Upstairs, Downstairs

Servants should not fraternise with a lady’s paid companion. But then, Ellen never was one to stick to the rules!

HOLDING the mirror at arm’s length, Ellen adjusted her new hat while keeping an eye on the driveway below.

“Still here?” Betsy burst into the tiny attic bedroom they shared, discarding her apron and taking a clean one from a drawer.

“The Market Dutton bus doesn’t leave till a quarter to two.”

“I bet you’re trying to avoid getting stuck with that Miss Lowe again,” Betsy said. “Can’t say I blame you. I’d sooner change my afternoon off than be forced to ride into town with her every week.”

Betsy didn’t have much time for paid companions, especially if they happened to be short, stocky spinsters in their thirties.

Both she and Ellen were tall and carried themselves well, as befitted parlour maids, but Betsy was also extremely pretty and tended to be dismissive of those not equally favoured by fortune.

Her most cherished fantasy was that a Hollywood film producer would be asked to one of her ladyship’s regular house parties, leading to her own discovery and a starring part in the talkies.

“You read about it happening all the time,” she’d whisper dreamily as they lay in their narrow beds in the darkness, listening to the hooting of owls among the chimney pots. “What do you think, Nelly? Will I be the new Greta Garbo or the new Norma Shearer?”

The new “Rin Tin Tin” had been one of Ellen’s less polite suggestions, at which point a pillow had come flying across the room.

“Anyone exciting been invited this weekend?” Ellen asked now.

“The usual,” Betsy replied gloomily. “A bishop and a concert pianist. Some businessman who’s just bought Morslake Manor.

“Oh, and one of those ‘man of the people’ types who writes novels about the working classes. Josh Hardcastle, he’s called.”

“Hmmm,” Ellen said, deliberately non-committal.

If truth be told, she’d borrowed every single one of Josh Hardcastle’s books from the public library and devoured the lot, but she knew better than to show any excitement. Besides, a tweedy figure had just emerged from the shrubbery below.

“There goes Miss Lowe now,” she said, buttoning up her coat. “She’ll be well on her way by the time I get down there. See you at six o’clock, Betsy.”

But when Ellen reached the end of the drive, Miss Lowe was waiting for her.

“I’m to enquire at the bookshop about the new Agatha Christie,” the companion announced as if they were old friends, “and get her ladyship’s special face cream made up for her at the chemist’s.”

“Really,” Ellen said politely.

She set off at a smart pace for the village and Miss Lowe had to put on a spurt to keep up.

“Apparently, since my job doesn’t involve any actual physical work, I should be grateful that I’m allowed an afternoon off at all, and not begrudge running a few minor errands,” she continued.

“Which is very unfair, because having to be unfailingly polite and self-effacing is pretty exhausting, I can tell you.”

Ellen didn’t like snubbing people, but Miss Lowe had to understand that it just wouldn’t do for them to get too friendly.

If Betsy, for instance, found out that Ellen had been fraternising with a person from above stairs . . . well, she’d probably never speak to her again.

And the same would apply to Miss Lowe. Being her ladyship’s companion might be a poorly paid, thankless job, but she’d be expected to behave like a gentlewoman and not consort with the household staff.

They marched on, Ellen feeling obliged to respond occasionally, but keeping her replies short and her voice colourless, just as she did whenever her ladyship popped down to the kitchen for one of her “inspections”.

Finally, as they reached the village street, Miss Lowe seemed to take the hint.

“Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I know I talk too much and it’s mostly piffle, but then I’m not as clever as you.”

“Why do you say that?” Ellen asked, surprise making her forget herself and speak normally.

“Have you forgotten I caught you reading Shakespeare in the library a couple of weeks ago, when you

were meant to be dusting?” Miss Lowe dimpled. “It made me wonder why you’d gone into service rather than teaching or something of the sort.”

“The schoolmistress did suggest applying for training college,” Ellen admitted, “but my mother said if I could find a good place in a respectable household, I’d be looked after for life.

“Or until I married, anyway, and then they’d most likely give me a decent wedding present if I’d proved satisfactory.”

“I was never very brainy at school myself,” Kitty Lowe said, “but I talked my father into letting me take a secretarial course on the grounds that it would come in useful for parish committees.

“I’m supposed to be a secretary-companion here, in fact, but all it amounts to is sending out invitations.”

“Why didn’t you get an office job if you can do shorthand and typing and all that?” Ellen wondered.

“Because I grew up in the kind of provincial town where female clerks are still considered flighty and unreliable, and Mother was so horrified at the idea of my living alone in London that she took to her sick bed,” Miss Lowe explained.

“I’d have probably ended up in one of those hostels for middle-class girls who need to earn their own living.

“Hardly the hell-fire club, but Ma was convinced I’d be putting myself in mortal danger.” She pulled a wry face. “Strikes me our mothers have got more in common than you might think.”

Ellen doubted that. Mam believed in what she called quality – dignified, longestablished families. She’d never had much time for the middle classes who, according to her, didn’t know how to treat their servants properly.

Still, now that they were well away from the house, perhaps Ellen herself needn’t behave quite so stand-offishly.

When the bus arrived, it felt quite natural for the two of them to sit together, and she didn’t even raise an eyebrow when Miss Lowe insisted on being called Kitty. After all, if they were careful, nobody else need know about it.

On the way to Market Dunning, they exchanged further confidences.

Ellen learned that Kitty had lost a sweetheart during the war and that, on the death of the Reverend Lowe, she and her mother had been forced to vacate the rectory and move to a genteel boarding house.

Once there, their savings had dwindled until, eventually, Mrs Lowe had been forced to agree to Kitty finding paid work.

“She made me promise I’d stick it out with her ladyship for at least six months,” Kitty said. “After that, I’ll take my chances in London.”

Ellen didn’t have half so much to tell. The lads in her village had all called her toffee-nosed and nobody had ever tried to kiss her.

Nine years ago, at the age of sixteen, she’d been sent here to her ladyship’s country residence in Hertfordshire and had gradually worked her way up from kitchen maid to parlour maid. Such was her life so far.

It made a nice change, she decided, to be able to talk to someone without putting on an act or pretending to be a different kind of person. The sort of person who hadn’t heard of Josh Hardcastle, for instance.

“I’m surprised her ladyship’s asked him,” she said to Kitty after they’d discussed the subject at length, “seeing as he hasn’t got a good word to say about the rich.”

“Her ladyship likes to mix her guests up – self-made men who fancy themselves as country squires rubbing shoulders with firebrand authors and arty types.

“She wants to show everybody how modern and unconventional she is. A stroke of luck for me that there’s a concert pianist coming, though.” “Oh?” Ellen prompted. “It means there’s no danger I’ll be asked to play.”

“Aren’t you very good?” Ellen asked.

“Terrible,” Kitty told her cheerfully. “But I will be safe for this weekend, at least.”

At first, the house party promised to be a success.

After serving dinner on Friday evening, Ellen and Betsy agreed that both Josh Hardcastle and Mr Smith, the new owner of Morslake Manor, were good-looking, but that the former’s thick, dark hair and boyish features definitely gave him the advantage.

Much to Betsy’s disappointment, he appeared rather taken with Miss Mortimer, the concert pianist.

“I was expecting somebody ancient in a tiara,” she grumbled, as though Miss Mortimer’s youth and beauty were a deliberate affront to herself.

Mr Smith, Ellen thought, was more of an enigma. He didn’t say much, but he watched people.

She caught him watching her at one point and actually blushed. It generally took quite a lot to ruffle Ellen’s professional composure and she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. After dinner came bridge. At least Kitty need have no fears there, Ellen, who’d begun to feel quite protective where her new friend was concerned, thought.

She and her mother had played bridge nearly every afternoon at the boarding house.

Then Saturday arrived and, with it, Kitty’s nemesis.

When Ellen and Betsy arrived outside the drawing-room with the coffee at nine o’clock that evening, Miss Mortimer had just reached the finale of a dramatic sonata.

As applause broke out, they entered, set down their trays on a side table and took up their usual positions next to it.

Mr Hardcastle was leaning confidentially against the piano.

“I was having a look through her ladyship’s music collection earlier on,” Ellen heard him say. “Do you know this one at all? It’s ‘Un’ aura amorosa’ from ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’.”

“A breath of love.” Miss Mortimer’s eyes brightened. “Do you sing, Mr Hardcastle?”

“A little. But I don’t want to tire you.”

Her ladyship, who hated to miss anything, had wandered over to get a cigarette while Kitty was fetching her coffee.

“Miss Lowe will accompany you,” she said, and Kitty went pale. “Hurry, child, don’t keep people waiting.”

As she moved away, Mr Hardcastle glanced around. The only person within earshot was Ellen. Presumably she didn’t matter. At any rate, he didn’t bother to lower his voice.

“Let the companion do it, by all means, but I’d much rather it were you.”

“Well,” the pianist said, blushing, “if Miss Lowe wouldn’t mind turning the pages for me . . .”

The next thing Ellen knew, poor Kitty was perched on a stool just behind Miss Mortimer’s left shoulder, looking decidedly nervous.

Ellen had to keep her expression neutral, but she felt worried. Surely turning the pages for a pianist required actual musical skills.

Ellen’s old schoolmistress had once acted as pageturner at a village concert and had explained to the children how the role required excellent sightreading and timing and, above all, the ability to be so unobtrusive that it was almost as though

“Ma was convinced I’d be putting myself in mortal danger”

you weren’t there.

Still, perhaps Miss Lowe had exaggerated when she’d described her own playing as terrible.

The aria began. After a minute or so, a hand hesitantly reached out from behind Miss Mortimer, but she shook her head firmly.

Seconds later, the pianist nodded emphatically, but this time Kitty was slightly slow off the mark and, in trying to make up for it, almost dislodged the score from the music stand.

After that, Ellen hardly dared look. Instead of feigning a sudden illness, which is what she herself would have done, her friend seemed set on continuing to the bitter end.

Miss Mortimer’s attention was so taken up with anticipating Kitty’s next move that she played several wrong notes, and Mr Hardcastle looked increasingly bemused as he sang on.

What should have been a tender, romantic interlude between the two of them was ruined.

Back in their room, Betsy laughed till she cried, but Ellen couldn’t even raise a smile.

Poor Kitty.

The following morning, Ellen arrived back from church to the news that Mr Hardcastle was catching an earlier train than expected.

The shoes he’d arrived in, which she’d removed for cleaning the previous day, must be returned immediately.

Quickly she ran upstairs to retrieve them and, at the same time, the cheap edition of one of Josh Hardcastle’s novels that she’d bought in Market Dutton while Kitty was enquiring about her ladyship’s Agatha Christie.

He might no longer be a man of the people exactly, with his Italian arias and the way he just stared straight through you as if you weren’t there, but he was still a fine author.

At any rate, he surely couldn’t object to signing the book for her.

She straightened her cap, knocked and entered.

“Thank you,” he said when she handed him the shoes.

He removed his bedroom slippers and placed them in an overnight bag, then, still without looking at her, held out a ten-shilling note.

“Oh,” Ellen said, taken aback.

Tips were normally left on the bedside table, to be discreetly removed once the guest had departed. As she hesitated, wondering if now were the right time to produce the book from her apron pocket, he sighed.

“Will this do, then? Please take it. The taxi’s due any minute so I don’t have a lot of time. Just leave my case in the hall.”

Stunned, Ellen did as he’d asked. It was only when she got downstairs that she realised he’d actually given her five pounds.

“Ellen!”

Kitty was standing by the library door, her face blotchy and tear-stained. Quickly, before anyone should see, Ellen pushed her inside.

“Has her ladyship sacked you?” she asked, but Kitty shook her head.

“No, but she was really horrible and called me an imbecile. I don’t think I can bear it any longer.”

“Me, neither,” Ellen admitted, then told her what had happened. “I can’t believe he actually thought I was querying the amount of the tip. It’s so mortifying – and after I’d bought his book as well!

“The thing is, Kitty,” she went on, angry tears coming to her own eyes, “people like him don’t see servants as proper working class. To them, we’re practically invisible.

“Well, that money is going straight back. I can’t face him again just now, but you can give me his address and I’ll write and explain it was a mistake.”

“Cheer up, ladies,” a pleasant voice with distinctly Cockney overtones said. “If you hate your jobs that much, why don’t you come and work for me?”

They both jumped as Mr Smith emerged from one of the darker corners of the library, a book in his hand.

“At Morslake Manor?” Ellen asked.

She felt quite surprised at her own boldness, but there was something about this man that made her almost sure he wouldn’t mind her not lowering her voice respectfully or calling him sir, like a well-trained servant should.

“At the new Morslake Film Studios.” He closed the book with a snap and replaced it on the shelf. “Our first full-length movie will be going into production in six months’ time, just as soon as we’ve done the necessary conversion work and built the backlots.”

“You mean, that’s your business – making talkies?” She gave a quizzical smile. “You should probably be talking to Betsy, not us.”

“That blonde parlour maid? I’m up to my ears in blondes wanting to be film stars. Whereas you, my dear,” he said to Kitty, “are a natural-born comedienne.”

While Kitty stared at him, open-mouthed, Ellen thought quickly. She’d read quite a bit about film studios in Betsy’s magazines.

“I suppose you’ll be doing a lot of hiring,” she said. “Not just actors and technicians, but other staff, too. Secretaries, for example.”

He nodded.

“True enough.” “Kitty – I mean, Miss Lowe – has taken a course,” Ellen said. “She can do shorthand and typing.”

“And book-keeping,” Kitty added in a small voice. “And business correspondence.”

“And what about you?” Mr Smith seemed to be studying Ellen’s face and she was reminded of the way he’d looked at her at dinner on Friday night. As if – well, as if he admired her. “What can you do?”

“I could be a waitress in the staff restaurant.”

“Or we could put you in reception. You’d make a good receptionist.” He nodded. “Tell you what, I’ll take you both on, starting as soon as possible. We’ve a lot to do before we officially open.

“I’d like to give Miss Lowe here a film test at some point. If we can reproduce that piano routine, we might have a hit on our hands. In fact,” he went on, with another thoughtful glance at Ellen, “maybe we should try you out, too.

“You can look pretty snooty when you want to, and the difference in heights would make it all the funnier. Perhaps even finish with a staged punchup.”

“Right you are,” Ellen said before Kitty could protest. It sounded like more fun than waiting at table any day.

“But you mustn’t go expecting to be looked after, as though you were still in service. Once you’re out in the big, wide world, you’ll have to find your own lodgings, buy your own food and clothing and make your money last till payday.”

“I’ve a little put by,” Kitty said, and Ellen fingered the five pound note that Josh Hardcastle had given her. Perhaps it had been meant after all.

“Here’s my business card,” Mr Smith said. “Give me a call when you’re free.”

After shaking hands with them both, he left the room. “Oh, Ellen!” Kitty cried. “I know,” Ellen replied. “Out in the big, wide world. Shall we give notice straight away, before we change our minds?”

“There’s no point in delaying it,” Kitty agreed and, arm in arm for all the world to see, the two friends went to find her ladyship. n

“I’m up to my ears in blondes wanting to be film stars”