Page 22 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

Rose was just beginning her walk back from the village to the Castle when a small boy dashed up to her crying, ‘Miss Rose! Miss Rose!’

She turned, and recognised little Billy Dawkins, son of one of the waiters at the Crown. He was generally to be found hanging around the inn or the high street, looking for jobs to do for pennies. ‘You should be at school, Billy Dawkins,’ she said. ‘How will you learn your letters else?’

Billy, who could not see how letters would make him better at holding horses or carrying messages, shrugged it off.

‘Ma made me take our stuff down the bag wash. And then Mr Persons saw me come out and wanted a message run.’ The Ideal Laundry was next door to the station.

‘So I done that and took the answer back from Mr Gilbert what’s in bed with a belly-ache. And then—’

‘Never mind,’ Rose said, sorry she’d started it. ‘What were you calling me for?’

‘I was getting to that,’ Billy said, wounded.

‘Then I went to see if Pa wanted anything, and I got to clean knives in the Crown kitchen for a bit, then I went back for the bag wash an’ took it home, and on the way Miss Eddowes called me over and said if I was to see you, to tell you she wanted to speak to you right away, urgent.

Cos she knew it was your afternoon off and you’d likely be in the village.

And I’d seen you go into Poining’s before, so I took the bag to Ma, then I runs back to Poining’s and they said you’d gone home and I runs out and I sees you just going for to climb over the stile. And that’s what I been doing.’

He stopped, breathless. Rose filtered out the important section. ‘Miss Eddowes wants to see me?’

‘Urgent,’ he said, nodding importantly, and his grubby palm crept out an inch in a manner both hopeful and suggestive.

‘Miss Eddowes gave you something for bringing the message, didn’t she?’ Rose said sternly. She knew how things were done.

‘A ha’penny,’ he said brazenly. ‘And she said you’d give me the other.’

Rose was as sure as she could be that Miss Eddowes had given him the whole penny.

But she reflected how much a ha’penny meant to the likes of Billy Dawkins and how much less to her, and felt for her purse.

Annoyingly she didn’t have a ha’penny, only pennies, and one lurking farthing.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to palm him off with the farthing, and had to part with a whole penny, in bad grace and feeling she’d been had.

But when Billy Dawkins looked at it, his face brightened and he said, ‘Gosh, thanks, miss,’ with such pleasure that it softened the blow for her. Philanthropy , she thought. Maybe that’s why Miss Eddowes does it.

She walked down past the church to Weldon House, where any pleasure she had been feeling dissolved before the news Miss Eddowes had to give her.

The cook’s room was at the far end of the passage that ran right through the lower floor, which the servants sometimes called Piccadilly.

All the domestic offices lay on Piccadilly, or down short spur passages leading off it.

It was a world of its own, a place of echoing footsteps, clashing sounds, voices, smells.

Most of the servants left it at various times to carry out their duties in the house above, and they went right up to the roof at nights to their bedrooms. But the cook and the kitchen staff had their workplace on Piccadilly, and Mrs Oxlea had her bedroom there as well, which Rose sometimes thought was unhealthy: she never got away.

The room was not particularly lovely either, being a stone-walled, stone-floored cell, with one window high up – and even that window had bars.

There was space for a narrow iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a wooden chair, and a corner was curtained off for clothes.

But at least, Rose thought, trying to find the good, Mrs Oxlea had it to herself.

And the door had a bolt on the inside. The maids in the attic all shared, and there was no privacy for them.

Mrs Oxlea was not in the kitchen when Rose returned, so she went and knocked on the door of her room. ‘Are you there, Deena? It’s me, Rose.’ There was a shuffling, the bolt was drawn, and the door opened a crack. ‘I’m alone,’ Rose said. ‘Are you sober? I got to talk to you. It’s important.’

Mrs Oxlea sighed, and yielded the door.

Rose slipped in and shut it behind her. ‘You ought to go outside sometimes,’ she said. ‘Get some fresh air. It’s not healthy staying in all the time.’

The cook shuffled backwards and sat on the bed.

She had been writing in a book, Rose saw, but shut it firmly as if Rose might be able to read it across the room – though her one glance had shown writing so tiny and crabbed she probably couldn’t have read it close up with a magnifying glass. Her diary, Rose guessed.

Rose moved the chair across to face her and sat down.

‘Don’t stare at me like that,’ Mrs Oxlea said irritably. ‘I’m as sober as what you are. Anyway, I’d like to see you working all hours in that kitchen in the heat and not take a drink of ale now and then to cool you down.’

‘It’s not just the beer, though, is it?’ Rose said. ‘You got a black bottle under the mattress, there? Wouldn’t be the first time.’

Mrs Oxlea didn’t answer. Rose had always been irritated by the cook, though mostly she felt sorry for her, because it was none of it Mrs Oxlea’s fault, when you thought about it.

Rose had had her own little brushes with his lordship over the years, and she knew how insistent he could be.

Still, there was no room in a person’s life for self-pity, and Mrs Oxlea was her own worst enemy.

Her drinking was a problem for everyone – and when she was in the bag, she was loose in the tongue.

Rose had often told her she’d end up in Bedlam if she wasn’t careful.

There was an insane asylum out at Asham Bois, and they said once in, you never came out.

You had to hope her ladyship wouldn’t think of that one – it would solve all her problems, because nobody listened to the ravings of a certified loony, did they?

But what she had to tell Mrs Oxlea now changed things.

She wasn’t sure exactly how the future would be different, but there was no doubt it would be.

And it was she who had to deal the blow.

Miss Eddowes had said she’d do it if necessary, but she thought it would come better from Rose, and be more discreet, and that was true, but it didn’t make it easier.

Well, no sense in dilly-dallying. ‘I’ve got some news for you, Dee,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard something.’

Mrs Oxlea sniffed. ‘Not surprising in this house. Never knew such a lot of servants for tattling. What is it this time?’

‘It’s not gossip. I had it from Miss Eddowes in the village this afternoon.’

Mrs Oxlea drew in a sharp breath, and looked at Rose with an appalling mixture of hope and apprehension. It was the hope that upset Rose most. ‘About – him?’

‘It’s not good news,’ Rose added quickly. ‘I’m sorry, Deena. I wish it was anything but this. I wish it wasn’t me having to tell you—’

‘No,’ said Mrs Oxlea in a flat voice. ‘No.’

‘It was diphtheria. There was an outbreak in the village. Lot of kids got it. There was nothing anyone could have done. He died, Deena. He’s dead. I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Oxlea again. But the truth was in her eyes, the truth that she had always known she would never see him again.

Yet the heart lives on hope, its constant food and strongest drink.

Rose understood, and her pity hurt her. You consume that hope, no matter how much you know it’s false, no matter how much more it will make things hurt in the long run. Because without it, what is there?

‘When?’ Mrs Oxlea asked, in a dead voice.

‘A week ago.’

‘A week?’ It was a cry of pain.

‘Miss Eddowes only heard yesterday. She thought about sending you a note straight away, but she thought it was better told than written. She sends you her – her deepest condolences.’ Rose stumbled slightly on the remembered words.

There was a long silence. Mrs Oxlea’s head was down, so Rose couldn’t see her face. Her shoulders were hunched, her hands, clasped in her lap, twisted together.

‘I’m sorry, Dee,’ Rose said again. ‘I know you must be upset. But it’s over now. You can make a new start for yourself. Maybe you should get away from this place—’

‘I got a photo, did you know that?’ Mrs Oxlea said, as if Rose hadn’t spoken.

‘Miss Eddowes, she always told the people that took the babies, one photo when it’s five.

She made it a rule. One photo, then that’s it, you won’t get bothered any more.

’ She picked up the book in which she had been writing, and drew out from inside the cover the photograph, which she offered to Rose.

A small boy, seated in a very large photographer’s chair, velvet-upholstered like a throne, with potted palms behind him and a glimpse of a backcloth of parkland and trees.

A small boy in nankeen knickers, short jacket and long stockings, his small boots dangling above the floor.

His solemn face stared expressionlessly at the camera – he had been told he mustn’t move.

The hair was straight and very dark, the round, fixed eyes seemed light – blue, probably.

He did look – well, Rose was looking for the likeness – but he did look a bit like his late lordship.

Poor little chap! Well, it was all over now.

Lives blighted and a life lost, and the only one who hadn’t paid was the one to blame for it all.

Rose sighed and handed back the photograph. ‘Burn it, that’s my advice to you. No sense in brooding over the past any more. Get rid of it, and start afresh.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Mrs Oxlea said in a low, desperate voice.

‘No, I don’t,’ Rose said. ‘You had rotten luck, I don’t deny it, but if it was me, I wouldn’t’ve let it rule my whole life. I’d’ve made an effort. And I wouldn’t have hid inside a bottle, that’s for sure.’