Eva Ibbotson - The Secret Countess

But Peggy and her sister Pearl were not so sure. There’d been a sort of look about the Russian girl.

That first day Anna rose at five-thirty, snatched a piece of bread and jam in the servants’ hall, and by six, clutching her housemaid’s bag, had followed Louise, Peggy and James, loaded with buckets, stepladders, druggets and mops, up to the library.

Mersham’s library was world-famous. Its satinwood bookcases, its pedestal desk and writing tables were made by Chippendale and reckoned to be among his finest work. A sumptuous, moss green Aubusson stretched to the windows of the south terrace and on the barrel-vaulted ceiling the Muses swam most decoratively.

‘Oh, what a beautiful room!’ exclaimed Anna, only to get a sour look from Louise, who was briskly pouring soda into a bucket.

‘’ere,’ she said, handing Anna a bucket of steaming water and a cloth. ‘Start on this geyser, and don’t drip!’

‘This geyser’ was Milton in old age, whose marble head stared thoughtfully and somewhat snottily from a plinth between the windows. When Anna had rinsed and dried the poet’s face, the convolutions of his wig and the lacework on his Puritan collar, she moved on to Hercules resting — unnecessarily, she could not help feeling — on a slain lion, whose mane had most horribly collected the dust. Next came the overmantel depicting scenes from Dante’s Inferno .

‘Better wring your cloth out harder for those,’ advised Louise, looking with disgust at the tortured souls writhing in agony across the chimney breast. ‘Bloomin’ sculpture! I hate the stuff.’

By this time Anna’s water was black with dirt and she had carefully to carry her bucket down a long parquet corridor, across the blue john and jasper tiles of the great hall, down the service stairs and through a green baize door into the scullery, where Florence, the ancient scullery maid, filled it for her. She was crossing the great hall again when Fate dealt her an undeserved blow in the form of Baskerville, who discovered her with yelps of joy in a place where it was meet and right for her to be and padded passionately after her into the library. Nor could James, trying to dismantle the chandeliers, or Louise, cleaning the windows, prevent him from lying like a felled ox across the foot of the stepladder on which Anna, scrubbing Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in a niche above the door, was precariously perched with her bucket.

By lunchtime Anna’s back ached and her hands were sore but she persevered and she kept — though this was harder — silence. It was late in the afternoon when, moving a silver photograph frame to safety, she found herself staring for the first time at the long-awaited earl.

The photograph, taken just before the war, showed two young men standing on the steps that led to the front door. The older was strikingly handsome, with regular features, springing hair and an easy smile. The other, who was hardly more than a boy, was slighter, darker, and had turned half-away as though looking at a landscape visible to him alone.

‘That’s Lord George, the one that was killed,’ said Peggy, coming over to her and pointing at the older of the two. ‘He was a smasher! My, didn’t we half have to run for it when he was around!’

‘And this is the new earl?’ queried Anna. ‘His brother?’

‘That’s right. Mr Rupert, he was then. He’s much quieter like. Got a lovely smile, though.’

‘He looks nice, I think,’ said Anna, and stepping over the recumbent Baskerville, she began to scrub the cold and protuberent stomach of Frederick the Great.

Just before it was time to pack up for the day, Proom appeared silently as was his wont and took Louise aside.

‘Any difficulties?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Anna.

‘Not really,’ said Louise reluctantly. ‘Except for that bloomin’ dog following her about. She’s as green as they come, of course, but she hasn’t stopped, not for a minute. And I must say you don’t have to tell her anything twice.’

On her third day at Mersham Anna discovered that the butler, so regal and authoritative in the servants’ hall, suffered from a bedridden and deeply eccentric mother, with whom he shared a cottage in the stable block.

She had spent the whole day in the windowless scullery washing, piece by exquisite piece, the Meissen dinner service — a tedious and frighteningly responsible job with which Proom, rather to his own surprise, had entrusted her. Seeing her pallor and the circles under her eyes, Mrs Park had sent her out to the kitchen garden with a message for the under-gardener, Ted.

Anna was on her way back, crossing the stableyard, when a pot of geraniums flew out of an upstairs window and crashed into pieces at her feet. Retrieving the remains of the shattered pot and going to investigate, she found herself in the presence of an ancient, ferocious old lady, glaring like a beleagured ferret at the end of a high brass bed. Mrs Proom’s appendix, removed ten years earlier in Maidens Over Cottage Hospital, stood in a glass jar on a shelf above her head; various lumps under the counterpane indicated that she had taken the silver to bed in case of burglars.

‘Who are you? Why are you dressed like that? Where’s Cyril? I want my tea!’ she began.

‘I am dressed like this because I am a housemaid. Mr Proom is decanting the claret and I will bring your tea if you permit,’ Anna replied.

Half an hour later, Mr Proom, noticing with foreboding the remains of the broken flowerpot and wearily ascending the stairs to his mother’s room, found her absorbed in a game of dominoes in which the new housemaid was cheating, with an expertise which shattered him, so as to let the old lady win.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mother,’ he began.

‘Sh! Be quiet, Cyril. I don’t need you,’ said the old woman, gleefully moving a piece.

Only when Anna had left did she ask again: ‘Who is that girl? Why is she dressed like that?’

‘I’ve told you, she’s the new housemaid, Mother.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Mrs Proom.

Anna had been at Mersham for a week before she met the first member of the family. In addition to the Lady Mary Westerholme, the dowager countess, Mersham had for many years provided sanctuary for the present earl’s great uncle, the Honourable Mr Sebastien Frayne. It being Louise’s day off, Anna was instructed to take up his tea.

‘You want to listen outside the door,’ Peggy told Anna. ‘There’ll be some music playing on the gramophone. If it’s that stuff all loud an’ wailin’ an’ women shrieking and that, you want to watch out. Specially there’s one called the Libby’s Tott or something. If he’s playing that you want to keep the tray between you an’ him and put it down and run quick. But if it’s that stuff that sounds like church, you know, all on the level and not much tune, then it’s all right to have a chat. Not that it’s ever more than a bit of a pinch and a grope, but you not being used to it like…’

It was with a sinking heart that Anna, pausing outside Mr Sebastien’s door, heard the unmistakable sound of the Liebestod issuing forth. Isolde was dying and she was dying hard. Bravely, Anna knocked and entered.

Mr Sebastien Frayne was reclining on a large Chesterfield, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his hands folded over a large stomach. He was close on eighty and seldom left his room, which resembled the den of a musical badger, strewn with manuscript paper, ashtrays, music stands and books. There was egg on his dressing gown and his white hair was dotted with cigarette ash, but the eyes he turned to the door were the blue and candid eyes of a child.

‘I have brought you your tea, sir,’ said Anna, above the soaring voice of the soprano issuing from the huge horn.