Free Liza by Irene Carr Page B

of Lady Angela, clasped her hands to her bosom in anguish. The audience cheered. The sketch was being performed in the hall at the Grange. The members of staff without parts squatted on the stairs while the Gresham family, parents and three of their four children, sat on chairs in front of them. The stage was the floor of the hall, the ten-foot width of it, flanked by ‘wings’ of temporarily rigged curtains.
    ‘ You have no choice,’ the villain sneered. ‘You must wed me or take the consequences.’ Gillespie, in false beard, pointed his pistol and the audience booed.
    ‘ Never!’ cried Liza. ‘Death before dishonour!’
    ‘ Ooh!’ wailed family and staff alike.
    ‘ You reckoned without me!’ Toby, the Greshams’ eighteen-year-old eldest son, home from school for Christmas and dressed as a naval officer, burst from the wings to cheers. He was popular with all the staff, tall and good-looking, with a ready smile. Now he stumbled on a trailing curtain but recovered to say, ‘Take that!’ He fired his pistol but the cap only fizzled. Gillespie clutched at his chest, then fell —carefully but flat.
    Liza threw out a hand. ‘Saved! My hero!’
    And the curtain came down, to rise again so that the cast could acknowledge the applause.
    ‘Author!’ Jonathan Gresham bellowed, and Gillespie took a bow on his own. Then Jonathan went on: ‘You all did well. First class. But an extra cheer for the leading lady.’
    Liza blushed. This was the happiest Christmas she had ever known, but it was the culmination of three happy years, a time when she had worked hard but taken pleasure in it. She had found the Grange was not so isolated as she had thought and she had come to love the countryside. There was a village only ten minutes away, with a church and a shop but no pub. She had guessed that that was why Bridie had left. Liza had learned to dance. In the evenings all the younger members of the servants ’ hall would practise their steps to Gillespie’s fiddle. It was their sole entertainment in the winter.
    Soon after Gillespie had taken her on he had announced in the kitchen: ‘Mrs Gresham wants an assistant for Madame Jeanne, somebody to do sewing two days a week. Any takers?’
    The staff were seated around the table for the evening meal, the butler at the head. He glanced up and down the lines of faces, but they avoided his eye. One said, ‘Not me. That Frenchie is ower fussy and bad-tempered.’ Vanessa Gresham’s French maid was a motherly woman of forty, dumpy and smiling, but with high standards and an acid tongue for those who did not measure up to them. She was not present because she was attending her mistress on a visit to another part of the county. Gillespie sighed. He was reluctant to order one of them to do the job, knowing there would be argument and excuses and probably a blazing row with Madame Jeanne.
    Then Liza said, from the foot of the table, ‘Can I try, please, Mr Gillespie?’ In her excitement and embarrassment at speaking out in front of them all it came out in a squeak. But it eased the tension. There was laughter and a call of, ‘You sound like a little mouse, Liza.’
    She blushed, but the butler grinned at her. ‘You can try. Report to Madame Jeanne when she returns tomorrow.’
    ‘ Thank you, sir.’
    The others smiled because she had taken the job none of them wanted, but Liza was delighted. She believed this was a step on her way to becoming a lady ’s maid one day, for which sewing and dressmaking were essential skills. Would her needlework satisfy Madame Jeanne?
    The Frenchwoman had the same doubts and pursed her lips. ‘We shall see.’ After two weeks she told Liza, ‘You will do. You have a lot to learn but I think that will come.’ To Gillespie she said, ‘The little one is ver’ good,’ and at her urging he asked Vanessa Gresham if Liza might be sent to learn dressmaking one day in each week. Since then she had spent Thursdays in Newcastle, setting out at dawn and