Servants’ Hall Read Free Page B

overbearing voice, I could tell that it would have been incongruous for him to orate about how we were loved by the One above when it was obvious that the one above, who paid us our wages, didn’t even like us.
    It rather grieved Mrs Buller that no prayers were said in that house. She considered that to have fifteen minutes of spiritual communion was to start the day well; though as Doris and I said – only to each other of course – as we’d already been up for a couple of hours of hard work without spiritual communion, we could continue to manage without it. But Mrs Buller appeared to be on almost familiar terms with God. Casting her eyes upward, she always spoke of Him as the ‘Master’. I got extremely confused about this owing to the fact that when she was working for Mr Wardham’s mother, Mr Wardham was always known to her as Master Edward. Now that she worked for him, she referred to him as the Master. Once, when Mrs Buller admonished Doris to hurry with stoking up the range for dinner, the Master didn’t like to be kept waiting, I whispered to her that he’d been waiting for hundreds of years so a bit longer wouldn’t matter. And besides, I thought, one stoked up for ‘him below’. Doris giggled so much that Mrs Buller enquired sarcastically whether we thought we were in training to be cooks or a couple of comics on the stage; and Mr Hall, a balding man of fifty who occasionally tried to be avuncular with the young servants, said, ‘Ah, Mrs Buller, when they get to our age they’ll realise that “life is real, life is earnest”, which drew no response from Cook, who disliked any mention of age. I thought that Mr Hall was being very tactful for Cook must have been ten years older than he was. The only person allowed to be jokey with Mrs Buller was young Fred, the under gardener.

 
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    On my first morning at Redlands – the name of the house – I realised that Mary had spoken the truth about Madam. Mrs Wardham was a rather sad-looking lady, but so very pleasant. She actually called me Margaret and thanked me for helping them out at such short notice. Mrs Buller sniffed audibly on hearing this but I didn’t let that detract from my pleasure. I really felt for a few moments that I was just as important in the scheme of things as the upper servants. Subsequent remarks from Cook and the butler soon dispelled such ideas. Not that Mrs Buller was ever really unkind. For one thing, an experienced kitchenmaid such as I was could lighten a cook’s load of work considerably. After reading the menu, I knew just what utensils she would require on the kitchen table. And I knew just what was within my capacity to cook. As Mr Wardham was only in to lunch at weekends, the meal for them upstairs, unless there were guests was a simple affair of two courses and cheese. But a lot of food had to be cooked for our dinner, which was our main meal at two o’clock, for as well as the nine servants in the house, both gardeners and the chauffeur sat down with us. Proper ritual it was too. The cook and butler were ensconced at each end of the table, Agnes and Violetta each side of Cook, Mr Burrows, the valet, and Jack, the chauffeur, each side of the butler, and the rest of us in between. It was my job to lay the table with a huge white cloth, and we all had serviettes rolled up in different coloured rings. It was difficult at first remembering the right places at table to put them – not that it mattered with Fred, the gardener or the chauffeur, as they never bothered to use theirs. Doris and I had to bring in the hot plates, vegetables, gravy and sauce. By the time we all sat down it was quite an impressive sight. Once, young Fred whispered to me, ‘You’d think we were in training for the State Banquet,’ which caused me to giggle and Mr Hall to frown. If I forgot some item for the table, such as the salt, or enough tablespoons, Mr Hall, as was the way with most butlers, would not address me directly but, looking very