Emily Goes to Exeter

1

Go call a coach, and let the man be call’d,

And let the man who calls it be the caller;

And to his calling let him nothing call,

But Coach, Coach, Coach! O for a Coach, Ye Gods!

Henry Carey

Hannah Pym stood by the drawing-room window of Thornton Hall and waited for the stage-coach to go by.

Thornton Hall was a large square building, rather like a huge doll’s house, with a drive that led down to the Kensington Road. There were no formal gardens or trees at the front, only lawns cropped short by sheep, with the arrow-straight drive running down to tall wrought-iron gates flanked by stone gateposts topped with stone eagles.

It was six o’clock on a winter’s morning and a low moon was shining. During the night, the wind had blown a light fall of snow into scalloped shapes across the lawns.

Hannah tugged open one of the long windows which led out on to a shelf of a balcony guarded by a wrought-iron railing. She walked out, and listened.

Then she heard it, the thud of hooves, and hung on to the rail and peered down the drive.

‘Here she comes,’ she whispered.

And bowling along the Kensington Road came the stage-coach, the Flying Machine, pulled by six powerful horses. She felt that breathless excitement which the sight of the stage-coach always gave her and lifted her hand and waved. The groom raised the yard of tin and blew a merry salute. The passengers on the roof were clutching their hats. How loud the horses’ hooves were on the hard ground. What speed! And then the stage-coach was gone, taking life and adventure away into the darkness and leaving behind the bleak winter scene.

Hannah gave a little sigh and stepped inside and closed the window behind her.

Time was, she thought, when she had been too busy and happy to need the excitement of watching the stage-coach go by. That was when the mistress, Mrs Clarence, had been in residence: pretty, frivolous Mrs Clarence, filling the house with parties and friends and flowers and colour and light. But Mrs Clarence had run off with a footman just after Hannah had achieved her life’s ambition and been made housekeeper.

Then a sort of darkness had fallen, for Mr Clarence had gone into a gloomy decline. Half the rooms were locked up, half the servants were dismissed and poor Hannah felt she was presiding at a perpetual funeral. That was when she began to wait for the stage-coach to go by, needing the sight of all that motion and life to raise her spirits. And then at last, she found she was supervising the arrangements for a real funeral. Mr Clarence had died just after Christmas.

In that year of 1800, the stage-coaches were advertised as Flying Machines. To Hannah they stood for everything that was missing from her now dark and bleak life: adventure, other worlds, hope, life and laughter.

But she could remember happy times before Mrs Clarence had run away, oh, so long ago, when life had been busy and exciting. At the age of twelve, she had left her parents’ home in Hammersmith and entered into service in Thornton Hall, the Clarences’ residence. She had worked hard to become a kitchen maid, then a between-stairs maid, then chambermaid, then housemaid, then chief housemaid, and had finally been exalted to the position of housekeeper. There had been servants’ parties, she remembered, especially at Christmas, when Mrs Clarence and her husband would descend to the servants’ hall and Mrs Clarence would dance with the menservants and Mr Clarence with the maids.

Hannah left the drawing-room and went down to the kitchens and made tea. She had always risen early, being one of those rare people who need very little sleep. She liked being up before the other servants to enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet on her own.

She was worried. She was forty-five, a great age, nearly old. It would be hard to find another position as housekeeper. In making the arrangements for the funeral and coping with the Clarence relatives who had descended like vultures, she had not had time to seek another post. She had only a little money saved. ‘And that,’ said Hannah Pym aloud, ‘is your own fault.’ Hannah could not help interfering in other people’s lives. There had been money given to servant girls to help them get out of trouble, somewhere to go and stay until the babies were born. There had been money given to a footman to go to university and make a new start, for he had been a bright, sensitive lad, hopeless as a footman. There had been money – Hannah winced – given to that under-butler who had proposed marriage to her. He had said he would go and purchase a cottage with her savings and had never come back. But now she was older and wiser and could often see through people and, besides, there was no use regretting the past.

The relatives, who had mercifully left for a few days after the funeral, were ready to descend again for the reading of the will. Sir George Clarence, Mr Clarence’s brother, would be there this time, thought Hannah, and there would be someone to take charge. Sir George had been abroad in the diplomatic service for a long time and had returned to England only recently. She remembered him vaguely as being a rather austere and cold man. She felt sure Mr Clarence would not have remembered her in his will, although she was the last of the old servants. Since Mrs Clarence had left, the house had become too gloomy to attract regular staff, and a bewildering variety of maids and footmen had come and gone. It had been years since there had been a butler, that job having been added to Hannah’s by the seemingly uncaring Mr Clarence.

The morning was busy with preparations for the reading of the will. A cold collation was to be served to the relatives in the dining-room about two o’clock. At four, they would adjourn to the library, where Mr Entwhistle of Entwhistle, Barker & Timms would read the will.

For a short while it was heart-breakingly like old times, with fires in the rooms and bustle and hurry. Hannah in her black gown and with her keys at her waist went here and there, running her fingers over ledges to make sure there was not a trace of dust, plumping up cushions, checking coal scuttles to make sure they were full, filling cans with hot water, arranging flowers, and giving a final polish to the brass and steel of fenders. Then, with the one remaining footman and two housemaids beside her, she waited in the hall for the arrival of the relatives.

First came Mrs Jessop, the late Mr Clarence’s sister, a small, fussy woman with her thin and whining husband and their three children, all boys in their teens, and spoilt, in Hannah’s opinion, beyond repair. Then there was a fluttering of cousins, spinster ladies, gossiping and complaining about the cold. Then Mr Clarence’s other brother, Peter, a fat, jolly man with a ferocious laugh and a weakness for practical jokes, his wife, Freda, fat also, but languid and a professional invalid, and their seven children of various ages.

And then arrived Sir George Clarence. He was a tall, spare man in his fifties with white hair, a hawklike face, and piercing blue eyes. He was impeccably dressed in a blue swallowtail coat and darker blue knee-breeches with striped stockings and buckled shoes, the splendour of which was revealed when the footman relieved him of his many-caped greatcoat.

‘How are you, Miss Pym?’ he asked, and Hannah flushed with pleasure because he had remembered her name. She had never adopted the courtesy title of ‘Mrs’, like most housekeepers and cooks, and he had remembered that too.

She supervised the serving of the cold collation. Bedrooms had been prepared, although no one but Sir George was staying the night, because she knew the guests would like somewhere to retire.

Then when the ladies had gone through to the drawing-room and the men were left to their wine, she went down to the hall to greet the lawyer, Mr Entwhistle.

‘Bitterly cold, ‘he said, rubbing his hands. ‘There is more snow coming, I can feel it.’

‘I have put a tray in the morning-room, sir,’ said Hannah. ‘I thought you might care for some refreshment before the reading of the will.’

‘Most kind of you, most kind. But business first, I think. Miss Pym, the housekeeper, is it not?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then you had better be present at the reading of the will. Lead the way, if you please.’

Hannah escorted him to the library before summoning the relatives. Her first elation was quickly dying down. Mr Entwhistle was a kindly old gentleman in a bagwig. His invitation to her to be present at the reading of the will was merely a courtesy. Why, poor Mr Clarence had barely noticed her existence in his final years.

Miss Pym bustled about, ordering the staff to find chairs for all the relatives and lighting lamps and candelabra, for the library was a dark room, the serried ranks of calf-bound books seeming to absorb what light there was.

She then took up a position by the door.

Mr Entwhistle took out spectacles from his spectacle case and polished them with maddening slowness. Hannah could feel the tension rising in the room. Only Sir George, sitting over by the window, appeared indifferent to the contents of the will. But then he would know the contents. Mr Clarence had told her a long time ago that he had appointed Sir George as his executor.

At last, Mr Entwhistle began. Thornton Hall, its grounds and all its contents were to be left to his dear brother, Sir George Clarence. There was a heightening rather than a lessening of tension as if everyone was privately asking, ‘The money. What about the money?’

They were soon put out of their misery. The bulk of Mr Clarence’s considerable fortune had been divided equally among his two brothers and one sister and then there were handsome legacies to every single one of the other relatives. Smiles all round, then a few sentimental tears shed by the spinster cousins – ‘So kind, so very, very kind of him to remember us all.’

‘Now to the servants,’ said Mr Entwhistle. Now the tension was in Hannah. ‘To any servant in my employ for the period of over four years at my death I leave two hundred pounds each.’

Hannah felt quite limp with relief. That would keep her for long enough and more to find a job. There were not many servants who had lasted the four-year period, she reflected. The house had been so gloomy that servants came and went, not many of them staying long. But there was the coachman and the outside man, and one of the scullery maids, and the remaining footman. Then she heard her own name.

‘To my faithful housekeeper, Miss Hannah Pym, I leave the sum of five thousand pounds to be hers entirely and to do with as she wishes.’

There were little rustles of irritation which gradually grew louder as Mr Entwhistle took off his glasses, polished them again, and put them carefully away in a leather case. Five thousand pounds! ‘Too much for a servant!’ said one of the cousins. ‘She’ll only drink it,’ hissed another. But Hannah stood by the door in a happy daze. She would never need to work again. Automatically, she walked down the stairs to the morning-room to see that everything was laid out for Mr Entwhistle. Finally, she stood at the door to help the departing relatives on with their cloaks and mantles. Not one of them tipped her, considering she had more money than was good for her.

Hannah then returned to the library to see if Sir George required anything and was told he did not. She bustled about the bedrooms with the maids, seeing that the mess left by the relatives had been cleared up. The bedchambers had been meant to be used only as places in which to freshen up, but they had all managed to make a horrendous mess just the same, the children having created a great deal of the havoc. Then downstairs to see the lawyer on his way. She longed to ask him how soon she could have the money but found she had not the courage. Her initial excitement was fading fast. She had a vague idea that wills could take forever, some slow legal process whereby the money was finally disgorged reluctantly when the recipients were nigh dead.

Hannah glanced at the watch she wore pinned to her bosom. Nearly six o’clock. Time for the stage-coach to go by.

Sir George went quietly into the drawing-room and stood watching the housekeeper as she stood by the window, one hand raised to hold back the curtain. The window was open and he heard the thud of horses’ hooves and the blast of a horn. The housekeeper waved and then turned slowly round, her eyes full of dreams. She started slightly at the sight of him and turned back and closed the window.

‘Are you expecting some friend or relative to arrive by stage-coach?’ asked Sir George.

‘No, sir,’ said Hannah over her shoulder as she swung the heavy shutters across the window. ‘I like to see the coach go by.’

She then began to move about the room, lighting the lamps, poking the fire and throwing a log on it. He came and sat down in a chair by the fire. ‘Sit down, Miss Pym,’ he said.

Hannah looked at him in surprise. ‘I do not think it would be right,’ she said.

‘You are now an heiress,’ said Sir George, looking amused. ‘Pray, take a chair.’

Hannah sat down gingerly on the very edge of a chair, facing him. He studied her for a few moments.

She was a thin woman with thick sandy hair under a starched cap. She had a sallow face with a crooked nose, slightly bent, and a long, humorous mouth. Her eyes were extraordinary, very large and bright, of many colours, it seemed, at times gold, at times blue, at times green. She had hunting shoulders although she did not know how to ride a horse, very square, and long thin arms and surprisingly elegant hands. Her ankles were very well turned. Hannah had automatically raised her skirt a little as she sat down. Her ankles and feet were her one vanity and she spent too much money on shoes.

‘What will you do with your fortune?’ asked Sir George. ‘Buy a little cottage? Retire?’

She clasped her hands tightly and looked at him as a simply wonderful idea entered her mind.

‘No, sir,’ said Hannah. ‘I shall travel. On the stage-coach.’

‘Where?’

Hannah threw out her hands, her sallow face flushed with excitement, those odd eyes blazing. ‘Anywhere.’

‘For the sake of travel. How strange.’

‘You see, sir,’ said Hannah earnestly, ‘I crave adventure.’

‘A journey on a stage-coach, particularly in winter,’ he said dryly, ‘is full of adventure – broken traces, snow-drifts, mud, highwaymen, footpads, and damp beds in the wayside inns.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The housekeeper’s odd eyes appeared to have lost all colour and become as bleak as the winter landscape outside.

‘But if that is your wish …’ he said quickly. ‘It means much to you?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’ The eyes flashed green. ‘The Flying Machines, the excitement, the motion, the towns and cities. I shall travel to the ends of the earth.’

‘Stage-coaches do not go to the ends of the earth,’ he pointed out.

‘I know. But all over England. Bath, York, Exeter. Life, adventure … and hope, sir.’

‘How gloomy it must have been here for you,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Why not try one stage-coach journey and see how you fare?’

‘I do not want to seem mercenary,’ said Hannah. ‘But … but, how soon can I have some money?’

‘You can get an advance from Mr Entwhistle as soon as you like. I would advise you to bank your fortune.’ Hannah’s face fell.

‘Come now,’ he said gently, ‘you cannot travel the length and breadth of England with sacks of sovereigns.’

‘It’s just,’ said Hannah, twisting her hands in her lap, ‘that I do not know anything about banks.’ She bit her lip, remembering the perfidy and cheating of that under-butler who had run off with her savings. ‘What if, sir, the banker should prove a cheat and run off with my money?’

‘Banks are not like that. Look, we shall go to the lawyer’s together tomorrow – I have to see him about a few things – and we will get you an advance. Then I shall take you to my bank and they will explain to you about cheques and bank drafts and all such complications.’

‘Sir, you are very good.’

‘Think nothing of it, Miss Pym. Now, as to dinner, tell cook to supply a simple meal. Have the servants who have been here longer than four years been told of their two hundred pounds?’

‘Yes, sir. Or rather, I told the footman and I assume he told everyone else.’

‘As I shall be closing this place up, I think Mr Entwhistle should advance them the money now or it might be very difficult to find them after the estate is sold and everyone has dispersed to different parts of London.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Harriet dutifully, although she was sure that any servant with the expectation of two hundred pounds would not stay away from the lawyers for very long.

‘That will be all.’

Hannah rose and curtsied and left. Her head was full of excitement and dreams. Where would she go first? Exeter, she thought. Instead of standing by the window watching the Flying Maching hurtle past, she would be on it herself!

* * *

At ten o’clock the following morning, Sir George sent for her and told her to make herself ready to go to the lawyers. He said he would meet her in the hall in half an hour.

Hannah ran to her room and wrenched off her black gown and cap. She was going out in the company of a gentleman and must look like a lady. She had one silk gown, a golden-brown colour. It was of old-fashioned cut with the waist being where a waist should be instead of up under the armpits as present fashion decreed. The day was bitterly cold. She hesitated and then ran up the stairs and through the long corridors to Mrs Clarence’s old rooms, which had been kept locked up. Mrs Clarence had fled only in the clothes she stood up in. Her clothes, never touched since the day she had gone away, hung in two large wardrobes.

With a feeling of great daring, Hannah selected a dark-blue velvet cloak and then lifted down a beaver hat. She was sure Sir George would give them to charity. She would find the right moment to tell him she had borrowed them and ask if she might pay for them.

She carried them back down to her room and put hat and cloak on. She hoped she looked like a lady. She felt she did. But when she met Sir George, a grand figure in a many-caped coat and shining top-boots, she felt just like a servant in borrowed clothes.

He helped her into his carriage exactly as if she had been a lady and Hannah began to feel a little more assured.

The well-sprung carriage bowled down the drive. Hannah looked out eagerly, rubbing at the misted glass with her glove and pressing her crooked nose against the window.

‘Miss Pym,’ he said, ‘it is like escorting a prisoner out of jail. Did you never leave the grounds?’

‘Hardly ever, sir. There was so much to do, you see. When I was younger, I would sometimes go to the play – that was when Mrs Clarence was here, but not for a very long time now.’

‘Have you no relatives? No friends?’

‘Such friends as I had, sir, were among the staff,’ said Hannah, ‘but they gradually all found posts in other households. My family were all killed in the smallpox epidemic of ninety-two.’

‘You were with the Clarences a long time?’

‘I started as scullery maid at the age of twelve. They were newly married then, Mr and Mrs Clarence. I rose up the ranks and became housekeeper eighteen years later. But it was shortly after that that Mrs Clarence ran away. She would have been about thirty-five years then, sir, and the footman only twenty-five.’ Hannah squinted down her nose in sudden embarrassment. He might consider it vulgar of her to regale him with such gossip.

Hannah turned her attention back to the moving scene outside. She was a gossip and knew it. Time after time, she had tried to stop her clacking tongue, and time after time it had got her into trouble. But not for ages. There had been no one really to talk to.

Hannah was very disappointed in the lawyer’s office. It was dark and musty. Could do with a good scrub, thought Hannah with a sniff. She had somehow imagined that everywhere she went with Sir George would be grand and elegant. Mr Entwhistle gave her a bank draft for one hundred pounds. ‘It is the same bank as mine,’ said Sir George. ‘We are going there now, Mr Entwhistle, to arrange an account for Miss Pym. Now, there are various other things I would like to discuss with you …’

Hannah drifted over to the window which looked out on to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. A fine snow was beginning to fall from the leaden sky. Then, as she watched, the flakes grew thicker, but still buoyant on a mischievous wind, scurrying in circles, swirling up to the window and spiralling down again. Five thousand pounds! The full impact of the legacy hit Hannah in all its glory. The spectre of the workhouse receded. She was a lady of independent means. She brushed the fine velvet of the cloak she wore with a complacent hand.

Sir George quickly completed his business and took Hannah to Child’s Bank. The bank was every bit as grand as Hannah could wish, but instead of feeling happy and confident she began to feel diminished. A friend of Sir George’s approached him while they were waiting for the bank manager. To Hannah’s confusion, Sir George introduced her to his friend, a Mr Cadman. She was so used to being invisible to the Quality that she stammered and blushed. ‘How goes the world?’ Sir George asked Mr Cadman. ‘Still gambling on everything and anything?’

‘Had the most miserable run of luck at White’s,’ said Mr Cadman. ‘Lost fifteen thousand guineas last night. But I shall come about.’

Hannah felt herself shrivelling. Here was a world in which gentlemen could lose such vast sums in one night. And she had thought five thousand pounds had raised her to the ranks of the gentry!

An usher came up and said the manager was ready to see them. Hannah’s mercurial spirits went soaring up again like a balloon. For the manager treated her with deference and seemed to find nothing odd in the fact that she knew absolutely nothing about banking. She apologized for her ignorance, but he smiled and said, ‘The ladies. The ladies. Never bother their pretty heads about such mundane things as money,’ and then proceeded to give her a simple lecture on how to draw money as and when she needed it.

He then rang the bell and ordered tea and biscuits. Hannah asked a few questions and drank tea. Her voice began to sound strange and ugly in her ears. She had trained herself not to drop her aitches and to watch her grammar but now she felt it had a coarse sound compared to the cool and incisive voice of Sir George and the polite, cultured tones of the manager.

She was disappointed when the hundred pounds was handed to her in notes and silver. Hannah distrusted bank-notes, weak, flimsy pieces of paper. She preferred the hard, comfortable feel of gold.

When they left the bank and climbed in the coach, Sir George hesitated before giving instructions to his coachman to drive them back to Kensington. There was something very rewarding about taking this odd housekeeper about. There was a wonderment in her eyes as she looked about the busy streets of London, something childlike. On a sudden impulse he raised the trap and said, ‘Gunter’s.’

Hannah flashed a look at him and then sat very still, the rigidity of her body hiding the bubbling excitement within. Gunter’s was the famous pastry cook’s and confectioner’s in Berkeley Square. She wished that wretched and perfidious under-butler could see her now, Hannah Pym, entering the famous Gunter’s on the arm of a gentleman, sitting down and eating cakes, like the veriest aristocrat.

‘My brother must have been a sore trial to you in his latter years, Miss Pym,’ said Sir George.

‘Mr Clarence was never unkind or unreasonable, sir,’ said Hannah. ‘I felt for him. He had a broken heart. I do not know how Mrs Clarence, who was the soul of kindness, could have treated him so.’

‘I do not think hearts break,’ sighed Sir George. ‘My brother was always moody and depressed even as a young man. Letitia Renfrew, as she was before she married him, was a great reader of Gothic novels. What she saw in my brother was brooding passion, very romantic. She was sadly mistaken. He must have been a sore trial to her.’

‘Sir!’ Hannah looked at him in amazement, her eyes suddenly as blue as her cloak. ‘You surely do not condone such behaviour.’

He shrugged. ‘I can understand it. My brother was set to become a recluse whether she stayed or went, in my opinion.’

‘Do you know where Mrs Clarence is?’ asked Hannah.

He shook his head.

‘So pretty and kind,’ mused Hannah. ‘She is probably dead by now.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘She was not brought up to work or even to scrimp and save. A footman’s wages, even if he got another post, could not keep her, and besides, footmen are not allowed to marry or even to pretend to be married.’

‘Letitia was a wealthy woman in her own right.’

‘But surely that money would become her husband’s when she married him?’

‘No, she was protected by the marriage settlements. She would have enough to keep herself and her footman in comfort for life. Does that shock you?’ he asked, looking at the housekeeper’s startled face.

‘I have been brought up to believe that the wicked are always punished,’ said Hannah primly.

‘Quite often not in this world. She was not wicked, only young and heedless, and tied to a man who must have made life seem like a desert.’

‘But she has to live with her guilty conscience,’ said Hannah.

‘Perhaps. Have another cake. So where do you plan to travel first?’

‘Exeter, sir.’

‘Exeter! In midwinter with the snow falling? Why Exeter? Why not Brighton? That’s a short run.’

‘But it is the Exeter Fly that I watch going past,’ said Hannah. ‘I want to be on it. I want to see the house from the road.’

He took out his card case and extracted a card. ‘I fear for you, Miss Pym,’ he said. ‘Take my card and come and see me on your return and let me know your adventures.’

‘Oh, sir, I should be most honoured. How soon may I leave?’

‘Let me see, Mr Entwhistle is coming in two days’ time to Thornton Hall to pay off the few servants who qualify for the two hundred pounds. All the servants may as well be paid off at the same time. I will put a caretaker and his wife into Thornton Hall to keep it aired and cleaned until I decide to sell it. This can all be arranged quite quickly and there is really not much more for you to do. Say, in a week’s time. Now what is troubling you?’ he asked, seeing those odd eyes of hers lose colour.

Hannah gave a genteel cough. ‘I have to confess, sir, that this cloak and hat are not my own. They belong to Mrs Clarence. She left all her clothes behind and … and … I could not … did not want to appear in servant’s clothes on this momentous day. I wondered, sir, if I might pay you for them.’

‘There is no need for that. Take what you wish, although no doubt everything is sadly outmoded. All your worries are over, Miss Pym. Relax and enjoy your cakes and look forward to your first journey on a Flying Machine.’

Hannah was by now Sir George’s devoted slave. No one in all her life had treated her with such courtesy. He was a god. But some innate sensitivity made her mask her adoration. She feared that he might misread any admiration on her part and think this family servant was getting ideas above her station. She covertly looked around her at the well-bred faces, at the fearfully expensive clothes, at the snow whirling outside the leaded windows, at the piles of sweetmeats and pineapples and chocolate and fruit, and then at the high, arrogant face of Sir George Clarence and wondered if it were possible to die from sheer happiness. When they rose to leave, she shot quick little glances about her so that she might stamp the memory of this glorious afternoon on her mind for life.

To her disappointment, Sir George said he would not be staying at Thornton Hall. He would return in two days’ time with the lawyer.

Hannah went up the stairs to Mrs Clarence’s rooms that night when the other servants were asleep and took out coats and pelisses and mantles and hats and fine underwear like gossamer. Mrs Clarence had been slim as a young woman and of the same height as Hannah. Hannah did not want the other servants to know about Mrs Clarence’s clothes. They were already bitterly jealous of her because of her large inheritance and the present of such fine clothes would only add to their jealousy.

The week passed like the stage-coach, rumbling off slowly and gathering momentum. Hannah tipped the Clarences’ coachman to drive her into the City to purchase an inside ticket for the Exeter Fly. She then recklessly promised him more money if he would rise during the night to get her to the City to join the coach, which left at five in the morning. The coachman pointed out that she would need to pay for two grooms and the outside man as well as there was no way he was going to face the perils of Knightsbridge on his own. Hannah thought of her fortune and threw thrift to the winds. All that mattered now was to get on that coach.

There were so many preparations to make in such a short time. But she had waited so long for an adventure, she could hardly bear to wait any longer. She took modest lodgings in Kensington Village and then packed as many of Mrs Clarence’s clothes as she could into large trunks. The outside man wheeled them in a cart to her new home, two rooms above a bakery.

All that was left was the trunk to take on the journey.

She did not go to sleep the night before the Great Adventure, as she mentally called it. She walked about the house from room to room, seeing herself in every corner. There was the scullery maid Hannah bent over the pots, then kitchen maid Hannah over the stove, chambermaid Hannah screwing up her face as she took down the slops, then between-stairs maid Hannah polishing the oaken treads on the main staircase, then housemaid Hannah in the drawing-room, darting here and there, quick and light, and then her last shell, housekeeper Hannah, proud of her black gown and starched cap and with the bunch of keys jingling at her waist.

How happy she had been then! There was so much to do, so much pride in her new position. But after Mrs Clarence had run away and the staff of servants had shrunk and all the parties and callers and entertaining had ceased, time had hung heavy on her hands and her employer’s depression seemed to permeate every room. And yet she was loyal to Mr Clarence and ever hopeful that one day Mrs Clarence might appear on the doorstep, gay and laughing, saying she had done it all for fun. But Mrs Clarence had never come back. At first Hannah had glanced idly out at the stage-coach going by. Bit by bit, she had begun to imagine herself on it, until she could not start her day until she had seen the coach thunder by. The sight of that coach made her feel less trapped in the gloom of Thornton Hall, where Mr Clarence grew more grey-faced and the servants moved silently about the house, as if in a house of mourning.

Sometimes she felt like yelling and singing, doing anything to shatter the grim silence, but respect for her employer was in her very bones. She had always been practical and busy until Mrs Clarence had run away, and then she gradually began to live in dreams of bowling along the dusty roads of England where the sun always shone, the birds always sang, and she was as free as the air. One Hannah saw that the rooms were aired and dusted and that the meals were served on time. The other Hannah, the inside Hannah, escaped far away outside the walls of Thornton Hall and into a dream country of endless travel and movement.

As the hour approached for the coachman to bring the carriage round, she began to worry and worry. What if the lazy old man was still snoring? What if the grooms had refused to come?

But just when she had decided to walk over to the stables and find out, she heard the snorting of horses and the rumbling of wheels. She drew the blue cloak around her and settled the beaver hat more firmly on her head. A new century, a new life, a new Hannah.

She tugged open the main door and then turned briefly in salute, waving goodbye to her past, waving goodbye to her servant’s life, as she had waved so many times to the Flying Machine on the Kensington Road.

Hannah slammed the door behind her with a satisfying final bang, handed up her trunk to the coachman, and climbed inside.