AGENCY
AFTER THE SLAUGHTER, there was a distinct – and most inconvenient – shortage of butlers. Ordinarily, one would simply oblige the departing servant to arrange for his replacement, or at worst, seek recommendations from the housekeeper as to suitable candidates. But Oxfordshire was afire with grief, angst and confusion, and Lord Featherstonehaugh’s own housekeeper remained crippled with neuralgia.
He would have to do the unthinkable, and seek help from an agency.
The telephone – that most despised object; a shrill klaxon, a ruiner of silences – stood on its own table in the great hall. Parkes, the groundskeeper, had been so good as to supply details of a place with which one of his sister’s recent acquaintances “ad hengaged, wi’ sum success, y’r lordship”. Very well. Featherstonehaugh pecked at the rotary dial with one disdainful finger. There was an eternity of ticking, then a scratchy silence as the call was connected.
‘My name is Fanshawe,’ he said into the horn, ‘and I am in exquisite need of assistance.’
*
‘Indeed, your lordship,’ said Mrs Scullion. ‘Certainly. A number of houses in Yorkshire, yes. References are on file with the Agency, which should prove satisfactory. No, that presents no difficulty. I shall see you first thing Monday morning, then. Thank you, and goodbye.’
After a second telephone conversation in as many days, Featherstonehaugh required brandy and prolonged rest, but at least it was done. After ringing for service, he waited almost quarter of an hour before realising there was no one to bring his drink.
*
He liked what he saw as the trap pulled in from the station. Featherstonehaugh descended the stairs; Parkes moved silently in to remove the steamer trunk. Stepping down was a trim, small woman, her black hair coiled tightly in a bun, radiating strength and competence. She curtsied as soon as her feet touched the gravel.
‘Mrs Scullion?’
‘Your lordship.’
‘Please, come this way. I shall show you around the Hall.’
He nodded to Parkes, who loaded the trunk onto a handcart, then steered the new housekeeper towards the house. They made short work of the principal rooms, servants’ quarters (with which she would shortly acquaint herself), the kitchen, &c.
‘I will leave you to engage directly with the staff, if I may,’ he said. ‘In due course your help will be most appreciated in refilling the ranks, in the absence of a butler.’ He touched a handkerchief to his brow, slightly faint with the heat. ‘Since the War, and the loss of my son, I find myself able to do much less in the day.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about that, your lordship. You will be able to rest as much as much as you need. May I express my sincere condolences on the loss of your son, even to such a noble cause.’
‘Thank you. Did you yourself lose anyone?’
‘A brother. He was nineteen.’ She lowered her head and took off her travelling gloves, dabbing an eye with a cotton finger-end. He sighed, touched her hand, retired. She waited till the great hall was empty then looked around with satisfaction. Scullion had no brother, nor husband either. She twisted her ring back into place, and smiling went about her business.
*
A few months into Scullion’s tenure, Featherstonehaugh was most satisfied, and decided on the unusual step of telling a member of staff of that satisfaction, as well as requesting advice on one final, yet necessary, step. She had instilled new respect in a staff flagging from loss of leadership; filled the gaps with pliant scullery maids (Polly, a favourite, had by all accounts dropped everything and moved from Yorkshire), cook’s assistants, stableboys; and overall brought to the Hall a clockwork sense of order.
He brought her to the library, pouring a small sherry and bidding her sit.
‘I am most grateful, Mrs Scullion, for your work of late. I hear no complaints, and the Hall runs as well as it ever did, under any butler.’
He had his back turned, at the whisky decanter, so did not see her twitch of pleasure.
‘Of course, your lordship. It’s nothing more than anyone in my position would have done.’
‘No, no. I mean to thank you – most sincerely. You have my lasting gratitude. But tell me, what became of Mr Scullion, if I may enquire?’
‘Oh, he was lost in the coalfields, your lordship. An awful thing.’
‘A mining disaster? Did his Davey lamp give out?’
He had heard of such things, in his youth, when Mr Dickens lectured the club on industrial conditions then prevailing.
'Oh, no. The props were not of sufficient strength, they say, and one gave way when struck by a pit-pony’s harness. It was instantaneous.’ She had gleaned the details from a socialist tract abandoned in the railway carriage; they fitted the circumstances admirably.
‘Ah – yes, I see. Most unfortunate. But I must say, Mrs Scullion, the tragedies of life do not appear to have dented your spirit. You seem to have no need of a Conan-Doyle.’
‘No, your lordship. We must simply carry on. Was there something further?’
She set down the sherry glass with little taken. It did not do to scramble one’s wits when a prospect was in the offing.
‘There was just one item,’ Featherstonehaugh said. He took a sip of Scotch then placed himself gingerly on the very edge of the divan, made great play of positioning the tumbler on a coaster, arranging both just so. ‘I – well, I shall simply say it. As you are aware, there seems to be no end to the – ah, drought of butlers. Now, much of what you have accomplished would ordinarily have been performed by a servant of that rank, you understand.’
‘Yes.’
If her antennae had caught the correct vibrations – and since the attack in childhood, they had seldom been wrong – she needed say nothing further. Things would tumble forth of their own accord.
‘In the absence of such a person, you have performed admirably, and I propose adding a further responsibility, if you are amenable to it. A task I find both taxing and – well, if you don’t mind my saying, a trifle beneath my natural dignity.’
‘You wish me to pay the staff.’
The light of relief was bright as dropping phosphorus over his face.
‘Yes – indeed! How splendid that you anticipated it. I need not have agonised over this conversation at all.’
‘Indeed not, your lordship. I would be happy to undertake that role. I shall inform the Agency at once. You will, of course, arrange with your bank, solicitor and so forth the proper means by which I can dispense wages?’
‘Of course, of course.’
He smiled, showing a row of bleached, slightly irregular teeth, then gestured towards her sherry glass with his tumbler.
‘To your health, my dear!’
‘And yours, Lord Fanshawe,’ Mrs Scullion replied.
*
She had a great deal to do, but still he bothered her. Since the radio broadcast, it had been Conan-Doyle morning, noon and night. Fanshawe believed – she hadn’t the slightest doubt – that there was hope in the old fool’s words, of worlds where loved ones lingered about the séance table yearning for contact. The man believed in fairies, for God’s sake! Yet in addition to the weekly cashing for the staff, she had a number of her own payments to make. Parkes’s sister, for one, and the Agency stationery bill, the retainer for the woman who answered when anyone rang. She demanded a pretty penny for her time, and her silence. There were still a thousand tasks to complete before the flit.
And yet – sometimes she overheard him on the telephone, or scratching away at invitation cards in the library. She took him the packages of spirit photographs which arrived by post, feigning an elaborate lack of interest in the sealed envelopes on the tray. A little steam from Polly’s kettle soon ungummed the flaps, and they laughed over the blobs of flocculent matter emerging from the moon-faced performer’s mouths. With Polly sent on her merry way, Scullion would not miss the Hall for an instant.
Closing the library, she noted two dozen gentlemen on Featherstonehaugh’s list, a few prominent Scottish names amidst them. At the foot of the page was a draft itinerary, with varying rosters of speakers (after the great man, of course) and his penmanship looping away into sodden grief at the tail.
Surely one among their number might have need of a competent housekeeper, references impeccable, on a strictly temporary basis?
Salary negotiable – expenses deferred.
Forthcoming in To Say Nothing of the Dog: Flash Fiction (Cyberwit, 2023)
Next: Mr Shanks and Mrs Clark