told me about a summer holiday.
‘Of course, we could not afford summer holidays, not the way all you girls have them now. Take them for granted, you do! They had put me off work from the millinery. I did not know when they would want me again. I felt tired and run-down, because I wasn’t eating right then, they paid us so bad. I answered an advertisement for a maid in a seaside hotel in Brighton. Select, it said. References needed. I had no references. I had never been in service. My mother would have died to think of it. I wrote a letter and I had a letter back asking me to come, my fares paid. I packed my little bag and I went. I knew it was all right, there was something about her letter. It was a big house, set back a bit from the road. I walked up the front path, thinking, well, I’m not in service here yet! And the housekeeper let me in, a real nice woman she was, and said Mrs Privett would see me at once. Well, let me say this now, she was one of the best people I have known in my life. The kindest. I often think of her. You know, when everything is as bad as it can be, and you think there’s nowhere you can turn, then there’s always that person, that one person … She looked me over, and said, Well, Maudie, you say you have no experience, and I value your honesty. But I want a good class of girl because we have a good class of people. When can you start? Now, I said, and we both laughed, and she said later she had had the same feeling about me, that when I arrived it would be all right. The housekeeper took me up to the top of the house. There was a cook, and a scullery maid, and a boy, and the housekeeper, and the two girls for waiting at the tables, and four housemaids. I was one of the housemaids. We were in one of the attics, two big beds up there, two to a bed. I wasn’t to start till the morning, and so I ran down to the beach, and took off my shoes. There was the lovely sea. I had not seen the sea since my mother died, and I sat on the beach and watched the dark sea moving up and down and I was so happy, so happy … and I ran back through the dark, scared as anything because of the Strangler …’
‘Because of the what?’
And here she told a long story about some newspaper scare of the time, a man who strangled girls when he found them alone … It was so out of key with the rest of what she was telling me, and yet this was, is, something in Maudie, a strain of horror-shivering masochism that comes out suddenly and then goes again. At any rate, she ran quaking up through the dark, through the dark garden, with the hot breath of the Strangler on her neck, and the door was opened by the housekeeper, who said, Oh there you are, Maudie, I was worrying about you, but the mistress said, Don’t worry, I know where she’ll be … ‘You know, I’ve often and often thought about this, when it is so easy to be nice, why are people nasty? Everything in that big house was nice, all the people in it, and even the guests too, no one unkind or quick or sharp. It was because of her, Mrs Privett. So why are people unkind to each other?
‘She had kept my supper for me, and it was a lovely supper too, and she sat with me while I ate. And then up I went to bed. It was dark through the house, with the gas lights burning on the landings, but at the very top the sky was light, there were the three other girls, and oh, we did have such a good time. We lay half the night and told each other stories, ghost stories and all, and we frightened each other with the Strangler, and we ate sweets and laughed …
‘And next morning, we had to get up at six. And by the time it was breakfast I was so hungry, but she, Mrs Privett, gave us the same food the hotel guests had, and better, and she came into the kitchen while we were all eating to make sure we had it. We ate great plates of porridge and real milk, and then kippers or haddock if we liked, or eggs any way we liked, and then all the toast and marmalade and butter we could eat, and sometimes she sat with us too, and said, I like to see young things eating. You must eat well, or you can’t do your work. And that was what all the meals there were like. I’ve never eaten like that before or since. And then …’
‘And what work did you do? Was it hard?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was hard. But we knew how to work in those days. We got up by six and cleaned the grates through the house and started the fires, and we had the big dining room cleaned and shining before we took the guests their trays of tea and biscuits. And then we did the public rooms, everything just so and polished, and then we had our breakfast. And then we did all the bedrooms, right out, no skimping on the cleaning, Mrs Privett wouldn’t have it. And we did the flowers with her, or the silver or the windows. And then we had our dinners, wonderful food, everything the guests had. And then we took the mending up to the attics and while we did that we had a bit of a skylark around. She didn’t mind. She said she liked to hear us laughing, provided we got the work all done. And then we came down to do the tea, trays and trays of bread and butter and cakes and stuff, the four of us served all that while the waiting girls went off for the afternoon. And then we had some time off, and we went down to the beach for an hour or so. And then we four maids would sit with the babies and children while the parents went out to the theatre or somewhere. I loved that, I loved little children. We all loved that. And there was a big late supper, about ten at night, with cakes and ham and everything. And we all had either Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon off. Oh, it was wonderful. I was there three months and I got so fat and happy I couldn’t get into my clothes.’
‘And then?’
‘And then the autumn was coming, and the hotel closed. Mrs Privett came to me and said, Maudie, I want you to stay with me. In the winters I open a place on the sea, in Nice that was. France. She wanted me to go with her. But I said no, I was a milliner, that was my trade, but it broke my heart not to go with her.’
‘Why did you really not go with her?’ I asked.
‘You are sharp,’ she said. ‘You are right. It was Laurie. I went away from London to Brighton and didn’t say where I was, so he would value me, and he did. He was waiting for me when I got off the train, though how he found out I never did know. And he said, So you’re back? As you can see, I said. Tomorrow you are coming for a walk, he said. Am I? I said.
‘And so I married him. I married him instead of the German. I married the wrong man.’
I gave a grimace at this, and she said, ‘And did you marry the wrong one too?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he married the wrong woman.’
And this tickled her so much she lay back in her chair, her brown old wrinkled hands squeezing her knees, and she laughed and laughed. She has a young fresh laugh, not an old woman’s laugh at all.
‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried, ‘I had never thought of that. Well, Laurie thought he married the wrong woman, but then what woman would have been right? For he never stayed with any one of us.’
That was this afternoon. I did not leave her until after six. She came with me to the outside door and said, ‘Thank you for getting the coal. You mustn’t mind me, dear, mustn’t mind my ways.’
Sunday.
I saw The White Raven. I see that I am like Maudie, the housemaids – I like being frightened. After the film I came back here for my usual Sunday evening’s occupation, making sure clothes are all prepared for the next week, grooming. I saw that I had spent all day alone and that is how I spend my weekends, usually. Solitary. I did not know I was until Freddie died. He liked us to have proper dinner parties every week or so, and we had his colleagues and their wives, and I asked girls from work, usually Joyce and her husband. My food was perfect, and Freddie did the wine. We were proud of how well we did it. And all that has been blown away, gone. I never saw his associates after the funeral. When I wondered if I would have the perfect little dinner parties, I couldn’t be bothered. At work, I am seen by everybody as this self-sufficient competent woman, with a full life. Friends, weekends, entertainment. I go each week to three or four lunches, drinks parties, receptions for the mag. I don’t like this, or dislike it, it is part
