Page 67 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

Then there had been the shocking death of the cook. Suicide – a black, black sin and a scandal. The idea that other servants’ halls around the county would be discussing their shame made him lie in his bed some nights, pale and sweating, unable to sleep. He had never had any opinion of Mrs Oxlea, and had not understood why her ladyship kept her on, but she had at least had the advantage of speaking rarely and never drawing attention to herself. The manner of her departing changed all that. It would never have occurred to him to enquire into the happiness or otherwise of any servant, but the fact remained he was responsible for them. In the final analysis, he was master below stairs. He couldn’t have known – but he should have.

Now there were new servants, new faces to bother him as he passed them along Piccadilly. Two new kitchen-maids and an Irish scullery-maid whose names he had not bothered to learn yet – he had very little to do with the kitchen. Ida, the previous head kitchen-maid, had taken over the cooking, and so far seemed to be managing. Mrs Webster gave cautious praise – cautious because they had not had any large parties so far to test her. When they did, they would probably need yet more kitchen staff – four was barely enough as it was.

There was a new, very young, houseboy, Eddie, who lived out, and was so young and undeveloped he seemed to be all ears and elbows. He did at least give Wilfrid, previously at the bottom of the pile, someone to boss. The new footman, Sam, was also young, and had only had two years’ experience, but he seemed modest and willing to learn, which Moss found refreshing after the cockiness of James and Cyril, and the self-composed menace of Speen. He only hoped the lad would not be corrupted

The other newcomers he noticed more because they sat at the table at mealtimes. The new maids were Mildred, Ada and Addy. Mildred was a very thin girl (Worms? he wondered in passing) and constantly sniffed. He had already mentioned to Mrs Webster that Mildred needed to be reminded of the difference between a sleeve and a handkerchief. Ada and Addy – such similar names, such dissimilar girls. Addy, strong and fat, cheerful and stupid, was the sort of housemaid one always imagined on her knees, scrubbing. Ada – ah, quite another story.

She was tiny, to begin with – not so much short as small all over, as if she belonged to a different, more delicately built race of creatures. Too delicate for housework, he had thought, when he first saw her, but Mrs Webster, when he suggested this, had said she seemed strong enough. She had fair, fine hair, pale skin, blue eyes and a wistful mouth. You would not have called her pretty, but with her resemblance to a porcelain figurine, you might have thought she was beautiful, in a way.

And she had an air of gentleness that he did not associate with servant girls as a whole. She had looked at him from the beginning with awe, as was correct in a new housemaid; but there had been underneath – or so he thought – a spark of something else. As though she were interested in him: not in Mr Moss, the mighty butler and below-stairs potentate, but in him, Albert Moss, son of Sarah and Abel Moss. Mr Moss was a monument of composure – but Albert Moss had a secret.

There had been a girl once. Madeleine. He had sat behind her at church, and her three-quarter profile, which was all of her face that he could see, sank into the depths of his soul and haunted his dreams. He had been fourteen, had just started as junior footman at Priestwood Hall, under old Lady Dunsmore – she who had perished in that dreadful fire twenty years ago which had burned the hall to the ground (after his time, thank God).

Madeleine was a laundry-maid, and whenever he passed her he caught a whiff of soap and starch, which was more entrancing to him than all the perfumes of Araby. His adoration had not been reciprocated – had never been communicated. She was two or three years older than him, and never appeared to notice him at all, though he waited in the church doorway after service every Sunday to watch her walk by giggling with the other maids, while he lurked, red-faced and silent, stifled by love.

He had loved her for almost a year, and then one day she was gone, moved on to another place, as maids did, and he never saw her again. He had wept into his pillow every night until the other footman with whom he shared the room gave him a clout on the head and told him to stow it. A few months later, he had got a fine new position, second footman at Ashmore Court, and his career had become everything to him.

But he had never forgotten Madeleine. She’d had fawn hair and fawn eyes and a long neck on which her head sat like a flower on a stem. Sitting behind her every Sunday, he had longed to kiss it. Ever since, he’d had a weakness for the necks of the female sex. Where some men yearned after a glimpse of ankle or perspired at the thought of a bosom, a slender neck filled him with an almost overpowering desire to nuzzle it.

Ada had a neck – as he had seen in the first moment of clapping eyes on her. And her hair, dragged into the tight bun demanded by Mrs Webster, left vagrant soft wisps to curl at the nape, inviting touch, inviting caresses. Of course he would never dream . . . But he found himself looking for her, found himself smiling at her when they passed in Piccadilly. Once or twice, he addressed remarks to her at mealtimes, to try to draw her out – but he couldn’t do that too often, for fear of being suspected of favouritism, and he had to speak to the other maids now and then to cover his spoor.

He became seized with the desire to have her smile back at him, but so far she had been too shy. She looked at him with solemnity, but always met his eyes, which many servants didn’t, with a kind of simple trustingness that made him want to strain her to his bosom. She was so sweet, so pure, so innocent. He wanted to protect her from the buffets of the world – and especially from the attentions of men. Footmen like William, and valets like Hook sprang to mind.

One sleepy Sunday afternoon he was sitting in his room with the door open onto Piccadilly, beginning to revive from the somnolence brought on by the servants’ dinner of roast pork and treacle pudding. He was leafing through his book, The A to Z of Universal Knowledge, to find where he had got up to, when Ada went past. On an impulse he called out to her, and she reappeared in his doorway, standing politely, hands clasped before her.

‘Yes, Mr Moss?’

He had to think of something to say. ‘This is interesting,’ he blurted. ‘Come and look.’ She came in, shy but trusting, and he looked down to see where his finger had alighted on the page. ‘Indigo,’ he said. ‘Did you know that almost all indigo dye is now artificial? It’s made from the same stuff as mothballs.’

‘Mothballs,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Fancy!’

‘Before, of course, it was made from a plant, like most dyes.’

‘Was it, sir?’

He looked questioning. ‘You know what colour indigo is?’ She shook her head. ‘Come, Ada, the colours of the rainbow? Surely you learned those at school. Red, orange, yellow . . .’ he prompted her.

‘Green, blue, indigo, violet,’ she completed obediently. It was one of the things they had learned to chant, like the times tables. She took courage from his smile. ‘I never knew what indigo was,’ she confessed.

‘It’s a very dark blue colour, sometimes known as ultramarine. That’s Latin for “under the sea”.’

‘Goodness!’ she said, looking impressed. ‘What a lot of things you know, sir.’

‘Oh, this is a wonderful book,’ he said, tapping the page, feeling warmth spreading through him like sunshine. ‘Anything you care to ask, the answer is in here. Indigo plants, for instance, come from India.’ He turned back a page or two, on surer ground here. He had been reading about India on and off for months. ‘Wonderful country, India.’

She twisted her head a little to see the page under his finger. ‘Ooh, it’s got pictures too, sir!’

‘Oh, yes. Come round here and see.’ She hesitated, then glided round to stand beside him. He caught a whiff of carbolic soap: his nostrils flared and his heart lurched. ‘See, there’s an elephant,’ he said. ‘Magnificent beasts.’

‘Are they really that big?’ she asked, for the illustration showed a mahout standing beside it.

‘Oh, indeed! Have you never seen one?’

‘No, sir,’

‘Never been to the zoo?’ She shook her head. ‘You should go some time,’ he said, a delightful but dangerous seed alighting in his brain. Easy enough to arrange his day off to chime with hers. Then, walk to the station, the train to London, the Underground to Regent’s Park . . . He saw a summer day, Ada in a light cotton dress and a straw hat with flowers on it, Ada looking at him admiringly as he named all the strange and wonderful animals to her. He would buy her an ice-cream, and she would smile at him . . .

He dragged himself back to the present, and to India. ‘They use them for transport, you know. Like horses. To ride and to harness. Now, an Indian elephant is quite different from an African elephant.’