Servants’ Hall Read Online Free PDF Page A

Make-up consisted of a liberal layer of pink powder. We never dared to use coloured lipstick, only ‘that sort of a woman’ would use it, so we rubbed our lips with a lip salve to make them shiny. Several dabs of 4711 eau de Cologne completed our toilet. Although Rose made us look plainer by comparison, having her with us did ensure that we got some partners. While the village youths were waiting their turn to be her partner, they’d take us round the floor just so they could be attached to our party. We weren’t quite accepted by the older generation because none of us were locals. I suppose for some twenty-five miles around, the large houses were mostly staffed by village girls whose mothers and grandmothers had also been in service there. But, according to Cook, Mr Wardham refused to employ any local girls who’d go home and gossip about his household all over the village. So, as he wasn’t popular, we too were regarded as outsiders.
    Young Fred was at the dance, Jack, the chauffeur, and his wife, and Jack’s father who, when he’d had a few beers – which happened frequently – would bitterly inveigh against ‘this new-fangled transport’, the motor car. He was an ’orses man and his father had been an ’orses man. There wasn’t nothing to beat an ’orse. It didn’t make ’orrible noises and stink up the roads with smoke so that decent country folk got poisoned with the fumes, God’s clean air had gone and all the flowers had died. Give ’im an ’orse any time. One could easily tell that Jack’s father had been an ’orse man. His legs were so bowed one could have driven a pig to market through them.
    Young Fred seldom danced with Rose; he said that she ‘hadn’t got what it takes upstairs’. That didn’t mean, as it would nowadays, that she wasn’t any good in bed, but that she wasn’t very intelligent. I protested that Rose was merely quiet. As an only child, she’d been very suppressed by her parents, allowed to be seen but not heard, and she was naturally shy. I wondered if young Fred was jealous of Rose, when he laughed and said rather cynically:
    ‘Shy! She’s not exactly blushing unseen and wasting her sweetness on the desert air.’
    ‘Why should she? And you’re no village Hampden, defying some little tyrant either.’
    ‘ Elegy in a Country Churchyard ’ we said simultaneously, and spent some time quoting extracts; much to the annoyance of the village girls who wanted to dance with him. Young Fred and two other swains escorted us back; poor Doris was the odd one out but she didn’t seem to mind in the least. At the beginning of the drive we all said goodbye to our young men and I could hear giggling and ‘don’t you dare’ from Mary and Rose. Young Fred said he had liked talking to me, but personally I’d have derived far more pleasure and satisfaction if he had seized me in a violent embrace and kissed me passionately. A good brain was something but a lovely face would have earned more in dividends. We’d nearly reached the path leading to the servants’ entrance when, all of a sudden, we saw Gerald coming down the drive towards us. We stopped, surprised and embarrassed. He asked if we’d enjoyed the evening and then, looking at Rose, said, ‘I’m sure that you were the belle of the ball’. None of us spoke, we were too dumbfounded, and he walked on towards the end of the drive. We waited for a few minutes, then whispered to each other that we’d not mention the episode to the upper servants, they’d be sure to blame us.
    We still looked flustered when we went into our servants’ hall, but I suppose Cook and the butler put it down to the heat of the dance. We had to listen to Cook telling us that she was twenty-five before she went to a dance. Dear Mr Buller – one of nature’s gentlemen – had taken her; and when he’d brought her home he’d stood on her mother’s doorstep, bowed, and kissed her hand ‘just as though I was a real lady’. In fact, they’d