Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

‘Lady wants to buy your portrait,’ said the man.

The black woman stared at Hannah then said something in a language I didn’t speak. Not French. Something far more foreign.

The man laughed and said to Hannah, ‘It’s not for sale.’ He reached out then and grabbed her chin. Alarm pulsed loudly in my ears. Even Hannah flinched as he held her firmly, turned her head from side to side then let her go. ‘Trade only.’

‘Trade?’ said Hannah.

‘Your own image,’ said the man in his heavy accent. He shrugged. ‘You take hers, you leave your own.’

The very thought! A portrait of Hannah-in Lord knew what state of undress-left hanging here in this dismal French alley for all who cared to see! It was unthinkable.

‘We have to go, ma’am,’ I said with a firmness that surprised me. ‘Mr Luxton. He’ll be expecting us.’

My tone must have surprised Hannah too, for to my relief she nodded. ‘Yes. You’re right, Grace.’

She walked with me to the door, but as I waited for her to pass through she turned back to the charcoal man. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said faintly. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

We did not speak on the way back to the car. Hannah walked quickly, her face set. That night I lay awake, anxious and afraid, wondering how to stop her, certain that I must. There was something in the sketch that unsettled me; something I saw in Hannah’s reflection when she looked at it: a flicker reignited.

Lying in my bed that night, sounds of the street took on a malevolence they hadn’t had before. Foreign voices, foreign sounds, a woman’s laughter in a nearby apartment. I longed to return to England, to a place where the rules were clear and everybody knew their place. It didn’t exist, of course, this England, but the night times have a way of encouraging extremes.

As it happens, things next morning took care of themselves. When I went to dress Hannah, Teddy was already awake and sitting in the armchair. His head was still aching, he said, but what kind of a husband would he be if he left his pretty wife alone on the final day of their honeymoon? He suggested they go shopping. ‘It’s our last day. I’d like to take you out to pick some souvenirs. Something to remind you of Paris.’

When they returned, I noted, the sketch was not amongst the things Hannah had me pack for England. I am not sure whether Teddy refused and she acceded, or whether she knew better than to ask, but I was glad. Teddy had bought her a fur wrap instead: mink, with brittle little paws and dull black eyes.

And so we returned to England.

I am thirsty. There is someone sitting beside me again, but it is not Sylvia. It is a woman, heavily pregnant, with bags of knitted dolls and homemade jams at her feet. Her face is shiny and moist, and her makeup has slipped an inch since application. Black crescents rest on her upper cheeks. She is looking at me, has been watching me for some time, I suspect.

I nod; it seems to be expected. She continues to look, waiting for something. She has the concentrated attitude of one who’s been listening. Have I been talking? Making a spectacle? I do not know. More and more I cannot trust myself. And I do not like to stand out; I am used to being invisible.

‘Lovely day,’ she says finally. ‘Nice and warm.’ She does not believe it herself. I can see the beads of sweat about her hairline. The darker strip of fabric that clings beneath her heavy breasts.

‘Lovely,’ I say. ‘Very warm.’

She smiles wearily and looks away.

We returned to London on 2 July 1919, the day of the Peace Procession. The driver steered us through cars and omnibuses and horse-drawn carriages, along crowd-lined streets where people had crammed together to wave flags and streamers. The ink was still wet on the treaty, sanctions that would lead to the bitterness and division responsible for the next world war, but folk back home knew none of that. Not then. They were just glad that the south wind no longer dragged the sound of gunfire across the channel. That there’d be no more boys dying at the hands of other boys on the plains of France.

The car dropped me off with the bags at the London townhouse and then continued. Simion and Estella were expecting the newlyweds to join them for afternoon tea. Hannah would have preferred to go straight home, but Teddy was insistent. He hid a smile. He had something up his sleeve.

A footman emerged from the front entrance, took a suitcase in each hand, then disappeared back into the house. Hannah’s personal bag he left at my feet. I was surprised. I hadn’t expected other servants, not yet, and wondered vaguely who’d engaged him.

I stood, breathing in the atmosphere of the square. Gasoline mingled with the sweet tang of warm manure. I craned my neck to take in all six storeys of the grand house. It was brown brick with white columns either side of the front entrance, and it stood to attention in a line of identical others. One of the white columns bore the black number: 17. Number seventeen, Grosvenor Square. My new home where I was to be a real lady’s maid.

The servants’ entrance was a flight of stairs that ran parallel to the street, from pavement to basement, and was bordered by a black cast-iron railing. I picked up Hannah’s bag of particulars and started down.

The door was closed but muffled voices, unmistakably angry, seeped from inside. Through the basement window I saw the back of a girl whose bearing (‘saucy,’ Mrs Townsend would have said), along with the flock of bouncy yellow curls escaping from beneath her hat, gave the impression of youthfulness. She was arguing with a short, fat man whose neck was disappearing beneath a red stain of indignation.

She punctuated a final, triumphant statement by swinging a bag over her shoulder and striding toward the door. Before I could move, she had pushed it open and we were face to startled face, warped reflections in a sideshow mirror. She reacted first; hearty laughter that sprayed saliva on my neck. ‘And I thought housemaids was hard to come by!’ she said. ‘Well you’re welcome to it. Fat chance I’m going to scrounge around in other people’s dirty houses for minimum wage!’

She pushed past and dragged her suitcase up the stairs. At the top she turned and shouted, ‘Say goodbye Izzy Batterfield, bonjour Mademoiselle Isabella!’ And with a final ripple of laughter, a theatrical flounce of her skirt, she was gone. Before I could respond. Explain that I was a lady’s maid. Not a housemaid at all.

I knocked on the door, still ajar. There was no answer and I took myself inside. It had the unmistakeable smell of silver polish (though not Stubbins & Co.) and potatoes, but there was something else, something underlying it, which, though not unpleasant, rendered everything unfamiliar.

The man was at the table, a skinny woman standing behind, hands draped over his shoulders, gnarled hands, skin red and torn around the fingernails. They turned to me as one. The woman had a large black mole beneath her left eye.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘I-’

‘Good, is it?’ said the man. ‘I’ve just lost my third housemaid in as many weeks. We’ve a party scheduled for two hours hence, Mrs Tibbit’s so behind she’s got a cow’s tail, and you want me to believe it’s a good afternoon?’

‘There now,’ said the woman, pursing her lips. ‘She was a tarty one, that Izzy. Career as a fortune teller, indeed. If she’s got the gift, I’m the Queen of Sheba. She’ll meet her end at the hands of an unhappy customer. You see if I’m wrong!’

There was something in the way she said it, a cruel smile that played about her lips, a glimmer of repressed glee in her voice, that made me shudder. I was overcome by a desire to turn and leave the way I’d come, but I remembered Mr Hamilton’s advice that I was to start as I meant to continue. I cleared my throat and said, with all the poise I could muster, ‘My name is Grace Reeves.’