Servants’ Hall Read Online Free PDF Page B

sin’. All because they had left their quiet village homes for the lights of London. According to Mrs Buller, there were always harpies waiting at the railway stations ready to lure away innocent girls if they were at all pretty. This fate could never have happened to Cook – come to that, nor to me either. I’d never seen anybody remotely resembling a harpy hanging around Victoria Station. Doris asked what a harpy was, and Mr Hall was just about to give his version of a harpy when, ever eager to show off, I interrupted to say that a harpy was a monster, half bird, half woman. That a kitchenmaid should interrupt the butler was a heinous offence.
    Mr Hall gave me a freezing look and, in his ‘upstairs’ voice, said; ‘Perhaps Miss Know-all would care to regale us with some further information about monsters? I’m sure she must have met many in the course of her long life.’
    I’d have liked to have retorted, ‘Yes, and some of them were butlers too,’ but of course I didn’t dare.
    Fortunately, by the time we sat down to our midday dinner, Cook and the butler were friendly again. Mr Burrows was still displeased about Master Gerald not requiring his services, he felt this as a slight on his profession.
    ‘Man and boy, I’ve been in service and valeted some of the highest aristocracy in the land. Why, in my last place, my gentleman consulted me every morning about what suit and tie he should wear. “Burrows”, he’d say, “today I’m lunching with Lord…”, and when I’d laid out the appropriate clothes, hat, shoes and umbrella, my gentleman said, “Burrows, you are indeed a gentleman’s gentleman”.’
    Young Fred hooted with laughter, and it did sound a highly improbable remark. The butler, not to be outdone in reminiscences of above stairs benevolence related how, in his last place, an American guest had been so overcome with admiration at the way Mr Hall carried out his butlering duties, he’d tried to entice him to go back to America with him; and he’d pay twice the money his present gentleman was paying.
    ‘But, needless to say,’ Mr Hall went on loftily, ‘I just wouldn’t serve in an American household. They’ve no idea of how to behave with servants. You may not belive this, but that American kept on calling me “old chap”. I ask you, what kind of a gentleman is that?’
    Probably a very nice one, I thought to myself.…

 
    6
    By the time I’d been at Redlands a month there was still no sign of Mrs Buller’s niece taking over as kitchen maid, so I had my day off. It really was a marvellous surprise to find that one got the whole day free, and did not even have to do the breakfast. Doris, who had no relatives and nowhere to go, hadn’t taken her day off; and though I’d urged her to stay in her room she preferred to work.
    As it was Mary’s free day too, we decided to go to London. We had to listen to solemn advice from Cook about not talking to strange men, but I had no men friends so if I didn’t talk to strange ones I’d never talk to any. Cook seemed to forget that I’d worked in London, or perhaps she thought a month of rustic life had lulled my sense of the dangers in a city.
    We got an early bus into Southampton and found it was full of men on their way to work, so that in itself was an adventure; very seldom had we ever found ourselves in a situation where men outnumbered the females. Mary and I made the most of this rare occurrence; by the time the bus journey ended, we’d promised to meet two of them on our next free evening. We felt quite safe for we knew they’d have forgotten all about us by then – and probably they were already married.
    There were only females in the No Smoking compartments so we gave them a miss. As Mary said, better to be smoke-dried with the men than bored to death with the Aunt Agatha’s. In 1925 very few women smoked, and almost none at all in public. It was a well-known fact that if a woman did such a thing, decent men avoided her