by Tim Pears
‘Is there no one?’ Cook yelled.
What she called a field kitchen had been set up in the scullery, with free-standing ovens and burners upon which pans bubbled.
Lottie had never seen so many people labouring in the kitchens. All the house maids had become kitchen maids. There was a squawk from the doorway to the scullery and all looked in that direction. Gladys stood and held an egg up for all to see. ‘I was drawin a chicken,’ she said, ‘and this come out.’
The male servants too carried cheeses or bottles or boxes from one room to another. Even Lord Prideaux’s valet wore an apron and stirred a pot of seething meat.
‘Surely, Mister Score, someone can be sent?’ the flustered cook was saying.
‘What do you need?’ Lottie asked her.
‘Oh, we are short of treacle, child. Missis Prowse will have some at the stores.’
‘I shall go,’ Lottie said.
‘I cannot send you, Miss Charlotte,’ Cook told her.
‘No one will know,’ Lottie said. ‘Please. I want to help.’
Cook wiped her brow with a cloth and handed the girl an earthenware jar. ‘Tell Missis Prowse to put it on my slate.’
*
The girl carried the jar to the stables and put it on the bench in the tack room. She went to Herb Shattock’s bothy and asked him where Blaze was grazing. He said that she was in the pasture beyond the training paddock and that he would send a lad to fetch her. Lottie said no, thank you, she would prefer to fetch the mare herself.
‘I had a look at her this mornin. Her’s in fine fettle,’ he said. ‘Takin her to the gallops again, Miss Charlotte?’
The girl frowned. ‘I fear I cannot tell you where we are going, Mister Shattock. It is a secret mission. If I told you, I’d be putting you in as much danger as myself.’
Herb Shattock smiled. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you had best go.’
‘You have not seen me,’ she said.
The groom looked around his room and shrugged. ‘I could a swore I eard a voice,’ he said to himself. ‘But no one’s there.’
*
The girl rode her pony past the white ducks on the pond, past Hangman’s Wood, past Manor Farm, and out of the estate and on to the village.
The store was owned by the Prowse family. It smelled of bread but otherwise only an indeterminate aroma derived from all the foods they sold. Mrs Prowse was serving an elderly man. At the end of the counter a boy about Lottie’s own age chopped a loaf of hard white sugar into fragments. His mother said, ‘Gilbert. Not too big.’
Lottie walked to the end of the shop and looked through the door to the bakery. There Mister Prowse reached his peel or paddle into the great brick oven and withdrew two quartern loaves upon it. Crisp, crusty bread. Beside the door were shelves of ironmongery: benzoline and paraffin, lamps and candles.
A woman was served before Lottie. She requested a taste of the cheese. Mrs Prowse inserted a small, tapered implement into the truckle or wheel of cheese. She withdrew the taper and a length of cheese with it. The customer broke a piece off the end and chewed it. Mrs Prowse eased the twig of cheese back into its slot. The woman said that she would take a half-pound.
On the highest shelf above and behind the proprietress stood large tin canisters. The woman asked for a quarter of one and two ounces of another, in combination. She watched as Mrs Prowse mixed the tea leaves in the exact proportions.
When her turn came, Lottie held up the earthenware jar and asked for dark treacle for the Manor kitchen. Mrs Prowse told Gilbert to weigh the jar for Miss Charlotte. The boy put down the chopping tool beside the sugar and came along the front of the counter. He took the jar from Lottie and removed the cork lid and placed it on the pan of the weighing scales. He added weights to the other side until the jar rose. He told his mother what the jar weighed then placed it on the counter beneath the tap of a large green urn. He turned the handle of the tap and they watched the dark syrup flow into the jar. Gilbert leaned over and looked inside and put his hand back on the tap and after a short while turned it off. As the stream of treacle slowed the boy passed his finger through to catch the last of it and raised his finger to his mouth.
‘I told you before,’ his mother said.
Gilbert returned the jar to the scales and weighed it and told his mother. She wrote the figure with a pencil on a pad, above the figure for the weight of the empty jar, then carried out a subtraction. Lottie read the numbers upside down and did the calculation in her head. She worked out the answer. A moment later Mrs Prowse wrote the number down. Meanwhile Gilbert pressed the cork lid into the neck of the jar and slid it along the counter. Lottie took it, thanked him and Mrs Prowse, and went outside. She carried the jar to where her pony was tied to the rail, wrapped the container in cloth, and placed it securely in the pannier. Then she unhitched Blaze and mounted up and rode on home.
6
Alice Grenvil burst into the dining-room as Lottie and her father took their breakfast. She said that she was sorry to be so early but she had woken at dawn and could not get back to sleep. Her poor maid was forced to help her pack and her father’s chauffeur to crank-start the car and drive her over at hair-raising speed but there was no help for it. She was too excited. This was going to be the most wonderful day of her life.
Arthur Prideaux asked his fiancée if she was hungry.
Alice looked surprised. ‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘Why, I had no idea.’
Lottie rang the bell and the maid came and laid another place at the table.
*
On the stairs Lottie met her great-grandmama’s maid coming down. She said that her ladyship was calm. Lottie said she would visit her anyway. Nellie said that she would look in upon the old lady intermittently through the busy day.
‘No,’ Lottie told her. ‘Once the party starts you’re off duty, all of you. I’ll see to her. If I need help, I’ll find it.’ The maid nodded and thanked her and carried on.
The girl climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor, past her father’s bedroom and her own and the empty guest bedrooms to the end. She opened the door and walked over to the bed. Her great-grandmother had lain here for many months upon her back. She had shrunk. On warm days all that could be seen was the faint outline of her bony form beneath the sheet, rising at the end to her toes. In recent weeks she had turned upon her side and begun to curl up. It was a fascinating process. Lottie knew that babies grew curled in their mother’s womb and believed her great-grandmama was reverting to this state. Her head was sunk into her shoulders. A few wisps of thin white hair straggled from her cap. In order to take her hand Lottie had to ease her fingers apart, for they were clawed in upon themselves, fists of knuckle and bone. Then she withdrew, as the old lady slept once more.
*
All the people on the estate were invited to the master’s engagement party on the sixth of June 1914. In the late morning they set off, some in carts, most on foot. Lottie saw them from a window of the attic nursery. From this height they did not look as if they were possessed of any autonomy but rather, like the members of an audience in a London show Alice had described, mesmerised by a hypnotist. Being pulled all in their Sunday best, on a hot but overcast summer’s day, towards the big house. She ran downstairs.
When she reached the landing Lottie stopped stock still. Alerted by a sound, she stood and listened. A far-off gurgling in the pipes? No. A bird trapped in a distant chimney? No. A floorboard groaning at someone’s tread? She followed the sound towards its source, and entered her great-grandmother’s room. As she approached the bed Lottie saw that the old woman’s eyes were open wide and her mouth too. The strange noise was produced when she breathed in. She breathed out silently. Then she inhaled once again with a rasping, fluttering, wheezing sound, incredible from such a tiny frame. Lottie took hold of her hand, and put her other hand on her great-grandmama’s forehead, and the noise ceased, just like that, for the old lady all of a sudden stopped breathing.
Lottie stoo
d beside the bed. Nothing had changed except that her frail great-grandmother was utterly still. The girl did not know what to do. But then she realised there was nothing she could do, and nothing to be done, and so only one course of action open to her. She let go of her great-grandmama’s hand, kissed her forehead then left the room.
*
The farmers and their carters, stockmen, shepherds, and all the members of their families. The sawyers. Over two hundred people. The grooms at the stud farm, and Herb Shattock at the stables and his lads. The gamekeeper Aaron Budgell and his wife and the under keeper Sidney Sercombe. All those who worked at the Manor itself, indoors and out. Only Cook and her scullery maids had to work this day long, and the master promised they would have a holiday after he and Miss Grenvil married in August and took their honeymoon. Cook was assisted by women from the village, whose daughters also became waitresses for the day.
As the guests arrived they were ushered around the side of the house to the back terrace where they were met by Lord Prideaux and his fiancée and his daughter Miss Charlotte. They shuffled past, murmuring congratulations to His Lordship. Some said the same to Alice but either not knowing her name or in the confusion of the moment addressed her as ‘My Ladyship’. Alice accepted the premature ennoblement, whether out of social grace or presumption Lottie could not tell. Some even congratulated Lottie herself. She tried to stop herself from scowling, and said nothing.
The guests passed on, to be offered glasses of sherry or lemonade and invited to spread out across the lawns. The idea was that they would carry their glasses with them. But it was not thought to suggest this and as no one was accustomed to such behaviour most raised their glasses and knocked back the contents in one, and returned the empty glasses forthwith to the trays upon which they’d been proffered, the sudden shot of alcohol causing one or two elderly cottagers to sway as they stepped off the terrace.
During a lull, the hosts surveyed the scene. Those who had arrived stood or walked stiffly, the men sweating in their heavy suits. The estate workers regarded the house servants as flunkeys; servants thought of the farm workers as dim, slow-witted beings, one step up from the beasts they tended. Various groups kept to themselves or nodded awkwardly to neighbours, even though many were related, exchanging the minimum of stilted conversation. Alice Grenvil sighed. It was her hope that an informal start to the party would relax the estate families. Instead all looked as if they would rather be elsewhere, even at their customary labours. Arthur Prideaux reassured her. It was always like this, he said. Their reserve was a sign of their respect and loyalty, and would ease as the day wore on.
*
At twelve-thirty a gong was brought out by Mister Score and banged loudly, its reverberating clang not merely silencing but stopping the guests stock still as if it were the prompt for a game, some variant of Musical Statues. Lunch was served. People sat where they wished at trestle tables set up down one side of the upper lawn. The waitresses brought plates with pressed beef and silverside of beef, ham, tongue, galantines, new potatoes with mint, peas, asparagus in butter, carrots. The men drank ale. When they needed to relieve themselves they went down into the shrubbery beyond sheets of canvas erected as a shield. The women went inside, to the lavatory behind the scullery, where they soon formed a queue.
The master and his intended sat at a table on the terrace looking down upon the scene. To Alice’s left sat her father Duncan Grenvil, then Lady Grenvil, then some Scotch relations who were staying for the summer. To Lord Prideaux’s right sat his daughter. The girl imagined they must look to the guests below like those celebrants of The Last Supper, reproduced in a book of the world’s greatest paintings that her father had recently given her for her fifteenth birthday. Beside her was William Carew, then her German governess.
William told Lottie in his quiet voice that she had no idea how fortunate she was to grow up in such a paradise. He himself had the misfortune to be reared in the smoky metropolis. Eton was little relief. He had also visited many beautiful places in the Empire and beyond and thus knew what he was talking about.
Lottie thanked him but said she had a good idea, and that was why she had no wish to leave it.
‘Perhaps it is best that you go – not only for your own education,’ William told her, ‘but also to give the new Lady Prideaux a chance to establish herself without the encumbrance of a stepdaughter.’
Lottie said she did not wish to pursue this line of conversation. She asked if it was true that he was to be employed by her father to manage the estate. He said it was. Lottie said that she herself would be able to do the job if her father would only let her. She was fifteen years old now. Then she asked why a gentleman should wish to take on such employment.
William Carew laughed. ‘It’s very simple,’ he said. ‘My own father squandered our inheritance.’
‘That sounds dramatic,’ Lottie replied. ‘How did he do it?’
William shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it’s merely tawdry. He gambled.’
Lottie nodded. ‘On horses,’ she said.
‘On horses,’ William agreed. ‘On cards. On financial markets. He shot himself. With one of my guns, would you believe? Not a very fatherly thing to do. He left my mother and sisters and me penniless.’ William smiled, as if what his father had done had been somewhat amusing. A good-humoured jape. ‘And who knows?’ he said. ‘Perhaps it will be the making of us. One of my sisters is training to be a teacher. The other, a nurse. I am here.’ He raised his mug of beer. ‘And there is nowhere I would rather be, Charlotte.’
Over to one side of the lawn the members of a band who had come out from Taunton set up their music stands and instruments. The plates were cleared away and desserts brought out. Jam and fruit tarts, stewed fruit, blancmange, custard and jellies. Ingrid admonished Lottie for the gravy stains on her white dress. Lottie said that perhaps she was not fit company for her cousins in Weimar.
Ingrid shook her head slowly. ‘We Prussians, I am afraid,’ she said, ‘are not for our table manners renowned.’
Lottie’s father beside her stood up and tapped one of his glasses with a fork. Indoors perhaps the sound would have been of sufficient volume to hush the assembled company, but outside it was lost amongst the clanking of utensils and the hubbub of conversation, which with the consumption of ale had gradually increased in volume.
Adam Score, though nominally a guest like any other, saw the master’s predicament and took it upon himself to retrieve the gong, which he bashed again and so silenced the gathering.
‘My dear friends,’ Lord Prideaux began. ‘I am in a most privileged position. For I have not one but two families. The first, of course,’ he said, gesturing to his daughter beside him, ‘given to me by blood. The second . . .’ and now he opened out his arms to indicate and so include all those whom he addressed ‘. . . the second by inherited right and responsibility. You are my children just as surely as is my dear Lottie here. Just as you serve me with your sweat and toil, so I serve you and always shall. Which is why I wish to share with you, dear friends, the most unexpected happiness that this beautiful young lady’– Lord Prideaux turned to his right and indicated Alice – ‘has brought me in my middle age.’
He took a deep breath and sighed. ‘I hope, and I’m sure you too will join me in this, that as well as happiness my future wife will bring us more: flesh and blood, with whom and through whom this estate will continue to flourish and thrive, unto further generations.’
Here Lord Prideaux was forced to pause, for a general cheering rose from the lawn below him.
‘I ask you, dear friends,’ he resumed, ‘to raise your glasses in a toast to Miss Alice Grenvil, and hope that you will all welcome her to our home, and that she will come to cherish it as we do.’
The guests rose from their seats, holding their glasses and mugs, and drank and cheered his lordship and his fiancée. At a signal from her father, the band began to play, a tune Lottie recognised, though she could not name it. When she looked down a
t the guests she saw one nodding her head, another tapping his foot, and could feel the music do the same to her – making her want to move in time to it.
Her father and Alice Grenvil rose from their seats and walked around behind their companions and down from the terrace to the lawn. There they moved among the trestle tables to speak with the estate workers and their families.
Lottie watched a group of lads and maidens sitting together at a table. Some, she knew, were cousins. The under keeper Sidney Sercombe. The maid Gladys. Herbert Sercombe, once under carter on Leo’s farm, had somehow persuaded the tall red-headed maid Elsie to sit on his knee. Lottie rose. It occurred to her that her invisibility might be a fleeting phenomenon. Adults did not see her for she was not one of them. Children likewise. She was in between. She turned and walked into the house, up the stairs. She went to her great-grandmother’s room. All was as it had been before. The smell of roses predominated, but with something else behind it, which could have been the coming putrefaction of the flowers themselves but was not. The girl looked upon the face of her great-grandmama. The powdered yellow flesh was sinking onto the bones of her skull.
Lottie climbed further, to the nursery, and changed into shirt, breeches and boots. She descended the enclosed circular staircase to the cellars then climbed the steps that led back up into the west side of the house. She crept along silently, past her father’s office – soon to be occupied, presumably, by William Carew – past the flower room, to the gun room. She took out one of the light Churchills Alice had given her from its case and put some shells in her pocket and went back down to the cellars and through their dank corridors to the greenhouses and out through the walled garden to the woods.
The sound of the band playing drifted from the lawn. It felt less like man-made music than something rising from the trees and the undergrowth. Lottie walked on and soon the music faded out of earshot. She walked fast, tripping over roots, and came out of the wood into fields. Sheep grazed in one. The next was empty. The girl walked along the hedge. She broke open the breech and fumbled with the shells, inserting one then the other. Then she closed the gun, and walked on. She knew she should walk slowly, warily, but could not. Something moved in the hedge. Lottie raised the shotgun to her shoulder and took aim. The gun trembled in her hands. She lowered it and walked on, sobbing. She did not know why, exactly. There were many reasons. Her great-grandmama’s death. Her father’s marriage. Exile to Weimar. Thoughts of all that she was losing combined to make her miserable and she could see no end to it.
