The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog Read online

  She pushed open the door. The room was small and spare, and it smelled, unaccountably, like potatoes. But one half of it-an iron bed, chest of drawers and chair-was to be mine.

  ‘There now. That’s your side,’ she said, nodding toward the far edge of the bed. ‘I’m this side and I’d thank you not to touch anything.’ She walked her fingers along the top of her chest of drawers, past a crucifix, a Bible and a hairbrush. ‘Sticky fingers will not be abided here. Now get your things unpacked, get into uniform and come downstairs so you can start your duties. No dawdling, mind, and for heaven’s sake, no leaving the servants’ hall. Luncheon’s at midday today on account of the Master’s grandchildren arriving, and we’re already behind with the rooms. Last thing I need is to have to go looking for you. You’re not a dawdler, I hope.’

  ‘No, Myra,’ I said, still smarting at the implication I might be a thief.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ll see about that.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I tell them I need a new girl and what do they send me? No experience, no references and, by the looks of you, a dawdler.’

  ‘I’m not-’

  ‘Pish,’ she said, stamping a narrow foot. ‘Mrs Townsend says your mother was quick and able, and that the apple don’t fall far from the tree. All’s I can say is you’d better hope it’s so. The mistress won’t put up with dawdling from the likes of you and neither will I.’ And with a final, disapproving toss of her head, she turned heel and left me alone in the tiny dim room at the top of the house. Swish… Swish… Swish…

  I held my breath, listening.

  Finally, alone with the sighing of the house, I tiptoed to the door and eased it shut, turning to take in my new home.

  There was not much to see. I ran my hand over the foot of the bed, ducking my head where the ceiling slanted against the roof line. Across the end of the mattress was a grey blanket, one of its corners patched by a competent hand. A small, framed picture, the only hint of decoration in the room, hung on the wall: a primitive hunting scene, an impaled deer, blood leaking from its pierced flank. I looked away quickly from the dying animal.

  Carefully, silently, I sat down, wary of wrinkling the smooth under-sheet. The bedsprings creaked in response and I jumped, chastened, my cheeks flooding with colour.

  A narrow window cast a shaft of dusty light into the room. I climbed up to kneel on the chair and peered outside.

  The room was at the back of the house and very high. I could see all the way past the rose garden, over the trellises and to the south fountain. Beyond, I knew, lay the lake, and on the other side, the village and the cottage in which I had spent my first fourteen years. I pictured Mother, sitting by the kitchen window where the light was best, her back curled over the clothing she darned.

  I wondered how she was managing alone. Mother had been worse lately. I’d heard her of a night, groaning in her bed as the bones of her back seized beneath her skin. Some mornings her fingers were so stiff I’d had to run them under warm water and rub them between my own before she could as much as pluck a roll of thread from her sewing basket. Mrs Rodgers from the village had agreed to stop in daily, and the ragman passed by twice a week, but still, she’d be alone an awful lot. There was little chance she’d keep up the darning without me. What would she do for money? My meagre salary would help but surely I’d have been better to stay with her?

  And yet it was she who had insisted I apply for the position. She’d refused to hear the arguments I made against the idea. Only shook her head and minded me that she knew best. She’d heard they were looking for a girl and was certain I’d be just what they were after. Not a word as to how she knew. Typical of Mother and her secrets.

  ‘It’s not far,’ she said. ‘You can come home and help me on your days off.’

  My face must have betrayed my qualms, for she reached out to touch my cheek. An unfamiliar gesture and one I wasn’t expecting. The surprise of her rough hands, her needle-pricked fingertips, made me flinch. ‘There, there, girl. You knew time would come and you’d have to find yourself a position. It’s for the best: a good opportunity. You’ll see. There’s not many places will take a girl so young. Lord Ashbury and Lady Violet, they’re not bad people. And Mr Hamilton might seem strict, but he’s nothing if not fair. Mrs Townsend, too. Work hard, do as you’re told, and you’ll find no trouble.’ She squeezed my cheek hard then, fingers quivering. ‘And Gracie? Don’t you go forgetting your place. There’s too many young girls get themselves into trouble that way.’

  I had promised to do as she said, and the following Saturday trudged up the hill to the grand manor house, dressed in my Sunday clothes, to be interviewed by Lady Violet.

  It was a small and quiet household, she told me, just her husband, Lord Ashbury, who was busy most of the time with his business and clubs, and herself. Their two sons, Major James and Mr Frederick, were both grown up and lived in their own homes with their families, though they visited at times and I was sure to see them if I worked well and was kept on. With only the two of them living at Riverton they did without a housekeeper, she said, leaving the running of the household in Mr Hamilton’s capable hands, with Mrs Townsend, the cook, in charge of the kitchen accounts. If the two of them were pleased with me, then that was recommendation enough to keep me on.

  She had paused then and looked at me closely, in a way that made me feel trapped, like a mouse inside a glass jar. I had become instantly conscious of the edge of my hem, scarred with repeated attempts to match its length to my growing height, the small patch on my stockings that rubbed against my shoes and was becoming thin, my too-long neck and too-large ears.

  Then she had blinked and smiled: a tight smile that turned her eyes into icy crescents. ‘Well, you look clean, and Mr Hamilton tells me you can stitch.’ She had stood up as I nodded, and moved away from me toward the writing desk, trailing her hand lightly along the top of the chaise. ‘How is your mother?’ she had asked, without turning. ‘Did you know she used to be in service here too?’ To which I had told her I did know and that Mother was well, thank you for asking, and I remembered to call her ma’am.

  I must have said the right thing, because it was just after that she offered me fifteen pound a year to start next day and rang the bell for Myra to show me out.

  I pulled my face from the window, wiped away the mark my breath had left, and climbed back down.

  My suitcase lay where I’d dropped it, by Myra’s side of the bed, and I dragged it around to the chest of drawers that was to be mine. I tried not to look at the bleeding deer, frozen in his moment of final horror, as I packed my clothes into the top drawer: two skirts, two blouses and a pair of black tights that Mother had bid me darn so they’d see me through the coming winter. Then, with a glance at the door and a speeding heart, I unloaded my secret haulage.

  There were three volumes in all. Dog-eared green covers with faded gold lettering. I stowed them at the back of the bottom drawer and covered them with my shawl, careful to fold it right around so they were completely concealed. Mr Hamilton had been clear. The Holy Bible was acceptable, but any reading material beyond was most likely injurious and must be presented for his approval or would risk confiscation. I was not a rebel-indeed, back then I had a fierce sense of duty-but to live without Holmes and Watson was unthinkable.

  I tucked the suitcase under the bed.

  A uniform hung on the hook behind the door-black skirt, white apron, frilly cap-and I put it on, feeling like a child who had discovered its mother’s wardrobe. The skirt was stiff beneath my fingers and the collar scratched my neck where long hours had moulded it to someone else’s wider frame. As I tied the apron, a tiny white moth fluttered away in search of a new hiding spot, high up in the rafters, and I longed to join it.

  The cap was white cotton, starched so that the front panel sat upright, and I used the mirror above Myra’s chest of drawers to make sure it was straight and to smooth my pale hair over my ears as Mother had shown me. The girl in the mirror caught my eye
briefly, and I thought what a serious face she had. It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.

  Sylvia has brought me a cup of steaming tea and a slice of lemon cake. She sits next to me on the iron bench and, with a glance toward the office, withdraws a pack of cigarettes. (Remarkable the way my apparent need for fresh air seems always to coincide with her need for a covert cigarette break.) She offers me one. I refuse, as I always do, and she says, as she always does: ‘Probably best at your age. Smoke yours for you, shall I?’

  Sylvia looks good today-she has done something different with her hair-and I tell her so. She nods, blows a stream of smoke and tosses her head, a long ponytail appearing over one shoulder.

  ‘I’ve had extensions,’ she says. ‘I’ve wanted them for ages and I just thought, Girl, life’s too short not to be glamorous. Looks real, doesn’t it?’

  I am late in my reply, which she takes for agreement.

  ‘That’s because it is. Real hair, the sort they use on celebrities. Here. Feel it.’

  ‘Goodness,’ I say, stroking the coarse ponytail, ‘real hair.’

  ‘They can do anything these days.’ She waves her cigarette and I notice the juicy purple ring her lips have left. ‘Of course, you have to pay for it. Luckily I had a bit put aside for a rainy day.’

  She smiles, glowing like a ripe plum, and I grasp the raison d’être for this reinvention. Sure enough, a photograph materialises from her blouse pocket.

  ‘Anthony,’ she says, beaming.

  I make a show of putting on my glasses, peering at the image of a grey-moustachioed man in late middle-age. ‘He looks lovely.’

  ‘Oh Grace,’ she says through a happy sigh. ‘He is. We’ve only been out for tea a few times, but I’ve got such a good feeling about this one. He’s a real gentleman, you know? Not like some of them other layabouts that came before. He opens doors, brings me flowers, pulls my chair out for me when we go about together. A real old-fashioned gentleman.’

  The latter, I can tell, is added for my benefit. An assumption that the elderly cannot help but be impressed by the old fashioned. ‘What does he do for a living?’ I say.

  ‘He’s a teacher at the local comprehensive. History and English. He’s awful clever. Community-minded too; does volunteer work for the local historical society. It’s a hobby of his, he says, all those ladies and lords and dukes and duchesses. He knows all kinds of things about that family of yours, the one that used to live up in the grand house on the hill-’ She breaks and squints toward the office, then rolls her eyes. ‘Oh Gawd. It’s Nurse Ratchet. I’m supposed to be doing tea rounds. No doubt Bertie Sinclair’s complained again. You ask me, he’d be doing himself a favour to skip a biscuit now and then.’ She extinguishes her cigarette and wraps the butt in a tissue. ‘Ah well, no rest for the wicked. Anything I can get for you before I do the others, darl? You’ve hardly touched your tea.’

  I assure her I’m fine and she hurries across the green, hips and ponytail swinging in concord.

  It is nice to be cared for, to have one’s tea brought. I like to think I have earned this little luxury. Lord knows I have often enough been the bearer of tea. Sometimes I amuse myself imagining how Sylvia would have fared in service at Riverton. Not for her, the silent, obedient deferral of the domestic servant. She has too much bluff; has not been cowered by frequent assertions as to her ‘place’, well-intentioned instructions to lower her expectations. No, Myra would not have found Sylvia so compliant a pupil as I.

  Is it hardly a fair comparison, I know. People have changed too much. The century has left us bruised and battered. Even the young and privileged today wear their cynicism like a badge, their eyes blank and their minds full of things they never sought to know.

  It is one of the reasons I have never spoken of the Hartfords and Robbie Hunter and what went on between them. For there have been times when I’ve considered telling it all, unburdening myself. To Ruth. Or more likely Marcus. But somehow I knew before beginning my tale that they were too young to understand. That I would be unable to make them understand. How it ended the way it did. Why it ended the way it did. Make them see how much the world has changed.

  Of course, the signs of progress were upon us even then. The first war-the Great War-changed everything, upstairs and down. How shocked we all were when the new staff began to trickle in (and out again, usually) after the war, full of agency ideas about minimum wages and days off. Before that, the world had seemed absolute somehow, the distinctions simple and intrinsic.

  On my first morning at Riverton, Mr Hamilton called me to his pantry, deep in the servants’ hall, where he was bent over ironing The Times. He stood upright and straightened his fine round spectacle frames across the bridge of his long, beaked nose. So important was my induction into ‘the ways’, that Mrs Townsend had taken a rare break from preparing the luncheon galantine to bear witness. Mr Hamilton inspected my uniform meticulously then, apparently satisfied, began his lecture on the difference between us and them.

  ‘Never forget,’ he said gravely, ‘you are fortunate indeed to be invited to serve in a great house such as this. And with good fortune comes responsibility. Your conduct in all matters reflects directly on the family and you must do them justice: keep their secrets and deserve their trust. Remember that the Master always knows best. Look to him, and his family, for example. Serve them silently… eagerly… gratefully. You will know your job is done well when it goes unnoticed, that you have succeeded when you are unnoticed.’ He lifted his gaze then and studied the space above my head, his ruddy skin flushed with emotion. ‘And Grace? Never forget the honour they do you, allowing you to serve in their home.’

  I can only imagine what Sylvia would have said to this. Certainly she wouldn’t have received the address as I did; would not have felt her face constrict with gratitude and the vague, unnameable thrill of having been lifted up a step in the world.

  I shift in my seat and notice she has left her photograph behind: this new man who woos her with talk of history and nurses a hobbyist’s affection for the aristocracy. I know his type. They are the sort to keep scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs, to sketch elaborate family trees about families to which they have no entrée.

  I sound contemptuous but I am not. I am interested-intrigued even-by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.

  I close my eyes again. The sun has shifted and now my cheeks are warm.

  The folk of Riverton have all been dead so long. While age has withered me, they remain eternally youthful, eternally beautiful.

  There now. I am becoming maudlin and romantic. For they are neither young nor beautiful. They are dead. Buried. Nothing. Mere figments that flit within the memories of those they once knew.

  But of course, those who live in memories are never really dead.

  •

  The first time I saw Hannah and Emmeline and their brother David, they were debating the effects of leprosy on the human face. They had been at Riverton a week by then-their annual summer visit-but to that point I had caught only occasional wafts of laughter, tattoos of running feet, amid the creaking bones of the old house.

  Myra had insisted I was too inexperienced to be trusted in polite society-juvenile though it might be-and had conferred on me only duties that distanced me from the visitors. While the other servants were preparing for the arrival of the adult guests a fortnight hence, I was responsible for the nursery.

  They were too old, strictly, to need a nursery, said Myra, and would probably never use it, but it was tradition, and thus the large second-floor room at the far end of the east wing was to be aired and cleaned, flowers replaced daily.

  I can describe the room, but I fear any description will fail to capture the strange appeal it held for me. The room was large, rectangular and gloomy, and wore the pa
llor of decorous neglect. It gave the impression of desertion, of a spell in an ancient tale. It slept the sleep of a hundred-year curse. The air hung heavily, thick and cold and suspended; and in the doll’s house by the fireplace, the dining table was set for a party whose guests would never come.

  The walls were covered in paper that may once have been blue and white stripe, but which time and moisture had turned murky grey, spotted and peeling in places. Faded scenes from Hans Christian Andersen hung along one side: the brave tin soldier atop his fire, the pretty girl in red shoes, the little mermaid weeping for her lost past. It smelled musty, of ghostly children and long-settled dust. Vaguely alive.

  There was a sooty fireplace and a leather armchair at one end, huge arched windows on the adjacent wall. If I climbed up onto the dark timber window seat and peered down through the leadlight panes I could make out a courtyard where two bronze lions on weathered plinths stood guard, surveying the estate churchyard in the valley below.

  A well-worn rocking horse rested by the window: a dignified dapple-grey with kind black eyes who seemed grateful for the dusting I gave him. And by his side, in silent communion, stood Raverley. The black and tan foxhound had been Lord Ashbury’s when he was a boy; had died after getting his leg stuck in a trap. The embalmer had made a good attempt to patch the damage, but no amount of pretty dressing could hide what lurked beneath. I took to covering Raverley while I worked. With a dust sheet draped over him I could almost pretend he wasn’t there, looking out at me with his dull glassy eyes, wound gaping beneath his patch.

  But despite it all-Raverley, the smell of slow decay, the peeling paper-the nursery became my favourite room. Day after day, as predicted, I found it empty, the children engaged elsewhere on the estate. I took to rushing through my regular duties that I might have a few spare minutes in which to linger, alone. Away from Myra’s constant corrections, from Mr Hamilton’s grim reproval, from the rowdy camaraderie of the other servants that made me feel I had so much still to learn. I stopped holding my breath, began to take the solitude for granted. To think of it as my room.