Thankfully, such an opportunity presented itself every day.
It was seven in the morning, and the sky was still veiled in a murky haze. Hester gulped down her tea as fast as she could, balancing the tray on her knees. The housemaid, meanwhile, was laying out and kindling the fire. Her face was pallid, and her eyes rimmed with red; the strands of ginger hair, straying from beyond her lace bonnet, seemed to be the only splash of colour in the world.
Hester hesitated for a moment; then she carefully put her cup away.
The tea would do for now. Her real breakfast would be later, after the masters had already been safely served theirs.
She wasn’t sure how to approach the subject.
‘I know it sounds rather silly …’
‘Aye?’ Abby turned her head. Her eyes, Hester noticed, were dim blue.
‘I was just wondering … well … is your name really Abigail?’
‘Of course!’ The girl laughed. ‘What else could it be?’
‘I don’t know. Mary? Rose?’ Hester never felt more stupid in her life. It wasn’t the girl’s fault, after all, that she had such a housemaid-ish name.
‘Oh! My sister’s Rose.’
‘Really? It must be nice to have a sister.’ Hester was relieved to find at least some kind of point of rapprochement. She was eager to ask any question now, just to bury her embarrassment. ‘Does she live somewhere around here?’
‘No, no. She stayed in the Highlands.’
Abigail’s accent left little room for doubt.
‘The Highlands? Must be a lovely place.’
‘Nae, not really.’ The first flame had already been woken up by Abby’s sure hands, and the faint glow turned her hair into threads of fire. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have to march down here to find a decent job.’
Hester blinked. ‘What do you mean, march?’
‘I mean march like the soldiers march.’ Abby looked a little amused by this strange misapprehension. ‘Actually, I took me Da’s army backpack with me,’ she added, ‘so I really felt a wee bit like a soldier.’
‘You came here all the way from the Highlands on foot?’
‘It wasn’t so bad,’ the redhead assured her. ‘The big problem was to find somewhere to spend th’night. I was lucky sometimes: people let me in the sheds. But usually I had to stay in a workhouse. I had to toil all the next day as a payment – a lot o’ time lost.’
‘I think they’re called institutions now,’ Hester said automatically. ‘Not workhouses.’
Abigail shrugged.
‘A workhouse’s a workhouse. I’m lucky they took me in here; I thought the housekeeper would turn me away at once. But it turned out they just wanted a housemaid who wouldn’t ask for too much. They didnae have much choice either. I saw it after,’ she added. ‘There’s no queue to serve in this house; that much I can tell.’
‘But you like it here?’
‘They feed me very well.’ It was so strange, to hear this forced purity, devoid of dialect. Mrs Mullet must have worked hard to bring this girl up to standards. ‘Always real butter. Never tasted margarine here. My brother’s jealous.’ Abby bit her lip so as not to giggle. ‘He had to go further south, down to Manchester. Works in a factory now. It was better here afore, though,’ she noted. ‘I worked with another girl back then. She left after the New Year, and they still didnae find anyone else. No queue, just like I said.’
‘It must have been easier to work together.’
That was a bit of an understatement. Having scaled the enormous realm of Hebden Hall over these weeks, Hester failed to imagine how one could housemaid keep even a part of it in order.
‘Oh, it’s not just that.’ With an effort, Abigail stood up. ‘We had so much fun. We used to practise all the new dance steps, when no one saw, and …’ She looked at Hester with a slight suspicion, as if unsure whether to trust her with a grave secret. ‘Promise you won’t tell the Crow. She’ll have my guts for garters.’
It wasn’t hard to guess whom she meant by that soubriquet.
‘I’m deaf and mute.’
‘Well, it happened when we were still in town. It was so late, and we had to clean up after a party. So, we cleaned it …’ Abby made a dramatic pause. ‘Especially the cocktails guests didnae finish. We polished them right off.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I know, I know! We felt so wild. But we’d never drunk anything like that before, so …’
‘What, even at Saturday dances? I mean … There’re Saturday dances in your hometown, aren’t there?’ Hester had never been to the Scottish Highlands, so she wasn’t entirely sure. Who knows how it was in that windswept wilderness?
‘Of course there’re!’ Abby sounded offended. ‘Every week, in the church hall or the baths. I’ve tried the Green Goddess during the break, but it was nothing like this.’
‘Oh, you’re bold! I’ve always wanted to try it, but could never bring myself up to it. I thought it was only for the most daring girls.’
‘You didnae miss much,’ Abigail assured her.
‘One minute!’ Hester remembered. ‘You said you were in town then? In London, that is?’
‘Aye. We all went there last summer, for Lady Lucy’s coming out.’
‘And how was it?’ Hester asked, her heartbeat firing up. ‘The city? How was it?’
‘It was stoating!’ The redhead exclaimed. ‘The house is much smaller, so I didnae have to clean so much. And on Sunday I could even go to the pictures.’
***
‘I wish all my readers good fortune; I hope my advice will help them in this dreariest of winter months!’
The typewriter clicked, and the last of the digits bloomed on the page in vivid fresh ink. Lady Lucy Fitzmartin leaned back in the heavy library chair and stretched her fingers. Her head hurt slightly; it was hard to decide whether it was due to the lack of fresh air or the excess of banality.
I swear to heaven, if I have to write the words ‘charming’ and ‘elegant’ one more time, the heads will roll.
Of course, it was all for naught – empty threats to the universe. That was what they were expecting her to write about: frocks and garden parties, weddings and tips on entertaining. Some Society gossip as well, of course. The heiress of such-and-such abandoned, at last, her Eton crop and began to grow her hair – congratulations! Lady Diana Mitford demonstrated a highly inventive way of wearing a tiara (on her neck, no less). A daring young gentleman came to a costume party in nothing but Zulu war paint and had to be turned away.
That was what they wanted her to write.
More importantly, that was what they were prepared to pay for her to write.
Lucy was certainly in no position to complain; at least, for now.
It was only now she saw, looking back at the last summer, just how haphazard was the start of her career, how fortunate. An encounter at a dinner party, a mentioned need for contributors to the fledgling Sunday Express, an ardent (too ardent to be ladylike) agreement from her.
A trial contract for three articles was signed during the same week.
She was not a fool, of course. She understood that this haste had nothing to do with Lord Beaverbrook’s