With that she turned her attention to her cock-a-leekie soup.
I sat fuming, but could find nothing to say. I wanted to remind her that I had only come here in the first place because she had begged me to keep her company. I had only stayed on so long because Binky had begged me to do so. Surely they owed me something for my months of enduring Fig. But she didn’t seem to think so. Rannoch House was the property of the current duke and I no longer had any claim to it. In fact, nothing belonged to me. I began to feel like a Jane Austen heroine. I was stuck in Scotland with relatives who didn’t like me and didn’t want me there. Frankly, I couldn’t think of a worse Christmas ahead, but I also couldn’t think of a way to escape from it.
Then a lovely idea popped into my head. I’d stay with my grandfather! That would shake them up. You see, my mother’s father is a retired Cockney policeman who lives in a little semidetached house in Essex with gnomes in the front garden. All the years I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to meet him. I had since made up for those years and I adored him.
I took a deep breath. “Then I think I may go and stay with my grandfather if the London house isn’t available to me.”
Spoons clattered. Someone choked.
“Your grandfather?” Lady Wormwood said in the same tones Lady Bracknell used regarding a handbag in the Oscar Wilde play. “I thought your grandfather had been dead for years.”
“Her mother’s father,” Fig said coldly.
“Oh, her mother’s father. I don’t believe I ever met him.”
“You wouldn’t have met him,” Fig said. “He’s not . . . you know.” Then she lowered her voice and muttered, “N.O.C.D.” (which is upper-class shorthand, in case you don’t know, for “not our class, dear”).
Binky was looking rather red around the gills. “I say, Georgie. Your grandfather’s a decent old stick and all that, but it’s simply not on. We’ve been into this before. You can’t stay in a cottage in Essex. Think of the embarrassment to Their Majesties if the press found out about it.”
“Anyone would think it was the Casbah or a den of ill repute,” I said hotly. “Anyway, how are they going to find out? It’s not as if the society reporters follow me around the way they do my mother. I’m nobody. Nobody cares if I stay in Belgrave Square or in Essex.”
Suddenly I felt tears welling at the back of my eyes, but I was not going to allow myself to cry in public. “I’m over twenty-one so you can’t stop me from doing what I want to,” I said. “And if Their Majesties are embarrassed by my behavior, they can give me an allowance so I don’t have to live as a penniless hanger-on all the time.”
With that I got up and walked out of the dining hall.
“Well, really, such hysterics,” I heard Lady Wormwood say. “Takes after her mother, obviously. Bad blood there.”
* * *
I HAD JUST reached the top of the first flight of stairs when the lights went out. This was a normal occurrence at Castle Rannoch, where electricity was a recent addition to a centuries-old building and the wires were always coming down in gales. Thus we had candles and matches all over the place. I felt my way up the last two steps, then along the wall until I came to the first window ledge. There, sure enough, was a candle and matches. I lit the candle and continued on my way. Outside, the wind was howling like a banshee. Windows rattled as I passed them. A tapestry billowed out to touch me, making me flinch involuntarily. I had grown up in this environment with stories of family ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night and usually I took them all in my stride. But tonight even I was on edge.
The hall went on forever with darkness looming before and behind me. My candle flickered and threatened to go out every few yards. There was no sign of another living soul although the house was full of servants. I realized that they must all be at their supper down in the depths of the servants’ hall. At last I reached my door. As I stepped into my room a great gust of wind blew out my candle. I felt my way to my bed, knowing there were more matches on the bedside table. As I reached out for the bed my hand touched cold, flabby flesh. I stifled a cry as a white shape rose up at me, looming larger and larger until it seemed to fill the room.
“Bloody ’ell?” muttered a voice.
“Queenie?” I demanded and fumbled to light my candle. My maid stood before me, hair disheveled, cap askew, blinking in the candlelight.
“Cor blimey, miss,” she said. “You didn’t half give me a nasty turn there. Scared me out of me ruddy wits.”
“I scared you?” I tried not to sound too shaky. “How do you think I felt when I touched a cold hand when I was expecting to feel an eiderdown? What were you doing on my bed?”
She had the grace to look somewhat sheepish. “Sorry, miss. I came up after me supper to put your hot water bottle in and I just sat down for a minute on the bed and I must have nodded off.”
“I’ve told you before about lying on my bed, haven’t I?” I said.
“I know. And I didn’t mean to, honest. But I get so sleepy after all that stodge they feed us in the servants’ hall. I swear we’ve had stew and dumplings three nights in a row.”
“You should be glad you have enough to eat,” I said, trying to sound like a mistress putting her servant in her place. “When I was in London you should have seen all those poor wretches queuing up for soup. You have a job and a roof over your head, so you should work harder to make sure you keep them.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I do try, miss,” she said. “Honest I do. But you know I’m thicker than two planks. You knew that when you took me on.”
“You’re right, I did.” I sighed. “But I had hopes that you might improve, given time.”
“Ain’t I improved at all, then?”
“You still haven’t learned to call me ‘my lady’ and not ‘miss.’”
“Strike me pink, so I ain’t.” She chuckled. “I try, but when I’m flustered it goes right out of my head.”
I sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Queenie? My sister-in-law is badgering me every day to get rid of you.”
“Spiteful cow,” Queenie muttered.
“Queenie. You’re talking about the Duchess of Rannoch.”
“I don’t care who she is, she’s still a spiteful cow,” Queenie said. “And ungrateful too, after all what you’ve done for her. Staying up here, month after month, because she wanted company, and now she turns on you like this. If I was you I’d get out while the going is good and leave her to get on with things by herself.”
“I may just do that,” I said. “Can you find me another candle? I want to write a letter.”
“Bob’s yer uncle, miss,” she said, instantly happy again. “I’ll go and take the one out of her bathroom—then just see how she likes going to the lav in the middle of the night in the dark.”
“Queenie, you’re incorrigible,” I said, trying not to laugh. “There’s a perfectly good candle on top of my chest of drawers. Then tomorrow morning I want you to bring my trunk down from the attic.”
“Are we really leaving, then?”
“Maybe. But I want to be ready, just in case.”
The candle was lit and Queenie departed.
I started to write the letter.
Then I paused, my pen in midair. Was it even right to ask him if I could stay? He had very little money himself and his health had not been the best lately. The last time he wrote to me his bronchitis had returned, aggravated by the London fog that crept out across the marshes into Essex. In truth I worried about him. At least Mrs. Huggins, his next-door neighbor, would be taking care of him and making sure that he ate well. She had designs on marrying him, I knew, but I wondered if he was more fond of her cooking than he was of her. In fact . . .
I gasped as a flash of brilliance struck me. A wonderful thought had entered my head, so wonderful that I hardly dared to think it. Mrs. Huggins was a good plain cook and she and Granddad had acted brilliantly as housekeeper and butler one time when I’d needed to produce servants for a visiting princess. I sat there in the darkness, waiting until I heard everyone go to bed. Then I tiptoed down to Binky’s study and picked up the telephone. I knew that Fig would have a fit if she knew I was making a trunk call, but for once I didn’t care. This was more important.
“Brown’s Hotel,” came the polished voice at the other end of the line after what seemed like hours of waiting for the operators to make the necessary connections. I asked to speak to the former duchess of Rannoch.
“I cannot disturb Her Grace at such a late hour,” said the voice sternly. “It wouldn’t be seemly.”
I wondered if this was a polite way of saying that my mother was not occupying her bed alone. It wouldn’t be
