3 Grace is shopping in Gillingham & Sons for material for a summer dress it's the last shop on earth she wants to give any of her hard-earned money to, except it's the only one in town that's got what she wants
she'd written to the store manager a few years earlier requesting an interview for a position on the sales floor, determined to prove Mrs Langley wrong now that she was fully grown up and had several years' experience in service behind her however, as soon as she presented herself to the manager, dressed in her smartest outfit, he said outright that she'd put his customers off he didn't even give her a chance to open her flaming mouth was quite sure she'd understand, he said closing the door firmly behind her for many weeks afterwards she dreamed of sneaking into the store one night and burning it to the ground with the manager inside it, crying out for her to save him Mabel and Beatrice from the home are working in Hosiery this Saturday, she's not seen them in ages, has a chat while their supervisor fawns over a very wealthy-looking customer, tells them she wishes she was working there they tell Grace that standing all day without a break makes their legs and feet so swollen they can barely walk afterwards that their room, clothes and food are all deducted from their wages leaving them with little money to spend and enjoy themselves Grace doesn't buy it, she'd give anything to work in a swish department store where she can look sophisticated, meet interesting people, including future husbands (such as the ones they're courting), get to live in rooms at the top of the shop in the middle of town, enjoy the social activities on offer such as tea dances, and the playhouse, and the winter and summer funfair you try working as a maid miles from anywhere, she says, giving it to them good and proper you try getting up before the cock crows to shovel out the grates and having to be on call until they all turn in in between it's non-stop scrubbing, scraping, shining, ironing, folding, fetching and carrying, because you're a nobody skivvy who has to wear a horrid uniform even though I was as good as anyone in my last year at the home for reading, writing and arithmetic Mabel and Beatrice really get on her nerves she walks off, leaving them to it
at least she's found the right material for her dress – plum-coloured and soft in its brown paper package tied with string it's so precious she holds it close to her chest in case it dies or something she can't wait to get it home, will use the pattern all the maids are sharing for a dress that comes just below the knee rather than just above the ankle, considered very risqué, as she overheard Baron Hindmarsh's daughter Lady Esmée tell her weekend guests when she made her entrance at the top of the stairs for one of her parties Grace peeped out from behind the secret door that connects the servants' passageway to the house proper as Lady Esmée made a show of herself to all her rich friends the ladies in backless dresses that shimmied and sparkled, the gentlemen in elegant dinner jackets with satin collars, with their cigarillos in gold holders and mint julep cocktails who watched admiringly as she walked slowly down the stairs showing off her slender legs and exquisite ankles it's all the rage in London, my darlings, all the rage Grace will never look like that; at least she'll soon have a new dress to wear when the occasion calls, not that it does very often she's not allowed to get dolled up for church, but she is for the Hindmarshes' Christmas staff party until she has to put her uniform back on along with the other maids to clear up the mess everybody's made she's about to cross the road outside Gillingham & Sons when a swarm of men on bicycles swoop past so close they almost knock her over, workers cycling home from a factory for lunch, she suspects next a packed omnibus lurches dangerously close just as she's about to step on to the road again she's used to the busy town, still has to be careful every time she comes into it, seeing as the rest of her time is spent in the middle of the countryside away from busy roads with only the occasional car to be found on the country lanes, usually belonging to a Hindmarsh or guest she finds she's not alone, a chap has sidled up to her you must be the Lady of the Nile, aye, that's what you are, he says; she turns sharply, looking fierce, ready to tear down his impudence for calling her a lady of the night
reading her mind he says, Queen Cleopatra, you know, the Lady of the Nile which is quite different altogether Grace stops herself lashing him with her tongue or whacking him with her package which she's done before now he's got the brightest ginger hair which he's tried to comb flat, it's still sprung up all over the place; a ruddy, friendly face and honest blue eyes staring at her in admiration, he's not leering at her the way many men do on the streets she looks at his tweed jacket, smart enough trousers, grubby boots, he's shorter than her, most men are Joseph Rydendale, he says, and insists on helping her across the road, he's just had a profitable morning's business at the Friday cattle market and deposited a wad of crisp white notes in Barclays Bank she suspects he's trying to impress her, which is working (when did a man ever try to actually impress her?) he seems to be a man of substance, too, who'd normally not pay her any attention, as opposed to the scoundrels and wasters who do Grace is right fed up of men who fancy their chances when she's alone with them, calling her a temptress, a tease, a seductress when she resolutely is not it can happen anywhere, even at the castle, in the servants' back corridors or when she's working alone in empty rooms, one guest snuck into her bedroom one night, prompting her to get Ronnie the estate's blacksmith to put a bolt on her door the next day she's managed to escape all advances without being ruined so far, despises those men who take ladies without their permission those men who make children without marrying the mothers, and disappear to faraway fairytale places where they eat cheese soufflé every day she's long ago resigned herself to eternal spinsterhood, to a future without the joys of marriage and motherhood nobody wants a mongrel, which she's been called on the street before now, she lets the perpetrators have it back with, you're a mongrel yourself! only she wasn't reckoning on meeting a Mr Joseph Rydendale, was she?
who, once they'd been chatting a while, asked her to walk out with him Sunday after next, and thereafter travelled to visit her every Sunday afternoon, then had to race home to milk his cows can't milk themselves, Gracie, and I don't trust my farmhands Joseph had returned from the Great War with his body and mind intact, unlike many of his comrades who'd survived but suffered amputations or still heard bombs exploding in their heads even though it was peacetime comrades who slowly went mad with it he'd returned to the family farm, Greenfields, to find both it and his father in decline, disease was decimating the emaciated livestock and crops, the equipment was rusty and broken down, farmhands were being paid every Friday evening and were nowhere to be found the rest of the time his father, Joseph Senior, widowed many years earlier, had taken to wandering the upper fields at night in his long johns shouting for his wife to come and help with the lambing, Cathy, come and help with the lambing Joseph put the farm to rights after years away, which took up all of his time and willpower, now he was ready for a wife for company and to carry on the family line he'd fought in the Egyptian desert and in Gallipoli, had known Ottoman beauties of the Orient (she daren't ask him how) when he came home from the war, none of the local girls appealed to him, until he saw her on the streets of Berwick Grace could see that Joseph was a well-meaning fellow, she began to like him very much, spent the whole week looking forward to Sunday and the few hours they spent together, walking around the permitted areas of the estate in summer, sometimes wearing her best dress, just for him, lying in the grass in the sunshine, or sitting in the servants' kitchen in winter, where he joined everyone for Sunday lunch Mrs Wycombe, the cook, allowed it, she'd taken to Grace as soon as she arrived and made sure she was treated well by the other staff or you'll have me to answer to, she warned them Grace couldn't believe her luck when Joseph asked for her hand in marriage, that he should behave as if she were a prize and not the booby prize
they wed three respectful months after his father died he brought her home to Greenfields for the first time the old boy would never have approved, sane or insane, was stuck in the Victorian era and still listened to music hall songs on the phonograph whereas I play jazz on a gramophone when he brought her to the farm, he took her there via the only route through the bustling village in his horse and cart on a Saturday morning past the shops lining the main street, past people out shopping who stopped and stared at this strange creature most had never seen a Negro before, certainly not one capable of stealing one of the most eligible men in the district, as she was made to feel once she began taking the horse and cart into the village on her own their Joseph Rydendale, the local farmer and honourable ex-soldier who most mothers of eligible daughters had hoped to have as their son-in-law when they heard her speak, they were surprised she sounded just like them, a local-enough lass, and warmed to her not the grocer, wh0 threw her change on to the counter with such force it scattered and she had to crawl around on the ground to pick it up next time she bought something from him, she threw the exact coins on the counter in the same way, and walked out with her Abyssinian nose in the air her Ma would be proud.