Servants’ Hall Read Free

such ranges, it burned coal and Doris was forever filling the scuttles. As I was bigger and stronger than her, I often used to carry the scuttles in from the coal-house, but Mrs Buller wasn’t altogether pleased by this, saying that if we all did each other’s work where would we be. With the licence of being only a temporary, I answered that I wouldn’t dream of offering to help Mr Hall. Later on, young Fred, the under-gardener, would often carry them in for me if he saw me struggling, which I suppose bore out the cook’s theory that you should stick strictly to your own sphere of work.
    My first evening there wasn’t too arduous, physically or mentally, as there were only just the five of them upstairs for dinner – though they still got through six courses. The main course was fillets of beef, and Mrs Buller, with an air of faint hopefulness, said to me:
    ‘Well, Margaret, I don’t suppose you know how to make a Béarnaise sauce to go with the fillets? It is a tricky sauce to make.’
    Though I would have preferred not to have to demonstrate my knowledge on that first evening, I did know how to make the sauce and I could see that my value had already risen in the cook’s estimation. For the sweet course she’d made a baked lemon soufflé, and she certainly was a dab hand at making them for this one rose above the dish like a balloon. They dined at eight o’clock so by the time that we sat down to our supper – a lovely steak and kidney pie – it was getting late. As usual, we ate in the servants’ hall; Doris and I laid the table and brought in the food. Mrs Buller sat at one end of the table and Mr Hall at the other; I reckon they both thought they were at the head of the table. One sensed a faint antagonism between the cook and the butler, although they were meticulously correct in their dealings with each other – except on one occasion, after I’d been there a few weeks. Mr Hall told me off for something, whereupon Mrs Buller intervened saying:
    ‘I’ll thank you, Mr Hall, not to admonish my staff, if you have any complaints, come to me.’
    Mary said that because the cook had known the family for years – she had worked for Mr Wardham’s mother and, incidentally, seemed to be the only person in the house that Mr Wardham had a pleasant word for – the butler felt that she had an advantage over him, as he had only been there for five years.
    Up in our bedroom we four younger servants settled down for a good gossip about the family. Mary remarked that Gerald, the son, although he’d been home only a few weeks, had taken quite a shine to Rose, his eyes were always following her around the dining-room. Rose, though blushing a deep red, denied that he took any more interest in her than he did in any of the staff, for how could one of the gentry be interested in the likes of her. Her mum would be horrified at the very idea, because her mum had been in one place only in service all her life until she married, and she still started her letters to this lady with ‘Dear Madam’, never Mrs Paine. Like Kipling’s ‘East is East’, I said, but the allusion was lost on Rose.
    ‘What does one do on one’s free afternoon and evening in this benighted place? I can’t see any kind of social life around here and I’m not addicted to country walks. I have always had this feeling that farm animals take an instinctive dislike to me; and they know that I have no rapport with the country.’
    ‘Cor, Margaret, can’t you use long words, you are clever,’ and Doris gazed at me admiringly.
    ‘She always could,’ said Mary; then she added, slightly maliciously, ‘trouble is, Margaret can’t pronounce them like they do upstairs.’
    I pretended to be indignant, but of course Mary was right. An extensive vocabulary was in no way comparable with the right accent.
    ‘Anyway,’ Mary went on, ‘you have Wednesday off, same as me. We could go to the village hop, it’s only three miles away and the buses run every