The Housekeeper's Tale - Hannah Mackenzie's Story by Tessa Boase

Author:Tessa Boase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

A Sedately Married Man

Hannah had a secret. Cecil Argles, Wrest Park’s land agent, had fallen in love with her. It might have been wheedled out of her by Barrie’s sympathetic manner during one of these imaginary (yet I think plausible) confessional sessions. Perhaps the man in question came to her door once too often in Barrie’s presence; perhaps Hannah’s embarrassed fluster gave the game away. But really the whole nonsense was an innocent thing at first, and no one could say that she and Mr Argles were not hard at work.

It all started with the accounts books. Hannah Mackenzie was appointed as an efficient, parsimonious, capable housekeeper in the best Scottish tradition–but household accounts were one thing; hospital accounts quite another. Her new role required her to fill out list upon list of minutely graded incomings, outgoings and averages to satisfy not just her mistress but War Office records. Official ledgers from war hospitals of the time are crammed with columns for ‘Average Number of Beds available during year’, ‘Average Number of Inpatients resident daily’ and ‘Patients’ average residence’; moving on to the minutiae of day-to-day expenses such as ‘Surgery and Dispensary’, ‘Salaries and Wages’, ‘Average cost of Maintenance per Patient per day’–and so on. No wonder Hannah felt faint contemplating these double-page ledgers and the enormous amounts of money involved. No wonder she sought help from Wrest Park’s wise and capable land agent.

One accounts sheet survives from this era (May 1915), pasted into the scrapbook: a neat page in fussy, rather feminine writing and signed with a flourish ‘Cecil G. Argles’. It is the sort of exemplary accounts page that brings joy to a housekeeper’s heart and order to a chaotic regime. This page and others like it were composed in Hannah Mackenzie’s basement office at her large leather-topped desk, the two heads close together in collaboration. There was much else to talk over, too, as they discovered. Cecil Argles also came from a large family. He was born the eldest of ten children to Mary Anne and George, later Canon of York Minster. As with Hannah’s family, there were three boys to seven girls.

Argles occupied a position of immense power and responsibility. He was employed by Lord Lucas in 1905 and remained in the post throughout the tenure of the American Ambassador, overseeing farms and income not only in Bedfordshire but also at Bron’s other estates in Essex, Wiltshire, Leicestershire and Lancashire. He is remembered by his nephew Charles as being ‘a somewhat awesome figure’ who terrified young nieces with his teasing. In letters he comes across as efficient, sharp-minded and meticulous, yet with that easy manner born of a public-school education.

At the outbreak of war he was aged 42 and married to Muriel, four years his senior. They had one son, Gerry, aged 13. Their daughter Enid had died, aged seven, three years previously. At dusk on midsummer’s day, 1914, while driving the heavy estate Daimler back to Wrest Park, Cecil Argles hit a cyclist coming towards him as he overtook a motorcycle.

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