‘A picnic. We’ll set the tray on the rug, then we’ll sit on the floor and eat as though we’re on a riverbank somewhere, enjoying the sunshine.’
She laughed again. ‘Mrs Beddows and her friends reminisce with tales of midnight feasts at their school, but this sounds much more fun.’
We cleared a space on the rug in the centre of the room, and set about laying out our feast. Morgan had said Betty was a quiet one, but it seemed she was happy enough to open up when she was safely away from the household staff.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said as I set out the plates and cutlery. ‘I’d heard they were at school together.’
‘Yes, one of the early girls’ schools. Mrs Beddows, Miss Titmus, and Lady Lavinia—’
‘Jake,’ I said.
‘Jake,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘What a horrid name. I think it was Mrs Beddows who came up with that one. But those three were “the best of chums”, they say.’
‘And remain so to this day, it seems.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Although between you and me, I’ve never quite been able to work out why. They don’t seem to have very much in common apart from having all been to the same school.’
‘Those are the experiences that bind us together,’ I said, pleased with myself for this display of apparent sagacity.
‘Like being in the army?’ she said.
‘Or prison. Actually, it’s probably more like prison from everything I hear about these schools. Have you read Tom Brown’s Schooldays?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, it’s no wonder the ruling classes are so peculiar, that’s all I can say.’
She laughed. ‘They do have access to nice things, though,’ she said, holding up one of the chilled champagne bottles. ‘How do you open these things?’
I took the chilled bottle from her, and removed the foil and cage. She ducked back and put her hand in front of her face.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘One thing I do know about champagne is that the cork pops out and flies around the room.’
‘Only if it’s opened by an idiot,’ I said. Gripping the cork firmly in my right hand and twisting the bottle with my left, I eased the cork out with a soft ‘pop’ and began to pour.
‘I say,’ she said delightedly. ‘That’s not at all how Mrs Beddows does it.’
‘That must be because,’ I said, topping off the glasses, ‘Mrs Beddows . . .’
‘. . . is an idiot,’ she said gleefully. We clinked glasses.
For the best part of an hour, we grazed our way through a selection of Mrs Ruddle’s finest buffet food as we supped champagne and put the world to rights. As we neared the end of the first bottle, and I coached Betty in the arcane art of champagne opening, my previously quiet and slightly reserved companion became increasingly garrulous.
‘Do you ever wish you could just jack it all in and go off somewhere on your own?’ she said through a mouthful of smoked salmon.
I thought for a moment. ‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think I do.’
‘What, never?’ she said incredulously. ‘A woman like you is happy to just be someone’s servant for the rest of your life?’
‘I’m not completely certain I know exactly what a woman like me is,’ I said. ‘But yes, I think I am. Lady Hardcastle and I have been through a lot together over the years, and I think we’re more than just employer and servant by now – we’re friends. And I’m more than happy to look after my friend.’
She sighed. And then hiccupped. ‘That must be nice,’ she said sadly. ‘I can’t imagine ever being friends with Mrs Beddows. Nor wanting to be, I must say.’
‘It does make a difference,’ I said. ‘I can’t say that many people approve, but I’d like to meet the people who could live the life that we have and still maintain the “proper” social walls between them.’
‘The lives that you’ve lived?’ she said. ‘In Gloucestershire, or wherever it is? Are there stories to tell?’
And so for the rest of the evening I treated her to tales of our past. Over many retellings, I had honed versions of the stories that skirted around the delicate matter of our employment as agents of the Crown, but I told her as much as discretion would allow. I told her of my journey to Shanghai as Lady Hardcastle’s maid when her husband was posted there by the Foreign Office. I told her of Sir Rodney’s murder and our flight into the heart of China. I judged (correctly as it turned out) that she would be impressed by the story of my mastery of the Chinese fighting arts under the tutelage of a monk who had helped us to the Burmese border. And by the time we had sailed down the Irrawaddy in a rickety boat and then found our way on to a steamer bound for Calcutta, she was positively agog.
‘Blimey,’ she said when the story had finally brought us back to England. ‘Well, no wonder you’re close. What amazing women you are. I couldn’t imagine doing half of what you managed, and Mrs Beddows would have been shot very early on for being vile. Probably by me.’
We both laughed. ‘The more I hear of your mistress,’ I said, ‘the less I like the sound of her.’
‘Oh, you just wait till you meet her,’ she said, waving her glass at me and slopping champagne on to the rug. ‘Then you can tell me whether you’d have shot her, too.’
‘Oh, I’m a dreadful shot,’ I said. ‘Lady Hardcastle, on the other hand . . . Now, there’s a lady who can shoot the sweat off a fat man’s forehead at a hundred paces. I prefer more . . . personal methods of dispatch.’
She grinned. ‘Perhaps you could take care of her for me.’
I laughed. ‘She can’t be that bad.’
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it,’ she said. ‘Just you wait and see.’
I steered the conversation towards less homicidal topics, and we were soon trading stories of our childhoods. Once again, though, she confessed herself disappointed that her life in Norfolk hadn’t been a patch on my life as one of the children of a circus knife-thrower and the wife he’d lured away from the Valleys. We were on safer, common ground, though, when my family returned to South Wales so that my mother could care for my frail grandmother. And when I entered service as a housemaid in Cardiff, our lives were parallel at last. Even if only briefly.
By now, the second bottle of champagne was empty and there was nought but crumbs on the tray, so we retired to our beds and left the mess until morning.
Chapter Five
Lady Hardcastle and I had agreed that the morning after the party would be a leisurely one, and that we should neither of us bother to rise early. It was something of a disappointment, then, when there was a soft but insistent knocking on the bedroom door at seven o’clock.
‘Who is it?’ I said, in what I hoped was a friendly tone, but which I feared might betray the irritation I felt at being denied my lie-in.
The door opened and Patty peered timidly round it.
‘Sorry to disturb you, miss,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Mrs Beddows; she wants Miss Buffrey.’
‘Not your fault, Patty,’ I said. ‘Betty? Betty!’
Betty mumbled, but didn’t seem to awaken, even though she was in the bed nearer the door and lay between Patty and me as we spoke.
‘Betty!’ I said more insistently. ‘Mrs Beddows wants you.’