Lucy replaced the sheet of paper in her typewriter. The old page, rippling with fresh black letters, now lay safely to her right. Now, the duty out of her way, she could finally approach the task she really wanted to do …
‘Thanks for taking these napkins, by the way,’ Abby whispered theatrically, as they ploughed their way through the snow. ‘I’d never have finished them on time myself. I’m still drowning in pillowcases.’
The landscape was weighted down with leaden winter twilight. Even after the narrow town streets, so sleepy on Sunday, the silence of the estate grounds always seemed to ambush them.
‘It’s nothing,’ Hester replied and squeezed her friend’s hand slightly. Like hers, it was clad in a coarse black glove, and still managed to freeze into rigidity as they walked from the train station. ‘I couldn’t let you drown in pillowcases, after all. That would’ve been a hideous death.’
The prospect of stuffing her precious hours of freedom with the patching of dinner napkins looked daunting. However, seeing Abigail wasting her hours of sleep away was even more daunting.
‘We’d have to make sure the Crow doesn’t know,’ the redhead continued in the same delighted whisper. ‘Otherwise she’d have a fit.’
‘Why, just because I’m lending you a hand?’
‘These are my duties, after all.’ Abby shrugged with an air of tetchiness. ‘She’s not too glad that we’re mixing so much as it is.’
‘Mixing!’ Hester couldn’t help but laugh. The word had such an air of Victorian aloofness that she couldn’t take it seriously for the life of her.
Not that she was oblivious to the intricate inner structures of the servants’ wing, of course. No one who lived there for more than a week could be. The world beyond the green baize door was as tightly regulated, if not more so, than the world of drawing rooms upstairs.
For instance, Abigail always ate in the servants’ hall, while Hester had to take her dinners in the quiet solemnity of the steward’s room. She heard that both the kitchen maid and Abby herself called it, with the cheerful irreverence, a Pug’s Parlour; the upper servants being, of course, the pugs.
‘Don’t worry,’ Abby said to her then, kissing her cheek. ‘It’s just a sort of tradition. You look nothing like a pug”. She sang the first few lines of ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’, a silly little song seemingly unable to leave anyone’s head.
Hester sang the rest of the line, twirling the girl in her arms. A ginger curl swept across her cheek.
Abby proved to be an inexhaustible source of intelligence when it came to this household. She had only worked here for two years, and someone like Mrs Mullet must have regarded her as a clumsy toddler; but for Hester that seemed like a treasure trove of experience.
Abby was still a little bitter about that lecture on thriftiness Mrs Mullet gave her after the housemaid decided to show her a new jumper. However, despite the not-so-affectionate soubriquet, she didn’t harbour any particularly hard feelings towards the housekeeper. Moreover, she schooled Hester in the precarious art of gaining her trust and avoiding her wrath.
At first, Mrs Mullet regarded her with sharp suspicion. According to Abigail, however, it was reserved for all the fresh young servants. Not that Hester felt particularly better for it; on the contrary, she felt her Northern vowels and bad posture more acutely than ever despite all her efforts.
However, in the tight, insulated world of Hebden Hall the new pair of ears was too seductive a gift to be scorned for long. After the cook-housekeeper finally acknowledged, that Hester worked quite well and probably wasn’t going to escape with the silver cutlery, their relationship started to warm.
Mrs Mullet’s memory was an enormous library when it came to the fascinating past of Hebden Hall and its illustrious inhabitants. She had first walked through the corridors of the servants’ wing at the dawn of the century, a shy girl of fifteen who arrived to become a kitchen maid. It was almost impossible to imagine Mrs Mullet shy; but then, it was equally impossible to imagine these quiet, grey halls as the bustling haven of activity she described them to be.
They had a proper housekeeper back then, of course, and Mrs Mullet wouldn’t have dreamt to take her place. In the steward’s room solemn silence always reigned; the upper servants were waited upon by an efficient young footman, and the butler presided over the table.
Now the chauffeur, also doubling as valet, was the only male servant left. It was rational, Hester supposed; after all, one didn’t have to pay women as much.
Mrs Mullet could remember the time, when Her present Ladyship was just gliding through her first Season – tight-laced in a corset, her skirts like pale clouds.
‘They were real ladies back then,’ Mrs Mullet sighed. ‘They never forgot to conduct themselves with proper decorum. Her Ladyship in particular, she always strived to be immaculate. Nowadays young girls are allowed all kinds of debauchery. Not our Lady Lucy, of course,’ she added hastily. ‘She has always been as pure as a lily-of-the-valley. Never smokes, and certainly wouldn’t dream of cutting her lovely curls.’
She scarcely spoke of the other times, of the Dark Ages that started only several years after the joyful celebrations of Armistice. It was a picture Hester had to piece together by details, by curt comments, by throwaway remarks, usually accompanied by a wince.
For instance, how much land the Fitzmartins had to sell to pay the death duties for the late Earl. How the close-knit world of downstairs was chipped away bit by bit, until only a couple of women remained, dwelling in these enormous caverns. How Mrs Mullet agreed to take on the duties of the gone housekeeper in addition to her usual work – only temporarily, of course, until things get better. But they didn’t get better.
Sometimes, they had to pay little Lucy’s governess with milk and eggs from the estate farm.
Hester was often curious as to the whereabouts of enigmatic Mr Mullet amidst all these troubles. She even conjured up a romantic story about his brave sacrifice on the fields of Flanders. However, it turned out that he never actually existed: as years passed by, the cook merely added ‘Mrs’ to her surname as a sign of gravity.
Hester tried to picture her life, to piece together the scrapbook of the decades. Did she ever have a sweetheart? Did she ever have friends outside the servants’ hall? She certainly never had children; that went without saying.
She walked through this door when the Fitzmartins still rode horse-drawn carriages, and had never left since. She lived through the family’s triumphs and carried them through their hardships.
Was that her future fate, too?
No, Hester hastened to assure herself, of course not.
After all, these are different times.
No one would expect her to toil without rest now, and, if she decided to find a better place one day, no one would consider it to be some sort of betrayal.
Surely not.
***
The grounds of Hebden Hall greeted her with silence, as Hester made her way through wet snow. She secretly hoped for March to bring at least a hint of spring and pleasant change; however, the local weather stayed dauntingly predictable.
She was surrounded by unnatural stillness, as if the world was now encased in a giant bell. The only sound Hester heard was the sound of her own heavy breath. Her boots were already soaked, and she cursed the hour when she decided to spend this Sunday exploring the grounds.
The morning had been spent, as usual, in accompanying the family on their obligatory visit to the local church. There Hester sat, gazing at the effigies of the past Earls of Hereford, at their monuments and their plaques. She spent the time contemplating