The Servants Read online

  Now Mark thought about it, he realized he knew this. His mother had a friend in London who lived in Notting Hill, in an apartment that was below ground level, like this. Hers was all white walls and track-lighting and big paintings with splashes of color, however. It was hard to imagine it could ever have been something like this.

  He pointed at the small room with grilles in the walls. “What was that?”

  “It’s where the meat was stored.”

  “They had a room, just for the fridge?”

  “There were no refrigerators. The meat was hung. The grilles in the walls are so the air could circulate.”

  “Didn’t the meat go off?”

  “Sometimes. The space next to it is the oven and bakery area. Then…” She turned to indicate the two low doors at the end. “Storage areas. Vegetables and fruit on the left, dairy—milk, cheese—on the right.”

  Mark went over and entered each area in turn, having to crouch slightly to get inside. The ceilings were curved, like a vault. There were shelves on either side of both rooms, again holding nothing but years and years of dust. They could have stored a lot once, though.

  When he came back out, he noticed a couple of broken wooden boxes on the other side of the kitchen space. They had wire netting across the front, and looked like very basic rabbit hutches that had fallen apart.

  “Chickens,” the old lady said.

  “Chickens? They had chickens in the house?”

  “Of course. Fresh eggs every morning.”

  Mark laughed, trying to picture a state of affairs in which it made sense to have live chickens in a place where people lived. Beyond the coops was a shallow recess in the wall, about eight feet wide and four feet deep. “Was that a fireplace?”

  The old lady smiled. “No, dear. That was where the cook slept. And the scullery maid, too, unless she just bedded down in the middle of the floor.”

  “It’s cold, though,” he said, trying to picture this.

  “Of course. It’s almost underground. But it would have been different when the range was alight. Then it would have been the one warm place down here. The cook was lucky, in winter. In summer…not so lucky.”

  Mark tried to imagine what it had been like. Two people sleeping in this area—in the kitchen—another in the other tiny room he’d seen at the end of the side corridor. Meat hanging in the space over there, a range puffing out smoke and heat, chickens clucking and walking around, the cook clattering around at the stove…

  He wandered back over to the bakery area—and was startled when a bird suddenly appeared from nowhere, flapping within inches of his face. It scrabbled chaotically out into the main area, careering through the air, circling around and bashing into the glass of the skylight. Though she was standing directly underneath, the old lady paid it no attention at all. Eventually, it found the broken pane and burst outside, shooting upward into the gloom and rain.

  “Who was the other servant?” Mark asked. “You said there was another one who had his own room.”

  “Not his, her,” the old lady said. “Perhaps the most important one of all.”

  “I thought the butler…”

  “The butler was the public face of below-stairs. He was the one visitors saw, if they saw anyone at all.”

  “Why wouldn’t they see anyone else?”

  “Servants were supposed to keep out of sight. As if everything happened by magic. They even had their own staircase, at the back of the house, weren’t allowed to use the main one. In a house like this all the rooms upstairs would have counters on the landings outside, so that trays of tea or food could be left or collected without the family having to deal with a housemaid directly. Fires would be built and lit in all the rooms before the family got up—and the ash cleared away after they went to bed. The newspaper left ready on the table every morning. Shoes cleaned and left outside bedroom doors, ready for the next day. Silent and invisible. Like living with a team of elves.”

  “So who…”

  “The housekeeper,” the old lady said, as she led Mark out of the kitchen and back into the main corridor. “She gave the housemaids their jobs. She talked with the mistress, discussing what meals would be required that week, and did all the ordering of the food. She organized the linen, made sure all the tasks got done. She was…the queen bee. Down here, anyway.”

  “Where did she sleep?”

  “She had the best room of all.”

  The old lady walked out through the big door and waited for Mark to follow her. He felt reluctant to do so—he wanted to go back and look some more—but he could tell by her demeanor that the tour was finished.

  The old lady pulled the door shut and locked it again with the big key. Then she nodded into her apartment.

  “That’s where the housekeeper lived. She needed to be at the front to deal with all the tradesmen who would call throughout each day. Things didn’t last. You didn’t go to a supermarket like you do nowadays and buy food frozen for the next month—you had it delivered, every day.”

  Now they were back in this small front area of the building, it was hard to remember that the rest of it even existed. The big, solid door, the old lady’s small, tidy room: it was as if that was all there was.

  “It’s weird, all that being back there,” Mark said.

  She looked tired now. “People are like that too.”

  Mark didn’t understand what she meant, but it seemed as if she didn’t want to say any more. His time down here was over. That was all right. It sounded as if the rain had started to slacken off. A walk along the seafront sounded okay now. The old lady followed him to the front door, and stood there as he stepped out.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re most welcome.”

  He started up the narrow metal staircase to the street, but hesitated, and turned around. “Do…other people know that’s there?”

  “Other people?” She knew whom he meant. The person who owned this whole building. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe he does. I’ve lived here for a long time and I don’t get many visitors. The only person who knows about it is me. And now, you.”

  She closed the door gently.

  When Mark got up to the sidewalk, the rain had stopped, though the sky was still low and a uniform gray. He pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets and set off toward the promenade. He had some change in his back pocket. He thought maybe he’d go down to The Meeting Place and ask for a cup of tea, and ask them to make it strong.

  He felt a little better than he had before.

  So David didn’t know everything there was to know, huh.

  six

  It started to rain again, however, and soon it became more like sleet. Mark stuck it out for a while, but his cup of tea tasted like dishwater and was cold within moments. The promenade was deserted. The sea turned gray and choppy and a spray came up over the rail. Even the seagulls looked freezing and embittered.

  When he got home, he was soaked to the skin. He started up the stairs to see if his mother was awake yet, but David was already waiting at the top, everything in his posture indicating a desire that Mark be quiet. He did everything short of actually holding his finger to his lips—as if he thought he was the gatekeeper, the person in charge of everything, with the power to decide who got access.

  “I want to talk to you later,” he said.

  Mark tramped back down the stairs without saying anything. He changed his clothes and dried his hair on a hand towel from the kitchen. Then he went into “his” room and shut the door.

  He read for a while, but soon finished his book. He didn’t have any new ones, and until his mother felt like leaving the house so that they could all go farther along the seafront to where the shops were, it didn’t seem likely he’d be able to get a hold of one. A couple of weeks ago, just after they’d got here, David had returned from one of his supermarket trips with a couple of books for Mark. They lay in a corner of the room, too boring even to open, and it seemed David had since
forgotten about bearing Mark in mind. Mark wasn’t going to help him to remember.

  He played PlayStation for a while, but that wasn’t much fun either. The television in the old house in London was huge. You could turn the sound up and it was as if you were actually there. The one in his room in Brighton was the smallest he’d ever encountered, so small he wondered why Mr. Sony had actually bothered. Even when you sat close, it was as if the TV was on the other side of the room, and it sounded as if it was being played over a very old radio. Though it was comforting to go running along the same old corridors and dodging through jungles and abandoned mines that he’d visited many times before, it wasn’t very exciting. He gave up in the end and went and sat in the chair facing the window. It rained and rained and rained, and then it stopped. When it got properly dark, lights began to come on again in the other houses on the opposite side of the square. You could see people walking around, sitting down, doing things. Having a life.

  What he’d seen downstairs seemed a long way away, blurred by rain and the images of the video game. It was odd, the old lady living in such a small room at the front when there was so much space behind her: but he supposed she probably didn’t have much money, and probably wasn’t allowed to change things anyway. This was David’s house now, after all—even if he’d let her stay down there because it had been her home, he was in charge.

  David’s house, yes. But he was not David’s son. And the woman in the room over Mark’s head was Mark’s mother. She didn’t belong to anyone else, whatever they might think.

  WHEN he tried again at six o’clock, David wasn’t there to guard the stairs. Mark found his mother on the couch again. She looked less tired than she had yesterday, and was in a good mood. She patted the couch next to her and he went over and sat down.

  She asked him about his day, as usual, but for some reason he didn’t tell her about visiting the old lady. Partly it was because he’d realized that it probably contravened the warning about talking to strangers, or going anywhere with them—even though the old lady hadn’t looked like a person who could do anyone much harm. But also he didn’t mention it because…

  Mark wasn’t really sure why. Perhaps because she might mention it to David, and Mark didn’t want him knowing what was down there. The omission made it sound as if Mark hadn’t really done very much all day, however, and his mother picked up on this.

  “Maybe…we’ll all go into town tomorrow,” she said. “It’s been a while. Don’t you think?”

  “Really?” Mark said. “That would be great. I need something new to read.” He realized this sounded greedy, and anyway wasn’t what he meant. “And it would just be, you know, nice.”

  “We’ll have to see what the weather’s like,” said a voice.

  It was David, of course, coming in from the bedroom. He wasn’t drying his hands on a towel this time but the effect was about the same. “It would be great for us all to go into town. But it’s gotten really cold today, and the rain, you know.”

  Gotten. This was an American thing, Mark knew, because David had told him months ago, like he told you everything. But David was in England now, so why didn’t he stop doing it? Did he think it made him sound cool, or something? It really didn’t.

  Mark was disappointed to see his mother nodding, conceding David’s point. “But maybe?” Mark said.

  “Maybe,” she agreed, smiling. “Are you hungry? David said you didn’t have any lunch.”

  Of course he did. Reporting back.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “What are we going to—”

  “I wondered about going out somewhere tonight,” David said. “Not far. I could drive us up to Western Road, find someplace along there. What do you say?”

  Mark rolled his eyes. He knew why David was doing this. A week ago, his mother had said something about going out to eat, how they always used to do that when they were here, it was a shame to be in a town with so many restaurants and not use any of them. Mark had noticed David frowning. He was jealous, Mark thought, didn’t like to be reminded that they’d had many times here before he came on the scene. Plus…David just liked ordering people around, trying to make them do what he thought was a good idea: as if he always knew what was the right thing to do, and it was his job to spread the information around.

  Mark’s mother hesitated. He could see her trying out the idea in her head. Mark didn’t want to go out. He’d spent enough time in the cold and wet today, and didn’t want to sit around a table in a restaurant and pretend they were a family when they were not.

  “Why don’t we order in,” he said brightly. “From Wo Fat?”

  “I’m not sure Chinese is what your mother’s going to want,” David said, with maddening speed and reasonableness. “She’s been a little…”

  “Good idea,” Mark’s mother said, and Mark felt a hard thrill of triumph pass through his chest. “It’s been a while.”

  “I’ll get the menu,” Mark said, and bounced off the couch to run downstairs.

  FOR appetizers they had spring rolls and barbecue ribs and sesame shrimp toast, and some of the green stuff that was supposed to be seaweed but apparently wasn’t. Then there was special fried rice and roast duck chow mein and sweet-and-sour shrimp balls and beef in black bean sauce. It was brilliant, as always, and came with a huge free bag of shrimp crackers, which you could dip in everything.

  Mark ate lots. He was ravenous from missing lunch, and he just loved Chinese food anyway. It was a family trait, his dad said. Genetics. On the two weekends he’d spent with his father since the wedding, they had eaten Chinese on both occasions, saving the leftovers from the first night and eating them in front of the television the following evening.

  David only had a spring roll—which he insisted on calling an “egg roll”—and some rice and beef. Mark had a suspicion that he didn’t even like Chinese. Every now and then since they’d been down here he’d mentioned Mexican food like it was a big deal of some kind, but Mark had never tried it, which meant it probably wouldn’t be much good. Mark’s mother didn’t eat very much, though she did have some of the crackers.

  When they’d finished, Mark picked up the remote and turned the television on. He knew he was pushing his luck, because David said his mother needed peace and quiet—but by the time his stepfather had come back upstairs from cleaning everything up, Mark and his mother were watching a nature program about penguins and there wasn’t anything David could do about it. Instead, he sat at the other end of the couch and watched it with them.

  He watched the television, anyway—but Mark knew he wasn’t seeing the same thing. David didn’t know about the time Mark and his mother had gone to London Zoo a couple of years before and spent two whole hours watching the penguins at the special pool. They’d made up stories about each of the penguins, saying which was the penguin policeman, which the lifeguard, and which had been the best female penguin swimmer of all time but gave it all up to have a family and now only came out of retirement once in a while to supervise the young ones as they zipped around, swimming in the shallow pool and poddling up and down the ramps and stairs. His mother kept saying they ought to go home but she didn’t really want to, and so they’d sat there for a long, long time next to each other on the bench, laughing and pointing, as if no one else had been there.

  David certainly hadn’t been there, and didn’t even know about that afternoon. At least Mark’s real dad had been there to tell about it when Mark and his mother got home. Back then David had been in America, yet to force his way into Mark’s world—and so while he thought he was sitting there watching the same thing as they were, he…wasn’t.

  He was watching some boring David version of the show, and he’d never know the difference.

  WHEN the documentary finished, David looked at his watch, but Mark was way ahead of him. He was on a roll tonight.

  “Good night, Mum,” he said. He kissed her on the cheek and left, before David could find something to tell him or ask him about.

 
When he got back to his room after brushing his teeth, he picked up the books that lay in the corner of the room and flipped them under the bed. Then he got one of the ones he’d brought with him from London, and turned back to the first page. He could read it again.

  It was a struggle to maintain interest to start with, but after a while it was okay. It was a bit like walking through some part of a city where you’d been before. You noticed different things.

  An hour later, he turned the light off and went to sleep. The room was cold and he woke up a couple of times in the night, but only once did he hear coughing, and if he dreamed of anything moving past him in the night, when the morning came, he did not remember it.

  seven

  The weather the next morning was no better. When Mark asked if they were going to go into town, like his mother had said, David shook his head firmly.

  “Drop it,” he said. “It isn’t going to happen, not today.”

  Mark marched out to the seafront with his skateboard and scooted up and down. The progress he’d made a couple of days before had faded away, however, and he seemed to fall off even more than he had before. He decided to try leapfrogging the problem, and found a short plank and a brick and set them up. The first attempt at jumping was a painful disaster. The second and third were worse. And then some man appeared from somewhere and shouted at him for stealing his brick, or something, and Mark stalked off, swearing under his breath.

  In the afternoon, he finished rereading his book, and though he tried to start another, this time it didn’t work. He sat up with his mother for a while but had nothing to tell her about, and she seemed not to have a lot to say either. He went back down to his room and played video games for four hours, sitting with his face up to the screen and using his iPod headphones to make the sound a little better. When he slept that night he thought he had slept deeply, but the next morning he felt very tired, as if someone had taken his eyes out in the night and dried them in front of the fire.