Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [36]
Rose, who was actually quite warm-hearted, became embarrassed at how Lily was being regarded by the others and told the girl to go outside and take a little walk around the garden.
‘The state of her!’ said Blossom the moment the back door closed.
‘Who knows what germs she might be harbouring – why, she doesn’t look as if she’s ever been on the receiving end of a bar of soap!’ said Lizzie.
Mrs Beaman heaved her bosom. ‘Master wants to take her on as a lady’s maid?’ she asked no one in particular. ‘Master must have gone mad.’
‘Mistress did look quite stunned when she told me to bring her over,’ Rose volunteered.
‘Anyway, apart from what she looks like, does she know what a servant’s duties are?’ Lizzie went on, with a superior smile. ‘Has she been in service before? Can she iron a pleated petticoat? Can she dress hair?’
‘Can she, my arse!’ said Mrs Beaman, and the others dissolved into shocked giggles. ‘Did he give instructions as to her dress?’ she asked. She looked down at herself. She and the rest of the house servants were wearing white linen pinafores over deep-blue cotton dresses. ‘Is she to wear our livery? She hasn’t even got any shoes!’
‘Where did she come from?’ Blossom demanded.
Rose shrugged. ‘All I know is that she has a sister who’s been taken on by the Unwins as a mute. I think they had to take both girls, or the first one wouldn’t have come. Mr Unwin will probably tell you more tonight,’ she added, for the family came back to their Kensington home in the evenings.
‘The Unwins – taking on charity cases? There’s a first!’ said Mrs Beaman, as she and the others stood in a line at the back window, shaking their heads and watching as Lily walked around the garden, smelling flowers, squeezing pungent herbs between her fingers and admiring the abundance of vegetables growing in the walled garden.
It was sad that she and Grace had to live separately, she was thinking, but she’d been promised that it wouldn’t be for ever. And just look at all the things to eat here: the shiny, red tomatoes, the marrows and onions and fat, white cauliflowers – not to mention the chickens pecking in the gravel. She was willing to bet that no one ever went hungry here! Used to taking food where she could get it, she reached up, picked several ripe blackberries and popped them into her mouth. When Mrs Beaman rapped hard on the window in order to admonish her, she merely looked back, waved and smiled.
‘The cheek of it! That one will never make a lady’s maid,’ said Mrs Beaman.
‘Or any sort of a maid!’ said Blossom.
‘Certainly not until she’s had a bath,’ said Lizzie, sniffing the air where Lily had left a faint, foul smell of boiled animal bones behind her.
Rose looked at Mrs Beaman, knowing that the very latest in all-enveloping hot-water showers had recently been installed in the house. ‘Do you think perhaps –’
‘No, she certainly could not use the bathroom,’ snapped Mrs Beaman. ‘The very idea!’
x
Rose bade her goodbyes and walked back across the park to the Unwin Undertaking Establishment while the debate about the new servant continued. After Blossom had declared it an impossibility to be in the room with anyone smelling as bad as Lily did, Mrs Beaman decided that she should, under the care of Ella, be given a penny and taken to the public baths in Hammersmith to be scrubbed and disinfected to the standard expected of a maidservant in a gentleman’s house. Before they set off, Mrs Beaman found several items of clothing which had been discarded by Miss Charlotte as being too awfully unfashionable, and a pair of shoes, soles worn as thin as paper, which she had thrown out herself. In this way, Mrs Beaman hoped to improve and enhance the new maid before introducing her to the daughter of the house.
x
‘Now she’s cleaned up, let her take in afternoon tea!’ Blossom urged Mrs Beaman much later that afternoon.
‘Oh yes, do!’ Lizzie said, winking at Blossom. ‘Let’s see what Miss Charlotte has to say about her.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said