memory.
‘Something about the hospital …’
‘Eastchester General?’
‘No, the other place, you know? It might have been someone she met there. Oh, it’s all so long ago now,’ she sighed, wearily. ‘When your father was a boy. Had a bit of a breakdown, poor old thing.’
‘Granny had a breakdown? I never knew about that. She had to go into hospital?’
‘Not for long. Just till she’d got better. It wasn’t far from here …’
‘And you said she met someone there who might be connected with the quilt?’ I prompted, but it was no good. I could see she was exhausted now. I started my usual routine before leaving her: cleaning up the kitchen, sorting out the fridge, taking out the rubbish and making a sandwich for her supper.
When I returned to the living room she was fast asleep. I wrapped a rug around her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. It tore at my heartstrings to see how vulnerable and old she looked these days, and I wondered how long it would be before she was unable to manage on her own.
Back at my flat in London, I unfolded the quilt across the spare bed, scanning both sides to make sure I hadn’t missed any clues, and re-read the cross-stitched lines of that sentimental little verse several times, as if by studying them long enough they might yield their secret. One thing was clear: it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing my feisty grandmother would ever have composed.
Chapter Three
Cassette 1, side 2
That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?
‘You and Nora were going into service. You had just arrived at the big house.’
Oh my lord yes. What a day! We was terrified, of course. Nora, me and Emily got bundled out and straight down some steps into the basement; the servants’ entrance, you see, away from the eyes of upstairs. We stood in a dark, echoey hallway for what seemed like an hour while they called someone to call someone else, and finally a maid came and said she was to take us to our room.
We said goodbye to Emily and dragged our bags up hundreds of stairs to our room, which had four beds in, and the two closest the fire was already taken so Nora and me put our things on the other two cots and waited for someone to come and tell us what to do. The room was bare and the beds narrow and hard, but we weren’t much bothered by that ’cos we didn’t know any different. While we waited, we opened the little parcels Sister Beatrice gave us and ate the biscuits she had wrapped inside – oatcakes with a sprinkle of brown sugar – and the taste reminded me so much of The Castle that I started snivelling all over again.
The maid came back and told us we must hurry now, as we must never keep Mrs Hardy waiting. It turned out that Mrs Hardy was the mountain of a housekeeper, the one who came to interview us. Her office under the stairs was not a large room and felt even smaller with her filling up most of the space.
‘Ah, you two, wherever have you been? Come and get your uniforms. Now!’ she bellowed. I started to say we haven’t been anywhere, Ma’am, but Nora dug me in the ribs and put a finger to her lips to remind me that we was not allowed to answer back, or do anything except be clean, neat, hardworking and obedient. Them nuns was so quiet spoken that we was petrified of the woman’s shouting but we soon learned that was how she usually talked to anyone beneath her station.
We grew used to life at the new place pretty quickly, Nora and me, and it wasn’t a bad one. It was nothing near as friendly as at The Castle, mind, but we just had to get on with it and we had hardly any free time to dwell on anything. Our uniforms was plain pale blue with black stockings and we got new black shoes, too, and it was a relief to get out of the clothes what was growing too small for us anyway.
There was hundreds of servants, not to mention the upstairs lot. The two maids who shared our bedroom had to get up early every morning to make fires so we
‘Something about the hospital …’
‘Eastchester General?’
‘No, the other place, you know? It might have been someone she met there. Oh, it’s all so long ago now,’ she sighed, wearily. ‘When your father was a boy. Had a bit of a breakdown, poor old thing.’
‘Granny had a breakdown? I never knew about that. She had to go into hospital?’
‘Not for long. Just till she’d got better. It wasn’t far from here …’
‘And you said she met someone there who might be connected with the quilt?’ I prompted, but it was no good. I could see she was exhausted now. I started my usual routine before leaving her: cleaning up the kitchen, sorting out the fridge, taking out the rubbish and making a sandwich for her supper.
When I returned to the living room she was fast asleep. I wrapped a rug around her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. It tore at my heartstrings to see how vulnerable and old she looked these days, and I wondered how long it would be before she was unable to manage on her own.
Back at my flat in London, I unfolded the quilt across the spare bed, scanning both sides to make sure I hadn’t missed any clues, and re-read the cross-stitched lines of that sentimental little verse several times, as if by studying them long enough they might yield their secret. One thing was clear: it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing my feisty grandmother would ever have composed.
Chapter Three
Cassette 1, side 2
That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?
‘You and Nora were going into service. You had just arrived at the big house.’
Oh my lord yes. What a day! We was terrified, of course. Nora, me and Emily got bundled out and straight down some steps into the basement; the servants’ entrance, you see, away from the eyes of upstairs. We stood in a dark, echoey hallway for what seemed like an hour while they called someone to call someone else, and finally a maid came and said she was to take us to our room.
We said goodbye to Emily and dragged our bags up hundreds of stairs to our room, which had four beds in, and the two closest the fire was already taken so Nora and me put our things on the other two cots and waited for someone to come and tell us what to do. The room was bare and the beds narrow and hard, but we weren’t much bothered by that ’cos we didn’t know any different. While we waited, we opened the little parcels Sister Beatrice gave us and ate the biscuits she had wrapped inside – oatcakes with a sprinkle of brown sugar – and the taste reminded me so much of The Castle that I started snivelling all over again.
The maid came back and told us we must hurry now, as we must never keep Mrs Hardy waiting. It turned out that Mrs Hardy was the mountain of a housekeeper, the one who came to interview us. Her office under the stairs was not a large room and felt even smaller with her filling up most of the space.
‘Ah, you two, wherever have you been? Come and get your uniforms. Now!’ she bellowed. I started to say we haven’t been anywhere, Ma’am, but Nora dug me in the ribs and put a finger to her lips to remind me that we was not allowed to answer back, or do anything except be clean, neat, hardworking and obedient. Them nuns was so quiet spoken that we was petrified of the woman’s shouting but we soon learned that was how she usually talked to anyone beneath her station.
We grew used to life at the new place pretty quickly, Nora and me, and it wasn’t a bad one. It was nothing near as friendly as at The Castle, mind, but we just had to get on with it and we had hardly any free time to dwell on anything. Our uniforms was plain pale blue with black stockings and we got new black shoes, too, and it was a relief to get out of the clothes what was growing too small for us anyway.
There was hundreds of servants, not to mention the upstairs lot. The two maids who shared our bedroom had to get up early every morning to make fires so we
Similar Books
Ski Trip Trouble
Cylin Busby
White Pine
Caroline Akervik
The Betrayal of Lies
Debra Burroughs
Torment: Reckless Desires (Dark Wolves Book 1)
Elianne Adams
The Leonard Bernstein Letters
Leonard Bernstein
Evil Eye
Joyce Carol Oates
The Elven King
Lexi Johnson
Barbara Samuel
Dog Heart
What God Has For Me
Pat Simmons
