A Stairs - Eva Ibbotson

He accelerated to pass a Model T Ford and though his skilled driving had effected the manoeuvre with perfect smoothness, the Lady Lavinia managed to hurl herself, as if impelled, against his side. She was the worst by far. When it was her turn to sit in front there was nothing to which this high-born lady would not stoop, yet when there was anyone looking on she spoke to him as his reactionary old grandfather would never in his life have spoken to the humblest of his serfs. And in the back of the car he could hear her four sisters snickering and bickering and awaiting their turn. How had Hudson wangled it, Sergei wondered, so that he went ahead conveying only the duke and duchess and the trunks? True, Hudson was the senior chauffeur, but he might have distributed the load a little less unevenly.

Sergei sighed, assisted the Lady Lavinia to right herself and apologized for the non-existent jolt. If only, h thought, any of the girls had had just one redeeming feature: pretty hair, nice eyes, a fondness for little children - it might have been possible to snub them even if, as seemed likely, they would retaliate by seeing that he lost his job. But how could one rebuff girls of such unredeemed ugliness, girls who had only to appear at any social gathering to send every young man in the room running for cover?

‘Boch ti moy,’ sighed Sergei, calling on his Maker. And at Heslop, where he was to spend three nights, there would be the lady’s maids, the upper housemaids … And another complication. For one of his duties there would be to drive the Lady Lavinia to and from Mersham where she was staying. And Mersham was the place where Anna, so Pinny had told him, was also staying as a guest. He’d have to be very careful not to be seen by her in his role of chauffeur. Anna was quite incapable of acting sensibly and cutting him dead.

Anna … As he thought of her, Sergei smiled -that dazzling, tender smile of his - and the Lady Lavinia, seeing it, edged closer. But Sergei was far away now … In the birch woods round Grazbaya as Anna ran towards him cupping fresh-picked wild strawberries for him in her hands … Anna, whose cry of ‘Look, Seriosha, oh, look!’ had been the thread running through their childhood as she shared with him her delight in a ring of white and crimson toadstools, a new foal, a skein of wild geese flying south to the Urals. If only he could find a job that would make it possible for him to look after her, and Petya too. She’d looked so tired when he saw her last at the club, so thin. Or should he, after all, marry Larissa Rakov like the grand duchess wanted? He’d fled from the baroness’ pallid plainness, her boring conversation, but compared to the Nettleford girls, the grand duchess’ dumpy lady-in-waiting seemed a miracle of propriety and intelligence and she was certainly very rich. Her banker father had seen the catastrophe coming long before anyone else and transferred all his assets to London. If he married Larissa, he could make a home for his parents and the Grazinskys too.

Beside him, the Lady Lavinia, watching the tender lines of his mouth as he thought of Anna, felt her heart miss a beat. There was no question, of course, of her losing her head. She was travelling towards her destiny in the person of the Honourable Tom Byrne in whose arms, as Undine the Water Sprite, she would, in less than twenty-four hours, circle the ballroom of Heslop Hall. But really this foreigner was shatteringly attractive. Would a small pinch on the thigh be going too far?

They had reached York and, following instructions, Sergei drew into the courtyard of the King’s Hotel where Hudson was already parked. He opened the doors and the girls swept haughtily past him into the restaurant.

‘We’re to wait here by the cars, her grace says,’ said Hudson. ‘No gallivanting off.’

Sergei nodded. He had been less than six weeks in the service of the Nettlefords, but long enough to know that their chauffeurs need not expect anything as vulgar and mundane as lunch.

- - - -*

‘You’re late,’ said Hawkins, Heslop’s awe-inspiring butler, staring disapprovingly from his great height at Anna. It was the evening of the ball. Anna had been conveyed to Heslop by the carter, an uncle of Peggy and Pearl, and now stood nervously before Hawkins, her eyes cast down. She had not thought of Selina Strickland for some days, but now she felt a pang of longing for the Domestic Compendium. For Heslop, with its labyrinthine corridors, its vast staff and rigid protocol, was a different world from Mersham.

And she was late. Furious at being deprived of Anna’s services, Muriel had kept her to the last second, finding a dozen unnecessary jobs for her to do, so that if it hadn’t been for the dowager’s Alice almost pushing Anna out of the door, she could not have come at all.

‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ she said - and immediately came under fire from the other half of Heslop’s Dual Monarchy: the formidable housekeeper, Miss Peel. »

‘Pull your hair back, girl. We don’t allow waves !’

Anna pulled dutifully at her hair. Louise, consulting with Mrs Bassenthwaite in hospital, had put Anna into the uniform the maids had been issued for Lord George’s Twenty-first: a black silk dress to the instep, a white fichu, a short apron of snowy lawn finely tuckered and edged with lace. A frilled cap of the same lawn was set demurely back on Anna’s dark head.

‘It’s old-fashioned but it’ll be right for Heslop,’ Mrs Bassenthwaite had said, ‘with Miss Peel being such a stickler.’

Unable to find fault with Anna’s appearance, yet aware that the girl somehow did not look as she wanted her to look. Miss Peel said, ‘Let me see your fingernails.’

Anna extended her hands. The obvious antagonism she had felt the moment she set foot in Heslop hurt and puzzled her. She was too inexperienced to realize what an affront her arrival was to servants jealous of their privileges and rights. As though they couldn’t provide all that was necessary for the ball without an upstart and a foreigner being wished on them! Not only that, but she was to be employed upstairs, in a position of prominence, serving drinks in the great hall when the guests arrived and showing the ladies to the cloakrooms. Unable to take their resentment out on Lady Byrne who had given these instructions, they prepared to give no quarter to the foreign girl who by all accounts had been thoroughly spoilt at Mersham.

‘I’ll take her along to get started,’ said Hawkins now. ‘She’s too late for tea, the girls are just coming out.’

Anna, who due to Muriel’s bullying had had no lunch, repressed a sigh, curtsied to the housekeeper and followed Mr Hawkins down a short flight of steps, along a winding corridor and through an enfilade of sculleries and store rooms to the pantries. Minna had done everything she could to provide her servants with comfort: the floors were carpeted, there were electric lights, new boilers, glass-fronted cupboards - but the tone of an establishment is set by those who run it and Anna was not surprised, passing the kitchens, to hear a scream and see the door burst open to eject a hysterically weeping kitchen maid who gave a gasp of terror at the sight of Hawkins, threw her apron over her head and scuttled blindly away.

Mr Hawkins stopped at the door of a large pantry where three girls under a barrage of admonitions from the first footman, were laying out trays of glasses and cutlery.

‘Here’s the Russian girl, Charles,’ said Mr Hawkins, pushing Anna into the room. ‘She’s to go upstairs at eight, but there’s plenty of time for her to make herself useful before then.’

‘There is indeed,’ said the first footman with a sour smile. He turned to Anna. ‘You can start by rinsing all those knives through hot water and polishing them. Hot water, mind, and no fuss about it hurting your hands. The sink’s over there.’