A Countess Below Stairs

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘I can’t write a letter like that, Mr Proom,’ said Mrs Bassenthwaite weakly. ‘Not to a countess, I can’t.’

Ten days had passed since the interrupted wedding and Mrs Bassenthwaite, released from hospital, was convalescing on the sofa in the housekeeper’s room.

‘I’d write it myself,’ said Proom, ‘but it would be better coming from you. More correct, you being in charge of the maids.’

Mr Proom had emerged as a local hero, sharing with Leo Rabinovitch and the Herrings, the acclaim of the entire district during the merrymaking which had followed the departure of Miss Hardwicke. Even the knowledge that Mersham would almost certainly have to be sold in order to meet the demands of Miss Hardwicke’s solicitors had not diminished the delight of the villagers, the tenants and the gentry in being rid of a woman so universally detested. To the general happiness, however, there was one exception - the earl himself who had put Mersham’s affairs into the hands of his agent and was about to depart for the Hindu Kush.

‘I’ll tell you what to say,’ persisted Proom - and went to fetch the inkwell and the paper.

----*

‘There’s a letter for you, Anna!’ said Pinny, looking at the postmark and trying not to let the relief show in her voice.

It was Petya, coming to London to greet Niannka and discuss the sale of the jewels, who had told them about the interrupted wedding. Pinny, watching Anna, had seen her turn almost in an instant from the kind of thing one expected to find under a pile of sacking after an earthquake or a famine into a radiant and enchanting girl. Anna discussing with the delighted Mr Stewart at Aspell’s, the jewellers, what he assured them would be ‘the sale of the century’; Anna helping her mother buy presents for the other emigres, treasuring the conviction that it was through Rupert’s good offices that Niannka had been found, was the Anna of the old St Petersburg days with a new glow, a new maturity.

But that had been more than a week ago. Since then, Pinny had watched, day by day, the glow lessen, the joy ebb as the postman still brought no letter, the doorbell still failed to herald the longed-for visitor.

Anna had opened her letter, begun to read - and as she did so the eagerness and expectation in her face was replaced by puzzlement.

‘It is from the housekeeper at Mersham,’ she said, her voice bleak. ‘She says that I have broken my contract. I was engaged till the end of July so I have five more days of work owing to them. She refuses to send the rest of my clothes or Selina Strickland until I make up the time.’

‘Well, really!’ Pinny was outraged. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.’

‘No, they are correct. I thought as I had not been paid for the last week it would be all right but she says not. Rup … the earl… has already left for India and the house must be made ready to go up for sale so there is a great deal to do.’

‘You aren’t going, Anna?’

‘I must. Pinny. Petya will be at his school camp in Scotland so it will be all right. If there is work owing,’ said Anna, lifting her chin, ‘it must be paid.’

----*

‘You’re to treat her exactly as before,’ Proom had instructed his staff. ‘She may be a countess, but while she’s here she’s still a maid.’

‘I can’t!‘wailed Pearl. ‘I’ll curtsy to her, see if Idon’t.’

‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said Mr Proom -but he was not as relaxed as he pretended, and secretly felt outraged by what he was about to do.

The outrage, the embarrassment, lasted exactly as long as it took Anna, in a blue cotton dress, carrying a straw basket, to cross the kitchen floor and be enveloped in Mrs Park’s motherly arms. But the instructions she received from Mr Proom when the greetings and gossip were over and she had changed into her uniform made her, for a moment, doubt her ears.

‘You wish me to wait at table? In the dining room!’

For the butler’s view on women actually waiting at table, with its middle-class overtones, were well known.

‘One must move with the times,’ said Mr Proom portentously. ‘It is only a small dinner: Lady Wester holme, Mr Frayne, Lord and Lady Byrne and a Mr and Mrs Clarke-Binningfold who are considering the purchase of Mersham. His lordship, as you know, has already left.’

‘Yes,’ said Anna, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘I had heard.’

For she knew, now, that Rupert had not cared, had not meant what he’d said in the garden, wanted only to be free of her and all entanglements.

The meal is a simple one,’ Proom continued. ‘Grapefruit, Consomme Beauharnais, Sole Marie Louise, carbonnade of beef, macaroon souffte and the dessert. James’ll be at the sideboard, Sid’H be handing the main dishes. All you have to do is follow him with the vegetables and the sauces and help clear. Can you manage that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Anna, rallying. ‘Because it is all in the Domestic Compendium. How I must approach from th left to serve but from the right to remove the plates, and how I must clear the crumbs with a napkin because a crumb brush is declasse and how I must not breathe ‘eavily and not address the guests.’ ‘You must certainly not do that,’ said Proom.

----*

The dinner party, whose dénouement was subsequently reported in detail by Sid and James to a spellbound audience below stairs, began quietly with the consumption of grapefruit and some rather desultory conversation. The dowager was discussing the launching of the new airship with Lord Byrne, Mrs Clarke-Binningfold was giving Uncle Sebastien her views on The Fecklessness of the Poor - when the door opened to admit Anna, her head bent in profound concentration over a famille rose tureen of Mrs Park’s incomparable chicken soup.

Gravely, aware of the honour that Proom had done her, she began to move towards the sideboard.