The Servants

She went to a small drawer in the counter, took an object out and held it up to show him. It was a large key.

He frowned. ‘What's that for?’

‘I'll show you,’ she said. ‘It's all right – you can bring your tea.’

Mark followed the old lady out into the corridor. He assumed she was going to go left, into the narrow passageway that led to the outer door, that perhaps there was something stored in a cupboard there. He had a horrible suspicion she was going to give him something. Old people did that, sometimes, thinking they were being nice but in fact making you accept something that you didn't understand or value and didn't know what to do with.

Instead she turned right and walked to the big, solid door. She fitted the key into its lock and turned it with an apparent effort. It made a loud, hollow sound, like a single horse's hoof landing on the road. She turned the knob and pushed, and the door opened away from her, slowly receding, without any sound at all.

There was darkness on the other side, the faintest hint of a very pale, grey glow in one corner.

‘Ready?’ she said.

She reached into the gloom and flicked a switch on the wall, and suddenly a couple of dim lights came on beyond, hanging from the ceiling of whatever lay on the other side of the door.

Mark's mouth dropped open slowly.

Chapter 5

HE FOLLOWED THE old lady as she stepped through the threshold and into the corridor beyond. It was the same width as the one they'd entered from, and ran towards the back of the building. Where the first corridor had been merely grimy, however, the walls here were almost brown. Mark looked more closely and saw that the colour was mottled, as if caused by years and years of smoke, under a thick layer of dust.

There were two openings on the right of the corridor. The first was a narrow door, which was shut. The second, a couple of yards further on, was the entrance to a short side corridor. There was a door on the left of this, and another opening at the end.

Past this, the main corridor ran for a few more yards and then took a sharp right turn. He couldn't see what happened after that, but it was from down there that the soft grey light was coming.

‘What is this?’

‘What do you think?’

Mark shook his head. He couldn't imagine what this space might have been. It looked a little like a floor of the house above, but with much lower ceilings and no windows and no fancy bits anywhere. It felt ancient, almost like a cave – but because of the smooth surfaces and corners everywhere, it also felt almost modern.

‘The servants' quarters,’ the old lady said.

‘Servants?’

‘These houses were built a long time ago. Not even the last century – the one before that. They were made specially for fancy people up in London, who wanted to come and take the sea air.’

‘On holiday?’

‘Like a holiday, but it was supposed to be good for their health too. Fancy people weren't used to doing anything for themselves in those days, though, and so they brought their servants along with them.’

‘What kind of servants?’

The lady opened the first door. Beyond was a dark recess, about four feet deep and three feet wide, with shelves on either side. These were empty and thick with dust and cobwebs.

‘The butler's pantry,’ she said. ‘You've heard of butlers, I assume?’

Mark's understanding of the term was largely confined to the expression ‘the butler did it’, plus he'd heard of Jeeves, but he nodded. ‘The man who opened the door to people.’

She smiled faintly. ‘That, and a good deal more. He was in charge of the world down here, for the most part, and one of his responsibilities was the house's wine, and brandy, and port.’ She closed the door again and pointed at a dark smudge just below the door handle, which extended a couple of inches either side of where the door met the frame. ‘This was sealed with wax every night, to make sure none of the other servants … helped themselves.’

She led Mark down the corridor and into the right turn. The first door on the left was open. Beyond was a tiny, windowless room, barely big enough to hold a single bed. Now it was full of old broken furniture and shadows. ‘This was where the butler slept.’

‘It's tiny.’

‘Not for a servant, I can assure you. Only one other person down here even had a room to themselves.’

She walked on past the doorway to the end. The lights from the corridor didn't shed much illumination here, and all Mark could make out was a murky and low-ceilinged space, again filled with bits of old junk.

‘The servants' parlour. They ate their meals in here, and the housemaid would sleep on the floor at night.’

‘This is where they hung out?’

‘There was no “hanging out”. They worked. I'll show you where.’

As she led Mark back to the main corridor, the old lady trailed her frail hand along the smooth surface of the right-hand wall. Where it joined the other passage, it turned in a smooth arc.

When they reached the point at the bottom where the corridor turned to the right again, Mark gasped quietly. He could see now where the light had been coming from.

The space they walked into was almost like a small, enclosed courtyard, filled with muted grey light, as if from inside a rain cloud. It was protected from the sky by a wooden roof and a large skylight, but still felt nearly as much a part of the outside as a part of the house. This, he realized, was where the smell was coming from. A couple of panes of glass in the skylight were cracked or broken, and water was dripping steadily onto the floor, onto broken tiles and pieces of wood which lay strewn all around. They smelt rotten. There were pigeon feathers on the ground, too, and quite a lot of bird crap. There was a soft cooing sound from somewhere.

‘Dreadful things,’ the old lady said. ‘Rats with wings.’

Mark barely heard her. He was turning in a slow circle. On the left of the room there were a couple more doorways, one to an area with metal grilles in the walls. At the far end of the space was another pair, but much lower, and on the right side of the room, which he assumed must be a kitchen, he saw the rusted remains of … he wasn't really sure what it was, in fact.

‘The range,’ the old lady said. ‘Where meals for the entire household were cooked. There would have been a big table here, right where we're standing, but I'm sure that was sold many years ago. Probably a dining table up in London now, or someone's desk. People stopped living this way seventy or eighty years ago. In most houses all this has been turned into a basement flat.’

Now Mark thought about it, he realized he knew this. His mother had a friend in London who lived in Notting Hill, in an apartment that was below ground level, like this. Hers was all white walls and down-lighting and big paintings with splashes of colour, however. It was hard to imagine it could ever have been something like this.

He pointed at the small room with grilles in the walls. ‘What was that?’

‘It's where the meat was stored.’

‘They had a room, just for the fridge?’

‘There were no refrigerators. The meat was hung. The grilles in the walls are so the air could circulate.’

‘Didn't the meat go off?’

‘Sometimes. The space next to it is the oven and bakery area. Then …’ She turned to indicate the two low doors at the end. ‘Storage areas. Vegetables and fruit on the left, dairy – milk, cheese – on the right.’

Mark went over and entered each area in turn, having to crouch slightly to get inside. The ceilings were curved, like a vault. There were shelves on either side of both rooms, again holding nothing but years and years of dust. They could have stored a lot once, though.

When he came back out he noticed a couple of broken wooden boxes on the other side of the kitchen space. They had wire netting across the front, and looked like very basic rabbit hutches that had fallen apart.

‘Chickens,’ the old lady said.

‘Chickens? They had chickens in the house?’

‘Of course. Fresh eggs every morning.’

Mark laughed, trying to picture a state of affairs in which it made sense to have live chickens in a place where people lived. Beyond the coops was a shallow recess in the wall, about eight feet wide and four feet deep. ‘Was that a fireplace?’

The old lady smiled. ‘No, dear. That was where the cook slept. And the scullery maid, too, unless she just bedded down in the middle of the floor.’

‘It's cold, though,’ he said, trying to picture this.

‘Of course. It's almost underground. But it would have been different when the range was alight. Then it would have been the one warm place down here. The cook was lucky, in winter. In summer … not so lucky’

Mark tried to imagine what it had been like. Two people sleeping in this area – in the kitchen, another in the other tiny room he'd seen at the end of the side corridor. Meat hanging in the space over there, a range puffing out smoke and heat, chickens clucking and walking around, the cook clattering around at the stove…

He wandered back over to the bakery area – and was startled when a bird suddenly appeared from nowhere, flapping within inches of his face. It scrabbled chaotically out into the main area, careering through the air, circling round and bashing into the glass of the skylight. Though she was standing directly underneath, the old lady paid it no attention at all. Eventually it found the broken pane and burst outside, shooting upwards into the gloom and rain.

‘Who was the other servant?’ Mark asked. ‘You said there was another one who had his own room.’

‘Not his, her,’ the old lady said. ‘Perhaps the most important one of all.’

‘I thought the butler…’

‘The butler was the public face of below-stairs. He was the one visitors saw, if they saw anyone at all.’

‘Why wouldn't they see anyone else?’

‘Servants were supposed to keep out of sight. As if everything happened by magic. They even had their own staircase, at the back of the house, weren't allowed to use the main one. In a house like this all the rooms upstairs would have counters on the landings outside, so that trays of tea or food could be left or collected without the family having to deal with a housemaid directly. Fires would be built and lit in all the rooms before the family got up – and the ash cleared away after they went to bed. The newspaper left ready on the table every morning. Shoes cleaned and left outside bedroom doors, ready for the next day. Silent and invisible. Like living with a team of elves.’

‘So who…’

‘The housekeeper,’ the old lady said, as she led Mark out of the kitchen and back into the main corridor. ‘She gave the housemaids their jobs. She talked with the mistress, discussing what meals would be required that week, and did all the ordering of the food. She organized the linen, made sure all the tasks got done. She was … the queen bee. Down here, anyway’

‘Where did she sleep?’

‘She had the best room of all.’

The old lady walked out through the big door and waited for Mark to follow her. He felt reluctant to do so – he wanted to go back and look some more – but he could tell by her demeanour that the tour was finished.

The old lady pulled the door shut, and locked it again with the big key. Then she nodded into her flat.

‘That's where the housekeeper lived. She needed to be at the front to deal with all the tradesmen who would call throughout each day. Things didn't last. You didn't go to a supermarket like you do nowadays, and buy food frozen for the next month – you had it delivered, every day’

Now they were back in this small front area of the building, it was hard to remember that the rest of it even existed. The big, solid door, the old lady's small, tidy room: it was as if that was all there was.

‘It's weird, all that being back there,’ Mark said.

She looked tired now. ‘People are like that too.’

Mark didn't understand what she meant but it seemed as if she didn't want to say any more. His time down here was over. That was all right. It sounded as if the rain had started to slacken off. A walk along the seafront sounded okay now. The old lady walked behind him to the front door, and stood there as he stepped out.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You're most welcome.’

He started up the narrow metal staircase up to the street, but hesitated, and turned around. ‘Do … other people know that's there?’

‘Other people?’ She knew who he meant. The person who owned this whole building. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don't believe he does. I've lived here for a long time and I don't get many visitors. The only person who knows about it is me. And now, you.’

She closed the door gently.

When Mark got up to the pavement the rain had stopped, though the sky was still low and a uniform grey. He pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets, and set off towards the promenade. He had some change in his back pocket. He thought maybe he'd go down to The Meeting Place and ask for a cup of tea, and ask them to make it strong.

He felt a little better than he had before.

So David didn't know everything there was to know, huh.

Chapter 6

IT STARTED TO rain again, however, and soon it became more like sleet. Mark stuck it out for a while but his cup of tea tasted like dishwater and was cold within moments. The promenade was deserted. The sea turned grey and choppy and a spray came up over the rail. Even the seagulls looked freezing and embittered.

When he got home he was soaked to the skin. He started up the stairs to see if his mother was awake yet but David was already waiting at the top, everything in his posture indicating a desire that Mark be quiet. He did everything short of actually holding his finger to his lips – as if he thought he was the gatekeeper, the person in charge of everything, with the power to decide who got access.

‘I want to talk to you later,’ he said.

Mark tramped back down the stairs without saying anything. He changed his clothes and dried his hair on a hand towel from the kitchen. Then he went into ‘his’ room and shut the door.

He read for a while, but soon finished his book. He didn't have any new ones, and until his mother felt like leaving the house so that they could all go further along the seafront to where the shops were, it didn't seem likely he'd be able to get hold of one. A couple of weeks ago, just after they'd got here, David had returned from one of his supermarket trips with a couple of books for Mark. They lay in a corner of the room, too boring even to open, and it seemed David had since forgotten about the idea of bearing Mark in mind. Mark wasn't going to help him to remember.

He played PlayStation for a while but that wasn't much fun either. The television in the old house in London was huge. You could turn the sound up and it was as if you were actually there. The one in his room in Brighton was the smallest he'd ever encountered, so small he wondered why Mr Sony had actually bothered. Even when you sat close it was as if it was the other side of the room, and the sound was like it was being played over a very old radio. Though it was comforting to go running along the same old corridors and dodging through jungles and abandoned mines that he'd visited many times before, it wasn't very exciting. He gave up in the end and went and sat in the chair facing the window. It rained and rained and rained, and then it stopped. When it got properly dark, lights began to come on again in the other houses on the opposite side of the square. You could see people walking around, sitting down, doing things. Having a life.

What he'd seen downstairs seemed a long way away, blurred by rain and the images of the video game. It was odd, the old lady living in such a small room at the front when there was so much space behind her: but he supposed she probably didn't have much money, and probably wasn't allowed to change things anyway. This was David's house now, after all – even if he'd let her stay down there because it had been her home, he was in charge.

David's house, yes. But he was not David's son. And the woman in the room over Mark's head was Mark's mother. She didn't belong to anyone else, whatever they might think.

When he tried again at six o'clock, David wasn't there to guard the stairs. Mark found his mother on the couch again. She looked less tired than she had yesterday, and was in a good mood. She patted the couch next to her and he went over and sat down.

She asked him about his day, as usual, but for some reason he didn't tell her about visiting the old lady. Partly it was because he'd realized that it probably contravened the warning about talking to strangers, or going anywhere with them – even though the old lady hadn't looked like a person who could do anyone much harm. But also he didn't mention it because…

Mark wasn't really sure why. Perhaps because she might mention it to David, and Mark didn't want him knowing what was down there. The omission made it sound as if Mark hadn't really done very much all day, however, and his mother picked up on this.

‘Maybe … we'll all go into town tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It's been a while. Don't you think?’

‘Really?’ Mark said. ‘That would be great. I need something new to read.’ He realized this sounded greedy, and anyway wasn't what he meant. ‘And it would just be, you know, nice.’

‘We'll have to see what the weather's like,’ said a voice.

It was David, of course, coming in from the bedroom. He wasn't drying his hands on a towel this time but the effect was about the same. ‘It would be great for us all to go into town. But it's gotten really cold today, and the rain, you know.’

Gotten. This was an American thing, Mark knew, because David had told him months ago, like he told you everything. But David was in England now, so why didn't he stop doing it? Did he think it made him sound cool, or something? It really didn't.

Mark was disappointed to see his mother nodding, conceding David's point. ‘But maybe?’ Mark said.

‘Maybe,’ she agreed, smiling. ‘Are you hungry? David said you didn't have any lunch.’

Of course he did. Reporting back.

‘Yes,’ Mark said. ‘What are we going to—’

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