The Housemaid

by Sarah A. Denzil

  My first day had been strange, to say the least. Frightening even. I used the spiral stairs just once that day and wondered whether I’d ever feel comfortable moving up and down the steep wooden treads. I couldn’t imagine being on those stairs without picturing the doll lying on the ground, the floor painted red.

  I thought of Chloe, this faceless maid, scurrying up and down the staircase five, ten, maybe fifteen times a day, forever at the beck and call of the Howards and Mrs Huxley. And all the time she was keeping that secret, an illicit affair with the boss’s son. It was a story I could imagine ending unhappily, perhaps doused in the sort of bitterness that made you resent the person who came after you. My head was spinning. I’d come here for a job, yes, and also to perhaps learn more about the mother I never knew, but I hadn’t anticipated this.

  We finished up the laundry and headed back to the kitchen. Mrs Huxley waited for us at the top of the stairs.

  “Lord Bertie has reported the suspicious parcel to the police,” she said. Her hands were clasped together in front of her body. “Now, let that be the end of it. You can put it out of your mind by helping the kitchen staff prepare the silverware for the Howards’ dinner. Come along.”

  Roisin imitated Huxley’s abrupt heel turn as we went back into the servants’ corridor and followed the housekeeper through the house, ending up back in the dining room. At least this time I had an official reason for being there.

  Huxley gestured to a tray of cutlery in the centre of the table that we were to set. “You’ll set the tables for an informal dinner. No starter, just main course and dessert. Then you’ll carry the food on trays and serve them. I stay for the duration of the meal, topping up drinks and serving vegetables, but you can then go back to the kitchen for your evening meal.”

  Roisin and I worked methodically around the table, setting knives and forks on place mats. Then we headed back to the kitchen where Pawel and the kitchen staff passed us trays of sea bass in samphire sauce, grilled asparagus and buttery potatoes. I had a sudden urge to rebel, like sneeze on the food or steal a potato, anything naughty. But I didn’t. Instead, I concentrated on walking through the corridors without spilling anything. When we arrived back in the room, most of the Howards were ready and waiting for their food.

  Lottie, her petite, upturned nose catching the light of the chandelier, sat playing with her phone, her shoulders slumped and a waterfall of blonde tresses caressed the tablecloth. Lord Bertie drummed his fingers against the base of his wine glass, short, stubby nails creating a metallic ring. I couldn’t help notice that his hands were just as strong as his son’s, though around twice as old.

  Alex looked at me with an open, pleasant face. He smiled and thanked me as I placed the fish in front of him, and a waft of his citrus aftershave hit me. When I moved back to stand with Roisin, I found my gaze reaching for his, as though it were magnetised. I was sure Mrs Huxley would notice, which was why I then forced myself to look elsewhere.

  The last to enter the dining room was Margot Pemberton, Lord Bertie’s mother-in-law and the woman whose dead daughter was painted onto the dining room wall. She staggered in, wearing an enormous fur coat wrapped around her shoulders, a pair of Jackie O sunglasses sliding down her narrow nose, and a bright purple turban atop her head. She was clearly inebriated, with a slim cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. I hung back away from the table, waiting for Mrs Huxley to let us leave, completely transfixed by this woman. When she sat, she hung the fur on the back of her chair to show off her little black dress and the slightly drooping skin it revealed. And then her head turned towards me. To my surprise, she slipped the sunglasses from her face and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “So, you’re the replacement, are you? Come here, girl.”

  I felt like I was in a period movie from the 1920s. I walked over to her, avoiding Alex’s eyes, vaguely noticing Lottie pull her attention away from her phone, and stood before Margot Pemberton.

  She then beckoned for me to lean closer and grasped my face between her pale, bony fingers. Once she’d examined me, she tutted.

  “A pretty one, Bertie? Again.” She pulled my face close to hers and whispered in my ear. “Don’t take any shit from these pissers. Especially not my son-in-law and especially not that godawful housekeeper.” And then she released me and addressed the table. “What is it tonight anyway? I hope it’s not fucking fish again. We eat so much goddamn fish I’m afraid of growing gills.”

  Lottie leaned across the table and touched her grandmother’s hand. “It’s good for you, Mo-mo.”

  Margot rolled her eyes. “Oh, whoop-de-do. Maybe I’ll make it to my eighty-fifth birthday. Wouldn’t that be a delight for you all?”

  “Margot dear, please shut up,” Lord Bertie said, barely even moving his eyes away from his plate. “Can we just get on with dinner? Huxley wants to send the maids away. If you’ve finished inspecting them of course.”

  The matriarch glanced in my direction once more. “One moment.” She hooked a finger at me, and I approached again. “What’s all this about threatening mail? Has someone got it in for you?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered, feeling stupid. I found myself fiddling with the bare finger where I usually wear my ring.

  “Stop fidgeting, girl. Well, if someone does have it in for you, you’d best start growing a spine. My mother knew Al Capone, you know. I grew up around some interesting Hollywood types who could get you anything. Have you got a pistol?”

  “Mo-mo—” Alex started.

  “Margot, really.” Lord Bertie let out a weary sigh.

  Mrs Huxley stepped forward. “I’ll get the girls back to the kitchen. Is there anything else you need, sir?”

  “English mustard would be wonderful.” Bertie continued to stare at his mother-in-law.

  I backed away from them, my skin vibrating with excitement. The burgeoning of a giggle fit built in my stomach, and every time I imagined Margot’s dark brown eyes widening as she said the word pistol, a little laugh escaped from between my lips. Once we were a few feet down the servants’ corridor, Roisin grabbed my arm, and we couldn’t contain the laughter any longer. Luckily, Huxley was still in the dining room and not there to chastise us.

  “Are they always like that?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, absolutely. Margot once told me I’d never find a husband because my ankles were too fat. They broke the mould with that one, I tell you.”

  The release of laughter made my shoulders lighter. Being with Roisin tended to do that. Finally, I relaxed for long enough to take in the strange dark walls of our private corridor. A place so many other ghosts had tread. The nameless, faceless servants lost to history. We would forever remember a stone trodden on by Anne Boleyn, but who remembered the maid scuttling along by her side?

  “A lot of people have lived here,” I mused.

  Roisin made an mm-hmm in agreement.

  “There must be stories. Are there any stories about the maids that came before us?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought there might be tales of maids from years ago. Affairs and disappearances, that sort of thing. Like Chloe and Alex.”

  Roisin raised her eyebrows. “I think Chloe and Alex are probably the biggest story right now. But she didn’t tell me much. She kept to herself mostly. She was a bit scary, to be honest. She had mood swings.”

  “What sort of mood swings?”

  Roisin shook her head. “One day she’d be fine, the next she’d be in the worst mood. I could never work her out.”

  I thought of the psychological struggles that came with addiction and wasn’t surprised. None of it meant Chloe was unstable; it just meant she was struggling. Guilt gnawed at my stomach. I had no right to assume Chloe sent me the diorama because of her affair with Alex. I’d need a lot of questions to be answered before I made any assumptions. But I was too tired to even think about it. I decided to change the subject.

  “Is Highwood
haunted?” I asked.

  The smile faded from Roisin’s lips. “I hear things at night.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. The expression on my face must’ve been one of terror because Roisin backtracked slightly.

  “It’s the house, I suppose. It’s so old, and it settles at night. Sometimes those sounds mimic other sounds, like footsteps or voices.”

  “Voices?”

  She shrugged.

  “I guess with all these corridors and passageways, voices must carry in unusual ways.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I heard, but don’t tell Mrs Huxley, will you? The thing is, I’d stayed up late with”—she blushed—“with Pawel. The cook. We’d been drinking, and then he told me he wanted to show me a painting he said looked like me near the north wing. It was like two a.m. or something, so we walked through the house super quietly and he showed me the painting.”

  “Did it look like you?”

  Roisin rolled her eyes. “It was of Lady Godiva with her tits out and hair all over the place. Looked nothing like me at all, but I think he wanted to see my tits, judging by the way his hand kept travelling down my back. Anyway, I told him to feck off, and we started walking back to the kitchen. That was when I heard a door slam, and I don’t know… whispering.” She leaned against the wall. “The north wing is empty. It’s not in great shape, and the Howards don’t want us in there because it’s a safety hazard. I guess there’s a draft somewhere near there and the wind came through. It sounded so much like a voice.” She shuddered. “I don’t mind admitting that it scared the crap out of me.”

  I felt the coldness of the wall behind my back, the stillness in the air.

  “What about Pawel?”

  “The bastard ran away.” She laughed and shook her head. “I guess that killed any illusions I had of finding a decent man at Highwood.” She blushed then, turning away. I wondered if there was more to the story. “I saw Alex looking at you tonight.”

  It was time for us to head back to the kitchen. I started walking, ignoring her prompt.

  “I’d be careful there,” she said. “In fact, I’d be careful about everything at Highwood.”

  “Is there anything you’re not telling me about this place?” We were close to the kitchen, but I slowed to keep her there in the hallway. “Is it about Chloe?”

  Roisin glanced around her to make sure we were alone even though it was clear we were. Then she leaned closer to me and whispered what she wanted to tell me. “I tried to call her once, after she left, and her phone was disconnected. I guess she might’ve not paid her bill, but I worry about it. I checked her Instagram account, and she hasn’t posted for weeks. She was pretty. She used to post selfies of herself in the beautiful gardens here, and she had a small following, you know. Why would she abandon five thousand followers?”

  “Maybe if she couldn’t afford to pay her phone bill, she can’t access the app.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Roisin said. “I just wish I could get in touch with her. I’m worried about her.”

  “Did she and Alex break up?”

  Roisin gave me a long stare. “Oh, undoubtedly. He obviously used her and threw her away. That’s what rich arseholes do to us lot, isn’t it? Chloe thought they were in love. Sometimes he bought her jewellery, and for that, she thought he loved her. She thought she’d be Lady Howard one day. How could she be so stupid?”

  I wondered the same thing. It was my first moment of true naivety.

  Chapter 12

  After wolfing down a stew Pawel made for us, I left Roisin to flirt with the cook and went to bed. But I had an ulterior motive for slipping away from the others. I’d seen Mrs Huxley leave, and I wanted to see where she went in the evenings.

  Mrs Huxley hadn’t shown us to her office or room or wherever it was she spent time away from us. I knew she lived in the house just like we did, but I didn’t know where. Instead, she seemed to mostly remain in the kitchen if we needed her. But I was curious, so I followed her along the hallway and stood outside my bedroom, watching her. She continued on to a room at the end of the hall, and there she removed a key from her pocket and entered. I frowned, wondering whether she always kept the room locked.

  There would be records in Mrs Huxley’s office, I was sure of it. Perhaps evidence of my mother’s employment here. But I wasn’t going to find them tonight, and I was exhausted from the long, strange day I’d had. I opened the bedroom door and went inside, grateful for the quiet and even more grateful for the soft bed. I kicked off my shoes and plopped down.

  I’d decided not to tell anyone about my connections here. I had my own reasons. It was partly because I didn’t want Mrs Huxley looking over her shoulder at me, constantly suspicious of a hidden agenda. No, I just wanted to do my job and maybe uncover some secrets at the same time. Which meant staying sharp, being smart. My plan was no plan at all; it was to roll with the punches and see where the job took me. However, the arrival of the diorama had thrown me an unexpected curveball, and now I had two things to worry about.

  My mind didn’t settle easy that evening, but I shed the uniform, checked on the letters I’d hidden in my underwear drawer, and slipped between the bedsheets, my body so tired I didn’t even have the energy to wash my face. Uneasy thoughts moved through my mind as though on a conveyor belt, but one stood out to me. I remembered a few lines from the letters in my drawer. I had them memorised. I think there’s something wrong with Highwood Hall. That line went around and around in my mind. Somehow, despite everything, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The second day went relatively smoothly compared to the first. Mrs Huxley gave me a written schedule and map along with a key to the various supply cupboards hidden around the house. I spent most of my time with Roisin, which helped keep the anxiety at bay, but it made exploring Highwood tricky.

  I’d heard nothing from Lord Bertie about the strange parcel I received in the post. I spent most of my time cleaning and washing clothes. It was a Thursday, and Lord Bertie was in his office most of the day. I often heard soft classical piano music playing on his sound system and his voice on the telephone.

  The warmth of the late May day made my uniform stick to my back as I walked around the hall. At around eleven a.m., I made my way to the living room to dust the ornaments and Roisin had gone to vacuum the upstairs bedrooms. I saw Margot walking through the entryway, her hair pulled up into one of her turbans, wearing nothing but a swimming costume and heels. A cigarette hung from her red lips, skin the shade and texture of leather. She didn’t notice me as I hurried past, duster gripped in my fist. She walked surprisingly well in her high heels, like a model on the catwalk, but with that mid-century cool shoulder slump. I assumed, or rather hoped, that she was on her way to the pool.

  When I reached the Howard’s living quarters, I expected it to be empty, but Lottie smiled at me as I entered.

  “Good morning,” she said brightly.

  “Morning,” I said, wondering if I was supposed to give her a title, like Miss or Lady. “Do you want me to come back later?”

  She swiped the air with a relaxed hand. “No, just ignore me.”

  Her long, slender legs dangled over the arm of an ornate, floral sofa. Half-closed hazel eyes watched me as I worked, one foot bobbing up and down as though to music. A book lay on her lap, splayed out and page down.

  “God, I’m bored.” She sighed dramatically. “This book is bloody awful. Have you read it?”

  She lifted the cover and I squinted to read the title. I’d never seen it before, but it looked like an old cosy mystery, something in the same vein of Agatha Christie. I shook my head, and she dropped the book to her lap.

  “So, where are you from?” she asked. “I like to get to know the maids. You lot are always much more interesting than books.”

  “I grew up just outside York.” I didn’t mind her asking questions so much, but I was quite concerned about losing concentration as I dusted the priceless antiques dotted around the mansion.


  “Was it a council estate?”

  “No, but it wasn’t the nicest area.”

  She nodded solemnly and tugged at a skinny gold chain around her neck. “What’s it like being a junkie?” The necklace slid between her lips, and I saw her tongue slink out and back in, twisting the metal. “Sorry, I like to run my mouth off. That was terribly rude.”

  Before I answered, I carefully replaced a porcelain horse on top of its plinth. The word she’d used had taken me by surprise, and I hadn’t had a chance to react. Resentment, anger, and annoyance bubbled up inside, but I pushed it down. “It’s a lot more boring than you’d think. Most of the time you’re just out of it, sleepwalking through everything. You don’t live. You exist. There’s a high, but it doesn’t last. Then there’s just… numbness and this feeling that you want the high back.” I shook away a thought, a feeling, a remnant from my past, not wanting to dwell on those times. And I certainly didn’t want to look at her, smiling sympathetically, if not genuinely, with her head tilted to one side. I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about pills and powder and the blurring of a dirty room as the world drifted away.

  “You don’t talk like… someone with your background.”

  By that, I assumed she meant I didn’t have a broad accent. My patience began to wear thin. The Howards liked to look at me as though I were a rare specimen. I wondered if Lottie had been like this with every maid who came from the Providence programme.

  “My aunt raised me. And she was old-fashioned. She thought I’d have a better life if I didn’t pick up an accent, so she used to teach me received pronunciation. She gave me a lot of books to read too.” There were hackles standing up on my neck, the edge of a defence mechanism, the weariness of being presumed to be one way because of where you happened to be born.

  Lottie swung her legs back over the arm of the sofa and dumped the book on one of the mahogany tables. Her unbrushed hair bunched around her shoulders. She leaned forward, watching me, her hands gripping the sofa cushion. I wondered what she did day in and day out. She was about my age, maybe a year or two younger, and yet she didn’t appear to be a student or have a job. What kind of existence was that? Then I glanced at my duster, wondering the same about my own.