A Countess Below Stairs Read Online Free PDF Page A

stuff.’
    By this time Anna’s water was black with dirt and she had carefully to carry her bucket down a long parquet corridor, across the blue John and jasper tiles of the great hall, down the service stairs and through a green baize door into the scullery where Florence, the ancient scullery maid, filled it for her. She was crossing the great hall again when Fate dealt her an undeserved blow in the form of Baskerville. who discovered her with yelps of joy in a place where it was meet and right for her to be and padded passionately after her into the library. Nor could James, trying to dismantle the chandeliers, or Louise, cleaning the windows, prevent him from lying like a felled ox across the foot of the stepladder on which Anna, scrubbing Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in a niche above the door, was precariously perched with her bucket.
    By lunchtime Anna’s back ached and her hands were sore but she persevered and she kept - though this was harder - silence. It was late in the afternoon when, moving a silver photograph frame to safety, she found herself staring for the first time at the long-awaited earl.
    The photograph, taken just before the war, showed, two young men standing on the steps that led to the front door. The older was strikingly handsome with regular features, springing hair and an easy smile. The other, who was hardly more than a boy, was slighter, darker, and had turned half-away as though looking at a landscape visible to him alone.
    ‘That’s Lord George, the one that was killed,’ said Peggy, coming over to her and pointing at the older of the two. ‘He was a smasher! My, didn’t we half have to run for it when he was around!’
    ‘And this is the new earl?’ queried Anna. ‘His brother?’
    ‘That’s right. Mr Rupert, he was then. He’s much quieter like. Got a lovely smile, though.’
    ‘He looks nice, I think,’ said Anna, and stepping over the recumbent Baskerville, she began to scrub the cold and protuberent stomach of Frederick the Great.
    Just before it was time to pack up for the day, Proom appeared silently as was his wont and took Louise aside.
    ‘Any difficulties?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Anna.
    ‘Not really,’ said Louise reluctantly. ‘Except for that bloomin’ dog following her about. She’s as green as they come, of course, but she hasn’t stopped, not for a minute. And I must say you don’t have to tell her anything twice.’
    - - - -*
    On her third day at Mersham Anna discovered that the butler, so regal and authoritative in the servants’ hall, suffered from a bedridden and deeply eccentric mother, with whom he shared a cottage in the stable block.
    She had spent the whole day in the windowless scullery washing, piece by exquisite piece, the Meissen dinner service - a tedious and frighteningly responsible job with which Proom, rather to his own surprise, had entrusted her. Seeing her pallor and the circles under her eyes, Mis Park had sent her out to the kitchen garden with a message for the under-gardener, Ted.
    Anna was on her way back, crossing the stableyard, when a pot of geraniums flew out of an upstairs window and crashed into pieces at her feet. Retrieving the remains of the shattered pot and going to investigate, she found herself in the presence of an ancient, ferocious old lady, glaring like a beleagured ferret at the end of a high brass bed. Mrs Proom’s appendix, removed ten years earlier in Maidens Over Cottage Hospital, stood in a glass jar on a shelf above her head; various lumps under the counterpane indicated that she had taken the silver to bed in case of burglars.
    ‘Who are you? Why are you dressed like that? Where’s Cyril? I want my tea!’ she began.
    ‘I am dressed like this because I am a housemaid. Mr Proom is decanting the claret and I will bring your tea if you permit,’ Anna replied.
    Half an hour later, Mr Proom, noticing with foreboding the remains of the broken flowerpot and wearily ascending the stairs to his