Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

by Catriona McPherson

  The maids’ store was in a part of the station I had never seen before, under some brick arches with metalled walkways crossing overhead. A queue of girls in serge and bad hats shuffled forwards, kicking their trunks or rolling them on barrows, towards an opening with a counter where a middle-aged man in uniform was writing down details in a ledger and tearing off pink tickets from a roll.

  ‘Name?’ he said when I got to the head of the queue.

  ‘Miss Rossiter,’ I said. He looked up and frowned at me.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘31 Heriot Row,’ I said. He put his pencil down, folded his arms and stared at me.

  ‘There’s no Rossiter in Heriot Row,’ he said. ‘Are you taking a lend o’ me, lassie?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand,’ I began, feeling my face start to change colour. There was some tittering from behind me.

  ‘Get yourself round to the left luggage and pay your tuppence,’ said the man with the pencil. ‘This is the maids’ store.’

  ‘I am a maid,’ I told him. ‘I’m starting today as a lady’s maid for Mrs Balfour of Heriot Row and my name is Rossiter.’ The struggle between wounded dignity and maid-like meekness was making my voice tremble.

  The man explored the inside of his cheek with his tongue and regarded me.

  ‘Aye, Balfour, that’s right,’ he said at last.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s my first position, you see.’

  His face softened with understanding and, I think, pity. He ripped off a pink ticket and closed my hand around it with a fatherly pat.

  ‘I do see,’ he said. ‘Well, you take that there wee chitty and give it to the housekeeper. She’ll get a pair of lads to lift your trunk round for you. And sorry I was that wee bit short, there. It’s been going like a fair all day and I’m run off my feet with it.’

  ‘It’ll be a quieter day tomorrow for you,’ I said. ‘If this strike goes ahead anyway.’

  ‘I’ll be on the pickets, hen,’ he said. ‘On my feet all day and no’ getting paid for it.’

  I stared at him. A striker! I was face to face with one of them. He did not look much like a revolutionary, with his uniform jacket open over a Fair Isle jumper in bright colours and with a stub of pencil behind each ear as well as the one in his hand.

  ‘See if you can get the lads down for your case nice and sharp, eh?’ he said. ‘The store’s fillin’ up fast already and we’ve still the late rush to come.’

  There was no front door and butler for me today, of course. The maids’ store might have thrown me for a moment but I knew that much, and I passed through the iron gate and descended the area steps to the door below. It opened before I had reached the flagstones and a smiling face appeared round it.

  ‘Miss Rossiter? I’m Clara, the parlourmaid.’ She opened the door completely, came out into the area and took my bag from me. ‘Mind they steps,’ she said. ‘They get right mossy when it rains.’ She was a tall, vigorous girl in her twenties, with a long oval face and small dancing eyes, and her smile – perhaps to hide imperfect teeth – was more a bunching up of her lips into a bud than a stretching of them, which was most appealing.

  ‘Mrs Hepburn’s making toffee nests for tonight’s sweet,’ she said, ‘and she cannae leave them, but come away back and say hello a minute, before you go to your room, and you can pick up a wee cup of tea and take it with you, eh?’

  ‘That would be lovely, Clara,’ I said, envisioning kicking off Miss Rossiter’s shoes and lying back against pillows, sipping and dozing.

  ‘So what’s your Christian name?’ asked Clara over her shoulder as she closed the area door behind us and started along a stone passageway towards the back of the house, squeezing past the filled scuttles and zinc liners which waited in a row there.

  I stopped walking. What was Miss Rossiter’s Christian name? I had not imagined that she would need one. Grant was Grant to me and Miss Grant to the others as far as I knew. Before I could speak, Clara turned around and gave me a cold look out of her little eyes, not dancing at all now.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s like that, is it?’ and she flounced into the kitchen with her head held very high.

  ‘It was Miss Rossiter you heard right enough, Mrs Hepburn,’ she said. ‘Here she is. Miss Rossiter.’

  I stepped inside behind her. It was a cavernous room dominated by the black Eagle range which took up most of one wall and sent shimmering waves of heat to stir festoons of flypapers all around the ceiling. At the table, directly under the electric light, a formidable-looking cook in a rose-pink dress and enormous apron, with a bunch of keys twinkling at her waist, was letting ropes of syrup drop from a small ladle onto a wooden contraption like a large darning ball on a stick, held up by a kitchenmaid who was quivering with the effort of holding it steady and was cross-eyed from staring just in front of her face. By the range, a very young boy was sitting with his stockinged feet on the fender, plucking a chicken and throwing the feathers onto the flames.

  ‘Fanny,’ I said, rather louder than I had intended.

  The young boy looked up, Clara bit her lip and the cross-eyed maid jumped.

  ‘Millie-molly-moo,’ said the cook, ‘how many times have I told you?’ She wiped up a blob of syrup from the table-top with her finger and stuck it out for the girl to lick. ‘You have to hold the paddle steady.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, meaning it to take in all of them. ‘I always tell myself that next time I meet someone I shall say Frances and I never do. I got close this time, though – said nothing at all!’

  Clara was smiling at me again; she had swallowed it.

  ‘Nothing wrong with Fanny,’ she said. ‘Better than Millie-molly-moo, anyway.’

  Mrs Hepburn took the paddle and stuck it into a kind of pipe-rack affair where a few others were cooling, then she put the sugar pot on the back of the range to keep warm, wiped her hands on her apron and turned to greet me.

  ‘Kitty Hepburn,’ she said. ‘And this wee chookie is my niece, Amelia, the scullerymaid. She gets Millie, though. And Mattie, the hall and boot boy.’

  ‘Miss,’ said Mattie, dipping his head.

  ‘Kitchenmaid now, Auntie Kitty,’ said Millie. ‘I mean, Mrs Hepburn.’

  The cook’s face clouded very briefly.

  ‘Well, let’s just see, will we?’ she said. ‘Make a cup of tea for Miss Rossiter to be going on with anyway.’

  Millie trotted towards the scullery door then turned and took a few paces back in the direction of the large dresser which filled the wall opposite the range.

  ‘What cup does a lady’s maid get, Auntie Kit— Hepburn?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get it, Molly-moo,’ said Clara, rolling her eyes at me. The scullerymaid, unperturbed by the teasing, sat down opposite Mattie by the fireside and put her hands between her knees, like a toddler who is trying ostentatiously to stay out of mischief. She was fifteen perhaps, with the face of a pink-and-white china baby doll and a round, dumpy figure that one could easily believe was made of stockinet stuffed with sand. Her brown hair was plaited and pinned over her head and her innocent eyes blinked from behind round spectacles. She caught me studying her and beamed at me with the guilelessness of a child.

  ‘I’ve put two lumps in,’ said Clara, holding out a teacup with the saucer balanced on top to keep it hot, ‘seeing you’ve been on the train getting all trauchled.’

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘I’ll take you down to your room now, Miss Rossiter. Clara, you better get into your blacks before Mr Faulds comes in. Coal scuttles, Mattie-boy. And potatoes, Millie – ten big ones and mind you set them in the salt water straight away and not leave them out on the bunker to brown.’ Mrs Hepburn gathered up my bag and umbrella in one hand and taking my teacup in the other she swept out of the kitchen.

  ‘Isn’t she lovely spoken?’ said Millie as I was closing the kitchen door behind me. The others shushed her furiously but I caught her eye and smiled.

  ‘Down to my room
?’ I said, following the cook, and right enough she had crossed the passageway and was descending a set of worn steps, her wooden heels knocking on the stone with a rather mournful sound. ‘I was expecting an attic.’

  We arrived in the sub-basement, and I peered around waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did I saw dark green walls, dark brown doors and a dark red painted stone floor, covered with a narrow strip of grey hair carpet. There was no furniture, only two deep laundry hampers set against the wall, one open and half-filled with white bundles and one buckled shut, an address label tied to its handle, awaiting collection or just returned.

  ‘You’ve never been in an Edinburgh house then?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘The nurseries are in the attics and our rooms are all down here.’

  I had indeed noticed the almost subterranean windows below basement level in some of Edinburgh’s houses but had never stopped to wonder what was behind them. Mrs Hepburn turned right and opened one of the brown doors.

  To my surprise, light flooded out into the passageway.

  ‘Here you are then,’ she said, bustling in and putting my teacup down on a shelf to the side of the fire, which was burning cheerfully. ‘You’re at the back but there’s no slight meant to it because the front rooms are black as caves and here you’ve a good view down the garden. Clara and Phyllis – she’s the housemaid – are across the way and the rest of them – well, it’s just the two of them now – have the front room.’ She stopped and smiled at me. ‘I’ll let you get settled then,’ she said. ‘Servants’ hall is in front of the kitchen and dinner’s at six. Mrs Balfour said she’d not need to see you until seven, so there’s a nice easy start for you. The – ahem – is just out the back there, up the steps to the walkway and on the left beyond the scullery and it’s ladies only, so there’s no need to worry about that. The menservants have their arrangements down at the mews.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very kind. And regarding the ladies’ . . . arrangements, is the back door open?’

  ‘Until Mr Faulds locks up at night it is. Now do you have your chit for your trunk? I’ll get Mattie and John to slip down for it before tea.’ I fished out the pink ticket and gave it to her. ‘We’re a happy house, Fanny,’ she said, then hesitated as though wondering whether to say more. ‘Young Mrs Balfour is a dear girl and you’ll not have much to do with the master, I don’t suppose.’

  Which, I thought to myself once she had left, was commendably discreet but still spoke volumes. It need have no connection to Lollie’s troubles, of course, but still I should have liked to know why my predecessor had left before a replacement could be found for her. The loss of a servant from a household of such friendliness, in which fires burned in bedroom grates on afternoons in May, needed at least some explaining.

  My new home, now that I had a chance to look around it, was a great deal better than I had been expecting; a very great deal better than the attic rooms at Gilverton anyway. It was perhaps ten feet square, with a tall window, modestly clothed in muslin halfway up, which looked out over a patch of grass and a cherry tree. There was a black iron bedstead – exactly the same as those at Gilverton – with fat pillows and a fat quilt, an armchair near the fire, a chest of drawers with jug and basin on top, a bookcase and a hanging cupboard. A door beside the window revealed a tiny room housing a small china sink with hot and cold taps, a very small mangle fitted to it at one end and a clothes airer on a pulley above it. Boxes of Sunlight soap and packets of Robin starch lined up along the windowsill told me that this was where Miss Rossiter would lovingly launder Mrs Balfour’s most delicate garments. I sniffed at the packets, of course. Armed with Grant’s notes I would raid the kitchen for lemon and lavender; I knew the right way of things. I leaned over the taps and peered out of the window wondering if there might be a butt of rainwater I could lay claim to, but the fire, armchair and sweet tea were calling to me.

  When I left my room at five minutes to six for dinner in the servants’ hall, I had already made it wonderfully cosy. Photographs of Bunty – and one of Nanny Palmer whom I was proposing to pass off as my mother – were ranged on the chimneypiece; my clothes were folded away or hanging over the airer to uncrease themselves, and I had upended my trunk and covered it with a gay shawl as a nightstand, a trick learned at finishing school where the furnishers of our dormitory bedrooms had taken great care to discourage reading in bed by failing to provide anywhere to put a candle or cup of cocoa.

  Before I was halfway up the stairs to the basement again I could hear talking – men’s talking – and I hesitated, smoothing my hair under the restraining pins and patting flat the starched collar of my frock. When I pushed open the door a sea of faces turned towards me.

  ‘Here she is,’ said a jovial voice, and the butler I had met on the day of my interview stood up from a fireside armchair and opened his arms in welcome to me. Mrs Hepburn was sitting in a matching armchair on the other side of the fire with a small glass of some brown liquid in her hand. There was a third chair in a less exalted position just off to one side and a plump young man sprang out of it and began shaking up its cushions before turning towards me.

  ‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said, with a slight bow.

  ‘Sherry, Miss Rossiter?’ said Mr Faulds, taking out a fat watch and peering at it. ‘There’s just time before dinner, I see.’

  Slightly bewildered, I sat down and accepted a glass with a thimbleful of thick, dark sherry in it.

  ‘Now,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Here’s where we test your memory for you!’ As he sat back down again he waved around the long table, covered in oilcloth but laid for a meal, where the rest of the staff were sitting.

  ‘Clara, Millie and Mattie I know already,’ I said, nodding at the three of them, the known faces in the crowd. As I spoke a young man in grey britches and braces, with his collar open and sleeves rolled, sat up very straight and whistled.

  ‘Mind out for your glass with they vowels flyin’ about, Mrs Hepburn,’ he said.

  One of the maids tittered and I smiled too, to show willing.

  ‘That’s John,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘He’s the chauffeur. Cheek of a monkey but no harm in him.’ John grinned at me and stretched out in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle and lacing his hands together behind his head. Chauffeurs are most often chosen to complement an elegant motorcar and this one was no exception: tall and broad-shouldered with a square jaw and straight brows, as though the word ‘strapping’ had been invented to describe him.

  ‘Next to him,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘is Harry, master’s valet.’ Harry took his nearly finished cigarette out of his mouth and saluted me with it, touching his fingertips to his temple in such a way that the insolence was as hard to define as it was to ignore. I smiled at him regardless and he looked away. He was as young as John and as tall, but nature had been less kind, giving him a weaker chin, a larger nose, a rather red and angry-looking complexion.

  Beside Harry was the man who had vacated my armchair. He was clearly a butler-in-waiting, natty in dress, stout in outline, dressed in the same striped trousers, yellow-edged waistcoat and butterfly collar as Mr Faulds.

  ‘Stanley,’ he said to me, half rising to bow. ‘I’m the footman.’ He tweaked at his trousers as he sat back down and I noticed that Millie’s eyes, soft behind her spectacles, were fastened upon him with something approaching rapture. I had to purse my lips not to smile. For if the scullerymaid was a china doll fashioned by Mabel Lucie Attwell, then Stanley the footman was made to match her with his large blue slightly pop eyes, his pink cheeks and his egg-like figure. They put one in mind of the carved couples who trundle out one on each side of a cuckoo clock to mark the halves and quarters with a bang of a mallet.

  ‘And then there’s Phyllis, the housemaid,’ said Mr Faulds, gesturing with a broad smile.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Rossiter,’ said Phyllis. She was a taking little thing, perched at the end of the table with her feet up on the spar of her chair and a small embro
idery frame held up close in the dimness as she sewed. She had that very pretty Celtic colouring of dark hair, pale skin, light eyes and sparse pale brows, with curling lips which looked as though they had been rouged but were really just naturally pink, and a shiny little spade of a chin. I could not help glancing at John and Harry to see if there were any more rapturous glances to be intercepted, but I found none.

  ‘And finally,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘Eldry, the tweenie.’ Eldry, the tweenie, when she looked up and nodded a greeting – for she was sewing too – was revealed to be a plain girl with a bony nose and teeth which, at rest, were always visible against her bottom lip. She should have scraped her hair back, painted her lips red and pointed that sharp nose to the sky, I thought – I had seen girls who had managed to make themselves striking that way if they had enough confidence to pull it off – but Eldry had taken the much more common route of pressing her hair into little curls around her face, lowering her head to hide the nose and pursing her mouth to hide the teeth, after which of course there is no helping it.

  ‘That’s a very unusual name you have,’ I said to her. Phyllis – I guessed that she was the giggler amongst the girls; there always is one – tittered again.

  ‘Etheldreda,’ said Eldry. ‘Only my ma’s Ethel and my grandma’s Dreda so there was only the middle bit left for me.’ She sounded so plaintive as she said it that the laughter spread around the room, even as Eldry blinked at us all wondering what the joke was.

  ‘Eh, dear,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Ah well, if you can’t laugh, eh? Right then, girlies! It’s sausage and onion pie and treacle pud, Fanny. Drop of pea and ham soup to start with. I knew you’d be wanting a good dinner after your long day.’

  Eldry and Millie jumped up and Mrs Hepburn, one hand on each knee, hauled herself to her feet too. Clara, who had come to drape her long frame on the arm of the chair during the introductions, now slid into its seat and stretched her feet out towards the blaze.