The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed

Author:Lynn Freed [Freed, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter 20

So that is how I came to be back at Harding's Rest. It was hard to know whose idea it was really—Ma's, because she wanted to save her marriage, or Mr. Ledson's, because he'd found a way to blame me after all, or even Mr. Harding's, because I'd be doing him a favour, he said, old Mrs. Harding was in need of companionship and would welcome my return.

At first I was supposed to stay in Mrs. Arbuthnot's old room, but as soon as the servant closed the door I knew that it would be impossible. The whole room smelled sour like her, and also sweet with her horrible wild gardenia scent. I ran to the windows and pushed them wide open, but it didn't make any difference. She was everywhere, even the antimacassars still had some of her hairs on them. But how could I tell Mr. Harding this? When Phineas had dropped me off at the front door, he'd come out himself to greet me. "Ah, Cressida!" he'd said, taking my arm. "My mother has been asking for you every hour."

Standing with him in the dim light of the hall, with its smell of floor polish and skins and pipe tobacco, I was as happy then as I'd ever been at the top of the flamboyant all those years before. Mrs. Arbuthnot was gone, and Mr. Harding was going to pay me to be old Mrs. Harding's companion. He was going to put money into a building society every month, he said, and if I wanted to take it out, all I had to do was go down there myself. And if I was one of those people who saved for an uncertain future, I could do that as well. It was all up to me.

I stared out of the window at the old servants' quarters, thinking of how Mrs. Arbuthnot must have stared out like this herself. She must have watched me coming across to the big house and wondered, as I'd wondered myself, why Mr. Harding would want me there at all.

He listened carefully when I went down to the study. Without his bandages, he almost had a proper forehead now, and his bad eye had been lifted up a bit so that, even though it still seemed too wide open, at least it wasn't staring in the wrong direction.

"You'd prefer to be back in your old quarters, Cressida?" he said. He smiled so that I'd know he wasn't cross. "Well, I'm afraid that's impossible. You see, I've put Edgar in there."

"Edgar?"

"I wanted him out of my sight for a while. Perhaps I should have put him on a ship and sent him to the North Pole. But, as it is, one of his tutors is living over there with him, and he has a timetable to adhere to, so we'll see what that will accomplish."

Ma had left everything behind in the old servants' quarters when she'd married Mr. Ledson, even my father's wicker chair. So now Edgar was sitting on our couch and sleeping in our beds, and all I had was Mrs.

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