A Stairs - Eva Ibbotson

The butler was silent. No one more than he, who had trained James from the age of twelve, knew the blow Muriel had aimed at James. James’ skill with the silver, the unobtrusive bravura of his work at the sideboard, his knowledge of wines, all had been instilled by him. The little Cockney lad had turned himself from a scruffy lamp boy into one of the most highly trained servants in the land - and now this!

‘You’re ready for promotion, anyway,’ said Proom at last. ‘I’d hoped you’d stay and take over from me. I know her ladyship intended it. But…well, we’ll have to do it different. It’s no use speaking to Lady Byrne because Hawkins’s got his own team, but there’ll be a vacancy somewhere. When they hear you’re on the market, offers’ll come flooding in, you’ll see.’

‘I’d like not to go too far away. I reckon I’ve got used to it here,’ said James, coming as close as he could to expressing his sense of desolation at leaving the companions of a lifetime and the man who’d made him what he was. ‘Do you think her ladyship might take me on at the Mill House?’

Proom frowned. The dowager’s departure from Mersham, the restricted circumstances in which she would find herself, were a hard cross for him to bear. ‘I doubt if she’ll be taking more than a gardener-handyman. But something’ll turn up. Let’s just get this wedding behind us, shall we? You’ll stay for that?’

‘Aye, I’ll stay for that.’

- - - -*

Mr Proom returned to his cottage at dinner time with a heavy heart. Mrs Bassenthwaite was gone, James was going; he doubted if Mrs Park would last much longer with Win away. Miss Hardwicke had promised him an increased staff to train, but it was already clear that her ideas would not accord with those of Mersham.

He opened the door of his mother’s room. The bed was perfectly tidy, the flowerpots intact, even the appendix floated quietly in its bottle, but Proom was at once aware that something was wrong. He went over to the bed. Mrs Proom was cowering back against the pillows, shrunken and tiny as a child, and she was crying.

‘What is it? What’s the matter, Mother?’

The suffused blue eyes stared wretchedly up at him, the tears continued to flow silently down the raddled cheeks.

Mr Proom was appalled. His mother furious, unreasonable, mad, he could cope with. His mother unhappy and pitiful was more than he could bear.

‘I know … I’m … a nuisance to you, Cyril.’ The tears continued to well up, spill over. ‘But I’ll try to be better, Cyril … You’ll see, Cyril, I’ll be better.’ She stretched out a hand, clawed desperately at his arm.

‘Mother, what is all this about ?’

Another spate of those heartrending and silent tears…

‘I won’t do nothing bad no more, Cyril, I won’t throw nothing. Only don’t send me away. Don’t send me to the workhouse.’

‘The workhouse! Are you mad, Mother?’

‘She said … as ‘ow I must be lonely. But I’m not, Cyril.’ The little speckled claw dug deeper into his arm. ‘I’m not lonely, I’m used to it here.’

‘Who said this?’ asked Mr Proom but already, sickeningly, he knew.

‘ ‘er that’s going to marry ‘is lordship, ‘er with the eyes that don’t blink. She said… ‘as ‘ow I’d be happier with people like myself. But I wouldn’t, Cyril. I wouldn’t…’

‘I’m quite sure you wouldn’t, Mother,’ said Mr Proom, trying for a little joke.

But the terrified old woman was beyond his reach. The sobbing was building up now, she was beginning to gasp and choke - she’d make herself ill.

He began to pat her hand, to soothe her, but as she gradually became calmer Proom’s own fears increased. Had anyone asked Proom what he thought about his mother, he would have said that the old lady was a nuisance the like of which had probably never been equalled. If Mrs Proom’s Maker had seen fit to take her to his bosom one night as she slept, Proom, after giving her a fitting funeral, would have regarded himself as the most fortunate of men.

An honourable release through death was one thing. Putting the old lady into a home for deranged old people was another. Proom knew he could have gone straight to the earl and been listened to, but making trouble between a man and his intended wife was not something he cared to do. No, it looked as though he too would have to leave Mersham. Only where, with a burden such as this, could he possibly go?

The problem of what to wear at the fancy dress ball at Heslop did not concern the Herrings, for they had not been invited. Indeed, the Herrings had expressly been bidden not to arrive until the day before the wedding, and had been informed precisely from which train it would be possible to collect them. Even so, nothing could damp the pleasure of that family of layabouts and spongers at the thought of being taken up again by their posh relations.

For the Herrings’ star, which had never been conspicuously high, had of late plummeted catastrophically. The Herrings owed rent to their landlord, their grocer had forbidden them his shop and they had been turned out of their local pub. The supply of suckers on which Melvyn relied to keep body and soul together seemed, in the weeks before his noble cousin’s wedding, to have mysteriously dried up and, in the proposed visit to Mersham, Melvyn saw a clear sign that Fate was about to smile on the Herrings once again.

‘Don’t worry, Myrtle,’ he said now. ‘Aunt Mary’s a soft touch, really. She’ll see us all right.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Myrtle, who was standing by the stove in a mauve satin peignoir liberally sprinkled with grease, mixing the lethal concoction of peroxide and vinegar with which she dyed her hair. ‘But ‘ow the dickens are we goin’ to get there? There isn’t a hope in Hell of raising the rail fare for the four of us.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ said Melvyn.

‘Well, not that locking us in the lavatory one while the guard comes round, because that’s got whiskers on it,’ ‘ said Myrtle. ‘And what about clothes? I ain’t got a stitch to wear and the twins’ll have to have new trousers.’

Melvyn sighed and looked at his obese and pallid offspring, sitting on either side of the sticky kitchen table reading comics. Donald was methodically sucking a long, black stick of liquorice into his mouth. Dennis was licking at a dribbling bar of toffee. Like certain caterpillars whose short lives are dedicated to achieving simply the maximum possible increase in size, the twins seemed to have done nothing but eat and burst out of then-clothes since they were born. Watching them, Melvyn had to abandon another of his half-formed schemes -that of smuggling them to Mersham in a cello case in the guard’s van. Even a doublebass case would not take more than half of either of his sons…

‘Don’t worry, Myrtle,’ he said again, giving her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ll think of something. You’ll see.’

- - - -*

Dr Lightbody, on the other hand, was one of the favoured ones who, at Muriel’s request, had been invited for all the festivities and therefore faced the problem not only of morning clothes for the wedding, but of acquiring a suitable costume for the ball. A hot afternoon just a week before his departure for Mersham accordingly found him standing in front of the long, fly-stained mirror in the dim, dusty shop of Nathaniel and Gumsbody, the theatrical costumiers in Drury Lane. An enormous tricorne hat with a cockade lurched over his left eye, he wore a blue military coat heavily braided in gold and his arm was folded in a characteristic gesture across his chest. Unmistakably, he was the Emperor Napoleon as immortalized in the famous portrait by David.