Free The Doryman by Maura Hanrahan Page A

relatives “back home” as they called it, even those who had never lived there.
    Angela’s day was cluttered with work. She rose long before dawn to start the fires in the kitchen and drawing room, where Mrs. Spurrell would start her needlework right after breakfast. Her next task was to help the cook, a black woman called Rosa. The cook was elderly now and had been born a slave in Georgia. She had been in service her whole life and had never married.
    Angela took the bread from the breadbox – white, they never ate brown – and cut enough slices for Mr. and Mrs. Spurrell and their four children, Lillie, Andrew, Evelyn, and George. Then she got the oats off the top shelf in the pantry and laid out the butter, sugar, tea and milk for Rosa to prepare breakfast. She buttered some bread for herself and gulped some of the tea that Rosa made for the two of them. Then she crept into the bedrooms and collected the chamber pots, which she then dumped outside. She cleaned them out before replacing them, fresh for the first use of the morning.
    By now, the younger children had awakened. Angela went into the boys’ room and fetched baby George’s clothes from the wardrobe. Then she went into the girls’ room and chose a dress for little Evelyn. She went back to George then and dressed him. When she was done, she returned to Evelyn and helped the little girl, who was into her petticoats by then. Lillie and Andrew were old enough to dress themselves.
    Rosa set the table, between stirring the oatmeal and making the toast, but Angela always cleared it and brought the cutlery, cups, and dishes back into the kitchen. As Mrs. Spurrell settled into the drawing room, Angela always remembered to ask her if she was comfortable with the fire. Angela had figured out early on that it was best to have the mistress of the house as an ally, should anything go wrong. Like most girls on the Placentia Bay islands, she had only three years of schooling; her mother had plucked her out of the classroom to help with the younger children. But Angela’s brain worked non-stop, and she was described proudly by her parents in Oderin as “smart as you can get.” She was more than a competent reader, and in the top drawer of her bureau she kept a notebook into which she copied prayers and her favourite poems.
    After Mrs. Spurrell was settled away, and the two littlest children by her side in the drawing room, Angela got Mr. Spurrell’s briefcase from his study and put it out by the door so he could take it as he left for work. He was an accountant for an import-export firm, who took the subway into Midtown Manhattan every day. He never spoke to Angela, only nodded in her direction once in a while. That’s for the best, Angela often reflected, all too aware of the pinching, teasing, and worse, much worse, that other young women in service had to contend with.
    Then Angela walked Lillie and Andrew to school a half-mile away, answering Lillie’s incessant questions about everything under the sun on the way. Although the Spurrells seemed to Angela to be well off, both children attended Public School 30 in central Brooklyn, rather than a private academy. She wondered if this was a philosophical decision, or whether the Spurrells conserved their funds in case providence decided to deal them a financial blow someday. After all, their roots were in Newfoundland, where few people took the future for granted.
    After the children were ensconced in school, Angela walked back to the house, where a mountain of chores awaited her. She made the seven beds in the home, swept the three layers of floors, beat the area rugs, fetched wood from the basement, stoked the fires, washed windows and walls, dusted in every room, mopped the porch and hallway floors, and did laundry.
    Washing clothes was the hardest and most time-consuming task of all. Angela started by gathering the dirty clothes from the three bedrooms upstairs. She