“You’ve got circles under your eyes the size of quarters.” The cook’s face was red and suspicious, and her thin black hair was already wisping away from the side of her cap. Christmas was her Armageddon, the annual life-and-death climax of her struggle against the towering demands of an Important Family during the festive season.
Olive wanted to say that she had already laid the fires and scrubbed the floors and polished the silver for Christmas Eve dinner, and all before nine o’clock in the morning. She had served breakfast to Mr. and Mrs. Pratt and Miss Prunella Pratt at nine thirty (really, how many cups of coffee could a man drink?) and cleaned up the table afterward. She had done all this on exactly two hours and forty-eight minutes of sleep, and if she had circles under her eyes, she had damned well earned them.
On the other hand, if anyone in the Pratt mansion was working harder than Olive just now, it was Mrs. Jackins.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said instead. “It’s so exciting, my first Christmas here.”
“It’s a load of bother, is what it is,” the cook said, conciliatory. She tucked the loose hair back under her cap and glanced up at the clock. “And them boys not even awake yet. Up to no good last night, I don’t doubt. Boys that age is never up to any good.”
Was it Olive’s imagination, or did the cook put a bit of emphasis on those words?
She shrugged. “It must be nice, being rich.”
“Well, and so it is nice, but it’s not for the likes of us working folk. Do you hear me, Olive? Now—”
But the sharp ring of a bell interrupted her words, and she glanced up at the row of them on the wall.
“Master Harry,” she said, sighing. “He’ll be wanting his coffee.”
“I’ll get it,” Olive said quickly.
“Oh, and you will, will you?”
“It’s my job, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Jackins put her hands on her spacious hips. “You and the half dozen other housemaids who might take Master Harry his morning coffee.”
Olive took a tray from the cupboard and began to collect the coffee service. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I? I might as well.”
“Now, Olive,” said the cook. “You stop banging that china around for a moment and listen to me. Olive!”
Olive sighed and set down the sugar bowl.
Mrs. Jackins’s right index finger appeared out of nowhere, scolding the warm kitchen air. “I’ve been in service near all me life, and I’ve never seen it turn out well.”
“Seen what turn out well?”
“You know what I mean.”
Olive marched to the nearest stovetop, where the enamel coffeepot sat on a round back burner, keeping hot. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“You and Master Harry. I’ve seen the way the two of you look at each other. Like I said, I’ve been in service me whole life, and I knows a look when I sees it.” Under moments of emotion, Mrs. Jackins’s original accent slipped out, a relic of her upbringing an ocean away. She had moved to America when she was eight or nine, she’d once told Olive over tea one evening, and had started as a scullery maid in a house off Washington Square, moving both upward and uptown as she grew apace with Manhattan itself. While Olive couldn’t guess how old the woman was—her hair was still dark, but her face was red and wrinkled—she could well imagine that no aspect of downstairs life hid for long from Mrs. Jackins’s experienced eye.
Still, Olive had no choice but to brazen it out. She poured hot coffee into the elegant porcelain pot, replaced the lid, and set it carefully on the tray, without so much as glancing in Mrs. Jackins’s direction. “You’re imagining things. I wouldn’t dream of looking at Master Harry, and as for him, why—”
A hand closed gently around her arm. “Now, Olive. You just listen to me one minute. One single minute; that’s all. I’m not casting no stones. I’m not after tattling on you to herself. But I seen all this before, masters and servants, and trust me, my dear, no good can come of it. No good, do you hear me?”
“It’s not like that,” Olive whispered.
Mrs. Jackins removed her hand and sighed. “And there it is. All you girls think it’s different for you, that you’re the special one. It’ll all work out for you, won’t it? But listen to me, dearie. Listen good.” She leaned toward Olive’s ear. “It never does. You ain’t special. The world don’t work that way. Masters and servants, mixing together. Never did, never will. Take my advice, Olive dearie. If you want to be happy, set those sights of yours a wee bit lower. A fine man like Master Harry might fancy a pretty housemaid like you, but curse me if he ever marries her. Why, we had a housemaid just last summer, didn’t we, who set her cap for Master August and wound up in a right fix—”
Olive pulled away and picked up the tray. Her face was hot and tight. “Thanks very much for your advice, Mrs. Jackins. I’ll just run this coffee upstairs, now, won’t I?”
Mrs. Jackins rolled her eyes upward and turned away. “Have it your way, dearie. But Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be? Right here on Sixty-ninth Street, ironing them tablecloths, hoping you ain’t in a fix of your own.”