Plain Jane (5 page)

The arrival of Joseph Palmer at Number 67 Clarges Street was most unexpected. Neither Rainbird nor any of the other servants had expected him to venture out in such weather.

The snow had fallen steadily for days and then had frozen hard, squeaking beneath the Londoners’ feet as they scurried through the cold. A biting north-easter had blown the fog away. Blocks of ice churned about the steely waters of the Thames.

MacGregor fortunately had espied the stocky figure of the agent in Bolton Row and had rushed to warn the others of his impending arrival. The blazing kitchen fire was doused with a bucket of water and the back door was opened to chill the servants’ hall and kitchen. Palmer knew they had not any money for coal and would immediately demand to know where they had found it.

Lizzie, almost completely recovered, had been moved out of the upstairs bedroom, but still Alice and Jenny flew upstairs to make sure there was not the slightest trace of her recent occupation.

The wind had abruptly died and a pale disk of a sun was moving down the sky as Jonas Palmer stood on the step and scraped the mud and snow from his boots on the iron scraper set into the wall of the house. He performed a brisk tattoo on the brass knocker and then fidgeted impatiently on the step while the pattering of hastening feet crossed and recrossed the hall inside.

At last Rainbird opened the door. He did not look in the least surprised to see Palmer, and the agent crossly guessed that they had been forewarned of his arrival. Palmer stumped past the butler and went into the front parlour on the ground floor. A dim white light shone through the frost flowers on the window, and the room was as cold as the grave.

‘The windows will soon be cracking with frost if you don’t fire the house properly,’ said Palmer sourly. He was a heavy-set man who looked like a farmer with his great coarse red face. There were tufts of grey hair sprouting from each nostril and adorning his cheeks.

‘You did not give us any money for fuel, and sea coal is dear,’ pointed out Rainbird.

Palmer stared at the floor.

‘Should any tenant come to inspect the premises first,’ pursued Rainbird, ‘they might not wish to take such a cold house.’

‘Had a hard winter, heh?’ grinned Palmer.

‘Like everyone else.’

‘We’ll see about getting you coal, for the house has been let.’

Rainbird’s face remained impassive.

‘It’s a member of the gentry,’ said Palmer. ‘A Captain Hart, his wife and two daughters. But there’s a problem of sleeping space.’

‘There is enough,’ said Rainbird. There was a bedroom at the back of the dining room on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second.

‘Mrs Hart is bringing a fancy French lady’s maid and wishes her to have a room separate from the common servants.’

‘Then it can’t be done,’ said Rainbird, surprised, ‘unless the daughters share a room and give the other on the second floor to the maid. I gather Mr and Mrs Hart will wish to take the large bedroom next to the dining room.’

‘Seems the daughters must have a room apiece,’ said the agent. ‘So Mrs Middleton will have to give up her parlour.’

Mrs Middleton, the housekeeper, had a small cosy parlour on a half-landing on the kitchen stairs. It was her pride and joy, but Rainbird knew that not one of them was in a position to protest. They all desperately needed a tenant for the Season.

‘And the Harts’ is the only offer?’ he asked.

‘The only one that I’m taking,’ said the agent. ‘They’re paying in advance.’

Mrs Hart had been advised to do this by Lady Doyle in case the house should prove to be £800 instead of £80. ‘Pay in advance,’ Lady Doyle had urged, ‘and get the lease letters so that if they have made a mistake, they cannot go back on it.’

‘Very well,’ said Rainbird. ‘I shall tell Mrs Middleton to prepare the parlour for the French maid.’

‘And none of your womanizing tricks with the maid,’ said Palmer.

‘I do not go in for womanizing.’

‘Ho, no? You what was dismissed from Lord Trumpington’s household for bedding his wife?’

‘The only crime there was that I was found out,’ said Rainbird stiffly.

He had been a young footman at the time and had been well and truly seduced by Lady Trumpington, but her husband had cried rape and Rainbird was glad to escape with only the punishment of a bad reference. Still, the scandal clung to him wherever he went.

‘’Tis monstrous cold. Is there no tea?’ asked Palmer.

‘Alice will be along directly,’ said Rainbird, ringing the bell. He was torn between elation at the idea of having a tenant and worry over Mrs Middleton’s distress when she found out she had to give up her parlour.

Because Palmer surmised they had been warned of his coming, he did not inspect the premises – which was just as well because the servants’ hall and the kitchen were both still suspiciously warm.

Rainbird was glad to see him go after an hour of instructions. He had not liked the way Palmer’s pig-like eyes had rested on Alice’s bosom as the maid had bent over to deposit the tea tray on a low table.

To Rainbird’s relief, Mrs Middleton stoically agreed to transform her parlour into a bedchamber for the lady’s maid. It was not the giving up of her sanctum that disturbed her, she said, but that the Harts should have employed a
French
maid. What was the world coming to when English servants were not considered good enough? This foreigner would probably murder them all in their beds in the way that Napoleon’s troops were murdering British men abroad. The French were savages. Everyone knew that!

But Rainbird, wise in the ways of the
ton
, pointed out that society still interlarded their conversation with bad French, slavishly copied French fashion, hired French chefs, and generally went on as if there were not a war raging across the Channel.

The new tenants were to arrive at the beginning of March and stay until the end of June. Surely a family who could indulge in the frivolity of a French maid would be open-handed and generous.

In the late afternoon, Lizzie asked permission to go out. The previous tenant, Miss Fiona, now the missing Countess of Harrington, had once urged Lizzie to eat raw vegetables and to take as much fresh air as possible, and Lizzie, pleased that her disfiguring spots had gone, still followed her advice.

Her wrist had healed, although she would carry the scar to the end of her days. As she walked towards the Green Park, her thoughts turned as they usually did to Joseph, the footman. Little did Lizzie know that the vain footman longed to be able to take his precious handkerchief back but could not steal it because Lizzie kept it under her gown, next to her heart. Lizzie wondered what the French maid would be like. What if Joseph fell in love with her?

The sun was setting and the trees in the park cast their long black shadows across the snow. Lizzie stood silently, thinking of Joseph, as the sun turned to red as it sank lower. The snow burned crimson, one glorious blazing sheet of rubies, and then slowly changed to grey with bluish tinges in the hollows.

Lizzie had come to Clarges Street from the orphanage. Her parents had died just after she was born and the servants in Clarges Street had become her adopted family.

She shivered as a sudden wind rattled the skeletal branches of the winter trees. As she turned about to head home, she saw a bundle lying near the edge of the reservoir. In the hope that someone might have dropped some firewood, she went closer – and then drew in a sharp breath of anguish. A mother and child lay half buried in the snow. The child was about three years old, its dead face turned to the darkening sky.

Frozen to death!

She swayed as she remembered the death of Clara, daughter of the second tenants of Number 67. She, too, had been found dead on the edge of the reservoir. Lizzie stumbled away towards the cottage at the gates of the park where two elderly ladies kept the herd of cows that supplied fresh milk to Mayfair. She banged on the door. A tall old lady dressed in the style of Louis XV – high lace cap and gown of brocaded silk – opened the door.

‘Please, mum,’ gabbled Lizzie, ‘there’s a woman and child by the reservoir, and, oh, mum, they’s dead . . . starved and froze.’

‘Indeed,’ said the lady. ‘So inconsiderate. I will tell the rangers. You may go. Wait! Do you know who I am?’

Lizzie bobbed a curtsy. ‘No, mum.’

‘I,’ said the lady, drawing herself up and looking down her long thin nose at Lizzie, ‘am Mrs Searle.’

Lizzie looked blank.

‘
I
am George Brummell’s aunt.’

Even little Lizzie knew of George Brummell, that famous leader of fashion and close intimate of the Prince of Wales.

‘Yes, you may stare,’ went on Mrs Searle. ‘I started him on his career. He was visiting me after he had just left Eton when the Prince of Wales called on me with the Marquess of Salisbury. The Prince was attracted by George’s nice manners. He said, “As I find you intend to be a soldier I will give you a commission in my own regiment.”’

All at once, remembering the face of the dead child, Lizzie burst into tears.

‘Yes, you may well cry,’ said Mrs Searle. ‘I see you have guessed the tragedy of it. That wicked boy never came near me after I had set his feet on the road to success.’

Lizzie stumbled away, still crying.

Although the other servants tried to comfort her, they were slightly irritated by what they considered Lizzie’s excessive sensibility. Certainly bodies in Mayfair were not so thick on the ground as they were in the less salubrious areas, but with dead bodies lying frozen all over London, and with dead bodies dangling from the gibbets, they privately thought Lizzie over-nice in her feelings, unsuitably so for a scullery maid.

Talk soon turned back to speculation on the character of the new tenants. The fire supplied by the coal taken from Lord Charteris’s cellar warmed their bones.

Rainbird did not consider the taking of the coal as theft, for he could not tell the servants not to sin and then do it himself. He convinced himself that they had merely been
borrowing
the coal. Palmer had promised him a delivery. When it came they would put it back in the cellar next door.

Unaware of all the discussion and speculation going on about them, the future tenants of 67 Clarges Street prepared for the great exodus to London. Their own home had been let for the period of their absence to an elderly lady who proved to be a match for Mrs Hart when it came to beating down the price. But the fact that her home in Upper Patchett
had
been let, and at such short notice, did much to allay the pangs of being outwitted and outdone in Mrs Hart’s breast.

Never for a moment did Jane think there would be any question of leaving her behind. But horror upon horrors, the old lady, a Mrs Blewett, who was to take their home expressed a wish to find a young female companion. Mrs Hart’s eyes gleamed and she promptly suggested Jane – Jane who sat with her dreamworld of London and her possible meeting with Beau Tregarthan falling about her ears.

‘It is not as if
you
were to make your come-out,’ said Mrs Hart.

‘I don’t want an unwilling gel,’ snapped Mrs Blewett, who had called to inspect the linen closet and assure herself the linen would not be damp. Mrs Blewett was fortunately not in need of sea breezes. Rather, she was fleeing from them as she lived in Brighton, and had let
her
home for a much larger sum than she was paying Mrs Hart.

‘You will find Jane a congenial companion,’ said Mrs Hart while her mind busily worked out the money she would save on Jane’s gowns, what exactly she should charge for Jane’s services, and that the whole arrangement would go a long way to defraying the expense of the smart new French maid. Lady Doyle had said that a French maid was
de rigueur
.

Euphemia looked worried. She teased and tormented Jane, but, since she had no friends, she dreaded the thought of being launched into society with no one of her own age. Besides, Jane was an excellent foil for Euphemia’s beauty.

‘No,’ said Mr Hart suddenly from his seat by the fire. ‘Jane’s going with us.’

All the ladies stared at him in surprise. Mrs Hart looked as amazed as if her wig stand had suddenly up and expressed an opinion. ‘Mr Hart,’ she said, casting an amused and tolerant look at Mrs Blewett as if to say ‘these men’, ‘Jane will do very well with Mrs Blewett.’

Mr Hart rose to his feet. ‘Jane’s going,’ he snapped. ‘Let that be an end of the matter.’ He strode from the room.

There was a long embarrassed silence. Mrs Hart fought to conceal her surprise at her usually silent husband’s bid to assert himself. Then she gave a little shrug. ‘That seems to be the way of it, Mrs Blewett. Mr Hart is very fond of our younger daughter.’

Mr Hart had previously shown little interest in either girl.

Jane let out a slow sigh of relief.

After Mrs Blewett had taken her leave and Mrs Hart fussed off to see what could possibly have driven her husband to voice an opinion for once in his life, Euphemia and Jane were left alone.

‘I’m glad you are coming,’ said Euphemia, giving her sister an impulsive hug. ‘It is all rather terrifying, you know.’ There was an almost comical expression of surprise on Euphemia’s face. She had not been in the way of feeling in the slightest nervous when faced with social occasions before. In fact her bold manner at local assemblies usually verged on the indecent.

‘The Season?’ said Jane, round-eyed. ‘Why,
you
have no need to be afraid, Euphemia. The gentlemen will fall over like ninepins when they see you.’

More in charity with her sister than she had been for a long while, Euphemia gave her another hug. ‘Nonetheless,’ she said, ‘it is not as if I have any experience of the beau monde. I know I am beautiful, but I do not have any jewels. Mama is so clutch-fisted.’

‘As to that,’ said Jane, who studied the social columns, ‘it is not at all the thing for debutantes to wear elaborate jewelry. Besides, you will marry a very rich man and have all the jewels you desire.’

‘You must do everything in your power to help me,’ said Euphemia. ‘I do not want the gentlemen to take us in dislike because of that forthright tongue of yours. And papa is awkward in the saloon.’