Free Easterleigh Hall by Margaret Graham Page B

clean the shoes, all twenty or so pairs of them including those of the upper servants. Annie had soaked the blacklead for the ranges overnight, and they worked until Evie’s hair was sweat-soaked. Finally the ranges gleamed, but not as much as Evie’s mam’s. ‘They’ll do,’ Annie groaned. ‘Old Moore can’t see too well, even with her glasses.’
    They tackled the fender with emery paper and by then their hands were sore and smudged, their nails torn. At Miss Manton’s, Susan from Hawton had sculleried for her and Evie realised just how lucky she’d been. The kettle was boiling and it was time for biscuits and tea for Mrs Green, Mr Harvey, and Mrs Moore.
    As instructed, Evie left the sustenance on the occasional table in both Mrs Green’s sitting room and Mr Harvey’s parlour, which was opposite Mrs Moore. She tapped lightly on the cook’s parlour door, and put her tea and biscuit on her table. It was a nice room but cold, with a fireplace laid but unlit, and photographs on the wall. Evie glanced at these as she headed for the bedroom. She saw a young woman who must have been Miss Manton sitting in a garden, alone, smiling into the camera. She radiated joy.
    Evie kicked something as she was about to knock on the bedroom door. It was an empty gin bottle. Mrs Moore had asked her to make sure she knocked long and hard. She left the bottle where it was, because to move it would show that she knew. She knocked again, and again. At last she heard Mrs Moore call, ‘Enough. I’m awake. Leave the tea, get out. Just go. Get out.’
    She went, wanting to bang the door shut on the canny old witch, but did not.
    Evie checked her list of ‘things to do’. Some of the copper pans had been left from the night before, though Mrs Moore had written that they should not be. Annie had already started on them in the bitter cold of the scullery and Evie rushed in, dipping into the mixture of silver sand, salt and vinegar and starting to rub the largest, gasping at the stinging of her raw flesh. ‘Quick, she’s awake and not happy.’
    Annie looked up at her, her face still puffy, a Woodbine hanging from her mouth. ‘Never is in the morning. Don’t know why, except I’m not either. She’s got a touch of the rheumatics is all. No need to make such a do of it, is there. Don’t worry, she’ll be half an hour yet and by then she’ll expect this kitchen to be on the way to being perfect, with the table laid up. But that’s your job, not bloody mine. How it can all be done just by us two I don’t bloody well know.’ Her ash dropped into the pan, her cigarette clung to her bottom lip. How could she talk with it in her mouth? The same way Jack and his marras did.
    They worked on, and any skin on their hands that had survived was soon as raw as the rest. Evie felt the stinging right up through her arms as far as her eyebrows. Nonetheless, by the time Mrs Moore appeared the pans were hung up on the hooks and gleamed enough to satisfy the pickiest of souls. But not Mrs Moore. ‘They’re a disgrace, take ’em down again and finish them properly and stoke up that furnace, for God’s sake. And I’ll expect them to be cleaned every time we use them today.’ She had the same frown that Jack had after a night at the pub, the same faint tremble of the hands, and that smell.
    She slumped down on her stool. ‘We need the porridge ready for the staff, don’t you forget that, Evie, and I’ll have more tea. Miss Donant, the lady’s maid, will be in hotfoot for her bloody highness’s cuppa and then for Miss Veronica’s, and Archie will have to take up Mr Auberon’s now he’s home, so hoy that down to the butler’s pantry. God almighty, as though we don’t have enough to do. And this table isn’t laid properly. Get the ladle, or are you expecting Mrs Green to serve with her hands?