He was silent for several seconds. Then he said, “No, it should not. If ever you smell one, you pay me a visit and tell me who the scent comes from.”
I gave some silence back to him before I said, “It’s not you. Maybe it’s not anyone. I won’t pretend my nose is always reliable.”
When I passed through the spacious butler’s pantry into the dining room, I found that Mrs. Symington was setting the table for the family dinner. The three maids serving under her had just left for the day. When I asked whether I could help, she showed me how to fold the linen napkins so they made an impression equally as elegant as the china and silverware.
“Franklin sits at the west end of the table, Loretta at the east. Forgive me if it seems odd for a housekeeper to use their first names, but they insist on it. Now that we’ve four children, two of you will sit on the north side and two on the south.”
“Where should I sit?” I asked as I worked with the napkins.
“In the south chair closest to Loretta. The conundrum is how we decide who sits next to you without causing a general consternation among the urchins. Each has come to me separately to insist on being your companion at table.”
“Really? Why ever would it matter to them?”
“You are the newcomer, and newcomers are always mysterious and exotic. Plus I understand that you made quite an impression on themin the schoolroom—and on our darling Rafael. May I suggest you be first to table and stand behind your chair, with a firm grip on it, to avoid the anticipated collisions. They will no doubt burst into the room in high competition, and the chair next to yours will be occupied by the most determined. If Loretta and Franklin want to become involved, let them take the risk, not you or me.”
“When will you have dinner?” I asked.
“Certainly not this early. Happily we don’t have stage calls to meet, as our employers do. Julian and I will clear the table, rinse the dishes, and stack them for Anna May to wash in the morning. Then we shall have dinner in the kitchen with Chef Luigi.”
“I suspect Mr. Lattuada is a good dinner companion,” I said.
“Your suspicion is well placed. He’s a rare man and friend.”
“The Bram is such an amazing house. Huge. It’s a good thing you have such helpful ladies like Lynette, Harmony, and Anna May. Anna May seems very serious about her job. She must be a hard worker.”
Mrs. Symington looked at me sideways as she placed the last butter knife on the last bread plate.
I’d been too obvious. Anna May had seemed to be anxious and perhaps preoccupied by thoughts of some trouble in her life outside of Bramley Hall. I’ll admit my judgment was based on nothing more than intuition, which also told me that her trouble might in some way become mine, too.
In the carnival, the fortuneteller, Madam Zena, had for a while taken an interest in me. Her behavior had been too peculiar to be called friendship. She was strangely insistent about spending time with me, trying to instruct me in matters such as palm reading and crystal gazing, in which I had no interest. When I could not divine her motivation or intentions, I became uneasy and broke off the relationship as politely as I knew how. Sometimes I wonder if Zena might not have been thefraud she seemed to be and if some of the power she claimed to possess might have rubbed off on me.
“They’re all good girls,” Mrs. Symington said. “Anna May has been through a rough patch, but she’s coming out the other side. If she seemed a little cold toward you, she’ll warm up in time. Don’t take it personally. She’s a lovely person.”
“I understand rough patches,” I assured her, “how sometimes they come one after the other until you begin to think there will never be an end to them. It’s nice of you to share as much with me. I don’t need to know more. I didn’t need to know even that much.”
She met my eyes with a probing directness. “I believe you’re an insightful girl, Alida. Insightful and thoughtful and kind. I’m pleased you’re here in the Bram, and I’ve no doubt this will be a better place for your presence.”
Fifteen
No experience in my life had been closer to perfection than my first dinner at the Bram. The food was marvelous, the conversation lively. The autumn twilight purpled the world beyond the windows so that the candlelight grew more magical course by course. Having won the chair beside me, Harry proved to be gracious enough to thumb his nose at his sisters only once when the appetizer was served and once again as we received the entrée. As welcome here as anywhere in the house, Rafael lay in a corner, watching us with interest, certainly not an advocate of the rule that he must never be served from the table but nonetheless obedient and hopeful. Because I had read so many English novels, I knew which fork to use for what purpose and was not surprised when the salad came after the entrée, before the dessert.
Prior to retiring to my suite, I visited the library to borrow a copy ofBarchester Towersby Anthony Trollope. The day had been so long and tiring, so filled with event, that it seemed as if Tuesday had folded all of Wednesday into itself. After I prepared for bed and donned my lovely new nightdress, I found that I would rather dream than read. When I switched off the nightstand lamp, I turned my head to the windows and saw, beyond the pale shape of the balustrade, nothing but a sky fullof stars, as if the great house were untethered from Earth and floating serenely in the vastness of the universe.
I dreamed of Bramley Hall, though my mind reorganized the order of its many rooms, changed some elements of the decor, made the big house even larger, and replaced its electric lights with candles throughout. I was searching for someone I couldn’t name, but the residence seemed to be deserted. The eerie quiet was disturbed only by the click-click-click of a dog’s claws on stone floors or the soft padding of paws on a Persian carpet. Wherever I looked, Rafael was not there, yet I sensed him in the shadows and somehow knew we were searching the Bram for the same person, not for any member of the family, but for someone who did not belong there. At one point, I dreamed that I woke—which had been a feature of previous dreams—and that someone stood at my bedside, gazing down at me as I lay in the pallid light of the risen moon. In a voice thick with sleep, I murmured, “Are you there?” She whispered, “No,” and turned away into the darkness. “Who?” I muttered, but I knew, for even from that one word I recognized Anna May’s voice. She was surely a figment of my slumbering mind. She couldn’t be there, for she was not on staff at night and lived off the estate. I faded from a dream of being awake and again into the funhouse-like distortion of the Bram, searching through pulsing candlelight with unseen Rafael always nearby.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were sunny settling-in days, as Tuesday had been. I familiarized myself with the estate and embraced whatever opportunities arose to interact with family and members of the staff. If this was to be my world, I wanted to know it end to end and top to bottom, understand every nuance of its operation.
The most interesting—and to a degree unsettling—conversation of that period occurred on Thursday, when I kept company with Harmony for an hour as she stalked through my quarters like a long-leggedred-haired freckled stork. Among other things, she was assigned to clean my rooms and service them daily. Twice I’d made my bed in the morning before going to breakfast. Now she made it clear, gently but firmly, that I must not relieve her from any chore that was hers. “The children’s parents require them to make their bed, but not the adults. It’s a hard world right now, Alida, even in this golden state of milk and honey. Five million have lost work, and others will soon. Loretta and Franklin are more generous than makes sense. I will never find another job as sweet as this. You may put your laundry in the hamper yourself, if you must, but leave everything else to me.” I explained I hadn’t intended to put her livelihood in jeopardy, that I made the bed because I enjoyed doing so. Until the Bram, I’d never had a bed of my own, only a lumpy mattress on the floor, one sheet, and one blanket. “Well, knock me down with a mop!” she declared. “Is that true, girl?” I had no idea what she meant by the mop, but I assured her I wasn’t fabricating anything. Anyway, it wasn’t a hardship except when there were rats. Harmony said, “I’ve known rats of both kinds, the two- and four-legged varieties, but I’ve never had to sleep with either species. You must have quite an up-from-under story, here now at the Bram.” She heard the curiosity in her voice and said, “Don’t listen to me. I must have been a cat in nine other lives and still have some feline blood. Your past is yours, and I’ve no right to it. That’s been explained to us in a most sincere fashion, and I take the instruction seriously. Five million out of work. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not keen on reliving any of it. They say the past is never really past, but I’m going to prove them wrong. I’m all about what happens next, not what happened then. I can’t believe my luck, Harmony. Do you believe God is in control, and He works everything out for the best? I do. But then it seems blind luck has so much to do with it. Loretta and Franklin being where they were on the particular night they were, having the means and the desire to dowhat they did for me. Mr. Einstein says God doesn’t play dice with the universe, and he ought to know, I guess.”
As she hung fresh towels in my bathroom and I watched her from the open doorway, Harmony said, “God’s got it all covered, but He has to allow luck because people have free will. People make our luck, Alida, our good luck and bad, by what they do that turns our lives one way or the other. It was the same people that slammed me with the worst bad luck ever and at the same time good luck that saved my life. It was all so stupid crazy, tragedy and comedy all twined together. It was as ridiculous as one of those movie jokes where some guy gets one foot stuck in a bucket and stomps around like a fool, hilarious as anything—but then he falls down the stairs and breaks his neck.”
“Tell me. Tell me everything.” Stories were what had kept me sane, taught me how to live, how to survive, how to hope. Harmony’s story sounded like one I needed to hear. I wasn’t the kind of person to whom stories happened. My life had been cloistered, shut in if not shut away. Stories had always been for reading. Now they were also for gathering from others that I could write of them. “Please tell me, Harmony.”
“I probably shouldn’t.”
“You’re not supposed to ask about my past,” I said, “but it’s okay for me to ask about yours. Nobody told me I couldn’t. So tell me, Harmony. Please. I won’t lose my job, and neither will you.”
