Chapter Fourteen #2
Alexander, still in dresses, exhibited his new teeth in a delighted smile. Louis broke free from Jessie’s hand and ran to Richard. He swung the child up high in the air, making him squeal, then settled him on his hip. ‘How would you like to catch sticklebacks? I think it’s high time you learned.’
‘What’s stickerbacks?’ Louis demanded.
‘Something every self-respecting boy in nankins ought to know about. It involves paddling in streams and getting very, very muddy.’
‘Oh, sir!’ Jessie said reproachfully.
Louis crowed with delight. ‘Stickerbacks, stickerbacks!’’
‘I was thinking I might start teaching him to ride,’ Alice said.
‘Excellent idea. What a crowded diary young Lord Ayton will have! We’ll have to make an appointment just to tickle him,’ Richard said, beginning there and then and, when Louis wriggled, giggling, out of his arms, chasing him obligingly up the stairs.
One afternoon Alice was sitting on the floor up in the nursery.
Louis, worn out by pleasure, sprawled asleep beside her in the utterly abandoned way of the very young, as though he had slipped off his body and gone adventuring among the stars.
Alexander was napping in his cot, and Nanny was dozing in a chair in the corner, her sewing abandoned in her lap, her soft, moist breathing lapping like a gentle tide against the shores of the warm afternoon.
Richard had gone off to attend to some letters and the dogs had gone with him, probably for a little peace and quiet.
They were getting old now, and a fellow could have enough of having his ears and tail pulled, even when it was done from love.
There would be more disturbance for them tomorrow – Mrs Webster had asked Richard if she could call in the chimney-sweeps.
It was something that was usually done in August when the family was away, and it was unwise to put it off.
A chimney fire had burned down Priestwood Hall – twenty years or more ago, but the memory was seared into local minds.
The chimney-sweeping meant a great deal of disruption, including on the last day putting out the kitchen fires – a day of cold food, which Mrs Terry prepared for with a great baking of pies and roasting of hams. It would be a time of adventure for Louis, and even more so for the nursery maids who would have to try to stop him disappearing up chimneys, eating soot and generally getting filthy.
Alice had enjoyed being substitute mother to the boys.
She especially enjoyed reading to Louis every day – his appetite for stories was voracious.
Unfortunately there were few books in the house suitable for a child.
Today she had tried Gulliver’s Travels, but though the idea of tiny people appealed to Louis, the language was too difficult, and she’d had to paraphrase as she went along.
At least it had sent him comfortably to sleep.
She took up her sketching-pad and a soft pencil, and quickly drew the sleeping child in his wonderfully boneless sprawl.
She turned the page and drew Nanny, thrown into sharp chiaroscuro by the August sunshine slanting through the nursery window, deepening the shadows in the depths of the armchair and the folds of the dress.
Rather pleased with it, she turned over a new sheet, and began a drawing for Louis, of the Lilliputians tying Gulliver’s shoelaces.
She drew an enormous pair of feet in brogues, and the little people climbing over them, hauling on the laces, some with backs turned and the lace over their shoulder, like dock workers with ships’ cables.
Louis was still asleep when she finished, so she began another.
That was the way to tell him the story, she thought, through pictures.
And why stop at Gulliver? She could tell him the fairy stories she remembered from her childhood, and do drawings for them, too.
And not only pencil drawings: she could do water-colours, and collected together they would create something special for him to treasure through his childhood.
She felt a tremor of excitement at the thought.
It would be something worthwhile to occupy her time.
She would never be a great artist now, but she knew she was good enough for this.
It was the tradition at the end of chimney-sweeping to hold a party out in the yard, a feast with beer and a bonfire and dancing. It was one of the below-stairs highlights of the year.
This year the question arose as to whether Mr Richard and Lady Alice should be invited.
Moss was troubled. On the one hand, the tradition was ‘servants only’.
On the other hand, that two members of the Family should perhaps think themselves snubbed and neglected was unacceptable.
A debate bloomed in the servants’ hall. One faction held that having any Upstairs there would force them on to their best behaviour and spoil the evening; another said that Mr Richard and Lady Alice were not stuffy and might even add to the fun; a third that if they didn’t come, someone would have to remain on duty to answer bells.
Then someone suggested taking a vote, and Moss realised with horror how far things had gone.
He rapped the table for attention and told them very firmly that there would be no republican nonsense at Ashmore Castle, thank you very much!
He had to make an instant decision, and heard himself decree that it would be the right thing to do to ask Mr Richard and Lady Alice.
Of course, he mused as he pottered back to his room, they might decline to come anyway.
‘I thought it was only for the servants,’ Alice said.
‘I imagine they felt they couldn’t very well leave us out,’ said Richard. ‘The awareness of us mouldering upstairs like spectres at the feast would turn the food to ashes in their mouths.’
‘I suppose now they’ve asked us, we have to go,’ Alice said doubtfully.
‘Of course. But don’t look like that. It will be fun,’ Richard said.
‘I don’t know what to wear,’ Alice said.
He grinned. ‘You have grown up, little sister! A year ago that would never have occurred to you.’
On Rose’s advice she had put on a plain old skirt and shirt she usually only wore for walking when the paths were muddy, and did her hair in a simple plait hanging down behind.
‘That way you won’t stand out like a sore thumb.’
Alice read her expression. ‘Do you think we shouldn’t go?’
‘You can do as you please, my lady,’ Rose said, which was a statement of fact.
Alice saw through that. ‘But why don’t you want us to?’
‘Upstairs is upstairs and Downstairs is downstairs,’ Rose said. ‘It don’t do to mix the two.’
Alice blushed with vexation, afraid she meant Uncle Sebastian and Dory. ‘We don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun,’ she said, with dignity.
Rose pressed her lips together, as if a number of things were wanting to be said all at the same time. What she did say in the end was ‘You’ve said you’re going now. It’d look worse if you didn’t turn up.’
So Alice began by feeling uncomfortable when she and Richard went out together into the throng gathered in the yard. Just at first she stuck close to Richard and effaced herself. But he was in a jolly mood, plunged in, and was soon separated from her.
There were enough people there to absorb two Upstairs folk without dampening the mood, and the little bubble of awkwardness around Alice dissipated.
In the crush of bodies she was no-one and anyone and invisible.
She felt a little like the princess who dresses up as a peasant to go out and mingle with her people.
She might have expected to know everyone, but there were some old retainers who had retired too long ago for her to remember them, and there were relatives of the servants whom she had never met.
The food smelt wonderful and she was hungry, and eating was a great leveller.
She found to her amusement that there were several young men who didn’t know who she was, in her plain clothes, and vied with each other to fetch her things and sit beside her.
When the dancing began, it turned out that she hadn’t yet quite thrown off the mantle of royalty, for no-one asked her, though it looked like fun and she’d have liked to jig about with the rest. She stood to one side watching, her foot tapping to the tune.
And then a shiver ran down her back as she became aware of someone standing close behind her.
‘I like your hair done like that,’ Axe said, very quietly.
She closed her eyes, feeling his presence on every inch of her skin. ‘I didn’t know you were here,’ she said, equally quietly. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Didn’t mean you to.’
He moved, in his silent way, to be standing beside her, pushed close to her by the crowd. She liked the great size and weight of him next to her, like a bulwark against all harm.
‘I saw you, though. Saw that Nicky Cooper bringing you sausages, the cheek of him!’ He spoke without looking at her and without moving his lips. If she did the same, no-one would suspect anything. ‘Thought he’d be asking you to dance by now.’
She felt a small, ignoble thrill that he might be jealous. ‘No-one’s going to ask me. I’m Upstairs. Rose said no good ever comes from mixing Upstairs and Downstairs.’
‘Your Rose has got opinions. Doesn’t mean she’s right.’
‘Dancing with me would be going too far.’
‘I’d like to dance with you.’ It was said with the unspoken rider but I can’t.
She searched for something less fraught to say. ‘I’m doing some new drawings. You remember Gulliver’s Travels?’
‘That I do,’ he said, with pleasure.
It was one of the books she had borrowed for him. They had discussed it afterwards, and she remembered that some of the things he had said had made her see parts of it in a different light. She missed those times. She felt she had gained as much from his reading as he had.
‘I tried reading it to Louis, but it’s too old for him. So I thought I’d just tell him the story, and make illustrations to go with it.’
‘Illustrations.’ He seemed to savour the word.