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.
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,
