“Imight,” Audrey explained to her two new companions, “have accidentally started a sequence of events thatmighthave resulted in an elderly woman getting your bedroom mixed up with a bedroom that…” She struggled for a moment to find the words. “That meant a lot to her when she was younger.”
“Did she used to live here?” asked the manager. “Before it was a hotel.”
“No,” Audrey replied. And then because that wasn’t accurate, “Well, yes. Sort of. I’m guessing a bit.”
The lift stopped at the second floor and the little group made their way up the corridor to room 214. The manager opened the door to reveal a pretty little bedroom, still decorated in vintage style, with Doris sitting morosely on the end of the double bed. “Oh,” she said as Audrey entered, “it’s you.”
Audrey waved an apologetic wave. “It’s me.”
“Wasn’t sure you’d be coming.”
“I am. I mean I did. I mean I’m here.”
The guest, who was still wrapped in a robe and thus had good reason to want things resolved quickly peered over Audrey’s shoulder. “Look can you just get her out?”
“Her’s in the room,” Doris replied dryly.
“But can you, though?” asked Audrey, striking the best balance she could between compassionate and patronising. “I get why you’re here—at least IthinkI get why you’re here. Was this her room?”
Doris nodded. “Sort of. They’ve knocked a bit through”—she pointed at one wall—“and blocked a bit off”—she pointed at another—“and the furniture’s all changed of course but it’s still…well I suppose it’s like him with the boat isn’t it?”
“If you…you didn’t do this for the story, did you? Because you didn’t need—”
But Doris was already shaking her head. “No, love. This was for me. I’ve not talked about this in so long it was—I could feel it slipping. And I didn’t want it to slip, not none of it.”
“Not none of what?” asked the guest, who seemed to be drifting now from irate towards intrigued.
Audrey was about to explain that it was private, that Doris hadn’t meant to upset anybody but that she was going through something personal and would be out of everybody’s hairimmediately, but before she could Doris said, “I can explain if you want, but it’s a long story.”
And then everyone was speaking at once, Audrey and the manager both coming down heavily on the side of “that won’t be necessary” while the guest went instead to “go on then.”
It was thego on thenthat Doris chose to listen to.
December 1951
I were in service at Patchley (Doris explained for the benefit of those who hadn’t already heard that part). Before that I’d been evacuated here and all and when I was I’d met this girl. Emily her name was, daughter of the family what owned the place back then. Back before it was sold off to be a hotel. (The Branninghams, the manager clarified.)
Me and Emily, we’d been close when we was young. Then when I’d started working at the house we’d been close again. Least we’d been as close as you could be when one of you was in service and the other was the young mistress. I’d started as a housemaid but when Miss Emily’s lady’s maid had gone off to get married, she’d put a request in for me special, like. And it were a bit irregular because I weren’t that experienced, but Sir Arthur—that’s the one it was back then, though Master James took over after he died in sixty-two—didn’t kick up a fuss.
Mrs. Loris did, though (the housekeeper, Audrey explained to the other listeners).
I was angry about it at the time because I heard some of whatshe said to the master. “Highly irregular,” she said, “cause problems below stairs,” she said. But to be fair, she were right. Other servants as had been there longer didn’t much like having to call memisslike I were better than them. Because I weren’t, really. I was just me.
They tried not to whisper too much when I was around, because even then they was nice folks in general and there’s solidarity in the servants’ quarters, but I heard things. Couldn’t not. “You know how she got it,” I remember one of them saying when she didn’t realise I was there, “what she had to do.” And I remember another saying back, “Well better her than me then.” And some of the other girls looked at me with pity, or with fear, and that felt dark and sick in a way that never quite left me, for all I loved my new position.
And I did love it. The duties were lighter, for a start; taking care of the mistress was a sight easier than taking care of whatever needed taking care of that day in a big, messy house. But what I really loved was that it kept me close to Emily. And I think she liked that it kept her close to me and all.
Each morning I’d bring her breakfast in bed, which she wouldn’t eat, though she’d drink the coffee, sitting up in her silk nightdress with her hair all mussed from the night before and spilling around her head like a halo. Only her hair weren’t gold, it was brown like oak and beautiful as the autumn.
And some days—not every day, but often enough—she’d pat the bed and I’d sit beside her and then she’d pick something from the plate she’d otherwise not have touched—bread dipped in egg, perhaps, or a single slice of thick bacon—and she’d feed it me. And her fingers would stay on my lips and then her lips would follow them, and she’d lay me down and call me her beautiful, waywardnymph, and in them moments when it was just her and me and the morning I was happier than I’d ever been. Than I’ve ever been since, in a way—though that’s an unkind thing to say because I’ve had a wonderful life. But nobody’s ever made me feel how she made me feel, when she took the time to make me feel it.
When we was done I’d turn down the bed so as not to make too much extra work for the other girls, and fix my uniform so as not to make too much of a scandal. And then I’d dress my lady and do her hair and that, and then she’d nod and sayvery good, Cooper,on account of that was my name back then, and she’d be off to face the world. And I’d take a bundle of sheets that still smelled of her and of us down to be washed, and then I’d wait until the next time she needed me.
I lived like that all the way through fifty into fifty-one, and though there were parts that were hard, and though Mrs. Loris would take me aside regular to tell me to be careful, I was swept up in it all. In this place, and in Emily.
Back in them days the gentry was still the classy sort what cared about community, so Patchley was forever hosting fairs and fetes and big events for folk from Crinkley Furze and the like. And Christmas was always a big time of year, with people coming in from as far as Tapworth to celebrate the season with the family. Some of the lower rooms was opened up—the ballroom what we does the baking in now, for example—and the grounds was all decorated and set with tents and stalls and games for the kiddies.
It was round that time in fifty-one, and I’d just finished setting the mistress’s hair. We was standing by the window (Doris had gone to the window herself at this point and was gazing out over the grounds where the TV crew were still running their cables and rigging their gear) looking down at the fete setting up beneath us.
