week, and just one slice off the roast on Sundays. I am allowed one egg a week too, but it’s a pale watery thing compared with the deep gold yolks laid by our hens at home.
I have to make do with this niminy-piminy fare with the merest scrape of butter. The only food that is plentiful is milk pudding. I shall start mooing before long.
‘We don’t want you to fall ill with too rich a diet,’ says the Mistress, as if servants have different stomachs from posh folk.
Mrs Angel the cook and Eliza the maid are supposed to survive on this frugal diet too, but they eat their meals down in the kitchen and Mrs Angel is adept at keeping back the choicest portions for their own plates before Eliza serves the Master and Mistress in the dining room. I have my meals in the nursery so I miss out on these perks. Mrs Angel and Eliza treat me like one of the children anyway. They whisper and have secrets and laugh unkindly at the things I say. They are excessively tiresome.
They
are the childish pair. I do my best to ignore them, but then Mrs Angel calls me hoity toity and Eliza pulls my hair so that it tumbles down out of my cap. It is hard to bear sometimes. At home I was always a favourite. At school I was definitely Miss Worthbeck’s pet. All the children loved me. Even the boys. Yes, even that great lummox Edward James. But now I am openly despised and it makes my heart sore. At night I cry into my pillowcase, the sheets pulled right over my head so the children will not hear me.
Victor sees my red eyes in the morning and says that I have been blubbing.
‘Nonsense,’ I say firmly. ‘I have a slight cold, that is all.’
Perhaps that was tempting fate. Now the whole household has gone down with colds, even little baby Freddie. Mrs Angel has taken to her bed and Eliza is trying to take charge of the kitchen, but with very bad grace. The Mistress says her ailing children must have calves’ foot jelly served to them at every meal. I ask Eliza to prepare it but she utterly refuses, saying she has her work cut out as it is and she cannot abide messing around with lumps of messy meat.
So I have to make the jelly. The whole kitchen reeks and the walls glisten as the calves’ feet boil and boil and boil, and I skim and skim and skim, and then when I go to strain the liquid through the jelly bag my hands slip and . . . disaster! By the time I have run out to the butcher’s for six more calves’ feet and started the whole business in motion all over again I am in such savage spirits that I would cheer if a whole herd of calves stampeded through the house and trampled everyone within it with their poor feet.
TOYS AND BOOKS
I WAS SO scared! Jo could be cleaning Jamie Edwards’s house. I could just imagine Jamie lounging on a velvet chaise-longue in his posh William Morris-papered parlour, snapping his fingers imperiously at Jo.
‘Hey, you! Cleaning lady! Get me another cushion,’ he’d command. ‘I’ve spilt crumbs all over the carpet so get cracking with the hoover. And don’t sigh like that or I’ll dock your wages.’
I could see it as clear as anything. Poor Jo would have to wash Jamie’s clothes and tidy Jamie’s bed and dust all Jamie’s possessions. Maybe Jamie had a brace of younger brothers just as bratty as him, and she’d have to wash their clothes and tidy their beds and dust their toys. If he had a baby brother she’d maybe even have to wash and tidy and dust
him
down.
‘It’s not your Jamie Edwards’s house,’ said Jo. ‘This is the Rosen family, Mr and Mrs, with two teenage daughters.’
I practically passed out with relief.
‘Are you disappointed?’ said Jo. ‘Did you hope I’d get to go in your Jamie’s bedroom, eh, to tell you all about the posters on his wall and whether he still has a teddy on his bed and maybe even have a sneaky peek in his diary to see if he ever writes anything about you?’
‘He’s not
my
Jamie!’ I shrieked. ‘You are so nuts, Jo. I keep telling you,
I have to make do with this niminy-piminy fare with the merest scrape of butter. The only food that is plentiful is milk pudding. I shall start mooing before long.
‘We don’t want you to fall ill with too rich a diet,’ says the Mistress, as if servants have different stomachs from posh folk.
Mrs Angel the cook and Eliza the maid are supposed to survive on this frugal diet too, but they eat their meals down in the kitchen and Mrs Angel is adept at keeping back the choicest portions for their own plates before Eliza serves the Master and Mistress in the dining room. I have my meals in the nursery so I miss out on these perks. Mrs Angel and Eliza treat me like one of the children anyway. They whisper and have secrets and laugh unkindly at the things I say. They are excessively tiresome.
They
are the childish pair. I do my best to ignore them, but then Mrs Angel calls me hoity toity and Eliza pulls my hair so that it tumbles down out of my cap. It is hard to bear sometimes. At home I was always a favourite. At school I was definitely Miss Worthbeck’s pet. All the children loved me. Even the boys. Yes, even that great lummox Edward James. But now I am openly despised and it makes my heart sore. At night I cry into my pillowcase, the sheets pulled right over my head so the children will not hear me.
Victor sees my red eyes in the morning and says that I have been blubbing.
‘Nonsense,’ I say firmly. ‘I have a slight cold, that is all.’
Perhaps that was tempting fate. Now the whole household has gone down with colds, even little baby Freddie. Mrs Angel has taken to her bed and Eliza is trying to take charge of the kitchen, but with very bad grace. The Mistress says her ailing children must have calves’ foot jelly served to them at every meal. I ask Eliza to prepare it but she utterly refuses, saying she has her work cut out as it is and she cannot abide messing around with lumps of messy meat.
So I have to make the jelly. The whole kitchen reeks and the walls glisten as the calves’ feet boil and boil and boil, and I skim and skim and skim, and then when I go to strain the liquid through the jelly bag my hands slip and . . . disaster! By the time I have run out to the butcher’s for six more calves’ feet and started the whole business in motion all over again I am in such savage spirits that I would cheer if a whole herd of calves stampeded through the house and trampled everyone within it with their poor feet.
TOYS AND BOOKS
I WAS SO scared! Jo could be cleaning Jamie Edwards’s house. I could just imagine Jamie lounging on a velvet chaise-longue in his posh William Morris-papered parlour, snapping his fingers imperiously at Jo.
‘Hey, you! Cleaning lady! Get me another cushion,’ he’d command. ‘I’ve spilt crumbs all over the carpet so get cracking with the hoover. And don’t sigh like that or I’ll dock your wages.’
I could see it as clear as anything. Poor Jo would have to wash Jamie’s clothes and tidy Jamie’s bed and dust all Jamie’s possessions. Maybe Jamie had a brace of younger brothers just as bratty as him, and she’d have to wash their clothes and tidy their beds and dust their toys. If he had a baby brother she’d maybe even have to wash and tidy and dust
him
down.
‘It’s not your Jamie Edwards’s house,’ said Jo. ‘This is the Rosen family, Mr and Mrs, with two teenage daughters.’
I practically passed out with relief.
‘Are you disappointed?’ said Jo. ‘Did you hope I’d get to go in your Jamie’s bedroom, eh, to tell you all about the posters on his wall and whether he still has a teddy on his bed and maybe even have a sneaky peek in his diary to see if he ever writes anything about you?’
‘He’s not
my
Jamie!’ I shrieked. ‘You are so nuts, Jo. I keep telling you,
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