Thornfield Hall Read online

  When all that was in hand I would visit Mr Carter, the surgeon, to seek his services and tactfully put a price on his silence. I had my doubts about his suitability as physician to a weak-witted lady. A splendid man for a dramatic accident on the hunting field, our Mr Carter. There’s no one you’d rather see striding towards you if you lay crushed under a wagon wheel or if you’d fallen from your horse and broken your leg. Carter would have you tied to a hurdle and carried away with a splint on your leg in no time. He’d have you back home ready to share your dinner with him and drink a brandy or two as soon as wink at you. Solitary brooding or women’s tears were a different matter. I could not envisage that his bluff hearty confidence would be much help to a lady with a fragile mind who sometimes lost her wits completely.

  To have the Hall thoroughly cleaned and ready for the new master I had to hire in extra staff from The George at Millcote, as was the custom. When everything was done to my satisfaction I paid them their wages and sent them back to their regular business with a hint that they might be needed again in the future. I pictured the Hall full of life and bustle, with guests coming and going. We stocked up the store cupboards with preserves and pickles. I helped Mary make jellies and desserts. The butcher’s boy called more often to be ready for the moment we would give orders for meat for our new master. At last word came that we could expect him to arrive the next day.

  We sent a boy to the gates to keep watch for the coach. From there you can see for miles down the road to Millcote. It is the custom for the upper servants to line up to greet family members or important guests. I have Mr Merryman to thank for that piece of servants’ lore. Old John came to the entrance hall to be ready to help drive the horses round to the stables and unload the coach. He only came to the front of the house on special occasions. We had warned him to air out in the garden for a couple of hours first; the smell of horse can be very strong. Even after this precaution it was preferable for him to stand close to an open door or window. Mary came up to join the reception party with John, the new footman, and Sam. I asked Leah to make up the numbers though strictly speaking a housemaid is not one of the upper servants. Even with Leah, we looked a paltry number for such a house.

  All day we had kept an anxious eye on the weather. True to form, when word came that the coach had been sighted the rain decided to lash down and the wind scythed it across the drive in great waves. I gave the look-out boy two pennies and sent him straight to the kitchen to get warm and dry next to the Kitchener range. As we hovered in the entrance hall, dithering whether to stay in or venture out, Mr Carter appeared from the library; he had been summoned to look after the invalid. He asked for brandy and hot water and went back to warm his backside in front of the fire.

  When the hired post chaise bringing Mr Edward arrived at the entrance Carter pushed through to be first to greet the new arrivals and, being Carter, his concern was not for Mr Edward but for the horses. He rushed about ordering that the chaise should be driven round to the stables and demanding to know where in blazes those lazy bloody grooms were. There was much noise and confusion. This was not the welcome I had planned for Mr Edward.

  When he stepped from the coach I could see that this was not the gangly youth I remembered. His physique had developed into that of a strong and powerful man. His carriage was erect and his movements athletic. He was swift and light on his feet even after being confined in a chaise for hours bumping along on uneven roads. As he came towards me I saw that his black hair was thick and glossy and his eyes were alert and intelligent. His face still had its craggy attractiveness but it seemed careworn for a man in the prime of life. I felt that the tropics had not agreed with him.

  His first words when he arrived in the entrance hall reassured me. ‘Mrs Fairfax, it is good to be back in England.’ I bid him welcome and introduced him to my fellow servants. By the time these brief formalities were completed Carter had returned and was busy dripping rainwater on the marble floor.

  ‘All in good order,’ he announced and gave Mr Rochester a significant nod. ‘Dry stable and some clean hay. All safely stowed.’

  ‘I am glad that is over, Carter.’ Mr Rochester passed his hand across his face to smooth out the lines etched on his brow and down his cheeks. ‘The journey was a nightmare. A living hell.’

  Carter put his hands in his pockets, looked into a distant corner of the entrance hall and whistled through his teeth. It was clear he was sending Mr Rochester some kind of signal, a message warning him to watch his words. ‘You are not a good traveller then? Do you suffer from seasickness?’ he asked cheerily.

  ‘Yes. I suffer dreadfully from mal de mer. In future I shall cross no water wider than the Channel – and I shall travel alone.’

  It was then I realized that I had seen no sign of his travelling companion, the mysterious invalid for whom the suite of rooms had been prepared. Carter must have whisked her up the back stairs. I found I was starting to ask my master about arrangements for his companion but I quickly thought better of it. I swallowed my words, snapped my jaw shut and pulled on my pug face. The master would give his instructions when he was ready.

  ‘More brandy and hot water for your master. Send someone to build up the fire in the library. And get me a towel. My pesky breeches are sodden.’ Mr Carter was back to his usual rumbustious self. He put his arm round Mr Edward’s shoulders and led him towards the library. ‘Come along, Rochester. You and I will have a bit of a chinwag.’

  As I set about fulfilling the orders I realized how relieved I was not to have encountered the strange new lady. A new master was enough for one day. Preparing rooms for a madwoman was an easy task; her living breathing presence was quite another thing. I could not help wondering how the disease manifested itself and how the sufferer would behave.

  In spite of the poverty and the bereavements I had endured in my life my mind had always returned to its calm orderly self. My crying would stop and I would go back to my usual duties, though I carried my sadness inside me like the hard stone in the heart of a soft plum. Madness had not so much as brushed its fingertips against me. I did not look forward to meeting it face to face.

  ‘Veiled,’ said Old John as we questioned him over breakfast. He had seen the lady as she descended from the coach in the stable yard. He was the only one of us to have even glimpsed her and he was being singularly unhelpful in satisfying our curiosity. When prodded for more details he added ‘black’ and ‘heavy’. Try as we might we could learn no more than that the lady was hidden behind a heavy black veil.

  ‘I never saw the lady but I came across the nurse,’ volunteered Leah. ‘Several times. Once with hot water, then there was supper and the tea this morning and the eggs for breakfast. And soon I have to go back for the trays.’

  ‘You only have to say. I’ll help.’ John’s soft brown eyes gazed longingly at Leah, who ignored him. Her voice rose with indignation as she continued her complaint.

  ‘And if you please, I have to rap on the door and wait outside until she comes. Then she opens the door a crack and passes whatever it is out or I pass something in.’ Leah demonstrated with her fingers the narrowness of the door opening. ‘Not a glimpse or a sign of the lady, have I had.’

  ‘And coal!’ added Sam. ‘She’s had four buckets already. Blazing fire.’

  ‘I suppose the lady feels the cold after living in a hot country.’

  ‘It’s not affected her appetite. I was told to send up four eggs, lightly boiled.’ Mary casually threw this nugget of information into the centre of the table where it ricocheted amongst us with the force of a cannon ball. Spoons halted in mid-air as we did the sums in our heads. Four eggs for one lady. Divide by two and it is two eggs for the lady and two for the servant. The servant was getting two eggs while we were eating our customary porridge. I felt all their eyes turned upon me. Eggs for one servant meant eggs for all. Although the hierarchy of servants was very strict we expected a certain equality in our treatment. Here was an injustice. They looked to me to r
emedy it.

  ‘Did the nurse not think to come down for the lady’s breakfast? Surely that is one of her duties?’

  ‘She did not. In fact she wanted to know why there wasn’t a bell in the room so she could ring for one of us.’ Leah’s bottom lip stuck out as she looked ahead to being at the beck and call of a minder of the mad. I could feel the sympathy of the other servants around the table for her, and the swelling hostility to the newcomer.

  ‘I will speak to her and explain how we do things at Thornfield Hall and what her duties will be. We must be firm about this. To be plain I think she should have come and made herself known to me by now. Does this nurse attendant have a name?’

  ‘It is Morgan, Mrs Morgan.’ The voice came from behind me. The wretched woman had arrived unnoticed. I have sometimes wondered if my hearing is all it should be. Being caught at a disadvantage made me angry. The others saw the flash of rage that passed across my features. They exchanged knowing looks and surreptitious grins; they were sure they were about to witness an interesting encounter. I took a moment to compose my face before I turned to greet the woman who had sneaked in behind me.

  ‘And I am Mrs Fairfax, the housekeeper.’ I spoke in my best icy tones and was pleased to feel the temperature in the room drop by several degrees. ‘Come to my room,’ I commanded the frowsty-looking creature before me. ‘We can talk there.’ I fixed my eyes on hers and willed her to move out of my way. For a second she stood her ground. Then her mouth twisted, she stepped back and I swept out leaving her to follow behind me.

  Once in my room I sat at my desk and kept her standing while I surveyed her. She was a stout little body and none too clean. A few trips up and down the stairs with buckets of hot water would do her no harm. Some very close contact with the aforesaid hot water and the addition of some soap would improve her immeasurably.

  ‘Mr Rochester acquired you in Liverpool I believe.’ The hostility in my voice crackled like ice. I made her sound like some nasty disease he had caught there in a brothel. ‘You have no uniform?’

  ‘No. Never have. We didn’t have them in the asylum.’

  ‘So you have experience of dealing with…’ Words failed me, but they did not fail Mrs Morgan.

  ‘The mad. Lunatics,’ she supplied. Mrs Morgan was obviously a woman who liked to call a spade a spade. ‘All sorts and kinds. There’s those as never speak and those as never stop talking. There’s some as pull their hair out and—’ I held my hand up to stop her.

  ‘You obviously have much experience of asylums but you have very little experience of how things are done in a gentleman’s house. Does your charge have a name?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘What does the master call her?’

  ‘He just points and says She. Her. It.’

  I managed to conceal from her that I found this use of pronouns appalling. I never came across a dog but I wanted to know its name.

  ‘That is the master’s privilege,’ I continued smoothly. ‘In service we address our masters and our betters by their proper titles. Until we are told otherwise we shall call her “the lady” and when you address her you will call her “milady”. You understand?’ She nodded. ‘Say it. Say M’lady.’

  She mumbled something close enough to satisfy me so I went on. ‘I expect to have an interview with the master very soon.’ This was not strictly true. I had no idea what to expect from my new master but under the circumstances it was very low down in the scale of lies. Scarcely more than a fib.

  I took a breath and ploughed on. ‘The master and I have, of course, exchanged letters about your arrival. In the meantime there are some practical details we can sort out between us. They are too trivial to bother Mr Rochester with. First – arrangements for meals. The lady’s meals will be taken up to her. You will carry up the trays and return them to the kitchen. You will eat your meals with the rest of us in the servants’ hall.’

  Mrs Morgan held up her hand to stop me. The expression on my face warned her she should have a very good reason to interrupt me.

  ‘Not always possible, ma’am.’ (I noted the ma’am. Mrs Morgan was learning fast.) ‘Sometimes, I am told, she raves something shockin. They reckon it’s the moon that does it. Bangin her head against the wall and biting and that.’

  ‘In that case I doubt the lady will be very interested in her dinner. I think we should cross that bridge when we come to it.’ I contrived to sound very composed on the subject. I knew nothing of the behaviour of the mad and my ignorance gnawed at my confidence. Reason, however, told me that Mrs Morgan had been with the lady for no more than three days. A full cycle of the moon requires twenty-eight days.

  I returned to my list of requirements. ‘Now – coal. Sam will bring up two scuttles of coal. You must make that last. And then, hot water. You must take up the hot water for the lady. If the master decides to stay no doubt we will be hiring more servants but until then those tasks are yours.’ The woman stirred uneasily, no doubt thinking of all the stairs up to the third floor. The movement of her skirts sent the smell of dirt and neglect wafting across my desk. How had Mr Rochester endured sharing a coach all the way from Liverpool with this creature?

  Relentlessly I continued. ‘Then there’s the washing. Yours will be charged as usual. It will be deducted from your wages. I know that the master has been very generous with regard to payment.’ Another little fib. I did not know the exact terms on which Mr Rochester had engaged her but I guessed she had driven a hard bargain. A man of considerable means newly arrived in England with a lunatic on his hands would not stop to count the pennies. I watched her eyes as she calculated how much of her own linen she could pass off as the lady’s. Unpleasant though the task would be I vowed I would check all the laundry personally. With a curt, ‘That will be all,’ I dismissed her.

  This was not my usual way of greeting new servants. Generally I tried to be kind; usually they were no more than children away from home for the first time and struggling to find their way around a house that covered more ground than their whole village. Mrs Morgan and her frightening and mysterious charge were totally beyond my experience. I sat at my desk and remembered how we servants had hoped our new master would bring fresh life to Thornfield Hall. I began to wonder if we should have been more specific about the kind of life and society we desired.

  My hope that Mr Rochester would soon send for me proved true. The very next morning I was summoned to the library and told to bring my account books with me. The master sat at his father’s great mahogany desk. Glints of red and green from the stained glass in the leaded window flickered behind him. The family bible was in front of him; it sat squat and black in a pool of sunlight. The book was open at the flyleaf where different hands had entered the records of the Rochester births, marriages and deaths. The family goes back a long way; Damer de Rochester was killed at the battle of Marston Moor. My new master’s face was mournful as he stared at the list.

  I approached him softly. ‘I am sorry for your loss, Mr Rochester.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Fairfax. People seem to forget that I have lost…’ he paused for a moment as he appeared to search for the right words, ‘both my closest relations within a very short time. They think only of the fortune that I have unexpectedly inherited.’ His mouth twisted into a smile. People’s greed seemed to amuse him. There was, I noticed, no mention of a dear kind father or a beloved brother.

  He ran his finger down the list of names handwritten into the bible and stopped at his mother’s name. ‘I remember very little of her now. She was ill for so long. I was away at school when she died. Was there not a little sister? There is no name or date for her.’

  ‘There was. She was christened Elisabeth. She did not survive the three months. Perhaps your parents found it too painful to record her fate. The deaths of babies are particularly hard: their tiny lives so short, their little faces so perfect.’ I felt the catch in my throat a
s I thought of my own child. I put my hand in my pocket to feel the soft leather of my little bible. Her name was carefully inscribed in it, the ink smudged with tears and goodnight kisses.

  ‘That is not all that is missing.’ His finger pointed to the last entry; it was the date of his own birth. There was nothing after that. ‘I am pleased to see that my name and birth date are still in the book. I heard so little from my father and my brother that I did sometimes wonder if they had crossed my name out. The black sheep of the family sent abroad to mend his ways. I expect you have heard all the stories of my wild misdeeds?’ He looked directly at me.

  His dark eyes searched my face and for a moment I was overwhelmed by the power of the man. I wanted to blab about the scandal, to offer my theories as to his misdeeds and to denounce his father as an unfeeling wretch; the urge was almost irresistible. By some miracle of self-control I contrived to stay silent. I put on my smooth, expressionless servant’s face, lowered my gaze and examined intently the top button of his waistcoat. Sometimes it is best for a servant to act dumb.

  My silence seemed to satisfy him. It was not long before he continued. ‘As the last surviving Rochester it is my sad task to add the date of my father’s death. And I see that his death followed so close on the heels of my brother’s that he had neither the time nor the heart to complete the record for my brother.’ He took up his pen and filled in the dates. ‘I wonder who will write in the date of Edward Fairfax Rochester’s departure from this world.’