The Housekeepers(22)

The second check was bigger. Nobody heard about that one. It came with no terms, no parameters—without words, even. No need for explanations with a sum that size. It said, I don’t want any trouble.

That one she lingered over, weighing it in her hands, for many months. Of course she cashed it in the end. It bought her the factory, and the villa attached to it, and her seaside place in Broadstairs, and the storage house for her favorite treasures down in Deal. It bought her evidence of her own importance, her own mark on the world. It made her feel bigger; it made her feel as if she had teeth. It didn’t parch one iota of her rage against Danny. It made it worse. She yearned to crack rubies between her teeth, drink liquid gold, draw blood.

All that was twenty-four years ago. And now Danny was gone, really gone, and here she was still on the outside, gazing up at his vast and glistening house.

Nobody had answered the tradesman’s door. She banged on it, hard.

“Oi!” she shouted. “Let me in!”

The kitchen impressed her—she couldn’t help it. It bustled with life. Stove belching heat, tiles as white as teeth. Mrs. Bone felt stirred up by the glinting surface of everything. She eyed a line of gigantic fire irons. Mr. Bone would have liked those, she thought, with a little pang.

“Very busy, ain’t it?” she said to the cook, who was giving her the tour. Clearly, the woman had schooled the new people before, had perfected her system. She described the contents of every cupboard, taking her time about it. Mrs. Bone was itching to get on, get upstairs, take a look at the good stuff. “You’ll need to be patient,” Mrs. King had warned her. “Don’t let them know you’re a little racehorse. Don’t give yourself away.”

“I know how to do my preliminaries, thank you,” she’d said brusquely.

“What shall I call you, mum?” Mrs. Bone asked the cook now, trying humble on for size.

“Cook,” said the cook. “Now, then. Here’s where you empty the cinder pails. I suppose you know how to do that? You’ll need to make up the housemaids’ boxes, do the tea leaves for the carpets, get the hot-water buckets filled.”

Mrs. Bone sniffed. “All right.”

Cook eyed her, suspicious. “You bring the fresh dust sheets out. My girls don’t do that. And you do the napkin press, all right? Mr. Shepherd don’t like seeing no utensils out and about in the kitchen, and nor do I.” She glared at Mrs. Bone. “Got that?”

I’m a worm, thought Mrs. Bone. I’m a slug. She bowed from the waist. “Oh, yes, mum. That’s all most familiar to me.”

Cook liked being bowed to. It showed on her face. But it went against the rules. “You don’t call me mum, you call me Cook,” she said. “Now, are you f’miliar with brushes?”

Mrs. Bone had rolled her eyes when Mrs. King lectured her on this point. Hard brush for mud, soft brush for blacking, and the blacking went in a corked bottle. Always a corked bottle.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I know ever such a lot about brushes!”

“And look out—you’re in Mr. Shepherd’s way.”

Mrs. Bone only vaguely recalled the butler. The one who’d brought out a jug of lemonade to the park, carrying his silver tray. He plowed heavily toward them, followed by a train of bootboys, oblivious to her, nodding vaguely. He smelled of camphor and oil, and he was sweating. She saw a flash of light, the bright and perfect glitter of a key, attached to a chain around his waist. Oh, I could snap it off with my teeth, she thought.

“We don’t like dawdlers,” Cook said, and grabbed Mrs. Bone by the elbow.

And I could snap you in two pieces and all. Mrs. Bone grinned like an idiot, and matched Cook’s pace: slow, slow, slow.

“And here’s your room,” said Cook, banging the door open. “You’ll be sharing with Sue.”

Mrs. Bone could see an urchin peering at her from the shadows, wide-eyed and holding on to the washbasin for dear life. She looked pale and scaly, wracked by storms. Mrs. Bone felt her skin crawling. She hated sharing a bed.

“All right, Sue?” said Cook.

“All right,” replied the girl, voice husky.

Mrs. Bone disliked the name Sue. It always made her feel edgy, as if there were static in her hair. Her own little girl had been called Susan. She tried to breathe it away.

Cook fiddled with the water jug and the pail, straightening them, then straightening them again. “It’s lights-out at eleven, once you’ve put away the irons. Then we lock up.”

Mrs. Bone frowned. “Lock up?”

Cook was serene, halfway out the door. “We’ll be locking your bedroom doors at night.”

Mrs. Bone banged her bag down on the bed. It managed a sorrowful sort of half bounce. “Nobody’s locking me in anywhere,” she said before she could help it.

Mrs. Bone could hear bodies moving next door, girls coming in and out of their rooms. The light paused at the tiny window, unwilling to cross the threshold. She looked down at the purple-stained boards and saw grooves in the paintwork, nicks and cuts and spoiled varnish, as if someone had been dragging the furniture across the floor, barring the door.

“We’ve had a lot of unpleasantness this month,” said Cook. “And it’s Madam’s orders.”

Mrs. Bone could feel her heart thumping slowly, steadily. Madam. She repeated the name in her head. It made her feel the nearness of her own flesh and blood, the presence of Danny in the walls. She looked at the door and thought, He’s got me in a cage.