‘Really? You’d give me a job?’
‘Yeah, course I would. You’re a big girl ain’t you, got great strong arms like an ox, yes? Well, I’ll have so much money, you see, there’ll be more veggies for chopping than you’ve ever seen. And you can do ’em all.’
‘Oh, that’s real kind Nancy,’ Betty would say, with no trace of guile.
‘Yeah, I suppose it is,’ Nancy would answer, keeping her thoughts to herself.
Betty wasn’t alone in not having any ambition beyond a specific set of narrow expectations, and Nancy found this hard to understand. She’d read Jules Verne’s stories of adventures under the sea and inside the earth and wanted to fight dinosaurs and discover unknown tribes and bring home the biggest diamond she could find – not because she liked diamonds, but because no one had done it before. She wanted to be Alan Quartermain and Jim Hawkins and Captain Nemo all rolled into one, but instead she scrubbed potatoes, was occasionally spanked half-heartedly by Mr Waters, the Butler (once the first hundred beatings had had little effect he rather lost interest, but felt obliged to continue as appropriate), and was asked impolitely to put out her candle by the girls she shared her little attic bedroom with. She would extinguish it and then sit up staring out of the window at the moon. To think, she thought, confusing fiction with fact as she was wont to do, men have walked on that far off shiny globe and those insect-like Selenites live their mad lives under its surface – and here I am, stuck, not just on earth, but in this bloody castle.
Then one day she found that she began to think less of the adventures she didn’t have and more of how tight Ted’s trousers were, and also how tight Betty’s blouse was, and indeed how tight her own clothes had grown. She had turned fifteen and the imaginary company of Jim Hawkins was no longer quite enough to keep all of her attention.
*
After Epitome Quirkstandard’s twenty-first birthday Miss Penultimate left London and bought the small cottage on the outskirts of Arundel that would serve her as an English base to return to between expeditions. It was a pleasant little place, with a healthy-sized garden that ran down to the River Arun which meandered into the countryside on either side. The ground floor of the cottage had a large kitchen powered by gas, which also lit the rooms, a hallway and a front room, and upstairs there were two bedrooms and a study, which she immediately filled with accumulated junk from around the world. In the garden was an outhouse and a tin bath hung in the kitchen. Everything, Miss Penultimate thought when she looked around it, that a woman could want from a home.
The previous owner had been an elderly lady with few friends who had died in one of the upstairs rooms. When the milkman thought to look inside the cottage searching for the money she owed him, he found that her body had mostly been eaten by her cats, so a little tidying had needed doing, but in all other ways the house was in good order. The business about the cats, who still roamed the garden on occasion, had put a few buyers off, but Miss Penultimate wasn’t the sort to worry about a bit of bony mess, ghosts or stray pussies making a nuisance of themselves. However, she did feign a little womanly distress in order to get the price knocked down. She had high principles, but she also had common sense.
The previous owner had a gardener who came once or twice a week to tend the place and Miss Penultimate chose to retain his services, since he was quiet, polite and considerate. But the house didn’t come with a housekeeper and she needed someone to take charge of the domestic business and keep the place warm and tidy when she was away, so she placed an advert in the Arundel Evening Advertiser & News.
*
Every single one of the two women who came to be interviewed were either elderly, decrepit or enormous, things that Miss Penultimate didn’t necessarily hold against them. However they were also ignorant, unintelligent and dull, faults which she took as personal affronts. However, on the third hand, as it were, they were also the only two applicants and she had to somehow choose between them.
She was sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out some test for them to compete at (maybe firing an arrow through a series of … no, that wouldn’t do) when there came a knock on her back door.
Glancing up at the clock she said, ‘Come in.’
‘Sorry I’m late, ma’am,’ said a soft voice.
Miss Penultimate looked up toward the door and, seeing a nervous looking face poking round the edge with large dark eyes and a swirl of swooping black hair, stood up.
‘Oh, do come in and sit down,’ she said, an unexpected excitement fluttering in her heart.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ the girl said again, ‘but it was getting dark and I took the wrong street and besides, it’s not really that late, is it?’
Her voice seemed to blend the best parts of honesty and heresy together. There was something edgy but innocent about it that caught Miss Penultimate’s ear.
She gestured the girl into a chair and sat down in the opposite one herself. She studied her face with a calm look that masked the sudden perturbations thumping in her breast. It was a remarkably pleasant face, which seemed paler than it actually was due to the blackness of the thick hair that fell either side of it. For a moment, before she flicked it away over her shoulder, half of her face was hidden by that hair. A normal girl would have had it tied back, or put it up, thought Miss Penultimate, before chiding herself for having such a conservative thought. Why should a girl wear her hair in any particular way, simply because it was usual? It was the twentieth century now, after all.
That pale face continued to strike her. When she got closer, later on, she noticed that there was a touch of colour about it after all, certainly once she’d been out in the sun a bit, a slight wheaty inflection which suggested that the English sky was just a touch too overcast. She had thin, pink lips which parted in the moment before she spoke, as she thought to speak, revealing damp, straight teeth in a dark mouth. As she tucked her hair out of the way once more, Miss Penultimate noticed how long and delicate the fingers were, and the calluses that masked them. A few stray strands of hair remained crossing that face, and she refused her immediate thought, which was to reach out and move them aside herself.
After a few moments Miss Penultimate remembered to speak.
‘Do you want the job, my dear?’
‘I saw the advert in the paper, I brought it along …’
‘I know. I saw it in your hand. It has my address which is how you came to be here. Now, would you like the job?’
‘Don’t you want to see my references? I mean, ma’am.’
‘Do you have any?’
‘No. Not really. Not as such. But I could get some if they was important. I mean, but they mightn’t be any good.’
‘I’m sure that’s not a problem.’
‘It would be a relief to me, ma’am, if it weren’t. I do rather need a job right now and I’d take just about anything.’
‘Then the job is yours.’
Miss Penultimate explained the chores that were necessary and Nancy saw how straightforward they were and how kind Miss Penultimate seemed to be. This seemed to be going well, she thought to herself. After she’d lost the job at the castle, leaving under something of a cloud (in the rain, with lightning, thunder and the promise of no let up to the storm in sight), she’d been at a loss quite what to do. Fortunately she’d had just enough money saved up to buy herself a fish and chip supper and there, underneath the lump of cod, was the advert for this job. With nothing to lose, but a wasted evening which would’ve been wasted in any case, she’d made her way to the cottage. Not having left with the fortune she’d once dreamt of, she was a sensible enough girl to know a job was essential, and preferably one with a roof over her head would be best.
After the details were ironed out (the chores were less onerous and more interesting than in her previous job (never having, in nine years, advanced beyond First Scullery Maid (who was the one who decided which maid would chop which vegetable, but that was exactly as far as the responsibility went)), with a bit
of variety and sunlight and the likelihood of some spare time, if it was just going to be the two of them in the house) Miss Penultimate slid a piece of paper across the table and asked Nancy to sign it. It was when doing this that she realised she hadn’t even asked the girl her name yet.
‘Nancy Walker?’ she repeated, a little surprised.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘How old are you, Nancy?’
‘I’m nineteen, ma’am.’
‘Nineteen? So, that’s … oh.’
Miss Penultimate paused and looked even closer at Miss Walker. Nancy blushed at the scrutiny and wondered what she’d done now, or what she’d got herself into.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Oh, do stop calling me ‘Ma’am’, I’m not the bloody queen, you know. It’s making me feel so awfully old.’
‘Yes, of course. Er, sorry … Miss?’
‘Thank you, yes. Now, Nancy, my dear, I have something to tell you. Oh no, first I ought to ask … Um, did you grow up in an orphanage?’
‘Yeah, until they got rid of me. They were a right bunch of … Um, I mean … yes, Miss. I did.’
‘Very well. Nancy? Let me tell you a story.’ Penelope Penultimate laid her hands on the table, smoothed the wood out as if it were a tablecloth before drawing a deep breath, looking up, looking away and going on. ‘Nineteen years ago I was in no way prepared to be a mother. I had so much before me, whole vistas were open wide and I was enjoying looking at them, planning to pass through them and to see what further vistas might lie on the other side. I had begun my own business, I was working for myself, at last making my own living by doing something that I loved to do. My father was dead, my sister was married and I was free – all off by myself. It was a beautiful time, Nancy, I want you to try to remember that. I was travelling the world.’
‘Um. It sounds lovely. Miss.’
‘But I, er, I found I had a baby, Nancy. I found a foundling, if you will, and I felt, suddenly, a conflict swell up inside me. I had very rarely felt conflicts open up in me before and so maybe this time I chose the wrong path. You must understand, dear Nancy, how complicated things threatened to become all of a sudden. There was only one time before that when I had felt so torn in two different directions: when I was deciding whether to stay in the family business. That was before my father died. After he died our Uncle made it quite clear that he didn’t believe women had any place on the Board, so that was that; but I’d decided to go my own way before then anyway, and my father had put his hand on my shoulder and gladly watched me spread my wings.’
‘Mmm-hm?’
‘Yes. He was proud to see me setting out for myself, he had always had faith in me. Oh Nancy, he was that rarest of men, a gentlemanly gentleman, but he was also nervous on my behalf too. He’d tried to make his own way, a number of times and failed, had had to come back embarrassed and humbled. I remember as a little girl passing him his handkerchief as he blew his nose after another failed invention. But in the end it worked for him, he made aglets, you know?’
‘Penultimate Aglets? You’re one of those Penultimates, Miss?’
‘I am.’
‘But I’m wearing some of your aglets on me boots right now!’ She grinned in excitement as she said this and pulled her skirt up to reveal, not only her boot, not only her ankle, but also several inches of young, black-stockinged calf.
‘I’m pleased to hear it, Nancy,’ Miss Penultimate answered, trying not to look, or trying to not look like she was looking. ‘By doing so you’re contributing, in a tiny way, to your own wages. You see I get a dividend twice a year from the company’s profits, which is very useful in keeping everything running.’
‘Oh, I didn’t buy them, Miss. I got them in me last job. They was part of the uniform, you see?’
‘Ah yes, of course. By the way, who was your last employer?’
‘Oh, that was the Duke. Well, Mrs Fatty, the Cook, she was the one that told me what to do, her and Mr Waters, the Butler. But the Duke paid all the bills and it was his house upstairs. Well, his castle.’
‘Oh, you were at the castle?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why did you decide to leave? I mean, not that I’m not grateful for your moving on, but this must be something of a step down for someone used to the grand style?’
‘Oh, no. I didn’t have nothing to do with the grand style, Miss. I was just a Scullery Maid and I just did the washing up and chopped the veggies. I mean you mustn’t worry, I can do all the rest. I read and write, you know, I learnt that before I was ten even, and I can do me sums and I know the names of all the grocers and butchers and whathaveyou because I used to hear Mrs Fatty talking to them and the delivery boys. So I can do all that stuff that you asked. There’s no problem there. Miss.’
‘So …?’
‘Miss?’
‘Why did you … move on, Nancy?’
‘Oh, well. I got into a bit of trouble.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I’m not sure I ought to tell you, Miss. You might not want me here afterwards.’
‘Well, Nancy you’ve just signed a contract with a minimum six month term. So I think we’re stuck with each other, whatever you say next. Go on …’
‘Well, you see, if you must know, I got one of the Parlour Maids pregnant.’
Miss Penultimate looked blank for a moment, assuming she’d misheard or misunderstood something that would very shortly become clear.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, I’m not that sorry. I mean it finally got me out of that place. Oh, it was a rotten kitchen. I mean it was a good kitchen, Mrs Fatty could cook, but it weren’t no place to live, you know?’
‘No, Nancy, I meant … How …? Well … Unless … You did what?’
‘Oh, yes, well I got Peggy pregnant. And do you know something? If I’d been the Duke then it all would’ve been all hushed up and not a word said about it. Peggy’d be out with a little purse of cash and she’d be better off, you know. But because it was us servants doing it ourselves, we’re all out on our arses, with a big to do and not a ‘cheerio’ in sight.’
‘You got a girl pregnant?’
‘Well, sort of. You see there was this Page Boy, Cyril, who happened to have a bit of a fancy for me, but I weren’t interested. And so, to cut the long story short, after a bit of messing about, and a practical joke too far, late one night, well, Cyril has a bit of a nervous breakdown and starts yelling out in his sleep and is afraid to be left alone with any of the women – oh it’s ‘Mr Waters, don’t leave me alone …’ every five minutes – and eventually me and Peggy are kicked out of the castle. And he can’t look at an ice cream spoon the same way again. And he sits all awkward-like whenever he sits …’
‘Nancy?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think we should move on.’
‘Of course. Yes. Miss.’
During her little speech Nancy had begun blushing with the memory and excitement of the anecdote and Miss Penultimate had watched the blush rise up from under her smock, up her throat and round her cheeks. Where her hair was tucked behind one ear it revealed that her ears were glowing too. This was quite charming, although she didn’t approve of the story in itself, since it had left a poor girl in a troubled situation, although the discomfiture caused to the Page Boy didn’t cross her mind in any other way than with a small chuckle.
But she had to steer the conversation back to other things.
‘Nancy?’
‘Yes?’
‘I was … twenty-seven years old and I wasn’t prepared to be a mother.’
‘Oh yes, the baby.’
‘That’s right. I was in conflict. Did I keep this babe, this little girl, this beautiful but rather tearful child I’d found, or rather, to be more precise, that one of my girls had found and given to me, or did I give her away? It wasn’t an easy decision Nancy, but then again also it wasn’t a particularly hard one. I didn’t have any room in my life at that time for a baby daughter, do you under
stand? I had to give her away. I had my business to keep going and that was hard enough as a lone woman, let alone one with a baby on her hip. So … I had to give the baby away.’
‘I see,’ said Nancy quietly, suspecting that she might be beginning to understand, and wondering whether maybe she shouldn’t have turned the piece of newspaper over, earlier, to see if there might not have been another job on the other side.
‘But before I took her to the Adoption Agency I named her. If you don’t do that, you see, they give the baby a name out of their big book, um … the Bible … and frankly I preferred to take some responsibility myself. I gave the girl a name, a good one, one that had strength and dignity and bearing.’
‘And I am … I mean, I was, that baby? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
‘Yes. That’s really the truth of the matter.’
‘So, you’re my mother then?’
Miss Penultimate looked startled.
‘Oh God no! Nancy, you really were a foundling, my dear. A girl called Veronica Higginsworth-Smythe found you and brought you to me.’
‘So, do you mean she’s my mother … with two surnames?’
‘No Nancy, I’ve no idea who your mother is. You really were a foundling. She wasn’t pregnant, not Veronica. Very ugly girl, and besides she’d been in my tent for three months. We would’ve noticed.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nancy, you have to trust me.’
For a moment Miss Penultimate felt a deep drag of fear in her belly, as if she had already lost the girl. And it wasn’t the worry of losing a housekeeper, it was something harder than that – something that felt like a fishhook or barbed arrowhead under the skin. But then Nancy Walker looked up, met her eyes, a bright dark dazzle in her pupil where the gaslight caught on the moisture.
‘Do you know what, Miss? I think I do trust you. I trust you better than anyone I’ve ever met before. You just told me the truth, didn’t you? And you didn’t have to, did you?’
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 17
