bridge of his long nose. He replaced them and looked sternly at me. ‘It’s you I feel sorry for, lass. There’s going to be a lot of responsibility on your young shoulders with Alfred gone and Myra working two jobs. I’ve no chance of finding anyone else to help. Not now. You’ll need to be taking on a lot of the work upstairs until things return to normal. Do you understand?’
I nodded solemnly, ‘Yes, Mr Hamilton.’ I also understood Myra’s recent investment in my proficiency. She had been grooming me to fill her shoes that she might more easily be granted permission to work outside.
Mr Hamilton shook his head and rubbed his temples. ‘There’ll be waiting at table, drawing-room duties, afternoon tea. And you’ll have to help the young ladies, Miss Hannah and Miss Emmeline, with their dressing so long as they’re here… ’
His litany of chores continued but I no longer listened. I was too excited about my new responsibilities to the Hartford sisters. After my accidental meeting with Hannah in the village, my fascination with the sisters, with Hannah in particular, had grown. To my mind, fed as it was on penny dreadfuls and mystery stories, she was a heroine: beautiful, clever and brave.
Though it would not then have occurred to me to think in such terms, I now perceive the nature of the attraction. We were two girls, the same age, living in the same house in the same country, and in Hannah I glimpsed the host of glistening possibilities that could never be mine.
With Myra’s first railway shift scheduled for the following Friday, there was precious little time for her to brief me on my new duties. Night after night my sleep was broken by a sharp jab on the ankle, an elbow in the ribs and the impartation of a remembered instruction far too important to risk forgetting by morning.
I lay awake a good part of Thursday night, my mind racing fiercely away from sleep. By five o’clock, when I gingerly placed my bare feet on the cold timber floor, lit my candle and pulled on tights, dress and apron, my stomach was swirling.
I fairly flew through my ordinary duties, then returned to the servants’ hall and waited. I sat at the table, fingers too nervous to knit, and listened as the clock slowly ticked away the minutes.
By nine-thirty, when Mr Hamilton checked his wristwatch against the wall clock and minded me it was time to be collecting the breakfast trays and helping the young ladies dress, I was almost bubbling over with anticipation.
Their rooms were upstairs, adjoining the nursery. I knocked once, quickly and quietly-a mere formality, Myra said-then pushed open the door to Hannah’s bedroom. It was my first glimpse of the Shakespeare room. Myra, reluctant to relinquish control, had insisted on delivering the breakfast trays herself before leaving for the station.
It was dark, an effect of discoloured wallpaper and heavy furniture. The bedroom suite-bed, side table and duchesse-was carved mahogany, and a vermillion carpet reached almost to the walls. Above the bed hung three pictures from which the room drew its name; they were all heroines, said Myra, from the finest English playwright that ever lived. I had to take her word for it, for none of the three seemed particularly heroic to me: the first knelt on the floor, a vial of liquid held aloft; the second sat in a chair, two men- one with black skin and one with white-standing in the distance; the third was mid-deep in a stream, long hair floating behind, laced with wildflowers.
When I arrived, Hannah was already out of bed, sitting at the dressing table in a white cotton nightie, pale feet curled together on the vivid carpet as if in prayer, head bowed earnestly over a letter. It was as still as I’d ever seen her. Myra had drawn the curtains and a ghost of weak sunlight crept through the sash window and up Hannah’s back to play within her long flaxen braids. She didn’t notice my entrance.
I cleared my throat and she looked up.
‘Grace,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Myra said you’d be taking over while she’s at the station.’
‘Yes, miss,’ I said.
‘It’s not too much? Myra’s duties as well as your own?’
‘Oh no, miss,’ I said. ‘Not too much at all.’
Hannah leaned forward and lowered her voice, ‘You must be very busy; the lessons for Miss Dove on top of everything else?’
For a moment I was lost. Who was Miss Dove, and why might she be setting me lessons? Then I remembered. The secretarial school in the village. ‘I’m managing, miss.’ I swallowed, eager to change the subject. ‘Shall I start with your hair, miss?’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah, nodding meaningfully. ‘Yes, of course. You’re right not to speak of it, Grace. I should be more careful.’ She tried to suppress a smile, almost succeeded. Then laughed openly. ‘It’s just… It’s a relief having someone to share it with.’
I nodded solemnly, while inside I thrilled. ‘Yes, miss.’
With a final conspiratorial smile, she lifted a finger to her lips in a sign of silence, and returned to the letter. By the address in the corner, I could see it was from her father.
I selected a mother-of-pearl hairbrush from the dressing table and stood behind. I glanced into the oval mirror and, seeing Hannah’s head still bowed over the letter, dared observe her. The light from the window bounced off her face, lending her reflection an ethereal cast. I could trace the network of faint veins beneath her pale skin, could see her eyeballs tracking back and forth beneath her fine lids as she read.
She shifted in her seat and I looked away, fumbled with the ties at the base of her braids. I slipped them free, unravelled the long twists of hair, and started to brush.
Hannah folded the letter in half and slipped it beneath a crystal bonbonniere on the dressing table. She regarded herself in the mirror, pressed her lips together, and turned toward the window. ‘My brother is going to France,’ she said acrimoniously. ‘To fight the war.’
‘Is he, miss?’ I said.
‘He and his friend. Robert Hunter.’ The latter’s name she said distastefully. She fingered the letter’s edge. ‘Poor old Pa doesn’t know. We’re not supposed to tell him.’
I brushed rhythmically, counting silently my strokes. (Myra had said a hundred, that she’d know if I were to skip any.) Then Hannah said, ‘I wish I were going.’
‘To war, miss?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The world is changing, Grace, and I want to see it.’ She looked up at me in the mirror, the blue and yellow flecks of her eyes animated by sunlight; then she spoke as if reciting a line she’d learned by heart. ‘I want to know how it feels to be altered by life.’
‘Altered, miss?’ I could not for the life of me imagine how she could wish for anything other than that which God had been kind enough to give her.
‘Transformed, Grace. As some people are by great works of music. Or pieces of art. I want to have a grand experience far removed from my ordinary life.’ She looked at me again, her eyes shining. ‘Don’t you ever feel that way? Don’t you ever wish for more than life has given you?’
I stared at her an instant, warmed by the vague sense of having received a confidence; disconcerted that it seemed to require some sign of amity I was hopelessly underqualified to provide. The problem was, I simply didn’t understand. The feelings she described were as a foreign language. Life had been good to me. How could I doubt it? Mr Hamilton was always reminding me how fortunate I was to have my position, and if it wasn’t him, Mother was always willing to pick up the argument. I could think of no way to respond, and yet Hannah was looking at me, waiting. I opened my mouth, my tongue pulled away from the roof with a promising click, but no words were forthcoming.
She sighed and shook her shoulders, her mouth settled into a faint smile of disappointment. ‘No, of course you haven’t. I’m sorry Grace. I’ve unsettled you.’
She looked away and I heard myself say, ‘I’ve sometimes thought I’d like to be a detective, miss.’
‘A detective?’ Her eyes met mine in the mirror. ‘You mean like Mr Bucket
