Whispers in the Dark by Jonathan Aycliffe Read Free Book Online Page A

housekeeper, grandly called it the “servants’ entrance,” but it was no more than a plain back door at the foot of a short flight of steps. I had to knock hard and long before anyone answered. When the door finally opened, I found myself face-to-face with bedlam. A flagged passage ran down to a kitchen, from which came a frightening clatter of dishes and the hubbub of raised voices. The Lincotts kept a small enough establishment—a housekeeper, a cook, an undercook, two maids, and a boy—but between them, they managed to create as much noise as a roomful of costermongers. I was unused to such boisterousness, for it had been all hushed voices and scraping feet in the workhouse.
    The boy opened the door wide to discover me on the step shivering and sobbing. For all my fears, it was now my dearest wish to set foot in that house, for I thought I might at least find a little warmth and a bite to eat. Yet I was now mortally sure the door would be slammed in my face. The boy—whose name I later learned was George—called out to someone in the room behind, and moments later Mrs. Venables appeared (though I had not the slightest notion then of who or what she was).
    “You’ll be the new girl from the workhouse,” she snapped, taking a large watch from her dress pocket, opening it, and clicking it shut again. “You’re not far off being late. What kept you?”
    “Please, ma’am, I—”
    “No matter. There’s work to do, and it won’t get done if you stand there gawping and sniveling. George, see this girl in and tell Lottie to set her about her tasks at once. I’ll speak with her later, when I’ve a minute. Come on, come on, don’t dawdle.”
    She then grabbed me by the neck of my dress and hauled me bodily into the passage. A moment later, she had disappeared.
    “Watch out for Venables,” George whispered, leaning close. “Cross her, and you’ll find yourself back on the street.”
    He took my bag and tossed it carelessly into a corner. I made to rescue it, but he seized my arm and hauled me down the passage, limping and tripping, into the kitchen. The passage had been freezing cold, but the heat in the kitchen was enough to make me gasp for breath.
    A large woman in a floury apron, whom I took— rightly—to be the cook, descended on me like a barge.
    "New girl? Got a name?”
    “I . . . .”
    “Not good enough, girl. Use your tongue. God gave it you for no other purpose. Name?”
    “Char-Charlotte.”
    Her eyes widened.
    “Same as myself. But don’t go thinking you can be familiar on account of it. You’re here to work. And you can start by cleaning those pots and pans. If you’d got here earlier, you’d be halfway through them by now.”
    And so my day began. No one asked me if I was hungry. I just had to roll up my sleeves and set to work, scrubbing and scouring, with none of the detergents we have nowadays. Because it was a doctor’s house, there was an insistence on high standards of cleanliness, which meant that every utensil had to be scrubbed until it shone. After breakfast, after lunch, after tea, and after dinner. Of course, pots and pans and dishes were only a fraction of my work. There were five fires to light every morning before anyone else was out of bed. There were wooden floors to scrub, toilets to clean, bathrooms to wash out twice a week. Laundry and ironing, carpets, brasses, windows, the backs of cupboards, the rear yard—they were all my responsibility.
    In return, Mrs. Venables told me I could bed down in the kitchen at night and help myself to whatever scraps were left after the other servants had eaten their share of leftovers from the family table. Some days, I ate little more than a slice of bread and drippings. I never tasted hot tea or butter or jam. George warned me that the last girl had been caught picking morsels of meat from a hambone left on a plate, thrashed, and dismissed on the spot. Mrs. Venables ran her household with a will of steel and a rod of iron.
    I