘This geyser’ was Milton in old age, whose marble head stared thoughtfully and somewhat snottily from a plinth between the windows. When Anna had rinsed and dried the poet’s face, the convolutions of his wig and the lacework on his Puritan collar, she moved on to Hercules resting – unnecessarily, she could not help feeling – on a slain lion, whose mane had most horribly collected the dust. Next came the overmantel depicting scenes from Dante’s Inferno.

  ‘Better wring your cloth out harder for those,’ advised Louise, looking with disgust at the tortured souls writhing in agony across the chimney breast. ‘Bloomin’ sculpture! I hate the stuff.’

  By this time Anna’s water was black with dirt and she had carefully to carry her bucket down a long parquet corridor, across the blue john and jasper tiles of the great hall, down the service stairs and through a green baize door into the scullery, where Florence, the ancient scullery maid, filled it for her. She was crossing the great hall again when Fate dealt her an undeserved blow in the form of Baskerville, who discovered her with yelps of joy in a place where it was meet and right for her to be and padded passionately after her into the library. Nor could James, trying to dismantle the chandeliers, or Louise, cleaning the windows, prevent him from lying like a felled ox across the foot of the stepladder on which Anna, scrubbing Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in a niche above the door, was precariously perched with her bucket.

  By lunchtime Anna’s back ached and her hands were sore but she persevered and she kept – though this was harder – silence. It was late in the afternoon when, moving a silver photograph frame to safety, she found herself staring for the first time at the long-awaited earl.

  The photograph, taken just before the war, showed two young men standing on the steps that led to the front door. The older was strikingly handsome, with regular features, springing hair and an easy smile. The other, who was hardly more than a boy, was slighter, darker, and had turned half-away as though looking at a landscape visible to him alone.

  ‘That’s Lord George, the one that was killed,’ said Peggy, coming over to her and pointing at the older of the two. ‘He was a smasher! My, didn’t we half have to run for it when he was around!’

  ‘And this is the new earl?’ queried Anna. ‘His brother?’

  ‘That’s right. Mr Rupert, he was then. He’s much quieter like. Got a lovely smile, though.’

  ‘He looks nice, I think,’ said Anna, and stepping over the recumbent Baskerville, she began to scrub the cold and protuberent stomach of Frederick the Great.

  Just before it was time to pack up for the day, Proom appeared silently as was his wont and took Louise aside.

  ‘Any difficulties?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Anna.

  ‘Not really,’ said Louise reluctantly. ‘Except for that bloomin’ dog following her about. She’s as green as they come, of course, but she hasn’t stopped, not for a minute. And I must say you don’t have to tell her anything twice.’

  On her third day at Mersham Anna discovered that the butler, so regal and authoritative in the servants’ hall, suffered from a bedridden and deeply eccentric mother, with whom he shared a cottage in the stable block.

  She had spent the whole day in the windowless scullery washing, piece by exquisite piece, the Meissen dinner service – a tedious and frighteningly responsible job with which Proom, rather to his own surprise, had entrusted her. Seeing her pallor and the circles under her eyes, Mrs Park had sent her out to the kitchen garden with a message for the under-gardener, Ted
.

  Anna was on her way back, crossing the stableyard, when a pot of geraniums flew out of an upstairs window and crashed into pieces at her feet. Retrieving the remains of the shattered pot and going to investigate, she found herself in the presence of an ancient, ferocious old lady, glaring like a beleagured ferret at the end of a high brass bed. Mrs Proom’s appendix, removed ten years earlier in Maidens Over Cottage Hospital, stood in a glass jar on a shelf above her head; various lumps under the counterpane indicated that she had taken the silver to bed in case of burglars.

  ‘Who are you? Why are you dressed like that? Where’s Cyril? I want my tea!’ she began.

  ‘I am dressed like this because I am a housemaid. Mr Proom is decanting the claret and I will bring your tea if you permit,’ Anna replied.

  Half an hour later, Mr Proom, noticing with foreboding the remains of the broken flowerpot and wearily ascending the stairs to his mother’s room, found her absorbed in a game of dominoes in which the new housemaid was cheating, with an expertise which shattered him, so as to let the old lady win.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mother,’ he began.

  ‘Sh! Be quiet, Cyril. I don’t need you,’ said the old woman, gleefully moving a piece.

  Only when Anna had left did she ask again: ‘Who is that girl? Why is she dressed like that?’

  ‘I’ve told you, she’s the new housemaid, Mother.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Mrs Proom.

  Anna had been at Mersham for a week before she met the first member of the family. In addition to the Lady Mary Westerholme, the dowager countess, Mersham had for many years provided sanctuary for the present earl’s great uncle, the Honourable Mr Sebastien Frayne. It being Louise’s day off, Anna was instructed to take up his tea.

  ‘You want to listen outside the door,’ Peggy told Anna. ‘There’ll be some music playing on the gramophone. If it’s that stuff all loud an’ wailin’ an’ women shrieking and that, you want to watch out. Specially there’s one called the Libby’s Tott or something. If he’s playing that you want to keep the tray between you an’ him and put it down and run quick. But if it’s that stuff that sounds like church, you know, all on the level and not much tune, then it’s all right to have a chat. Not that it’s ever more than a bit of a pinch and a grope, but you not being used to it like . . .’

  It was with a sinking heart that Anna, pausing outside Mr Sebastien’s door, heard the unmistakable sound of the Liebestod issuing forth. Isolde was dying and she was dying hard. Bravely, Anna knocked and entered.

  Mr Sebastien Frayne was reclining on a large Chesterfield, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his hands folded over a large stomach. He was close on eighty and seldom left his room, which resembled the den of a musical badger, strewn with manuscript paper, ashtrays, music stands and books. There was egg on his dressing gown and his white hair was dotted with cigarette ash, but the eyes he turned to the door were the blue and candid eyes of a child.

  ‘I have brought you your tea, sir,’ said Anna, above the soaring voice of the soprano issuing from the huge horn.

  Mr Sebastien’s eyes gleamed. A new maid. At first sight unpromising in her absence of curves, but on closer inspection not unpromising at all. In fact intriguing. How did she manage to get a dimple in a face so thin?

  ‘Put the tray down here,’ said Mr Sebastien craftily, moving closer to the edge of the sofa and patting the low table beside him.

  Anna advanced. Suddenly the music surged and gathered force, its leitmotif transfigured in one of Wagner’s brilliant changes of key and, as the bereaved soprano prepared to fall ecstatically upon her lover’s corpse, Anna gave a deep sigh and said, ‘Oh, say what you will, but it is beautiful.’

  Mr Sebastien looked at her sharply, his seduction campaign of tired lecheries momentarily forgotten.

  Anna was standing in the middle of the room, the tea tray clasped to her breast, her huge, peat-coloured eyes shining. ‘Who is it singing? Not Tettrazini, I think?’

  ‘Johanna Gadski,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘The best Isolde in the world, without a doubt.’

  ‘My father didn’t care for Wagner. He found it too excited.’ The music had made Anna dangerously forget her status. ‘He and Chaliapin used to argue and argue.’

  ‘Come here,’ said Mr Sebastien, his eyes razor-sharp under the bushy white brows.

  She came forward and put down the tray. The music was mesmerizing her; she had turned to the gramophone like a plant turns to the light. Now she was right beside him. He could put an arm round her waist, pull her down on to the sofa, give her a kiss . . .

  ‘Stay and listen,’ said Mr Sebastien, not touching her, ‘it’s nearly over. Sit down.’

  ‘I must not sit down,’ said Anna. ‘I am the maid.’ Even Wagner could not efface the thought of Selina Strickland’s views on a maid sitting down in the presence of her employers. But the music held her and, caught in its toll, she compromised and slipped to her knees beside the sofa, her elbows resting on the arm.

  When it was over she sighed deeply and turned to him, her face mirroring the drowned look of someone returning from another world. ‘It is kind of you to let me listen,’ she said. ‘It is hard to live without music.’

  ‘There is no need at all for you to do so,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘I have a good collection of records. I would be delighted to play you anything you choose.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘Were you a professional musician?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to be,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘I played the piano and the cello and composed a bit. I think young Rupert gets his love of music from me. But they wouldn’t let me. In those days, the aristocracy wouldn’t let their sons do anything sensible and I was too feeble to rebel.’

  ‘Oh, I know, it is monstrous!’ said Anna. ‘I also have suffered in this way. I wanted so much to be a ballet dancer and they would not let me. Although,’ she went on, anxious to be fair, ‘it would not have been possible in any case because my toes were not of equal length.’

  ‘I have some ballet music also,’ said Mr Sebastien craftily. ‘Casse Noisette . . . The Sleeping Beauty . . .’

  ‘And Stravinsky, do you have? Is it recorded already? The Rite of Spring?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ said Mr Sebastien. ‘In my opinion The Rite of Spring is a work totally lacking in melody or sense.’

  ‘But no!’ Anna’s cry rent the air. For a moment it looked as though, Selina Strickland notwithstanding, she would stamp her foot. ‘It is not true. One must be modern!’

  ‘If to be modern is to be cacophonous, discordant and obscure,’ began Mr Sebastien . . .

  Battle, most enjoyable, was joined.

  Anna, coming down half an hour later, fearful of a reprimand, was greeted by an interested cluster of faces. The Russian girl was flushed and she was muttering beneath her breath.

  ‘He grabbed you, then,’ said Peggy. ‘Well, I warned you.’

  ‘No, no, he did not touch me,’ said Anna absently. Then the full impact of what she had just said hit her. ‘It is because I am not pretty!’ she said tragically.

  And Mrs Park, who had taken less than twenty-four hours to forget that Anna was a foreigner and a lady, said, ‘Now don’t be foolish, dear. Just drink your tea.’

  For the Dowager Countess of Westerholme, Proom, who had stood behind her chair as second footman when she came to Mersham as a bride, would probably have laid down his life. Nevertheless, when about ten days after Anna’s arrival he was told by Alice, the dowager’s maid, that someone was to go to the village and inform Mr Firkin, the sexton, that his deceased wife did not want him to give away his top hat, he was not pleased.

  The dowager was a small, vague woman in her fifties with silver hair, wide grey eyes and a penchant for the kind of tea gowns and flowing chiffon scarves which so often seem to go with a belief in spiritualism. Though somewhat lacking in intellect, she was a deeply kind and compassionate person, who bore with fortitude the fact that none of the dauntingly trivial messages which she fai
thfully took down in automatic writing came either from her revered husband or adored eldest son. Of late, instead, her boudoir had turned into a kind of clearing house in which the Deceased, unable to bypass so willing a recipient, made their wishes clear to her. And as often as not, these involved posting off to the vicar or the grocer or the undertaker with letters marked URGENT in the dowager’s sprawling hand.

  ‘I can’t spare any of the men today,’ Proom told Alice. ‘We’ve got all the pictures in the long gallery to re-hang and the music room’s not started yet.’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to go,’ said Alice.

  ‘Why don’t you send the tweeny,’ said Louise, who was mixing furniture polish in the pantry opposite. ‘She’s nutty on fresh air and it’d get that dratted dog out of the house for a bit.’

  Entering the dowager’s drawing room half an hour later, Anna found herself in a familiar world. Her own mother’s apartments had contained just such a clutter of occasional tables, potted plants, embroidered screens and piled-up magazines. Only the planchettes and astral charts were different.

  ‘Come in, my dear. You’re the Russian girl, aren’t you? Now I want you to take a very important message. It’s for Mr Firkin, the sexton. Can you find his house, do you think? It’s just opposite the church with the walnut tree in the garden.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, I’m sure I can.’

  ‘Good. Now I want you to tell him that a message has just come through from his wife. At least I think it must be his wife. She said her name was Hilda and I’m sure Mr Firkin’s wife was called Hilda. Yes, I know she was because . . .’ She broke off and began to rummage in her escritoire. ‘Now where was I?’

  ‘You were going to give me a letter, my lady.’

  ‘That’s right; here it is. The poor woman really sounded desperately worried. For some reason she cannot bear the idea of him giving away his top hat. It’s strange how these things seem to go on mattering, even on the Other Side.’

  Anna took the letter and bent to pick up the scarf that had slipped from the dowager’s shoulders. She was rewarded by a charming smile, which changed, suddenly, to a look of intense scrutiny.