by Tracy Rees
So whenever Aurelia appeared, bored and lonely as she so often was, Cook was all too happy to have me taken off her hands. It solved the problem at first. But that I was neither fish nor fowl became increasingly apparent to all.
The difficulty was I was at home at Hatville. Just as Aurelia took for granted her large house with its spare Regency trappings and her role as the first young lady of the neighbourhood, visiting the farm workers once a week, dispensing food and a few coins when a new baby was born, so I took for granted my bed in the scullery, the kitchen’s crowded warmth, my free roaming rights. When I learned that Hatville contained areas as yet unknown to me, bedrooms and a ballroom and a library, I naturally wanted to explore them. Cook and I were making cherry pies together when she tried to explain that they were not mine to explore, that it was not my home.
I was dumbfounded. ‘Of course it is my home. I’ve lived here always, with everyone I know!’
‘But Hatville belongs to other people. It is their home and you are their servant.’
‘But . . . who are they?’ I wanted to know.
‘Lord and Lady Vennaway are master and mistress here. You’ve to work hard for them, Amy, same as me and everyone else.’
I wondered why I’d never seen this master and mistress.
‘Because they’re very grand and very busy. Why, Hatville is so large that your paths need never cross.’
‘But have you seen them, Cookie?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Robin?’
‘Yes, Robin too.’
‘And Marcus and Benjamin and Jesketh?’
‘Why yes, Amy. Now mind what you’re doing.’
Cook was puffing as she kneaded the huge mound of dough. I huffed through my heavy fringe with equal concentration as I removed the stones from the cherries. I was sceptical. Two people whose existence meant my home was not my home . . . and everyone had seen them except me? It hardly seemed likely.
‘Cookie . . . how then has everyone seen them, if the house is so large and they are so busy?’
‘Because Master and Mistress need to meet their servants, to give them instructions and so forth.’
‘Well then, why have they never given instructions to me?’
‘Amy! Stop asking questions and stop eating those cherries!’
Poor Cook. My precarious position would have been difficult to explain to anyone, let alone a curious child.
Later, while the pies turned gold and fragrant and we were clearing up, it arose that Aurelia was the daughter of these Other People. Hatville Court was her home too, where it was not mine!
I laughed in disbelief. Aurelia and I saw each other every day. She told me stories and had me ride in her arms on Lucky. She taught me to play cards and race twigs on the stream and never gave me any instructions at all!
‘How can her parents be my master and mistress when Aurelia is my friend?’ I asked in a small voice.
‘Because,’ explained Cook, perspiring, ‘she’s not your friend. She is the young mistress. You must never forget that.’
‘But . . .’ I began, then seeing Cook’s expression, fell silent.
I understand better now the invidious position Cook was in. Aurelia’s treatment of me set me apart, suggested a status and favour that could not be sustained, and was directly at odds with her ladyship’s wishes. Yet what could Cook do? It wasn’t a servant’s prerogative to lecture the young lady of the house. She did try to explain, but Aurelia would have none of it. She enjoyed playing with me, she had no one else, and besides, she had found me.
At the time it all seemed fantastical nonsense to me. I remember puzzling over it for three or four days that summer, then deciding to worry about it no longer.
*
Then one day, for the first time in living memory, Lady Vennaway appeared in the kitchen. Usually, her bell would summon Cook or Dora. One or the other would jump, untie her apron, dust herself down and run from the room even if a broth was just coming to the boil or a roast was halfway out of the oven. I was sitting under the table, taking the heads off strawberries when she came. I only became aware that something had changed because the chatter suddenly stopped and even the bubbling pots hushed down to a simmer. I saw skirts crumple in curtseys.
A crystal-clear voice, like and yet unlike Aurelia’s, said, ‘Where is the child?’
‘Here, m’lady.’
Cook sounded subdued. Her red hand flapped in front of my face, beckoning me from under the table. I scrambled out, deeply curious to meet this fabled mistress, owner of Hatville, ringer of bells, in whose existence (like God’s and Samuel Pickwick’s) I had hitherto believed only tentatively.
I stood before her and stared. She looked like the ice queen depicted in one of Aurelia’s books, unbearably haughty and painfully beautiful, with a flowing gown and loose auburn hair. She was so fierce and radiant she made me want to hide my face.
It is strange to remember, now, that my very first instinct was that I wanted to please her. This is what hurts the most – for it was immediately clear that I did not. She looked down on me from her great height and I saw from her face that the sight of me made her sick.
I still clutched a knife in one hand and a strawberry in the other so I dropped them, in case it was they that offended. It was not.
‘What is the matter with her?’
‘Sorry, ma’am, I believe she be nervous,’ muttered Cook, pushing me out of the way so that she could pick up the things I’d dropped. She had never handled me so roughly and I felt wounded.
‘Curtsey, child,’ she ordered, and I bobbed, and wondered.
‘I will see her alone. Have her follow me.’ The mistress turned and left the room.
I felt the kitchen sag with relief but Cook grabbed me by both arms and stared into my face. ‘Oh dear,’ she muttered, ‘oh dear, dear, dear.’
She pulled my hands out to examine them and she didn’t seem to like those either. They were stained with pink juice and their usual coating of black grime. She spat into her own palm and started rubbing at them roughly.
‘No time, Cookie, no time,’ whispered Dora.
Sure enough a furious voice came from the passage: ‘Well, is she coming or not?’
‘Go!’ Cook was tugging at my apron ties and shoving me out into the passage all at the same time. ‘Be respectful. Be good!’ And I ran after the lady of the house.
I chased her down a long corridor with a high ceiling. I could not help but marvel as I ran, for I had not been there before. Its wooden-panelled walls bore dark portraits of pale-faced men in high collars and a good deal of lace. Some had horses, some had small children and wives, some had brown and white dogs of all shapes, sizes and arrangements of hair.
Unfortunately as I ran and twisted and stared and ran, my apron ties, half freed by Cook, came loose altogether. The apron slid off my small frame, tangled up my feet and I fell – smack! – on my face.
My cheek and hands stung and my head rang. Lady Vennaway turned and glanced at me contemptuously.
‘Oafish child.’
Then she resumed walking and I resumed scurrying, looking where I was going this time and clutching my apron in both hands.
In a cold study with an empty mantelpiece and a bare desk, she closed the door behind us. She sat on a spindle-legged chair, stood me before her and looked at me.
Set out in words, it might seem that worse fates could befall a child. But when the looker was Lady Vennaway and the looked-at was me, it was a dreadful experience.
Like her daughter, she had the most expressive face, with large eyes and delicate bones that conveyed every thought and feeling. But whereas Aurelia’s feelings were always frank and warm, her ladyship’s were altogether different.
In that gaze my innocence shattered. Her blue eyes bored into mine, and I watched shadows I could not name scudding across them like clouds. Her exquisite upper lip curled, though otherwise the lovely face was still and impassive. You might have thought her impervious to
me, but for those eyes and that lip.
Then she spat into my face.
It was so sudden, so shocking, that I stumbled backwards. Her spittle hit me hard in the eye and ran down my face. I wiped it away at once, then dragged my hand down my dress. I did not understand, yet I felt humiliated in a way that was all new to me. I wanted to wash my eye out, not only because it smarted but because I could not bear the thought of this woman’s venom somehow finding its way into my eye socket and seeping down into my soul.
Then she stood, dragged me to the door and slammed it behind me.
I stood shaking in the corridor, fairly sure I’d been dismissed but too confused to know whether I could leave or stay. No one had ever treated me thus. Her ladyship did not emerge, however, and in time I dragged myself off.
I found myself to be quite lost. We had turned a corner or two after I fell and I could not retrace my steps. All the passages here, all the doorways, looked the same. I soon found myself at the foot of a grand staircase we had not passed, a broad and lofty spiral, curved and cream like the shell of a monstrous snail. Above were galleries and soaring walls – all silent, cream expanses. I dared not climb it but feared to retrace my steps and perhaps meet the mistress again.
I had hoped that her inspection of me might mean that I was to become a proper servant who did not have to stay hidden but, little as I knew about it, I did not think staring and spitting could be the usual way these interviews were conducted.
Anger and curiosity propelled me in another direction. Through an open door I glimpsed an enormous chamber and was instantly lost in wonder. The walls were painted icy blue and a chandelier as big as a host of angels swooped and sparkled from the ceiling. Long, sage-green curtains swept from tall windows to the ground and a gleaming wooden floor reflected the light. I had somehow strayed into a strange, wintry world.
‘Amy Snow!’ thundered a voice, and I flinched. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
It was Jesketh, furious but familiar. I had never been so glad to see him.
Chapter Eight
I spend my last hour at the Rose and Crown neatly repacking my bag, still all a-tumble after my hasty flight from Hatville. My clothes are creasing by the minute. I have nothing of any loveliness, yet I shall try not to look worse than I must.
It is a reflective occupation. It unnerves me to see pieces of my old world here where I am all at sea.
I pull everything out and put them back in neatly. I pack the heaviest things first: my only other footwear, a pair of flat grey pumps for indoors or the summer, and my books. I have brought five. It was a great heartbreak to choose so few but I knew I had a long way to walk and no one to carry them but me. I have brought my Bible, the illustrated book of fairy tales that Aurelia used to read to me when I was small, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and of course two works by Mr Dickens. The very sight of them evokes memories of Aurelia, so helpless with laughter she was unable to read, clutching my arm.
Next goes in the sketchbook that Aurelia bequeathed me. I cannot look at that either.
Then my small toilette, containing hairbrush, hand-mirror, linen washcloth and a small pot of Cook’s homemade camphorated dentifrice . . . and one hundred pounds.
Next my heavier garments: a heavy wool dress, identical to the one I am wearing, only made up in grey instead of black. A spare woollen shawl. Dark, inoffensive colours. Then my brown summer dress. Aurelia’s green stole, now folded tidily. And finally, a packet of old letters, tied together with gold ribbon and all addressed to Amy Snow.
These are from Aurelia, from the time she went away from Hatville for a while. It is not a time I care to remember and the letters were a mixed blessing when they came, yet I have brought them with me because I could not bear to leave them behind.
It is not much to show for seventeen years on this earth, I consider, as I press the clasp shut. And somewhere in there, I fancy, folded up tight amongst the shoes and dresses shabby from overuse, are my dreams, equally tatty from neglect.
Aurelia always had an abundance of dreams and spoke of them often. They always included me. She longed to come into her fortune and leave Hatville for ever, to travel, to fall in love a great many times – to change the world. My fate was bound up in hers – she had saved my life, after all – so she always assumed I would go wherever she went and for the first years of my life I held the same assumption. But in the deepest corners of my heart tarried other wishes.
I did not want to be always on the road, as Aurelia did, sweeping up and down the kingdom like the queen before her. I wanted a home, but not a home like Hatville with its iron bars of heritage and pride. Sometimes, in quiet, private moments, lying in my scullery bed or dreaming in the stables, I saw a cottage, small and square, in the centre of a green lawn kept from rampancy by a greedy pony. A laughing husband who would keep me safe from insult. Children who would get into scrapes and make me enthusiastic gifts from paper and paste; children to whom I would give love and security – all the things I had never had. But I never told Aurelia, for they would seem very poor dreams indeed compared with changing the world. Besides, who would ever want me? Never given voice, my dreams dwindled.
Those dreams seem very simple to me now, a crude, crayon-drawn picture by a wistful child. But the beauty of impossible dreams is that they are impossible – the hows and whens don’t really matter. I suppose the true longing was not after all the outline of the image but the feelings beneath its surface. I wanted peace, a sense of belonging and love.
I startle when Tom, Mr Carlton’s boy, comes to escort me to the station. I have not thought of that cottage, that husband, those children for many years. And peace and security seem more remote than ever.
*
It is a very small branch at Ladywell, I am told, yet to me it is overwhelming. To see finally the railway tracks of which I have heard so much but only seen illustrated! The black, greedy arms that snake across our country, dividing it up into slices. The newspapermen tell us that they link here with there and A with B until distance is annihilated altogether and anyone can go anywhere, any time they want!
There is no station building but a platform open to the elements; a bitter wind blows straight through. It hums with people already, although we are in good time.
Tom takes the coin I proffer and purchases my ticket for me. Second class. I cannot be seen to travel first class so close to Enderby, yet I cannot find the courage for third. I stow it, naturally, in my left glove.
He leads me onto the platform and positions me in a very particular spot.
‘You’ll be next to a door here, miss. Be able to jump straight on. I’ll wait and help you with your bag, o’course. Now, have you looked around and decided which passengers might be the conversational types?’
I can’t say that I have, but Tom points out an energetic-looking family as examples of the sort of traveller to whom I might confidently address any enquiries, and two men in caps and dark jackets, as being ‘ones for avoidin’’.
I am too scared not to take every last piece of advice that comes my way, yet I find it hard to concentrate. I am leaving Ladywell. I am leaving Ladywell. I am leaving Ladywell. I have only ever been here two or three times before yet it feels familiar compared with whatever lies ahead.
The train, when it comes, is a great, black, blowing monster and I am in equal parts thrilled and terrified to see it. The doors are flung open with a racket as though devils are shaking the iron gates of Hell; great towers of steam fill the air.
I am a traveller in the Railway Age. I am a young woman of the world. I have important business to conduct. But why, oh, why is Aurelia not here to share this adventure with me?
Chapter Nine
Before my arrival, Aurelia was exceptionally lonely. As she told me when we were yet very young, her mother kept losing all her babies so there was no one for her to play with. And that was why, she believed, God had sent her to find me, knowing she would not be so careless as her mother. I was exceedin
gly glad that He had.
Although Aurelia had cousins aplenty she found no kindred spirit amongst them. To start with, I was her pet, like the broken birds and trapped animals she kept rescuing and housing in unlikely constructions – a field mouse in a dolls’ house, a snake in a bath tub. Robin always abetted these missions of mercy. He showed her how to set a bird’s wing, how to make a simple salve of dock leaves. But he was a quiet boy, and the animals had still less to say, and Aurelia had a great many thoughts tumbling inside her.
She had always wanted someone with whom she could share her ideas, someone to help her understand the things that made her laugh and the things that made her want to scream. At six, seven, eight years of age, I was still no equal for her but I was the next best thing: a willing pupil.
I was not stupid myself, it transpired, nor lacking in curiosity. She taught me to read and write and count, to draw and ride. I was not the only servant at Hatville who could do any of these things, but it did not make me popular.
Aurelia did have a grown-up friend, of whom I sometimes felt jealous. Mrs Bolton was a slender woman of around thirty, with a world-weary air, a selection of rakish bonnets and a jaw squarer than Robin’s. She always dressed in peacock colours: navy or dark green, with flashes of gold and amber. She did not suffer fools, Aurelia always said admiringly, which made me worry that she thought me a fool – Mrs Bolton was certainly scant in the attention she offered me. She and Aurelia held intense discussions about The State of the World, and The Lot of Women, which made me feel every bit as young and small as I really was. But I never seriously doubted Aurelia’s affection for me and I was comforted that Lord and Lady Vennaway didn’t approve of bold Mrs Bolton either.
*
A long while had passed (it seemed to me) since my first encounter with Lady Vennaway. The memory of that day did not come back to me often, but it was there, like an invisible fence. Aurelia and I had the run of the grounds, so long as we avoided the croquet lawn, the terrace, the rose garden – anywhere we might encounter civilized folk. Robin always warned us if we strayed too close and we would dash away like elves to the farthest reaches of the grounds. Nor would Cook allow me to accompany Aurelia when she walked into Enderby to do what she called her ‘Lady Bountifuls’. From her stories of the cramped homes of many of the villagers I knew I had much to be thankful for, yet it is the nature of bright, curious children to forget the fact.
