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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
When Mary Adams sees Millais' depiction of the tragic Ophelia, a whole new world opens up for her. Determined to find out more about the beautiful girl in the painting, she hears the story of Lizzie Siddal – a girl from a modest background, not unlike her own, who has found fame and fortune against the odds. Mary sets out to become a Pre-Raphaelite muse, too, and reinvents herself as Persephone Lavelle. But as she fights her way to become the new face of London's glittering art scene, 'Persephone' ends up mingling with some of the city's more nefarious types and is forced to make some impossible choices. Will Persephone be forced to betray those she loves, and even the person she once was, if she is to achieve her dreams?
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Praise for Following Ophelia:
“Sophia has conjured up a world as alive with colour and texture and beauty and rebellion as the paintings that she references… I was utterly engrossed from first page to last.” Perdita Cargill, author of Waiting for Callback
“This is Bennett’s first historical fiction title, and she does a wonderful job with the glamour, scandal and dresses of the period.” Fiona Noble, The Bookseller
Praise for Love Song:
“…perfect for anyone dreaming of living the rock star life.”S Magazine, Sunday Express
“I loved this book! Funny, romantic and smart, Love Song is a total treat.” Cat Clarke, author of Undone
“One of the funniest, most touching romantic YA novels ever, smart and warm.” Amanda Craig, author and journalist
“For anyone who ever fell in love with a pop star, Bennett helps bring that dream to life.”The Sun
“A really entertaining, well-written, feel-good contemporary.”The Bookbag
“This fun, feisty, fabulous novel is a total blast.”Heat
“Bliss in book form.”Sister Spooky
“I flew through it; hot boys, tantrums and a delicious peek at life in the fast lane of fame.” Melinda Salisbury, author of The Sin Eater’s Daughter
“Love Song is like a chart-topping hit: fun, thrilling and totally addictive.”Maximum Pop
“An uplifting love story.”The Telegraph, Best YA Books of 2016
“I’ve loved all of Sophia’s books – she writes teenage reality with such honesty and generosity and style.” Susie Day, author of The Secrets of Sam and Sam
“Nothing compares to the love story I’ve read in this book.”Serendipity Reviews
“A wonderful, compulsive read. I was caught in its spell.” Eve Ainsworth, author of Crush
To Katie. Telling this story together has been such a joy. Thank you.
Contents
In an Artist’s Studio
One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; – every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
Christina Rossetti
1856
PART I
THE PEACOCK DRESS
Chapter One
An uncommonly dangerous young woman. She has to go.
The words echoed around Mary Adams’s head to the rhythm of the paddle steamer that bore her down the River Thames.
She has to go. She has to go. She has to go.
Standing on deck, Mary drew the ribbons of her bonnet more tightly under her chin and hugged her crimson wool shawl around her shoulders. Even so, the winter wind whipped her face and stray tendrils of long copper hair caught in her eyes. Ahead, the shapes of buildings, tall and ominous, loomed out of the mist. The Queen of the Thames was getting closer to London now, leaving everything Mary had ever known in its churning wake.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It’s the girl, I tell you. No good will come of her.
Thrown out of the job she loved. Beaten by her pa in a drunken rage. Sent to work as a drudge for a family she’d never met. She didn’t know when she’d see home again.
Mary glanced around the deck. There were hardly any passengers outside, and the few willing to brave the cold were huddled at the stern of the boat.
Checking that nobody was watching, she leaned over the rail as far as she could stretch, until she could see only the dark, endless waters beneath her. The wind whipped the waves into pounding jets that stung her skin. Under the crest of each wave the water was a thousand shades of green and grey. The colour of her own eyes. Mary thought of the darkness waiting to claim her. How easy it would be to lean further … further … and be gone from this world forever: a mermaid, a skeleton, a ghost.
She breathed in sharply. Gasping, she felt her lungs contract with the shock of the ice-cold air.
Yes! Her skin tingled. Mary laughed at the freezing water. This is how to feel alive.
Wet hair clung to her face and rivulets of water ran inside her shawl, down her neck, and into her blue-green bodice. She caught sight of the ringlets trailing untidily from under her bonnet, turned a river of ruddy clay by the spray. Half-closing her eyes against the bitter wind, she peered at the unknown city emerging from the fog.
“Watch me, Pa! Watch me!” she shouted, throwing out her arms and leaning into the spray.
She was terrified – of the city, the new life, the work and all those strangers. But fear was part of what made Mary cling to life so tightly. And life was ice-cold today, and bitter, and strong as the iron rail. It was sharp on her tongue and stinging in her eyes. It made the blood throb in her veins.
“Look out, miss!”
A voice pierced through the wind behind her. Then came the sound of running feet and a strong hand on her elbow. She looked round to see the anxious face of a young man as he pulled her back from the rail. His coal black eyes met hers.
“You awright?”
Mary shook her arm free of his grip and tried to seem dignified.
“Of course I am … sir.” It seemed odd to address this slight young person so formally, but she didn’t know what else to say. Back in Westbrook, she knew everyone by name.
“It’s just … over the rail. You looked…”
“I’m perfectly well, thank you.”
His face clouded. “But the waters…” He glanced down, embarrassed. “You gave me a fright.”
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” Mary said, lifting her chin. “I was merely admiring the view. I’m quite safe, thank you.” She tried to sound like Miss Elsie Helpman, the teacher at the village school who was always a picture of ladylike composure, and not like a sixteen-year-old girl, cold and wet, leaving home for the first time and forever.
The young man raised his eyes again, and they travelled from her face to her blue-green skirts and back again. Mary noticed with a spark of amusement how long his gaze rested on her very pale skin with its dusting of light freckles, seeming to take in every detail.
“Well then. If you’re safe, I’ll take my leave. Sorry to have troubled you.”
She stood still as a ship’s figurehead, whipped by the wind in her bonnet ribbons, while he backed away, never taking his eyes from hers.
“Mary Adams,” she said to herself with a smile, “I do believe that if this were Westbrook, you might have found yourself a beau.”
She thought of Mrs Foster, the bitter crone who had called her dangerous and wanted rid of her, and laughed again. I’m going. And never coming back.
By now the city – the biggest in the world – was very near. Tall chimneys spewed smoke into the leaden sky. The fog had a sulphurous tinge and there was an acrid smell in the air. Fresh from the country, with its green and brown and earthiness, Mary’s senses were overloaded with this strange new world. It was much as she had heard hell described from the pulpit at St Michael’s every Sunday.
The steamer moved relentlessly towards the heart of it.
Chapter Two
At the pier, a tall girl in a black woollen dress waited patiently for the passengers to disembark. Anyone watching might have been surprised to see this calm and sober creature greet the vibrant and rather wild one with such joy and tenderness. But looking closely, they might have noticed the same rosiness in the cheeks illuminating the girls’ freckled skin, and the same copper note in their hair, although one had hers tucked neatly in a coil under her bonnet while the other let hers fly free.
“Harriet!” Mary said, hugging her cousin to her. “Two years and look at you! You’re a lady now.”
“I’m no such thing,” the tall girl scolded with a smile. “I’m a servant and so are you – and don’t you forget it.”
“As if I could,” Mary groaned. “Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am. I’ve been practising.”
“Try to say it without looking quite so disgusted. They’re not so bad as you think. And the house will be warm, with food on the table and…”
Her cousin trailed off, but Mary could tell from the troubled, tender look that flitted across her face what she was thinking. And no Pa to beat you. Well, that was true. But would living in another man’s house be any better? A stranger’s house indeed? She would have to keep her wits about her.
Mary didn’t want to think about that now. “Talking of food on the table,” she said, “I’m starving. Shall we eat? I have some pennies saved. That man is selling cockles, look. Shall we get some?”
“No indeed,” Harriet said sharply. “I have only the morning free, and that was a special dispensation to come and fetch you. We must hurry to the Aitkens’ or I’ll be late.”
Trust Harriet: the older cousin and always the sensible one. She was the girl who had helped Mary with her letters in the schoolhouse and told her off for scrumping apples with the boys at harvest time.
“If you say so,” Mary sighed.
“Wait here while I find us a ride.”
“Can’t we walk? My trunk isn’t heavy.”
‘Trunk’ was a rather grand word for the wicker basket at Mary’s feet. It was made to carry picnics, really. Beautifully made, by her father. Pa was good with his hands in many ways – some more beneficial than others.
Harriet looked at the basket doubtfully. “Is that all you have?”
Mary nodded. It contained everything she possessed that was worth carrying: two night shifts; her spare dress, tightly folded; petticoats and underclothes; her sewing box; some ribbons for her hair; bible, soap, pumice stone; and Little Miss Mouse, all raggedy and chewed, whom Mary would never leave. She picked up the basket, ready to walk to her new place of employment, wherever it might be.
Harriet laughed. “Put that back down. If you try and carry it to where we’re going, we’ll be walking till nightfall.”
“What do you mean?”
“London’s not like Westbrook. It’s fifty villages all together. More, even. Only a carriage will do for our journey.”
Mary blushed, feeling like a country bumpkin. While she waited for Harriet to negotiate a ride, she cheered herself up by defiantly spending a penny on two folds of cockles. They were fresh and salty and delicious. She and Harriet ate them as they travelled, sitting on empty beer barrels on a dray heading west from the docks. The horses looked heavy and slow, but with a light load they could trot along at quite a pace when traffic allowed.
Traffic. Mary had never seen so many horses, carriages and people. All criss-crossing the roads in the most dangerous manner. London was full of people. And noise. Grinding wheels, clopping hooves and ceaseless shouting. Everywhere she looked, there was someone leaning out of a window, rushing out of a doorway, leaping out of a carriage or running to catch up with one.
Harriet, in her letters home, had made London sound like a smoky, dangerous place, but she had never said it was so busy. Every street contained a building site. Ancient, tumbledown inns jostled for space with stone counting houses. Carts were piled high with goods from the docks. Mary felt their vibrations run through her as they rattled by with inches to spare.
Beside her, Harriet finished her cockles and chattered on about Mary’s new life.
“You’ll like the streets of Pimlico, they’re very smart and new. The Aitkens are a good family – not so rich as my Harringtons, but respectable. Professor Aitken is Mr Harrington’s great friend from Oxford. All the gentlemen in London have been to college. The professor teaches at London University. It’s not as prestigious as Oxford, Mr Harrington says, but it will do. Your mistress is about five and thirty, I would guess. She is younger than Mrs Harrington, but not as pretty…”
Mary knew she should be paying attention. After all, the professor and his wife were as close as she had to a family now. But she was distracted by Harriet herself. There was something odd about her cousin today. She had always sounded homesick in her letters, but the more she talked, the more Mary noticed a certain flush in her cheek and a sparkle in her eye.
“London suits you,” she said, causing Harriet to blush even deeper. “Tell me, what’s its secret?”
“It’s, um … nothing. London is exactly as I described. Can you not see?” They clung to each other as the dray bumped sharply over a pothole in the road. “It’s grimy and much too big. My skin’s always black with coal dust. Mrs Harrington must have a fire in every grate…”
She prattled on again and Mary was left to wonder what she was hiding under the talk of dirt and grime.
Eventually the streets became quieter, with space for trees in elegant garden squares. The dray dropped the girls on a wide road lined with shops. From here they would walk, but it was not so far, Harriet said. Mary didn’t mind, in spite of the mud from recent rain. At every corner there was something to see: a builder’s yard; a shop window filled with jars of enticing sweets; another with leather-bound books, and – was there? – yes! – another with bright-coloured satin ribbons.
Mary loved shops as much as any sixteen-year-old, and knew more about them than many a country girl. For a moment, she was nostalgic. In the little Kent village of Westbrook where she’d lived all her life, she had been lucky enough to work in the smart haberdashery shop, owned by kindly Mr Foster. It was the talk of all the local villages. Mary had encountered Mr Foster at school, where he came sometimes to teach drawing: the only lesson that wasn’t a physical agony to sit through. He had noticed something in her. What? Her hair? Her face? Her talent with a pencil or a needle? Her dresses were always prettier and finer than her friends’ clothes, she reflected, because she worked on them long into the night, until the guttering candle had finally burned itself out. No matter what he’d seen in Mary, what mattered was that as soon as she was released from the clutches of the village school, Mr Foster had invited her to come and work for him.
While her cousin slaved away in London, Mary had loved nothing more than to be surrounded by satin ribbons and cotton lace, bolts of thick tweed from Scotland and colourful chintz from India. Ladies came from miles around to choose fabric for their frocks and trimmings for their hats. Gentlemen, too, Mary found, who stood around admiring the stock and smiling, and would buy a yard of green ribbon for no reason at all.
Until Mr Foster’s God-fearing mother had come to stay, clad in black from head to toe. Her husband dead, her cottage sold, Mrs Foster inhabited the shop and the rooms above it like a brooding Cochin hen. If anyone smiled at her, she scowled. And God forbid anyone should smile at Mary. Especially any young gentleman buying ribbon. Especially if he happened to be the son of the squire and happened to remark on how well the green satin would sit in Mary’s flame-red hair.
That hair. It had been the bane of her life. All through her childhood, she had been ‘Coppernob’ and ‘Carrot Top’. Her mother and siblings had the same affliction. Some people said they were changelings, others that it was a sign of sorcery. But since coming home from university, the squire’s son had started to see it differently, it seemed.
She has to go. She has to go.
And so Mr Foster, who was forty-one years old, did exactly as his mother told him. Mary was sent home that very day in disgrace. She still remembered the look of thunder on Pa’s face when he came home that night after hearing the news.
She remembered, too, the look Mr Foster gave her as he presented her with a pretty sewing box as a parting gift. Thinking now of the heartfelt pain in his eyes as he had said goodbye made Mary suddenly wonder whether it was only the gentlemen callers his mother had worried about.
She shook herself out of her reverie as Harriet announced, “Well, here we are. St George’s Square.”
Stepping quickly across the road to avoid a hackney carriage, they approached a row of tall white houses with swags above the windows, and steps and pillars leading up to the smart front doors. “Mind your skirts on that puddle, Mary. Why you wore your best dress to travel in, I shall never understand. Maids are understated girls, you know.”
Mary considered this comment as she hooked up the rich peacock blue sateen of the skirt she had recently finished making. Understated.
It is not a word I recognize, she thought. If anything, I want to be overstated. She laughed aloud at the idea, shaking her head so her curls swung about her shoulders, causing Harriet to frown in concern.
“And that’s another thing. Your hair. You must wear it up. In a cap, to keep it out of the way. I’m sure they’ll give you one.”
She was peering at Mary in an odd way, pursing her lips and frowning.
Is she jealous of me? Mary wondered in surprise. And a little afraid? Of her country cousin, who knows nothing at all?
She laughed again, nervous and excited, and held out her hand to her cousin. “Of course, Hattie. Lead me onwards. I begin to wonder if I shall like it here.”
Chapter Three
The house where Harriet stopped looked to Mary like a wedding cake with a black front door. It was several storeys tall and sugar-white, like its neighbours, though the London soot was already starting to cling to the edges, sharpening them with thin black lines.
A smart flight of steps led up to a black-and-white tiled threshold, where the front door boasted a gleaming gold knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. It was framed by a portico, above which four floors of shining windows seemed to stretch towards the sky.
“Is this really the place?” Mary asked, looking up and up. It was even taller than the manor house at home. And every other house on the square was like it.
Harriet laughed. “Does it seem so unusual? For Pimlico, it’s quite ordinary. Wait till you see where the Harringtons live.”
Ignoring the front entrance, she turned right and led the way down some steep concrete steps to a smaller tradesman’s door in the dingy basement, where a scrap of a girl with sallow skin and dull brown eyes answered her knock.
“Yes?” the girl said cautiously.
“I have brought Mary Adams, the new maid,” Harriet announced, with the calm, slightly superior confidence of someone who worked for a better family.
The girl peered past Harriet in silence, taking in Mary’s vivid blue-green skirts, trailing bonnet ribbons and unkempt hair. Mary stared back at the girl’s ill-fitting black dress and dirty apron, and the old-fashioned mob cap on her head.
Is this how I must look, too, now? she wondered. Like a half-starved waif? But she squared her shoulders and smiled.
“How d’you do? I’m Mary.”
The girl kept staring. “Annie,” she muttered in a low voice. “You’d better come in.”
She led them through a short corridor into a kitchen that was dark, plain and immaculately clean. Its simple furniture reminded Mary a little of the cottage in Westbrook. But at home there was always the sound of chickens in the yard, cats and dogs to pet, and the smell of Ma’s baking. Here there was only a ticking clock and the acrid smell of coal. Mary bit her lip and told herself not to be homesick. There was nothing for her there. She kept her smile plastered on and tried not to cling to Harriet too tightly when her cousin hugged her goodbye.
“I’ll see you soon. We’re lucky to be so close.”
“Yes.” Lucky. Mary tried to believe it.
There was silence in the kitchen for a moment, except for the ticking clock. This is it, Mary thought. My new life. My new world. Annie, the maid, stared at her intensely. Then she put her red hands on her bony hips and laughed.
“Will you just take a look? In her satin dress with her slattern hair. Why, she looks like an actress or worse!”
The lilting Irish accent reminded Mary of the labourers who came to Kent to mend the roads or pick fruit in the summer. The voice was soft but the words felt like a slap. Mary took a breath and tried not to let the other girl get the better of her.
“It’s not satin, it’s sateen,” she retorted, smoothing out the lustrous cotton of her skirts. It wasn’t silk or anything ‘fancy’ but it was as good as she could afford at the shop. And why shouldn’t a girl make the most of herself?
“Oh, I see. Sateen. Sateen, she says. Well, that’s all right, then. And will you be happy to kneel on this floor and polish it to a shine in your fine sateen?”
Mary reluctantly admitted that she wouldn’t be.
At that moment, the kitchen calm was shattered by the sudden clamour of a brass bell. Annie glanced at a rack of them above the inner door and set off at a run. Unsure what to do, Mary followed her.
They ran up two flights of narrow back stairs, which led to the main living quarters of the house. Here, ceilings were high and the floor was thickly carpeted. Without glancing back, Annie went through an open door at the far end of a light-filled landing. Mary hovered a few feet from the doorway, taking in the large room beyond.
She had never seen anything quite like it. The light was muted by heavy red swagged curtains at the windows. Chairs were padded and stuffed, walls were painted indigo blue and patchworked with drawings in narrow black frames. Between the windows, giant plants in pots made it seem as if the jungle had come to Pimlico. Mary marvelled at the multitude of china ornaments and little silver boxes on every surface, of rugs and embroidered cushions. She wondered nervously who did all the dusting.
In the middle of the room stood a short, plump woman, her hand hovering near the bell pull. This must be Eliza Aitken, her new mistress. She looked padded and stuffed, too, in a high-necked silk dress the colour of mushrooms, with red velvet trimmings and a deep white lace collar. The colours worked oddly together, Mary thought. She tried not to look at it.
“Annie, I need you to get my— Who’s that behind you?”
The maid whipped round and scowled to see Mary standing there.
“The scullery maid, ma’am. I’m sorry – she’s just arrived.”
“The new girl? I must see her. Bring her in.”
Mary stepped slowly forwards while the mistress gawped at her like a curiosity. Pale grey eyes examined her from a round face framed by two loops of neatly plaited light brown hair. My hair would never consent to sit in such a style, Mary thought. She dropped a deep curtsey and decided to break the silence. “Good morning, ma’am. I’m Mary.”
She had dared to hope for a welcoming smile. According to Harriet, the family were desperate for a new maid. But instead, the mistress narrowed her eyes. “Mmmm,” she said, through pursed lips. “In this house servants speak when spoken to.”
There was another silence.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mary muttered uncertainly.
Mrs Aitken sighed. “Your cousin spoke highly of you to my friend, Mrs Harrington, but I wonder. You’ll need to change out of those extraordinary clothes. I don’t know what they wear in Kent. Our servants are plain, honest girls.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mary repeated, bobbing again to be on the safe side. How often should a girl bob? She didn’t know. She could almost feel Annie sniggering behind her.
“We certainly need another pair of hands. Annie’s rushed off her feet, what with the children and my husband…” Mrs Aitken flourished her wrist vaguely, as if to suggest an exhausting, difficult family. “He’s an academic, you know. A professor of Classics at the university. You know what a university is?”
“Yes, ma’am.” What kind of country animal did Mrs Aitken think she was? A goose? She happened to know the squire’s son had gone to Trinity College, Oxford. And the rector had been to Cambridge.
“Well … good. The professor is a very serious gentleman. Strict, but fair. You will do well with him as long as you do exactly as you’re told. You’re never to interrupt him when he is working in his study, or interfere with his work or his papers, do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t even tidy there without his express permission. Don’t annoy him with minor household matters. If anything arises, come to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good … well … that is all. I’m feeling rather tired. Annie, bring me my shawl and my lemon drink. And my sewing basket. Alice has a party tomorrow and I must fashion a fairy costume out of something.”
“I could help,” Mary offered. She felt encouraged for the first time since arriving here. She could think of nothing nicer than to spend an hour or so working with netting and wire. However, at the sight of Mrs Aitken’s stony gaze, she faltered. “I-if you wanted. I like to sew.”
Eliza’s lips formed a thin, tight line. “I am quite capable of making my daughter’s costume. I’m sure you will be busy enough with your duties.”
Flushing, Mary bobbed a last, quick curtsey and left the room. Annie followed and threw her a look of quiet triumph on the landing.
“Wait here while I get the sewing basket. Then it’s time to change out of those fancy skirts,” she whispered nastily. “You’ll be working hard today. Sewing! Ha!”
Chapter Four
Once Mary had collected her trunk from the basement Annie led her up to a room at the very top of the house. This was the bedroom they would share – her home for the next few years.
“Are ye pleased with your grand hotel?” the Irish girl asked, in her mocking voice.
Mary took it in slowly. The room was long and narrow, tucked inside the eaves, with whitewashed walls and pine boards on the floor. There were two beds, not far apart, a chair, a painted pine chest and a washstand. The ceiling sloped so sharply that the girls could only stand upright on one side. That was Annie’s domain. Mary’s was the lower one, under a little skylight that looked out on to dark tiled roofs, an army of chimney pots and a dove grey sky. There was no green at all in the view, Mary realized – only shades of grey.
“Well…” Annie prompted.
Mary nodded. It was dry at least – and warm. But she didn’t know yet if she loved or hated it. She hardly knew what to think at all.
Annie opened the painted chest and rummaged around. She emerged with a pile of dark fabric that turned out to be the bodice and skirt of a much-worn black wool dress.
“This’ll be yours for now. We mustn’t dirty the fine sateen.”
“I have a black dress,” Mary said quickly, opening her trunk and retrieving it. Harriet had told her to bring one.
Annie frowned as Mary held up the skirt. “Look at the braid, that will never do. Wear this one.”
Mary stared in horror. She had sat up for hours sewing on those yards of braid. The dress Annie was holding was in even worse conditon than the raggedy scrap she was wearing. The black material was fading to brown and it was frayed along most of its seams.
“Was that yours?” Mary asked.
“It was. In my younger days. Now hurry. We’ve a lot to be getting on with.”
As she changed out of her lovely skirt and bodice, Mary felt as if she was taking off the last of her old self. She felt lost and unmoored – a ship drifting out to sea. She adjusted her chemise to hide the worst of the bruises from the beating Pa had given her. The new self then had to scrimp and squeeze to get into the thin, shabby clothes. She could only just hook the bodice to the skirt by breathing in tightly. Looking down, her heart sank – the hem ended several inches above the floor. Shame flooded through her. She hadn’t worn short skirts since she was a little girl.
“Is… Isn’t there anything else?” she asked.
Annie rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, we’ve a whole fine wardrobe. Just ask for my ermine cloak, why don’t you?”
“What about … one of the other maids?”
“Listen to the girl!” Annie said, with a high, forced laugh. “She thinks she’s come to Buckingham Palace, so she does!”
Mary felt tears forming and willed them away. She would not cry. Harriet’s letters had mentioned several servants where she worked. The one thing she had been looking forward to was the company of the servants’ hall. It took a moment to find her voice and breathe so it wouldn’t wobble. “So it’s just you and me?”
Annie tipped her head to one side. “If you count Mrs Green there’s three of us, but she sleeps downstairs near the silver. She won’t be lending you her wardrobe. Ha!” And off she went again, laughing until she wheezed.
“Who’s Mrs Green?”
“The cook. She’s after finding a new butcher. The old one was serving rancid meat.” Mary’s stomach turned. “But when she comes back, you’re not to speak until spoken to, understand? A girl like you must know her place.” Annie’s pinched, pale face was lit up with a strange sort of challenging look.
A girl like me? Mary wondered. What kind of girl did she mean?
“D’you understand?” Annie asked sharply.
Mary nodded.
“You say ‘yes’. ‘Yes, Annie.’ Say it.”
Mary swallowed. “Yes, Annie.”
“That’s better. Now, put on this cap and apron, and follow me.”
When Mrs Green came bustling into the kitchen half an hour later, Mary knew better than to greet her. She waited until spoken to and Annie watched her sharply to make sure she did.
But the cook was not made of the same stuff as the housemaid. Mrs Green had a broad, friendly face, hands shiny with work, dark blue woollen skirts under a big white apron and a look of kindly wisdom about her. She was from a village not twenty miles from Westbrook, though Mary had never been there. But she had lived in London most of her life and welcomed Mary to the city as if she owned it.
“Work hard and you’ll be happy here. A girl can do anything in London if she works enough for it. Isn’t that true, Annie?”
Annie didn’t reply. She was busy listing Mary’s new duties around the house.
“You’ll start at dawn with the grates. Then get the kitchen fire going. Then do the slops for everyone in the household. Wake Cook with a cup of tea. Then clean the kitchen floor…”
The list went on and on. Mary would be responsible for cleaning and polishing everything in the house, it seemed, as well as helping to prepare the food and serve it, and a myriad of other tasks. The wedding-cake house was huge! Lovely, if you were to live in it at your leisure. Not so if it was your responsibility to swab down every floor twice daily. Mary struggled to hide her dismay. Annie smiled at her with grim satisfaction.
“You’ll have to learn fast, as I did. I’ll be much too busy to help you out, you know. I have my own duties – dressing the mistress and the children, and fetching and carrying. Show me your hands.”
Reluctantly Mary held them out. Once they had been rough but after a year of working in the shop she was proud of her soft skin and neat nails. Annie took them in her bony fingers and laughed.
“We’ll have those red-raw soon enough. When I first started, mine bled every day.”
Mary blinked away the new tears that formed before Annie could see them.
What have you let me in for, Harriet?
Having been so closely examined at first, Mary quickly came to feel almost invisible. Cook kept herself to the kitchen, which was sweet-smelling and welcoming, and Annie seemed to enjoy helping her in its steamy warmth. But Mary’s tasks kept her upstairs when they were down, or outside when they were in. Even downstairs, washing and scrubbing, she was relegated to the dark, airless scullery, whose cold, dripping tap provided her only companionship.
She was not introduced to the children but merely caught sight of them going up to their nursery after sharing lessons with the children next door. They were a girl and a boy, Alice and Henry. She saw them through the half-open door to the parlour, where she was busy lighting the fire. Her first impression was of petticoats and ringlets, red cheeks and stained white trousers. These worried her a little, as Annie had made it plain that she would be the one to wash them. The children, if they saw her, made no sign of it. She wondered whether they would notice the difference between her and the last scullery maid. One smut-faced girl, covered in coal dust and silently working, must look very like the next.
It was the same when the master arrived home from work. Mary only met him at all because he needed his coat brushed and Annie was busy with the children. As Mary went to find him in the hall, her heart was pounding. If he was anything like her father, she had much to be afraid of. She stopped at the top of the back stairs when she saw him. He gave the impression of a wall: tall, dark, wide and made somehow thicker still by an impressive beard. It took him a while to see her and when he did, he merely beckoned her forwards to hand her the coat.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, bobbing.
Only then did he look long enough to notice her face at all.
“Ah. You’re the new girl.”
“Yes, sir. Mary, sir.”
“Good, good.” With that, he strode upstairs and left her.
Strangely though, she breathed a little easier after he passed. She still felt almost invisible, but safer. She knew the lurking menace in a man who meant you harm. There was none of that in Philip Aitken. Stern, possibly, and somewhat godlike in his bearded magnificence. But not unkind. It made Annie’s next scolding easier to bear.
Annie was the exception to the invisibility rule. She noticed everything Mary did and nothing, it seemed, was right. Life in London soon came to feel like a constant scolding.
“Do it again!”, “Do it faster!”, “Scrub it harder!”, “Make it cleaner!”
It didn’t help that Mary was bad at her duties. They were boring and hard, which was no surprise, and she couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to other, better places. The fields around Westbrook on a warm summer’s day. Or the yard, collecting fresh eggs with her brother and sister… And the next thing she knew, an hour had passed and she had only cleaned two grates, and Annie was back in a fury.
The grates were the worst. There were eight of them in the house and each one seemed to gobble up coal like a little monster. Black coal dust got in Mary’s eyes, in her nose, under her nails, all over her clothes. It had to be shovelled, scraped, brushed, carried and bagged. Each morning at dawn she cleaned and relaid the fires. By lunchtime half of them needed to be laid again and in the evening every one of them mocked her with its filthy, smouldering ashes. Meanwhile, smoke dust settled in dark, sticky freckles on every surface and had to be polished away. Eliza Aitken liked to run a gloved finger along the mantelpiece in the drawing room on returning from her outings and if she found dirt on the fingertip she blamed Annie, who in turn berated Mary.
But how was she supposed to dust every minute, when there were rugs to be beaten and vegetables to be peeled and scraped? In addition, Mary had the laundry to wash, rinse and put through the mangle. And the washing-up to do before and after every meal. She spent hours up to her elbows in water, either too hot or too cold. Her skin was soon rubbed raw, as Annie had promised, her back ached and she was usually hungry. But though the work was hard, the hardest thing was the loneliness. There was no one to share a joke with, or bargain with, or dream with, for hour after endless hour. She thought she would go mad with it.
She had never been so dog tired, either and hadn’t known it was possible. At home, when the sun went down they all went to bed. Here there was gaslight in the streets and endless candlesticks and oil lamps round the house. Two nights in a row she was kept up until midnight working. Cook found her next day in the kitchen after dinner, with her cheek on the table and her hair in the soup.
But at least that soup was good. Mrs Green’s talent with food was the one thing that kept Mary going. Eliza Aitken had a taste for French cuisine and Cook was constantly experimenting with new recipes to impress her dinner guests. Any new dish that didn’t quite work or that wasn’t eaten by the family was eagerly consumed below stairs. At first, Mary didn’t understand how Annie could eat so much at every meal, steal bread whenever she was able and still remain skinny as a pipe cleaner. But she soon learned that running up and down five flights of stairs several times a day wore off all the scraps of meat and vegetables that any girl could consume. Before long Mary’s cast-off uniform, at first so tight, would be falling off her, without any need to let out the seams.
Cook had her moments of kindness, too. Five days after Mary’s arrival, Annie was asked to reclean the front steps after Mary had done them badly. She polished them to a shine, then slapped Mary across the face so hard that Mary saw stars. Cook noticed the red mark on her cheek. It was impossible to hide it.
“Have a bun,” Cook said, sliding a fresh, sugar-topped pastry towards her. Mary ate it ravenously before Annie could catch her at it. “And don’t think of her too unkindly.”
To this, Mary said nothing. How could she think of Annie any other way?
Cook sighed. “She had this job before you. And the last housemaid treated her cruelly. She’ll settle, I’m sure, in time.”
She might, Mary thought. Though I wonder if I’ ll live to see it. Cook’s explanation didn’t help much. She still thought of Annie as her new, unwanted enemy. But she was grateful for the bun.
Chapter Five
Early on the first Sunday morning, after the fires were laid, Annie summoned Mary back upstairs to their little room. She proceeded to undress to her chemise and indicated a clean bodice and skirt, which she had laid out on the bed.
“You can help lace my stays today. You might as well make yourself useful.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Mary asked.
“Going somewhere? Of course I am. And so are you. What are you, a heathen?”
“No,” Mary said, stung.
“Well, then, we’re off to church. You’ll need to get a move on – when you’ve done my stays. I’ve never seen a girl take so long to do a grate. If you’re not ready, we’ll be off without you.”
“I’d have been ready ten minutes ago if only you’d
