Facade (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  Facade

  Ursula Bloom

  Copyright © The Estate of Ursula Bloom 2020

  This edition first published 2020 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1948

  www.wyndhambooks.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover image © Everett Collection (Shutterstock)

  Cover design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  TIMELESS CLASSICS COLLECTION

  by Ursula Bloom

  Wonder Cruise

  Three Sisters

  Dinah’s Husband

  The Painted Lady

  The Hunter’s Moon

  Fruit on the Bough

  Three Sons

  Facade

  Forty is Beginning

  The Passionate Heart

  Nine Lives

  Spring in September

  Lovely Shadow

  The Golden Flame

  Many more titles coming soon

  www.ursulabloom.com

  Ursula Bloom: A Life in Words podcast

  Listen to the free, five-part podcast series based on the autobiographical writing of Ursula Bloom. The podcast covers Ursula’s life as a young woman on the Home Front in the Great War, and her rise to success and fame in the publishing world of the 1920s to 1940s.

  www.ursulabloom.com/ursula-bloom-a-life-in-words-podcast

  Contents

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  PART TWO

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Preview: Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: Youth at the Gate by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: Victoria Four-thirty by Cecil Roberts

  Preview: Wind on the Heath by Naomi Jacob

  Preview: The Print Petticoat by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: A Shaft of Light by John Finch

  Timeless Classics Collection by Ursula Bloom

  PART ONE

  One

  It was a late May afternoon when Alice Carter came to Thornhill. She had driven over in the carrier’s cart from Fincham village, and she was just seventeen; probably she was just a little plump with it, but in nineteen hundred and ten plumpness was an added attraction to a girl. She wore her cousin’s overcoat, topped by a green straw hat to which she had fastened a bunch of cotton violets, two-three from the draper at Mainwaring, and considered by her mother to be a wicked extravagance.

  The carrier’s cart set Alice down at the lower gate, but hesitated to do more, for a long path led up the garden to the house, and apparently there was no back drive.

  The front path curled through a small park, where the beech trees stood in clusters like suburban families about a common, but it led ultimately to the front door, and Mr. Boyle, the carrier, did not fancy taking Alice’s tin box to the front door, any more than he liked the idea of carrying it ‒ with only her amateur aid ‒ up the long steep garden path to the back one.

  He tied the horse to a pink chestnut tree which already had a rosy shower at its roots, and went across to the Hayworth Arms to ask Mr. Biddlecombe what the usual procedure was when new maids arrived at Thornhill.

  Alice walked inside the gate.

  It was a tall thin gate set into a high wall that was similar to what she supposed a prison door would be like. She was thinking of Thornhill as prison. The girl had been in service ever since she was thirteen, but always in her own village, first at the farm, and later on at the rectory with the Bensons. Her mother considered that now she should be earning more, and making enquiries had found that Mrs. Lester was needing a new housemaid. The Lesters were what is known as ‘good service’, even though Mr. Lester had once been a farmer, but later, inheriting a fortune, he had bought Thornhill and settled himself down to the life of a country gentleman. His wife was the daughter of the squire’s bailiff, and she had been born acid-looking, and had a corresponding temperament. She was a very masterful woman though she had never mastered her husband, with the result that she completely overawed her son Aubrey, who was twenty-three and had always been afraid of her.

  The wages offered at Thornhill were far higher than anything that Fincham rectory could afford to pay, so Alice’s mother had hurriedly brought the girl over for an interview. Alice had been too frightened to take any stock of the house, which was alarmingly grand, or of Mrs. Lester herself, who was unapproachable. Mrs. Carter made all the arrangements, grumbling later at the extensive uniform required, for Alice was still growing, and the too short black frock, which had excited no comment at Fincham rectory, was unlikely to pass unnoticed at Thornhill. New prints were needed, and the aprons would have to be patched.

  Rigorous retrenchment was ordered on all underclothes, which, as they didn’t show, couldn’t possibly matter. It was hoped that shabby house shoes would pass muster; hoped, but perhaps not really expected.

  In some ways Alice found herself highly flattered, because service at Thornhill was a step up in life, but she had been afraid of Mrs. Lester, and of the house which, seen through a haze of April rain, had been completely overwhelming.

  Now she stepped inside the wooden gate which swung to behind her. The path climbed with flower beds to right and left, becoming vegetable beds, box-edged and kept well clipped. It ascended into a cluster of dark yews, which veiled the facade of the house itself with a darkness so dim that she could not tell if it were blue or green. To the left a little orchard sprawled, speared by stunted apple trees, and amongst them a mossy Apollo in stone lifting his limbs with the abandon of virile youth.

  Alice went up the path with the feeling that the garden was warmly encouraging, and here ‒ the rest of the world being shut out ‒ only beauty could penetrate. The lilacs were still in flower, the may was red. As she neared the yews she caught a glimpse of the house, an eighteenth-century building in white, low and rambling, with an elegant fanlight above the door, and gracious windows which turned towards the park. There was the conventional lawn with stone seats set on it, and flower beds brimming with crimson wallflowers and smelling strongly. The facade was so beautiful that Alice stopped to look again. Uneducated and simple as she might be, the lines of the building still had the power to rouse her admiration, though she probably did not know what it was that she admired.

  Through the glass panels of the door she saw the hall, with a glimpse of the morning-room beyond, the old oak, the bowls of flowers, the peace of it all, and she stood in wonderment staring at it. That was when Mrs. Parkin saw her.

  Mrs. Parkin was the cook, of stereotyped sugar-loaf figure, with a curiously mottled face from long communion with the range. Mrs. Parkin (who was really Miss Parkin, but it was considered better form to speak of her as ‘Mrs.’) had been coming from the woodhouse behind the yews, when to her horror she saw the ‘new girl’ actually daring to s
tand on the front gravel and look at the house.

  ‘Whatever next?’ said she. Mrs. Parkin would never own to thirty-five again, which to Alice seemed to be an intolerable age, in fact she personally expected to die long before she reached it. ‘You’d better get out of that, and quick too,’ said Mrs. Parkin, ‘if they catches you in front, there’ll be trouble, and no mistake! So you look sharp!’

  There was no time to explain about Mr. Boyle and the luggage, and Alice found herself being pushed along, past the lean-to woodhouse, across a flagged yard and in at a side door which mournfully contrasted with the elegant facade that she had seen. The paved passage was lit by a single oil lamp at night, and smelt strongly of it all day. The scent of oil, and of weeping stones, and general dampness, was disillusioning after the warmth of the garden with its abundance of red may and lilacs.

  Mrs. Parkin stumped on ahead, past three storerooms, with the doors all suitably locked, and on into her kitchen. After the dimness which the passage always fostered, the square kitchen was sunny. The floor covered by rag mats led to a gleaming range niched like a high altar, and bright as though for a sacrament. The square table was clothed in red, and in the centre there was a highly ochred pot of day lilies; along the sill, similar ripely red pots housed geraniums, and one held a fragrant peppermint beside a cactus, reminiscent of some inanimate ape, lifting hairy arms.

  In a chair Milly, the parlourmaid, was lolling with a paper-backed novel, loudly sucking sweets. Milly was always an untidy girl, and her black alpaca frock had gone very shiny at the elbows; but she wore one of the fashionable caps, two rosettes in embroidered cambric, linked by a triangular motif slightly stained by hair oil, for Milly swore by white rose with which she burnished her abundant Merry Widow curls. There had been trouble with Mrs. Lester about the curls, for Mrs. Lester considered it unseemly that a servant should wear them, when the fashion should have been reserved for her betters. However, Milly persisted, and when rebuked, temporarily reduced the numbers, always gradually increasing them again when she believed the storm to have blown by. Milly read innumerable books of the paper-backed variety, and she ate quantities of cheap sweets kept in dilapidated bags in the knife drawer, which, so Mrs. Parkin declared, accounted for all her teeth being decayed in front.

  ‘Here’s the new girl,’ said Mrs. Parkin with no show of pleasure whatsoever, ‘and what do you think? I found her wandering round the front garden as bold as brass.’

  ‘You won’t ’arf cop it if the Missis sees you,’ remarked Milly.

  ‘Now you come out of that chair, and show her where her room is. I’ve got cakes in the oven.’ Then, suddenly remembering, ‘Now what about your luggage? I suppose you’ve got some?’

  ‘I’ve got a tin box. Mr. Boyle’s in the lane with it.’

  ‘Oh, is he? Well, a fat lot of good it’ll do you in the lane. I’ll send that lazy gardener down to give him a hand. I should have thought you might have done something about it yourself, a big strong girl like you, instead of gawking in our garden.’

  ‘Mr. Boyle went to the inn for help.’

  ‘Help, did you say? More like for a glass of something! I know men, dang them!’ For Mrs. Parkin had little love of the stronger sex. ‘Oh well, be off upstairs with you.’

  Milly dragged herself out of her chair, settled her apron, took another toffee out of a crumpled bag, popping it into her mouth, then led the way up the bare board stairs which had been scrubbed white. The landing above had linoleum on it which had been trodden into no pattern whatsoever, and from it led three small bedrooms. The first was for Mrs. Parkin, with the door tightly shut; the second was used as a box room, but the third had the strong scent of white-rose hair oil (some of which had gone rancid) and was the room that the girls shared. Camp beds were arranged down two of the walls, and they were divided by a yellow-painted chest of drawers, with woefully imitation graining on it. In the fireplace a too-big washstand spread itself, and a niche had been converted into a wardrobe with the aid of a few pegs sticking out at odd angles. A strip of felt stretching between the beds provided the only floor covering, whilst on the walls the pictures of The Good Samaritan, Shoeing the Bay Mare, and Cherry Ripe, were over-coloured.

  Milly’s tin box stood open at the foot of the bed that she had reserved for herself, and was very untidy. To Alice the room looked to be the height of grandeur, for at home she shared a cottage bedroom with three sisters and a couple of infant brothers, all huddled into one large flock bed which smelt abominably. Yet about that frowsty scent there was the essence of home to Alice, and it came to her now standing in this new room, so that she was suddenly aware of her constricting throat and the proximity of tears, for she was nostalgic for a sour flock bed.

  ‘Are they nice to work for?’ she asked Milly.

  ‘Oh, all right. He’s bad-tempered, short, you know, nothing ever suits him and he swears something chronic. She’s haughty! Mr. Aubrey’s ever so nice.’

  ‘Is he?’

  Alice knew nothing of men, having a strict father who had made her circumspect in her behaviour. Not that she wished to be otherwise, for she was entirely inexperienced of life and shyly unconscious of her personal charm. Alice had charm, not beauty, but that warm glow of a tempting youthfulness, all the more attractive because she was wholly unaware of it. She thought Milly marvellous with her curls, and her pert head, and the smart way in which she said things. Alice wasn’t clever; she knew that.

  There came the sound of men coming up the carpetless back stairs carrying the tin trunk, breathing heavily and swearing at the sharp corner. The carrier’s boots scraped, and they came into the room without knocking.

  ‘Here, I say! Manners please,’ said the outraged Milly. ‘Oh, my goodness, you men! Whatever next?’

  The gardener was a little crouching man in a fustian coat and cord trousers; he looked ill-nourished, and he tugged and sweated with the trunk as though he had little strength. Mr. Boyle was round and pompous, neatly dressed with an imitation pearl pin in his tie. He set the box at the end of the bed where Milly indicated.

  ‘Well, there you are and good luck to you, Alice!’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Boyle,’ and she hoped that she would not cry, but she felt suddenly frightened and sad.

  The gardener going to the door had to put in his spoke; he was a melancholy little man. ‘They never stays long,’ he said, ‘if they gets on with the Missis ‒ and a proper piece she is ‒ it’s that there Mrs. Parkin what puts the fear of God into them. If it isn’t that there Mrs. Parkin, it’s other things what I won’t name.’

  He went out on to the landing followed by Mr. Boyle, who breathed heavily and laughed, and left the pungent smell of beer behind him.

  ‘I like his sauce!’ said Milly, but she giggled all the same.

  Milly supervised the tin box, sitting on her bed and still noisily sucking toffees. She approved the new prints, but thought nothing of the patched aprons.

  ‘The Missis’ll have them off you,’ she said.

  Alice changed into uniform and together they went down to the kitchen, where Mrs. Parkin had got a pot of tea stewing on the hob, for she liked it really black. She was impatient with the girls for being so long; gossiping, she supposed, and about Mr. Aubrey, she dared wager. Not that Mr. Aubrey wasn’t nice enough, and a real gentleman, but in Mrs. Parkin’s private opinion he had no fire in him and never had had. Mrs. Parkin suspected him because he was aesthetic, and lived in a world of Elizabethan poetry, which was sheer nonsense to her.

  Naturally she was not averse to real poetry, for she admired Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and could quote at length ‒

  Laugh, and the world laughs with you,

  Weep, and you weep alone …

  which she thought was real sentiment, and ‒ oh, my Gawd, how true!

  She bustled about the tea with a scrupulous eye to Alice’s table manners, for in Mrs. Parkin’s kitchen everything had to be properly ordered, and nice manners counted. Some of the modern girls were
that common, she said. However, Alice was being careful, having been warned of Mrs. Parkin by her mother, for they had not taken to one another on the only occasion of their meeting, when Mrs. Carter had been peremptorily forbidden to bring ‘those dirty boots into my clean kitchen’.

  Alice started with bread and butter, remembering to curl her little finger gracefully when drinking, because her mother had assured her that amongst class she must do as class did. She would have liked more plum cake, but said ‘No, thank you’, in polite tones, staring in wonderment when Milly brought out the drawing-room tea, which had as its centrepiece a handsome cake basket of pierced silver in which reposed an enormous sugar cake.

  Milly washed up in the butler’s pantry, which once had been the original dairy; it was a dark little hole fitted with a buff-coloured stone sink, and fed by a tap that dripped mournfully. About the place clung the strong scent of the coarse ivy which grew outside and penetrated because part of the window was covered only by perforated zinc, as it had been in the old days. When they had finished, the bedroom cans had to be filled and placed in the upstairs basins, properly covered with face towels ready for the family to change for dinner. Milly showed Alice the routine. Mr. and Mrs. Lester’s room was the big one which faced south, and looked out across the lawn rising to meet the little wood bordered shaggily with periwinkles and rose of Sharon. There were pink brocade curtains reaching to a matching rose carpet, and toning in with the mahogany furniture; the tallboy was draped in embroidered linen, even the sheets bore the initials, and the pillow cases were edged with torchon lace.

  ‘They must be very rich,’ said Alice.

  The master’s hot-water can was set in the dressing-room which led from the big bedroom, and was obviously dedicated to manly use from the pungent scent of tobacco, boot polish and Harris tweed which clung to it.

  ‘The bad-tempered old beast!’ said Milly.

  Another can was taken to Mr. Aubrey’s room at the other end of the landing.

  ‘This one’ll make you laugh,’ declared Milly, ‘it makes me fair burst my sides. Downright comic, you’ll see.’