Hester was still unsure about this latter image, though. She suspected it to be at least an embellishment. How could anything bloom in March, let alone oranges?
Her hometown was a practical place, built around shipyards and factories. Lady Lucy’s Victorian grandmother must have seen it rising. It was sturdy; it was sensible; it was part of the backbone of the industrial empire. It wasn’t a gloomy place, either; there were teashops, and Saturday dances, and even a park. But no oranges or lemons bloomed there in March. Or in any other months, for that matter.
‘Still, it’s a splendid story,’ Lady Lucy concluded, as if answering her thoughts. ‘And, as I’ve said, I love legends. Speaking of which, we have quite a good selection in the library. Have you already been there?’
‘I can use the library?’ Hester blinked.
‘Of course you can.’ The young woman turned and stared at her, slightly frowning. ‘All upper servants can. Didn’t Mrs Mullet tell you?’
‘I didn’t ask,’ Hester confessed.
She said it as quietly as she could, as if trying to drown the evidence that it was her first time in service, and she only knew the barest of rules.
‘Well, then I am telling you. You can read however much you want there.’
A weight seemed to lift from Hester’s shoulders. She had already imagined the trouble of carving out time for trips to the nearest town’s library; or, even worse, the nightmare of living without any new books at all.
‘Thank you, my lady,’ was all she could say. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You are welcome. Now …’ Lady Lucy touched her newly arranged curls ‘… I think that’s quite sufficient. I wouldn’t dare keep you here for too long; I imagine you have plenty of duties to attend to.’ Her tone and smile were as courteous as they could be; however, from her eyes’ expression, she could just as well have been a military officer saying Dismissed. ‘As do I.’
***
Lucy was a child of winter.
She was born in the crispy frost of January, in the deafening silence of snow-covered countryside.
She was born in the early years of the war, which later passed into the realm of legends. On the Continent, emperors fought with kings, and the fields were soaked with blood. Here, the lights went out, and the country stood in the hushed silence of terror.
Lucy was the first child of a young, sweet, impossibly proper couple – as proper as they came in those turbulent days. She was really supposed to be a boy: a sunny heir, the first of more to come, the harbinger of hope. There would have been joyful celebrations; there would have been tables laid out for tenants. Maids in pristine aprons would have patiently queued to receive a golden sovereign each from their benevolent master.
As it was, there were only veiled consolations.
‘Don’t worry,’ the well-wishers must have said. ‘It will all turn out properly next time.’
No one recounted such words to Lucy, of course, but it was easy enough to imagine them. They appeared in her mind so readily, as if they were lines in an already written novel, just waiting to be called to light. Ordering life in the format of a novel made it so much easier for her to understand.
Lucy was also, at least, supposed to be cheerful and hearty, never bothering anyone with fevers or complaints. She was supposed to be stout and perfectly healthy, a lover of horses and hunting, her cheeks bright as apples. Instead, she turned out to be weak and pale, rarely getting through spring without a flu. Later, she learnt to apologize for it.
And the next time never came. Little Lucy didn’t, of course, know the word ‘miscarriage’ – she was shielded from this improper knowledge as she was from many others. But, as she grew and found out, the strange, unnamed tragedies of her childhood suddenly blossomed with blood and meaning.
She was, in other words, a walking spectre of happiness that never came. She was a living reminder of a failure. She was the failure incarnate.
There was a way to atone for being a failure, and that was to become perfection.
After all, diamonds could be cut and polished. Why not people?
The polishing came in many ways. There were books she wasn’t supposed to read (at least, if she didn’t want them to end up in the fireplace). There was a list of people she could correspond with (all related and female), provided, of course, that her letters were dutifully submitted for inspection. There were things she was never supposed to ask about.
There was a catch, though: namely, that Lucy wasn’t a diamond, and thus didn’t patiently sit on a pillow and wait for the tools to cut her. She learnt to evade the questions and hide the books, to invent codes for letters, to guess the moods, to coax the smiles she wanted and sometimes the permissions she needed. She learnt to navigate the labyrinth of traps (which was hard, as their positions changed every time) and to tread on eggshells.
This latter skill was vital for every inhabitant of the house, from Her Ladyship to her housemaid. After all, her father’s rages were the stuff of legends. They were always called that: rages, with a tint of awe. Never tantrums or, God forbid, hysterics. These words were reserved for Lucy herself, for the times she raised her voice.
She learnt a lot of things, and she went through life with the apologetic air of someone who wasn’t really supposed to exist.
At least, so it was until the last year. Until Lucy learnt with growing surprise that, perhaps, there was someone who might actually be very grateful for her existence.
Very grateful indeed.
Hebden Hall wasn’t a house, or even an estate; it was a world of its own, and it took time for its map to imprint on Hester’s mind.
There were whole clusters of rooms with unclear purpose: lamp rooms and hamper rooms and flower-arranging rooms. There were clusters of rooms long since shut, and in her more fanciful moments Hester liked to pause by these doors and listen, imagining the cries of a madwoman or the footsteps of a ghost.
But these were, of course, just silly fantasies. The key was turned on all these endless chambers, Snowflake parlours, and Lilac bedrooms, for more practical reasons: the house would have become totally unmanageable otherwise. With the skeleton staff that was left, taking care of it all was beyond possible.
The world of servants, the world downstairs, was a separate universe in its own right. Its sheer size whispered to Hester the stories of the past grandeur, of the disciplined army that must have once dwelled there.
This quiet spirit of forlornness didn’t spare even the servants’ hall, the heart of all things. Among the rows of bells that hung there, most had been deadly quiet for over a decade, intended for long-since dismissed servants. In its cavernous space, Abigail the red-haired housemaid looked painfully small as she sat there in the evenings, mending the towels with a coarse flaxen thread. Her movements were mechanical, but her eyes were alive; she hummed to herself the latest jazz melody, if she couldn’t put the actual record on.
Or, at least, Hester supposed it was the latest. She wouldn’t be surprised if by the time a fresh hit reached the world of Hebden Hall, in London shops it was already moved to the classics department.
Her anxiety waned a little as the time passed. Gradually, her days were drained of the sense of apprehension