“I was with your family for five years,” she told me.
“I came here when I was twelve years old. Then I stayed on, and when they went they couldn’t afford to keep me.”
That happened with so many, I’m afraid. “
“Would you care to start at the top of the house. Miss Clavering, and work down?”
I said I thought that seemed an excellent idea, and together we climbed the newel staircase to the roof.
“You can see the turrets best from up here. And look what a fine view of the countryside.” She looked at me intently. There’s a good view of the Dower House. “
I followed the direction in which she was looking and there it was nestling among the trees and the greenery. The house looked like a doll’s house from here. The clean lines of its architecture were very obvious and the smooth lawn looked like a neat square of green silk. I could see Poor jar man working on the flowerbeds.
“You have a better view of us than we have of you,” I commented.
“In summer Oakland House is completely hidden.”
“I often come up here and look round,” said Hannah.
“You must have seen us in the garden now and then.”
Oh, often. “
I felt a little uneasy at having been watched by Hannah.
“Do you prefer it now to the days when my family were here?”
She hesitated, then she said: “In some ways. Mr. Henniker goes away a lot and we have the place to ourselves. It seems funny that … at least it did at first, but you get used to most things. He’s easy to work for.” I could see that she was implying that my mother was not.
“Miss Miriam was only a girl when she lived here,” she went on.
That was a long time ago. Before I was born. “
They won’t be pleased to hear you’ve been here. Miss, I reckon. “No, they won’t,” I agreed and added: “If they find out.”
Mr. Henniker is a very strange gentleman. “
“Unlike anyone I’ve ever known,” I agreed.
“Well, you just think of the way he came here. Who’d have thought a gentleman like that would take a place like this?”
We were silent for a while contemplating the view. My eyes kept going back to the Dower House. Poor Jarman had straightened himself up as Maddy came out and started to talk to him.
I was amused that unbeknown to them I could I watch them. I Shall we go in now. Miss Clavering suggested Hannah, ‘y I nodded and we descended the circular stairs and entered , a room-I admired the moulded beams of the ceiling, the panelled walls and the carved fireplace.
There are so many rooms like this that you lose count of them,” said Hannah.
“We don’t use them all even when there’s a house party.”
“Is there often a house party?”
“Yes, gentlemen come to talk business with Mr. Henniker. At least that’s how it was. I don’t know if it will be the same since his accident.”
“I suppose they come about opals.”
“All sorts of business Mr. Henniker’s engaged in. He’s a very rich gentleman. That’s what we say is so good about being here … in the servants’ hall, I mean. There’s never all this talk about economizing, and wages come prompt, not …”
“Not like it was when my family was here.”
Most of the gentry have their money troubles, it seems. I’ve talked to others in houses like this. But someone like Mr. Henniker . well, he’s got to have a lot of money to buy the place, hasn’t he, so it stands to reason he can afford to keep it up-not like someone inheriting it and finding it’s a drain. “
“I see that it must be a great comfort to work for Mr. Henniker after my family.”
“It’s all so different. Mr. Wilmot’s always saying it’s not what he’s used to, and I reckon he sometimes hankers for a house with more dignity. But it’s nice to know your wages are there … on the dot just when they’re due, and there doesn’t have to be all this pinching and scraping. He never locks up the tea or anything like that … never asks to see Mrs. Bucket’s accounts, but I reckon he’d know fast enough if there was any fiddling.”
We had come to a gallery.
“Once,” she went on, ‘there were pictures of the family all along here. They were taken away, and Mr. Henniker never put up pictures of his own. A gallery’s not a gallery without pictures of the family, Mr. Wilmot says, but we don’t know much about Mr. Henniker’s. “
The gallery was beautiful, with carved pillars and long narrow windows, the stained glass of which threw a lovely glow over the place. There were curtains of rich velvet at intervals round the walls. They hid the part which wasn’t panelled, Hannah explained.
They say this is haunted,” she told me. There always has to be one haunted room in a house like this. Well, this is it. No one’s seen or heard anything since Mr. Henniker’s been here. He’d frighten any ghost away, I reckon. They used to say that they could hear music here coming from the spinet that was once there. Mr. Henniker had it shipped out to Australia. It meant something special to him, I heard. Mrs. Bucket says it’s a lot of fancy. Mr. Wilmot believes it though, but then he’d think that any family that didn’t have a ghost wouldn’t be fit for him to work for.”
“But he works for Mr. Henniker now.”
“It’s something of a sore point.”
We went on with our tour of exploration and, as Hannah had said, there were so many rooms of the same kind that it would be easy to lose oneself. I hoped that if I visited Mr. Henniker frequently I should be able to see it all again and enjoy exploring at my leisure. Hannah was not the most comfortable of guides because whenever I looked at her I would find her eyes fixed on me as though she were assessing me. I put this down to > the fact that I was a member of the family she had once served. However, I couldn’t stop thinking of her looking down on to the Dower House and watching me.
I admired the carved fireplaces which had been put in during Elizabeth’s reign; their theme was scenes from the Bible, and I picked out Adam and Eve and Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt and felt very ignorant when others had to be explained to me.
I thought the solarium delightful, with its windows facing south and its walls covered in tapestry, which had no doubt been sold to Ben Henniker by my family, and I pictured my mother pacing up and down here in the gallery while they discussed how they could possibly go on living here.
Finally we came down to the hall and passed through a vestibule to what Hannah called the Parlour.
“In the very old days,” she explained, ‘this was where guests were received. ” The walls were panelled, the windows leaded, and there was a suit of armour in a corner.
“Right at the other end are the kitchens with the buttery and pantry and that sort of thing. That’s the Screens end of the hall. You’ll want to see them. Some of them go right back to the days when the house was built and that was long enough ago, goodness knows. “
She led me back across the hall to what she called the Screens a door which shut off the servants’ quarters from the hall and I was in a vast kitchen. An enormous fireplace took up almost the whole of one side. In this were bread ovens, roasting spits and great cauldrons. There was a big table with two benches, one on either side; two armchairs-wide and ornate were placed at each end of the table, and I later learned that one of these was occupied by Mrs. Bucket and the other by the butler, Mr. Wilmot.
As I entered the kitchen I was aware of whispering voices. I knew that I was being watched from some vantage point.
A large woman came smiling into the kitchen followed by three maids.