The Shifting Fog (20 page)

‘Thank you, Sylvia,’ I say. ‘I’ll have my usual.’

‘Yes.’ Sylvia blinks, a spell is broken, and she finally pulls herself away. The door closes behind her and I am left alone with my two guests.

Immediately I regret sending Sylvia away. I am overwhelmed by a sudden and irrational sense that her presence warded off the past’s return.

But she is gone, and we remaining three share a moment’s silence. I sneak another glance at Keira, study her face, try to recognise my young self in her pretty features. Suddenly a burst of music, muffled and tinny, breaks the silence.

‘Sorry,’ says Ursula, fumbling in her bag. ‘I meant to turn the sound off.’ She withdraws a small black mobile phone and the volume crescendos, stops mid-bar when she presses a button. She smiles, embarrassed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She glances at the screen and a cloud of consternation colours her face. ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’

Keira and I both nod as Ursula leaves the room, phone to her ear.

The door sighs shut and I turn to my young caller. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I suppose we ought to begin.’

She nods, almost imperceptibly, and pulls a folder from her tote bag. She opens it and withdraws a wad of paper, held together with a bulldog clip. I can see from the layout that it is a script—bold words in capitals, followed by longer portions of regular font.

She flicks past a few pages and stops, presses her shiny lips together. ‘I was wondering,’ she says, ‘about your relationship with the Hartford family. With the girls.’

I nod. That much I had presumed.

‘My part isn’t one of the big ones,’ she says. ‘I haven’t many lines, but I’m in a lot of the earlier shots.’ She looks at me. ‘You know. Serving drinks, that sort of thing.’

I nod again.

‘Anyway, Ursula thought it would be a good idea for me to talk to you about the girls: what you thought of them. That way I’ll get
some idea of my
motivation
.’ The final word she speaks pointedly, annunciating as if it were a foreign term with which I might not be familiar. She straightens her back and her expression takes on a varnish of fortification. ‘Mine isn’t the starring role, but it’s still important to give a strong performance. You never know who might be watching.’

‘Of course.’

‘Nicole Kidman only got
Days of Thunder
because Tom Cruise saw her in some Australian film.’

This fact and these names, I see, are supposed to resonate with me. I nod and she continues.

‘That’s why I need you to tell me how you felt. About your job and about the girls.’ She leans forward, her eyes the cold blue of Venetian glass. ‘It gives me an advantage, you see, you still being … I mean, the fact that you’re still …’

‘Alive,’ I say. ‘Yes, I see.’ I almost admire her candour. ‘What exactly would you like to know?’

She smiles; relieved, I imagine, that her faux pas has been swallowed quickly by the current of our conversation. ‘Well,’ she says, scanning the piece of paper resting on her knees. ‘I’ll get the dull questions out of the way first.’

My heart quickens. I have decided to answer honestly, no matter what she asks. A little game of roulette played for my own amusement.

‘Did you enjoy being a servant?’ she says.

I exhale: more an escaped breath than a sigh. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘for a time.’

She looks doubtful. ‘Really? I can’t imagine enjoying waiting on people all day every day. What did you like about it?’

‘The others became like a family to me. I enjoyed the camaraderie.’

‘The others?’ Her eyes widen hungrily. ‘You mean Emmeline and Hannah?’

‘No. I mean the other staff.’

‘Oh.’ She is disappointed. No doubt she had glimpsed a larger role for herself, an amended script in which Grace the housemaid is no longer an outside observer, but a secret member of the Hartford sisters’ coterie. She is young, of course, and from a different world.
She doesn’t conceive that certain lines should not be crossed. ‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘But I don’t have scenes with the other actors playing servants, so it’s not much use to me.’ She runs her biro down the list of questions. ‘Was there anything you
didn’t
like about being a servant?’

Day after day of waking with the birds; the attic that was an oven in summer and an ice box in winter; hands red raw from laundering; a back that ached from cleaning; weariness that permeated to the centre of my bones. ‘It was tiring. The days were long and full. There was not much time for oneself.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that’s how I’ve been playing it. I mostly don’t even have to pretend. After a day of rehearsal my arms are bruised from carrying the bloody tray around.’

‘It was my feet that hurt the most,’ I say. ‘But only in the beginning, and once when I turned sixteen and had my new shoes.’

She writes something on the back of her script, in round cursive strokes, nods. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘I can use that.’ She continues to scribble, finishing with a flourish of the pen. ‘Now for the interesting stuff. I want to know about Emmeline. That is, how you felt about her.’

I hesitate, wondering where to begin.

‘It’s just, we share a few scenes and I’m not sure what I should be thinking. Conveying.’

‘What kind of scenes?’ I say, curious.

‘Well, for instance, there’s the one where she first meets RS Hunter, down near the lake, and she slips and almost drowns and I have to—’

‘Near the lake?’ I am confused. ‘But that’s not where they met, it was the library, it was winter, they were—’

‘The library?’ she wrinkles her perfect nose. ‘No wonder the scriptwriters changed it. There’s nothing dynamic about a room full of old books. It works really well this way, the lake being where he killed himself and all. Kind of like the end of the story is in the beginning. It’s romantic, like that Baz Lurhmann film.
Romeo + Juliet
.’

I will have to take her word for it.

‘Anyway, I have to run back to the house for help and when I get back he’s already rescued her and revived her. The way the actress is
playing it, she’s too busy looking up at him to even notice that we’ve all come to help her.’ She pauses, looks at me wide-eyed, as if she has made her meaning clear. ‘Well, don’t you think I should—Grace should—react a bit?’

I am slow to respond and she leaps ahead.

‘Oh, not obviously. Just a subtle reaction. You know the sort of thing.’ She sniffs slightly, tilts her head so that her nose is in the air, and sighs. I do not realise that this is an impromptu performance for my benefit until she drops the expression and replaces it with a wide-eyed gaze in my direction. ‘See?’

‘I see.’ I hesitate, choose my words judiciously. ‘It’s up to you, of course, how you play your character. How you play Grace. But if it were me, and it was 1915 again, I can’t imagine I would have reacted …’ I wave my hand at her, unable to put words to her performance.

She stares at me as though I’ve missed some vital nuance. ‘But don’t you think it’s a bit thoughtless not even to thank Grace for running for help? I feel stupid running off and then coming back just to stand there again like a zombie.’

I sigh. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but that was the nature of service in those days. It would have been unusual had she not been that way. Do you see?’

She looks dubious.

‘I didn’t expect her to be any other way.’

‘But you must have
felt
something?’

‘Of course.’ I am overcome with an unexpected distaste for discussing the dead. ‘I just didn’t show it.’

‘Never?’ She neither wants nor waits for an answer and I am glad for I don’t want to give it. She pouts. ‘The whole servant–mistress thing just seems so ridiculous. One person doing the bidding of the other.’

‘It was a different time,’ I say simply.

‘That’s what Ursula says, too.’ She sighs. ‘It doesn’t help me much though, does it? I mean, acting’s all about reacting. It’s a bit hard to create an interesting character when the stage direction is “don’t react”. I feel like a cardboard cut-out, just “yes miss-ing,” “no miss-ing,” “three bags full miss-ing”.’

I nod. ‘Must be difficult.’

‘I tried out for the part of Emmeline originally,’ she says confidingly. ‘Now
that’s
a dream role. Such an interesting character. And so glamorous, what with her being an actress and dying like she did in that car accident. You should see the costumes.’

I do not remind her that I saw the costumes first time around.

‘They wanted someone with more box-office pull.’ She rolls her eyes and inspects her fingernails. ‘They liked my audition well enough,’ she says. ‘Producer called me back twice. He said I look much more like Emmeline than Gwyneth Paltrow does.’ The other actress’s name she says with a sneer that robs her momentarily of her beauty. ‘Only thing she has over me is an Academy Award nomination, and everyone knows British actors have to work twice as hard for an Oscar nod. ’Specially when you get your start on the soaps.’

I can sense her disappointment and I do not blame her; I dare say there were many times I would have much preferred to be Emmeline than the housemaid.

‘Anyway,’ she says discontentedly, ‘I’m playing Grace and I have to make the best of it. Besides, Ursula promised they’d interview me specially for the DVD release, seeing as I’m the only one who gets to meet my character in real life.’

‘I’m glad to be of some use.’

‘Yes,’ she says, my irony lost on her.

‘Do you have any more questions?’

‘I’ll check.’ She turns a page, and something drops from its hiding spot, flutters to the ground like a mammoth grey moth, lands face down. When she reaches to pick it up I see that it is a photograph, a host of black and white figures with serious faces. Even from a distance the image is familiar to me. I remember it instantly, in the same way a film seen long ago, a dream, a painting, can be recalled through its merest shape.

‘May I see?’ I say, reaching out my hand.

She passes the photograph to me, lays it across my gnarled fingers. Our hands meet for an instant and she withdraws quickly, frightened she might catch something. Old age perhaps.

The photograph is a copy. Its surface smooth and cold and matt. I tilt the image toward the window so that it catches the light shining in off the heath. I squint through my glasses.

There we are. The Riverton household of summer 1916.

There was one like it for every year; Lady Violet used to insist on it. They were commissioned annually, a photographer brought in from a London studio, the auspicious day greeted with all due pomp and circumstance.

The resulting photograph, two rows of serious faces gazing unblinking at the black-hooded camera, would then be hand-delivered, displayed on the drawing-room mantle a while, then pasted in the appropriate page in the Hartford family scrapbook, along with invitations, menus and newspaper clippings.

Had it been the photograph from any other year, I may not have known its date. But this particular image is memorable for the events it immediately preceded.

Mr Frederick sits front and centre, his mother one side, Jemima the other. The latter is huddled, a black shawl draped about her shoulders to disguise her heavy pregnancy. Hannah and Emmeline sit at either ends, parentheses—one taller than the other—in matching black dresses. New dresses, but not of the kind imagined by Emmeline.

Standing behind Mr Frederick, centre of a shadow row, is Mr Hamilton, with Mrs Townsend and Myra beside. Katie and I stand behind the Hartford girls, with Mr Dawkins, the chauffeur, and Mr Dudley at the edges. The rows are distinct. Only Nanny occupies a place between, dozing in a cane chair from the conservatory, neither in front nor behind.

I look at my serious face, my severe hairstyle giving my head the appearance of a pin, accentuating my too-large ears. I stand directly behind Hannah, her pale hair, brushed into ripples, stark against the edges of my black dress.

We all wear grave expressions, a custom of the time, but particularly appropriate to this photograph. The servants are in black as always, but so is the family. For that summer they had joined the mourning that was general across England and across the world.

It was the twelfth day of July, 1916, the day after the joint funeral service for Lord Ashbury and the Major. The day Jemima’s baby arrived, and the day the question on all our lips was answered.

It was awfully hot that summer, the hottest anyone could remember. Gone were the grey days of winter, where night bled into day, and in their stead week after week of long days and clear blue skies. Day broke quickly, cleanly, brilliantly.

I woke earlier than usual that morning. The sun topped the birch trees that lined the lake and pierced the attic window so that a stream of hot light pointed across the bed, stroked my face. I didn’t mind. It was nice for a change to wake with the light rather than beginning work in the cold dark of the sleeping house. For a maid, the summer sun was a steadfast companion to the day’s activities.

The photographer had been booked for nine-thirty, and by the time we assembled on the front lawn the air was tight with shimmering heat. The family of swallows who considered Riverton their own sought refuge beneath the attic eaves, watching us curiously and quietly, robbed of their spirit for singing. Even the trees that lined the driveway were silent. Their leafy tops sat motionless, as if to conserve energy, until coerced by some slight breeze to emit a disgruntled rustle.

The photographer, his face spotted with perspiration, arranged us, one by one, the family seated, the surplus standing at back. There we remained, all in black, eyes on the camera box and thoughts in the churchyard valley.

Afterwards, in the comparative cool of the stone servants’ hall, Mr Hamilton had Katie pour lemonades while the rest of us sank listlessly onto chairs around the table.

‘It’s the end of an era, and that’s a fact,’ Mrs Townsend said, dabbing at her puffy eyes with a handkerchief. She had been crying for most of July, starting when news came of the Major’s death in France, pausing only to gain momentum when Lord Ashbury suffered a fatal stroke the following week. She no longer wept tears so much as her eyes had succumbed to a state of permanent seepage.