Park Lane Read online

Bea nods. Even if she had to beg for it in the street outside her house, she would have said yes. The taxi pulls up and he opens the door for her. She steps in, sitting deep into the far side of the rear seat. His hand is on the door and he leans in. Bea presses a smile across her face and pushes out a ‘Thank you.’

  He looks straight at her, at last.

  ‘It’s not some form of entertainment,’ he says, and closes the door. Well really, blast him, and blast him again. What does he think she is, some spoilt little rich girl? She’ll show him. But she won’t, will she, for he’s fifty yards behind her now, and she’ll never see him again.

  And, just for an instant, Bea feels a little sinking of regret.

  7

  VALENTINE’S DAY, TODAY, AND THEY’RE ALL IN A FLUSTER this morning. Well, the women are. Susan and Mary are a-scuttling up and down the stairs like they were juniors, not first and second housemaid who should have a bit of dignity about them. It’s the excitement, though, with Susan’s plan. Susan told Grace about it yesterday, or rather asked her to join in, and by that she meant pay money. Grace has been here almost a month now, and it was the first time Susan’s done more than order her around. Yet Susan was pleasant as anything to Grace yesterday asking for the ha’penny for the card, only a ha’penny, but Grace is counting them. Anyways, she’s not out of sorts over it, a ha’penny is the price of being accepted down here, and this morning she’s all brisk with the secrecy, being on the inside of matters rather than out.

  There’s no first post until Mrs Wainwright is satisfied, says Mr Bellows, and they’re hard at it. Slow and careful today, just brush, brush, brush and get it done. Make sure there’s no spots for Mrs Wainwright, she’s looking at them all as though she knows they’re scattered in the head this morning, but the work still needs doing up to the standard it always is. The first floor’s easy as pie, a large pie, mind, but everything in its place. There’s been no cigars in here, only two armchairs sat on, in the red drawing room, and the sofas are still as puffed up as she and Mary left them yesterday. Besides, when Grace opens the shutters, all the early morning sends in is a wall of cold. In this half-light there is not much dust to see. Pray that Mrs Wainwright checks it sooner rather than later.

  Downstairs, though, well, Grace has never seen anything like it. She’s smelt it, though, opened the door to the billiards and if she’d a lit a match it’d’ve burnt high. Like a public house, no, worse, it’s the spirits in here, the glasses are still half full, most of them, and imagine the waste with that.

  It’s not just the smell, either; you’d cough on the smoke if you weren’t choking on the brandy all around. The fire is still going; it can’t be more than an hour or two gone since Master Edward’s friends left. What time was poor Joseph up until, waiting to let them out?

  Joseph. Yesterday, they’d passed on the stairs, Grace looking to the wall because she was too shy to meet his eye.

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had to stop, didn’t she? It would’ve looked too strange if she didn’t, and then she wanted to, wanted to pause.

  ‘Grace, you look nice today.’

  Grace near gasped. You can’t say it’s anything but a pleasure, to be told that by a man you like, and she’d admitted it to herself now, hadn’t she? But you can’t let yourself have feelings like that, Grace Campbell, so shut them away.

  He was waiting for an answer though, so she said, ‘Thank you, Joseph’, and he flushed from his collar to his forehead. Then he stood back to let her pass, which she did, eyes on the wall.

  There are coals all around the grate, shovel’s on the edge of the carpet too. Look at that, it’ll be black underneath and it’ll take something to get that out. How’s she to clear this room up quick? Susan will be a razor with her, but Grace will take it in the right way today. Susan just wants what she thinks is in the post. And Grace wants the post, too, for he’s hardly going to hand it to her across the table.

  They did the other rooms too quick. Mrs Wainwright knew what would happen, she’s making a round at half past seven, just as it lightens outside. The sun is coming in now and the light shows dust that you couldn’t see a half-hour before, or so Grace guesses when Mrs Wainwright comes down to call her back for it.

  At morning break Mr Bellows says that the post won’t be until noon, that being the earliest Mrs Wainwright can now be sure that all will be finished. In any case, the second post will have arrived by then. ‘That’s cruelty,’ whispers Mary. ‘Then all of us at table will see who has a card and who hasn’t one. Not that we don’t know it already, but handing out the letters like that, in front of everyone, is rubbing it in.’

  Grace is standing at her place near the far end of the table when Mr Bellows leads in the Pugs’ Parade, she’s learnt to call it, all the senior servants together. Grace, as usual opposite Joseph, stands behind her chair looking at the floor, unsure of how she’s to go right through dinner without looking at him. Mr Bellows pulls back his chair and a grind it makes on the stone, but that’s the signal for the rest of them to sit and watch him carve the joint into fine pink slices. Rump it is, not the fillet they have upstairs, but Grace has never had meat so many times a week. Every day it is, twice most days, and even though she’s rushing around heaving, stretching, elbows pumping, she’s already having to lace her corsets looser, and that skirt waist’ll keep the breath out of her soon. Grace’ll have to eat less as how’s she to buy a new one? Then Joseph brings the plates down the table and Grace moves her eyes straight ahead. Just murmur a thank you, now. She doesn’t want to be too friendly in front of the other servants.

  The treacle dumplings steam up the room on their own account, so it seems, or maybe it’s all of them at the table puffing away with the wait. Too many in here and not able to relax just the slightest today; they’re as heated up as kettles about to whistle.

  Grace can see a small bunch of envelopes in Mr Bellows’ hand. He lifts one towards his monocle and says the name right out before passing it down. Grace glances around; the necks she can glimpse have come out in blotches.

  Susan has a card; she has a suitor to send it. She can expect a visit and a posy too, once he finishes at the bank at lunchtime, being Saturday. Susan’s not shy about this but, Grace’ll give it her, not too flashy either. Still, Susan slips the card only part back into the envelope, and they can all see it, pale white card against cream.

  Mary is less careful with hers. She giggles and blushes and near as swings her shoulders.

  ‘How do you know,’ Grace whispers to her, ‘that it’s from someone you’d like it to be?’

  ‘Any of them is fine by me,’ Mary replies.

  Mr Bellows opens his. Susan said they’d be safe, he’ll never admit it, not let go his dignity as butler. Mr Bellows doesn’t pinken. He quietly slips the card back into its envelope, looks down the table and asks for the teapot just as though he receives a nameless Valentine every day.

  Grace has a card, too, at least she thinks it’s a card. She hasn’t seen the writing before, but it looks how she’d expect it to be, not a good hand, but that’s not what she likes him for. She pushes it into her apron pocket – she’s not opening it in front of the others, and it is only when Joseph vanishes down the passageway to clear the kitchen staff’s dinner that Grace looks up.

  Grace is going out tonight with Mary. It’s her first night out since she arrived. It’s Valentine’s Day, Saturday, Mary said, you can’t sit in by yourself. Grace has spent all day hoping Joseph would ask her instead, after the card. Just a question mark it had in it, but when she caught his eye in the servants’ hall that afternoon, his neck reddened. But he says nothing to her. Maybe he doesn’t like it that she’s still going out with Mary and her sorts. More fool Grace for accepting; not that Mary gave her much choice. Mary’s been building up to this for more than a week and she needs Grace, she begged, he’s bringing a friend and four’s a good number. Grace couldn’t let Mary down now. Still, all day Grace has been thinking of the countryside and
Joseph’s farm in Somerset. Well, his da’s farm, and then it’ll be his brother’s, that’s why Joseph’s in service, to make a better life, he’d told her. But Grace can’t think of much better than a farm, all fresh grass and milk, golden-brown cows and a whitewashed square of a farmhouse, smoke coming out of the chimney, smell of fresh roast ham, too, from the door. But where’s she to use her shorthand there? Grace pushes the thought out of her mind, and goes on dreaming, for that’s as close as she’ll get. Another letter from Ma and she’ll be popped like a string drawn too tight.

  Mary found Grace a dress from a friend. You can’t go out in those, she’d said as she turned through Grace’s drawer of the office clothes Grace and Ma had stitched; looks like you’re going to church. Grace couldn’t go near a church in the dress she’s been pulled into. She’s not worn a showy colour like this before. It’s a shade of dark pink, not that there’s much of it at the front; she wants to cover her chest with her hands. Mary’s wearing rouge too. Come on, Grace, don’t you want to look your best? Paint my face! Grace is shocked at the thought of it. Not that she needs to paint her face to shock herself this evening. When she looks in the mirror she sees another person. Let’s be out of here before Joseph sees, she thinks. The night out won’t cost you a penny, Mary tells her, real gents, they are. But Grace has Ma’s words in her head, Never go anywhere you can’t get home. Grace turns to her drawer and reaches into her purse for a bus fare. She stills, then takes a deep breath and lifts out all she hasn’t yet sent home, just in case.

  It’s Mrs Wainwright that calls her in as she and Mary are leaving. Oh, Grace, moans Mary, can’t it wait? Not up to me, thinks Grace.

  Mrs Wainwright is all honey and sweet and tells Grace to sit down so that Grace thinks there’s some terrible news coming and it runs through her head, from Michael to Ma. Only address they have is here, or rather the mews at the back, but it’s all the same.

  ‘Grace,’ says Mrs Wainwright. Maybe, thinks Grace, maybe it’s just the dress I’m wearing, and her cheeks feel as though they are pinkening to match the colour of it.

  ‘Grace, we all, from time to time, have feelings.’ Here Mrs Wainwright pauses, and Grace looks over her shoulder at a photograph she’s not seen down here before. A handsome man, not young, Grace’d have him at near forty, but military. You can imagine the buttons shining, even just from looking at the picture. ‘But,’ Mrs Wainwright continues, ‘you’re a heady young girl, and these feelings may somehow overcome you.’ My word, what does Mrs W. think Grace and Mary are up to tonight, and why isn’t Mary in here too? ‘However, it is not always,’ Mrs Wainwright hesitates again, ‘appropriate to show them.’

  Mrs Wainwright’s hands move down to her desk. Grace follows them. There’s a card, there, a Valentine’s card. So Mrs W. has an admirer, too. She’s picking up the card, taking a breath to speak again. ‘Mr Bellows,’ she continues, ‘is a widower. He is old enough to be your …’ And Grace tries to shut out what’s coming, it’s ever so much worse than a scolding and she can feel shivers of embarrassment as though she’s stuck in this dress till Kingdom Come. Grace has had her card in her apron pocket all day, touching it from time to time like a lucky charm, but right now, she never wants to think about a Valentine again.

  ‘And there’s the question of the order of things down here. I don’t imagine it’s a joke, Grace; that would not be particularly pleasant.’ Either Mr Bellows thinks she loves him, or he thinks she’s making fun of him. Oh, Grace Campbell, oh. If Susan can do this when Grace has done nought to her, then the thought of what she might do if Grace tells on her makes Grace shiver. However, Grace can’t work in a house where she can’t look the butler in the eye without going crimson, and she needs the position. It may not give her thirty shillings a month, but it gives her a good deal more than nothing. Nor does she want Joseph’s smiles to vanish.

  ‘It wasn’t me.’ When Mrs Wainwright asks her if she knows who it was, Grace shakes her head so as it might fall off.

  Grace isn’t drinking, which puts her out between Mary and the two men, and they’re in a dance hall, all red velvet and smoke and a smell to the crowd that isn’t a smell but makes Grace think that dancing is not what it’s about here. Still, the band is playing the latest tunes, all animal dances they are, and Mary made Grace practise in their room, with the footsteps from the newspaper. Now Mary has danced off with her fellow and Grace has been left with Mr Pointer.

  Call me Will, he’d said, but the familiarity sticks in her throat. He’s not a tall man but his limbs are steel wire and he has sharp narrow eyes that were darting from side to side at the beginning of the evening, but are lolling a bit now as the middle of his moustache dampens with beer. Grace can’t hear a word of what he’s saying, not with the band, and now he’s his arm tight around her shoulder and walking her on to the dance floor. It’s not one of the dances she knows. ‘I don’t know how to do this, Mr Pointer,’ she says, not knowing if he can hear her or not, but he keeps moving her on.

  The couples around them are dancing closer than she’d like and Mr Pointer’s body’s near against hers. Grace tries to draw back, but he’s holding her tight as a trap, and coming in close so that there’s hot beer in her ear. It feels as though there’s a barrel-band across her chest and her lungs are only moving a little now, panting she is, and Mr Pointer goes ‘Oh’ and moves closer. Lord knows what she’ll feel of him next. ‘Come on,’ he says, but the thick air, the bodies, Mr Pointer’s locked-stiff arms are all making her feel ill. The dance floor’s so crowded there’s not a chance of keeping your distance, not that anybody on it looks like they want to. You’d’ve thought someone would put an end to it, in public, but it’s too dark, isn’t it, for anyone to see if they don’t want to. It’s the new dances, too, pushing you towards each other every few steps.

  Grace puts her heel on the toe of Mr Pointer’s boot. The edge, quite careful, so as all her weight’s on just that tiny bit, and he steps back. She smiles, mouths ‘Pardon’, then ‘Excuse me’. He nods to the bar, with ‘I’ll see you there’. Grace wriggles into the crowd fast as she can, knocking through the elbows, she’s fetched her coat in a flash, then out the door into the strange street. They came here in a taxicab and what bus, or where the stop is, she doesn’t want to spend the time looking for. A taxi draws up and a group of men fall out, with one lady screeching with laughter. Good Lord, Grace thinks, the extravagance, what she earns in … but Grace looks back over her shoulder and thinks she can see Mr Pointer coming out the door. It is him, and he’s walking towards her. Grace’s heart is pounding and she knocks on the taxi’s front window a flutter of times in a second, until the driver looks at her as if she’s half crazed. Park Lane, she says, and he raises his eyebrows. Then she’s on that empty seat quick as she can, grabbing the leather strap inside and pulling the door shut. Once she’s moving, she looks back at Mr Pointer and waves at him. At least he might tell Mary she’s gone, if Mary’ll notice anything.

  The cab is shaking from side to side as though the ground’s rumbling underneath, and each time it comes up behind a horse Grace is thrown forward as the driver brakes. Once she’s back in her seat, her eyes are fixed on the taxi meter as it clicks higher and higher. This is her sending-home money and she’s trying to think what else she can do without. It’s a while before she knows where she is, then she’s by Victoria Station, that’s ten minutes’ walk, and she knows the way. Grace leans forward and asks the driver to stop. ‘Thought you said Park Lane,’ he grumbles. ‘Remembered where you really live?’

  Sunday again. Michael takes Grace to the far side of the park. The damp chill of the last few weeks is fading and the freshness of the air begins to take her mind away from last night. Every minute she sat in church she was wondering if God forgives girls who encourage men. It must have been her fault that Mr Pointer behaved liked that. Is that what London has done to her, and so quick? The thought comes to her that Joseph may be seeing that too and it makes her feel slightly ill, so she fixes her eyes
on the building ahead, dark red brick and windows the size of small trees.

  ‘Looks like a palace, Michael.’

  ‘It is a palace.’

  ‘Who lives there?’

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘There must be dozens of them.’

  ‘Only dozens of servants, and thought little of. The rich keep their eyes shut and their hearts empty, Grace. They don’t give a damn about us. I’d do away with the lot of them.’

  Grace jolts back with this, almost as if he’s been speaking about her, which he is, in a way. When you’re in service it feels as though what happens to the family you work for is happening to you, too. She thinks of Miss Beatrice, and Lady Masters; would Michael want to do away with them? Surely they care about Grace and the rest of them downstairs, what with the questions they ask. She feels a little hollow. No, she thinks, this mustn’t be true; she’s not going to let Michael make all that friendliness untrue. There’s enough bad thoughts she’s had this morning and she’s not having him take away the good ones she might have left.

  ‘No, Michael,’ she says. ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’

  ‘Turning your head, is it? Mayfair and all that money? You’ll be on their side, soon … If I had my way I’d never give them a civil word. Some day I won’t have to.’

  ‘No, Michael, it’s simply not fair to say all of them are like that.’

  He grunts.

  She continues. ‘Some of them have the money not to be,’ and as she smiles at this wry comment of hers, Michael laughs out loud.

  ‘But it’s true,’ he says, ‘you have to be able to afford to be kind. Remember that: what you can afford to do and what you can’t. Not just money either, Grace. Don’t give anything away lightly.’

  They hover by the Round Pond, watching the miniature yachts trying to make their way across. A few feet from them a man so wide that he looks as if he would be better bouncing along rather than walking, struggles to lean over to launch his wooden boat.