Arian (6 page)

Mrs Richards entered the kitchen, her face unusually flushed. ‘Arian, you’ll have to serve the dinner,’ she said in her peremptory manner. ‘Bella’s gone and developed a headache.’ Her face took on a pinched, disapproving look, ‘Comes with her courses every month, convenient if you ask me. Now, change your clothes at once and for heaven’s sake do something with that hair.’

Arian looked at Mrs Bob who jerked her head, ‘Go on with you, girl, I can manage here.’

Arian mounted the two flights of stairs to the bedroom she shared with Bella. The girl had her face to the wall, she was pale and sweating and obviously unwell.

‘Can I get you something?’ As Arian talked, she was opening the drawer that had been assigned to her and taking out some fresh clothes.

‘No, I’ll be all right by tomorrow,’ Bella sighed. ‘It’s always like this, first day on, after that it’s not so bad, like.’

‘If you’re sure then.’ It took only moments for Arian to change into a neat clean skirt and crisp apron. She coiled her hair quickly into an untidy bun, cursing at her clumsy fingers, and placed the starched cap on top of her head. ‘I’ll come up later, see if I can bring you some hot tea.’ She spoke to Bella’s back, the girl was heavily asleep.

Mrs Bob had the food ready for her to serve; the meal was set out on a tray and covered with a silver lid. ‘His lordship don’t want no soup tonight so tell him there’s extra veg. Mind you give him time to eat his fill before you take him the pudding, he doesn’t like to be rushed.’

Arian felt a flutter of nerves that was alien to her. She wasn’t used to waiting at table, that was Bella’s job. The tray was heavy and Bella, who was a hefty girl, carried it with ease. Arian on the other hand found negotiation of the stairs and the passageway to the dining room quite an ordeal.

It was with difficulty that she knocked on the door, balancing the tray on one hand, her throat dry, fearing the huge silver salver might at any moment crash to the floor.

‘Come in.’ Calvin Temple’s voice was impatient, he wasn’t used to being kept waiting. ‘About time,’ he said as Arian set the tray on the sideboard and lifted the lid. ‘What is it?’

‘Breast of lamb in wine and mint sauce,’ Arian said quickly, her hackles rising at Calvin’s tone.

He tasted the sauce and looked up at Arian quickly. ‘Who chose the wine?’

‘Well, I went to the cellar to get it for Mrs Bob,’ Arian said puzzled by his manner. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Very possibly,’ Calvin said dryly. ‘Please bring me the bottle, would you?’

Arian forgot to bob a curtsy as she hurried from the dining room and quickly negotiated the stairs to where in the kitchen Mrs Bob was sitting down to a cup of tea.

‘He wants the bottle of wine,’ Arian said quickly, ‘Where did I put it?’

She looked among the dishes on the huge table and picked up the wine, staring at the writing on the label without comprehension.

‘Oh, my good lord!’ Mrs Bob put both hands on her cheeks, ‘you’ve only gone and fetched one of his best bottles of claret and let me use it for the cooking.
Duw
, there’s a fool I was, I should have warned you not to take anything from the back of the cellar.’

‘Oh, well, it’s all wine,’ Arian said huffily, ‘I can’t see that it really matters.’

Mrs Bob stared at her. ‘If this wasn’t so serious, it would be funny,’ she said. ‘That claret was laid down by Lord Temple’s great-uncle many moons ago. Cost a pretty penny today it would.’

Arian shrugged and returned to the dining room with the bottle. Calvin took it and stared down at the label for a long moment.

‘Mrs Bob must be losing her mind,’ he said at last. ‘This is one of my best wines.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Arian said defensively. ‘Mrs Bob has enough to do without running up and down to the cellar. In fact, I might as well tell you now that we are all overworked. There are not enough hours in the day for a small staff to keep a place like this going. I thought a man like you would have the sense to realize that.’

He stared at her for a long time in silence and Arian braced herself; now she would be dismissed, she would be forced to return to living rough on the hillside. Well, she wouldn’t wait for his scornful dismissal.

She untied her apron and threw down her cap. ‘I was a fool to come here, this work isn’t for me.’ She pointed to her head. ‘I have a brain, I commit the sin of thinking; something not encouraged in the lower orders, is it, Lord Temple?’

‘Sit down.’ He indicated one of the carved ornate chairs beside him.

‘What?’ Arian was taken aback by the sudden turn the conversation had taken.

‘I said sit down,’ Calvin repeated. ‘I thought you had a brain and yet you fail to respond to the simplest of instructions.’

Arian sat down. Calvin looked at her for a long moment in silence.

‘What would you like to be doing?’ he asked. ‘What would you use this famous brain for?’

‘No need for sarcasm,’ Arian said mildly. ‘If you must know, I would like to run a business,’ she spoke without hesitation.

‘I would like to buy and sell leather, I know how to choose the best.’ She laughed bitterly, ‘I learned from a harsh teacher.’

She thought for a moment of Price Davies, so clever when handling skins, able to discern what texture was needed, the correct amount of resilience, how to cost the leather coming from the tannery to the nearest penny.

‘I’m not interested in your past,’ Calvin said in a matter-of-fact way that Arian found strangely comforting. ‘I’m not really interested in you at all – as a woman – but as a business prospect maybe there’s a chance we could work something out.’

‘What do you mean,’ Arian said, ‘work something out?’

‘Do you mind if I eat my dinner while we talk?’ Calvin said lifting the gleaming cutlery. ‘Now that you
have
used my best claret for sauce, I might as well enjoy it.’

Arian waited in a fever of impatience, oblivious of her surroundings; the elegant dining room, the high chandeliers, the sumptuously curtained windows were all part of a backdrop to her. Here was Calvin offering her a way forward for the future but what was the catch?

‘Through my somewhat disastrous marriage, I became interested in the footwear business,’ Calvin said. ‘If I understand correctly, a supplier brings in the leather wholesale to some warehouse or other and the shoemakers have to buy it in fairly small quantities, is that right?’

Arian nodded, ‘French calf has to be imported of course but most skins are easily available in this country, the trick is in choosing the good stuff, you see.’

‘What is the competition hereabouts, do you know?’ Calvin watched her thoughtfully as he ate his dinner. His manners were impeccable, Arian noted absently.

‘Well, there’s Mr Grenfell of course,’ Arian said thoughtfully, ‘and Emily and John Miller do a bit of buying but I believe they buy just enough for their own use, they don’t have a warehouse as such, not these days.’

‘To whom would you sell, then?’ Calvin asked and Arian smiled. All these details had been worked out minutely by her during many a long hour when she lay awake in some barn, or cushioned in her broken-down shed.

‘There are the small Swansea shoemakers,’ she said, ‘cobblers who know the best and don’t want the bother of going to the tanneries to sort it out. Then there are nearby towns, Morriston, Clydach and Neath and further afield, the whole of the Rhondda valleys, the scope is endless. Eventually even the Grenfells and the Millers would save time and buy from me.’

‘You seem pretty sure of yourself,’ Calvin remarked, ‘but your income from such sources would be small. Surely it should be the bigger towns such as Cardiff and Newport you must aim for?’

‘You forget,’ Arian said, ‘I will be a specialist, anyone who wants the finest kid or pigskin would come to me and pay for the privilege of my expertise.’

Calvin put down his napkin. ‘A child and already you are an expert, amazing.’

‘Let me see your boots,’ Arian said, and Calvin’s eyebrows rose a fraction. Good naturedly, he lifted his booted foot and Arian took it on her lap, her fingers tracing the leather as though her finger-tips could see.

‘These boots are beginning to crack,’ she said. ‘The leather wasn’t treated properly, see how hard it is where it should be supple.’

‘They are almost new,’ Calvin protested. ‘Where are they cracking?’

‘There look, near the instep, where the leather takes the strain of bending. It’s not up to the job. It’s not seasoned leather but cheap, too quickly cured.’

‘You could be right,’ Calvin said. ‘So you know your leather but can you deal with figures? Can you handle the finance, for if I set you up in business I want nothing to do with it, except to rake in some profits. I don’t want you running to me every five minutes with tales of woe.’

‘I tell you what,’ Arian said firmly. ‘Let me do your household accounts for a week or two. I’ll prove I can save you money, you’ll see.’

‘I’ll think it over. Leave me now and ask Mrs Richards to come into the drawing room after supper.’

Arian bobbed a curtsy which for some reason caused Calvin to smile and then she was out in the passageway, leading to below stairs.

‘
Duw
, you’ve been long enough,’ Mrs Bob grumbled. ‘Get the dishes started there’s a good girl and I’ll take the master his second course. My stomach thinks my throat is cut. I shan’t be sorry to sit down to my own supper.’

Arian moved to the huge sink and stared down at the pots and pans. She sighed heavily. Well, if Calvin Temple didn’t come up with an offer for her soon, she would leave Stormhill Manor anyway. This was not the life for her. Perhaps she could get a room somewhere, find work on a newspaper; she knew most of what she needed to know about the printing business and what she didn’t know, she was confident she could learn.

She had spent much of her time as a child at the offices of the
Cambrian
with her father. She had watched the operators make magic words in the typeface, every letter being cut by hand on a steel punch, every numeral, every punctuation mark taking time and infinite care to produce.

Now there were new machines from America, the Linotype and the Monotype. These machines made the business of printing newspapers so much more swift and effective, but they also made Arian’s knowledge little short of obsolete, she realized with a dart of disappointment.

Yet how she would love the challenge of a new career, something to work for, a future with prospects instead of the dead-end job of merely existing in the kitchens of the big house. One thing she was suddenly determined on, even if Calvin did nothing for her, she would make a success of her life. She might never find love, she wanted nothing more to do with men, they only brought hurt and betrayal, but one thing she would have was a career, whatever it cost her.

It was a few days later that Arian learned that there was at least one outcome to her talk with Calvin Temple. Mrs Bob came into the kitchen her face flushed, her eyes shining.

‘We’re to have more staff at Stormhill Manor,’ she said excitedly. ‘Lord Temple is taking on a house steward and a footboy as well as an upper housemaid and a maid of all work.’

‘I thought that’s what I was,’ Arian said ruefully, ‘Bella too.’

‘Well, Bella is going to work as a chambermaid which will be promotion for her, and you, well, girl, I don’t know quite what his lordship’s got in mind for you.’ Mrs Bob sighed. ‘It will be wonderful to have some men about the place again, there’s nothing gives an establishment a bit of class like some male employees.’

Arian was uneasy. ‘I thought a steward’s job involved doing the accounts,’ she said and her heart sank. If that was the case, Calvin had obviously changed his mind about giving her a chance to go into business.

‘Oh, aye and supervising in the dining room, too.’ Mrs Bob said. ‘
Never
serves mind, oh, no, a house steward doesn’t demean himself to actually wait at a table, just to watch that others do their duty properly.’

‘Seems a pretty pricey idea, to me,’ Arian said. So much for her plan of impressing Calvin by saving him money.

‘It’s only right, though,’ Mrs Bob argued. ‘I well remember the time when there was not only a house steward in a grand establishment but a butler and under-butler with one or two footmen serving at table and those were the days when there was a tax on male servants.’

Arian was silent and Mrs Bob looked at her sympathetically. ‘Don’t you fret, girl,’ she said kindly, ‘there’s got to be something good in this for you. His lordship is not the kind to dismiss his servants for no reason.’

Arian didn’t reply. Calvin had rid himself of the staff employed to care for Eline and it was quite possible that he’d thought over their little talk and come to the conclusion that she was nothing but a trouble-maker.

It was two agonizingly long days later when he sent for her. He was sitting in his book-lined study, his feet stretched out to a cheerful fire, an open book resting on the table beside him, a picture of how the rich lived – a strange and sharp contrast to the hard work that went on below stairs – and for a moment, Arian resented his position in life, his wealth.

‘Arian,’ he said, ‘I have arranged a room at the back of the house as an office. There you and my new steward will work side by side. It is an unusual arrangement, the books are usually kept by the housekeeper or by the steward alone but in this case, I intend to make exceptions.’

Arian was tongue-tied, she stared at Calvin waiting for him to continue. ‘My new steward will begin on Monday. Before then, I would like you to go over the accounts. If there are discrepancies then you must come to me with them, understood?’ Arian nodded and Calvin continued to speak.

‘The steward, Mr Simples,’ he allowed himself a smile, ‘don’t be misled by his name, will check the books to be sure you have missed nothing. I will give you a three-month trial period and if you prove yourself then we will talk again.’

He waved his hand and Arian bobbed a curtsy and turned towards the door. His voice stopped her.

‘One thing more,’ she looked back at him. ‘I appreciate that the clothes Bella bought for you are not, shall we say, entirely suitable for your new post therefore I would like you to go out and dress yourself properly from top to toe.’