Page 32 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

‘Thank God for that! Now, attend: even when they’re not as shy as Miss Bayfield, girls are always happier in pairs.

Also, mamas don’t worry so much about foursomes as they do about a tête-à-tête.

So we’ll hunt together, and I’ll occupy the attention of the one you don’t want while you make your number with her miraculously relaxed and receptive friend.

And if we come across the Bayfield-Sanderton complication, you shall work on the Bayfield while I keep Miss Sanderton occupied.

If what you say is true, it won’t be any hardship. ’

‘No,’ said Giles, despondently. ‘She’s very conversable.’

Crooks had frequently visited Berkeley Square in the service of the old earl, so he knew his way around below stairs.

Lady Manningtree kept a decent establishment of well-trained servants, and everything was done in form, which he found comforting.

The only discordant note was the presence of Mr Richard’s manservant, Speen, who was a stranger to them all, having only just been taken on.

Speen was a Londoner, a thin man of middling height with slicked-back dark hair. He seemed to know his work well enough, but when Crooks asked him, in a friendly way, where he had served before, he only tapped the side of his nose and said mysteriously, ‘Luke eight, seventeen.’ And walked away.

Crooks had had to look it up, and found the words, ‘For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.’ Which was all very well, but it told him nothing, except that Speen had a good knowledge of the Bible.

That was reassuring, to an extent – one did not want to work with Godless people – but on the other hand, it struck him, when he thought about it, as not quite right to be using the Holy Scriptures to avoid answering what was, after all, a perfectly civil question.

Having seen his master off for his evening engagements, Crooks carried the boots he had worn that day downstairs to clean them, and was brushing them, his mind a pleasant blank, when Speen came into the boot-room and said, ‘This is dull work, Mr Crooks! Moping in here when all London lies spread out for our delight.’

‘Eh?’ said Crooks, coming out of his reverie.

‘This fair city hangs against the black of night, like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Crooks asked warily.

‘The Bard, Mr Crooks. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet .’

Crooks wasn’t acquainted with Romeo and Juliet but he had the idea it wasn’t quite proper – something about forbidden love?

More evidence of Speen’s education – but in a servant, it could even be a mite dangerous if improperly applied.

He shifted ground to one he was more sure of.

‘You shouldn’t call me Crooks. While we are here, I am Mr Stainton and you are Mr Tallant. ’

Speen made a gesture of impatience. ‘Oh, I know all that malarkey. Don’t you worry, I won’t make a slip-up when there’s anyone else listening.

I’m a man of many tongues, believe me, and I trim my cloth to my customer.

But it’s just you and me here now, refugees from the Castle.

We ought to stick together. What say we join forces? ’

‘To do what?’ Crooks asked, bludgeoned by words. The Bible, Shakespeare, talk of tongues – he stared at the tongue of the earl’s boot, and felt even more confused.

Speen stepped closer. ‘To have a bit of fun, that’s what!

’ His accent had changed, slipping from the fluting tones of a trained servant to something more ‘of the people’.

‘Our guv’nors are out, won’t be back before the wee hours – now’s the chance for you and me to sample the delights of the greatest city on earth. What say?’

‘But – but I’ve got things to do. These boots to clean. His suit to brush.’

‘Plenty of time for all that tomorrow morning. They’re having fun – why shouldn’t we? Come on, old man. Keep me company – two Castle valets together! I don’t want to have to go out alone. Be a pal.’

Crooks was strangely tempted. In London, he didn’t usually go out in the evening, feeling obscurely that it wasn’t his territory.

When he had done his legitimate chores and fiddled about in the dressing-room inventing things to do, he usually retired to his room and read.

He had two books with him, Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , and Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford .

He didn’t really enjoy either of them, but they were very effective in making him drop off to sleep.

‘Dull work’, indeed! And Speen was looking at him so pleadingly – he didn’t like to let a fellow servant down.

He could imagine that going out alone wouldn’t be much fun.

‘What exactly had you in mind?’ he asked.

‘There’s a little place just along the road, the Coach and Horses—’

‘A public house?’ At home he sometimes took a glass of ale on a summer evening in the private bar at the Dog and Gun in Ashmore Carr, but London pubs, he believed, were rough and dangerous places steeped in vice.

‘Oh, highly respectable,’ Speen said. ‘Proper as a deacon. There’s a back room where senior servants go from all the big houses round here.

Decent fellows like us. For a bit of conversation, a glass or two, and they do a cracking ordinary, as well.

We could have supper, meet some congenial chaps, perhaps play a hand of cribbage.

Suitable entertainment for two men of refinement like ourselves. ’

‘It does sound … rather nice,’ Crooks said hesitantly.

Speen clapped his shoulder. ‘That’s the dandy! Hustle along now, old man, and we’ll be off. I’ll just tell Mr Forbes we won’t be eating with them.’ He gave a ghostly wink. ‘Make sure they don’t bar the door before we’re back.’

Thus it was that Crooks found himself for the first time in his life in a London pub, crammed at a wooden table with six other servants in a throbbing atmosphere of talk, cigarette smoke, and the smell of spilled ale and roasted mutton.

It had not been so crowded when they first arrived, but more and more people had since come in.

Speen had introduced the six as first footmen and valets from this and that establishment, and they all seemed to know him, greeted him heartily as ‘Edwin!’ and ‘You old devil – back again, eh?’ Now all the tables were full, the rest of the floor-space was packed with men standing, quaffing ale (he was sure ‘quaffing’ was the right word) and talking nineteen to the dozen.

Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and people were constantly stopping on their way to the serving hatch or back to lean over and exchange pleasantries with Speen and his companions.

Crooks could not imagine why his presence was needed.

He had thought Speen would be lonely without him, but he obviously knew everyone in London.

The ordinary of roast mutton, pease pudding and cabbage was good and cheap, but so plentiful he could not make any inroads into the jam duff that followed.

He had asked for a half of ale but Speen had brought him a whole pint, and when he had managed with some difficulty to reach the bottom of the glass, another appeared before him.

He felt bilious, anxious, and out of place.

But then one of the others leaned across the table and patted his arm and said, ‘Don’t look so blue, old man. They ain’t coming to hang you!’

And Speen leaned over and bellowed in his ear, ‘Glad you came! Wouldn’t have felt comfortable without you here! Great little place, ain’t it?’

And suddenly, for no reason he could think of, he began to enjoy himself.

The second pint of ale seemed to go down more good-naturedly than the first. The faces around the table were all beaming.

They were good fellows – companions in arms, he thought sentimentally.

Only another servant could understand the difficulties and sacrifices of a servant’s life.

And the loneliness. The isolation. Imprisoned in a great house, far from the companionship of his own kind. Never to – never to—

He leaned forward. ‘Good fellows!’ he said. ‘All jolly good fellows.’

The man opposite him grinned. ‘He’s away! Crooky’s away!’

‘Crooky! That’s me,’ Crooks said. He’d never had a friend before. He’d been an only child, an outsider at school, had gone into service so young there had never been the chance to make a friend. It seemed a blessed thing to have a nickname. ‘Crooky!’ he shouted.

‘Crooky!’ they bellowed back. They were all beaming at him. His face felt like a full moon, round and smiling and warm. But not silvery. Red, it was. Red and smiling.

Speen put his arm round his shoulders. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

‘I am,’ said Crooks, eagerly. Someone put another pint glass in front of him. ‘But got to go to the – to the—’ He didn’t know what it might be called here. He leaned in to Speen and whispered, or thought he whispered ‘—privy!’

‘Out the back. Turn left out of the door. Here, I’ll go with you – you might get lost.’

‘Kind of you,’ Crooks said when he had got to his feet and found his balance. ‘Kind.’

Speen’s arm was round his shoulders again. ‘That’s what friends are for. And we’re not finished yet, Crooky. The night is still young.’

‘Like a precious jewel,’ Crooks agreed solemnly.

It seemed a long way to the privy and a longer way back, and after the darkness out in the yard the light and noise and smoke hit him hard. He reeled, and might have fallen if Speen hadn’t been there. Reaching the table again, he saw to his surprise that there were women among the footmen.

‘Here, Studs, give Crooky your chair. He’s older and grander than you,’ Speen commanded.

Somehow Crooks found himself sitting at the near side of the table, Speen next to him, but the chairs had been turned outward to face the room.

And there were two women, young women in evening dress – at least, they were showing a lot of décolletage, and they seemed young, with the red lips and red cheeks of youth.

One of them sat on Speen’s lap. Crooks stared owlishly at the phenomenon.

Speen grasped Crooks’s shoulder and shook it gently.

‘Not falling asleep, Crooky? Here, this one’s Susie, and she’s all yours. Enjoy yourself! You only live once!’

To Crooks’s immense surprise, the second young woman plonked herself down on his lap, put her arms round his neck, and said, ‘What’s your name, love? Can’t call you Crooky!’

Round, soft bosoms were pressing against him – his nose was practically in the cleft.

He smelt perfume, and powder, and behind it, a whiff of sweat.

She jiggled softly on his lap, and said, to his bewilderment, ‘Hullo, hullo! What you got in your pocket? Oh, you’re a card all right, Crooky!

It’s always the quiet ones you got to watch! ’

Suddenly the red lips were pressed down on his, and he tasted waxy lip paint and brandy.

Bosoms, red lips, cheap scent, bare arms round his neck, insinuating words …

One of her arms left his neck and her hand was sliding into his lap, fumbling about …

He panicked. He couldn’t breathe. He pushed her back, gasping.

Next to him, Speen was fully engaged with the other woman, their faces joined together and making a noise like a carthorse freeing its hoof from thick mud.

And Speen’s hand was deliberately rucking up the woman’s skirt, exposing her ankle, her leg …

‘Oh, no, no, no!’ Crooks cried.

‘What’s up, love?’ Susie asked with mild concern.

‘I can’t! No, really, I can’t! Please, please don’t!’ He pushed at her increasingly wildly. ‘Please get off! Get off me!’

She pulled herself to her feet, annoyed. ‘Well, pardon me, I’m sure! I know when I’m not wanted! Here, Eddy, you got a right friend here! Thanks for nothing!’

Speen had emerged from his lady-friend’s face in time to witness her dismissal. He sighed. ‘What’s up, Crooky? Don’t you like girls?’

Crooks stood up, shock having sobered him enough to be able to stand without swaying too much. ‘My life,’ he said. ‘My whole life has been dedicated to beauty. To order, to elegance. Not – not this !’

Speen’s lady-friend was not pleased. ‘Who are you calling “this”? Are you saying we ain’t elegant?’

Speen didn’t seem too put out. ‘Never mind him, love. He’s a bit of a choir boy. I’d better get him home.’ He pushed the girl off his lap, and slapped her rump. ‘Don’t go anywhere. It’ll only take half an hour, then I’ll be back.’

‘What about me?’ Susie complained.

Speen winked. ‘I’ll take on both of yer. Stay right here, ladies, I’ll be back.’ He took Crooks’s arm just above the elbow. ‘Come on, then, my old pal.’

‘I don’t need help. I can make my own way,’ Crooks said, pulling free.

Speen examined him, judging his condition. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave the party. Know the way, do you?’

‘Certainly,’ said Crooks. And then misgave: Speen had been trying to be nice to him, trying to give him a good time.

His tastes might be horribly low, but he had meant well.

‘Thank you,’ he said, pulled himself up straight, and departed with a dignity that was only slightly marred by stumbling over the doorstep onto the street and having to grab a stranger to keep himself upright.