‘Mrs Damage!’
I pulled my hand back and stood up as if I had been stung by a bee in the non-existent clover, but I did not turn round.
‘Mrs Damage! What are you doing?’ It was that maid again, calling from the top of the Knightleys’ steps.
Head bowed, I hurried back across the street so I would not have to shout my feeble explanation. Touching the grass. I’m ever so sorry. We don’t have grass like that in Lambeth, see.
But before I could speak, the woman called again, ‘I’m to take you up to see Lady Knightley,’ so I ran up the steps for fear that the door would close in my face once more, and into the hall, and was taken aback again by the statuary Negro lad, at whom I nodded by way of apology, and followed the maid up the stairs. We went along the plush, carpeted corridor, past the lion’s den of Sir Jocelyn’s office, and stopped outside another door.
The maid opened it, but before she could show me through she rushed inwards, saying something that sounded like, ‘Let me help you, ma’am.’ The door swung back towards me but did not quite catch: was I to push it open with my fingertips and peer round to show my presence, or was I to wait until it was re-opened for me? I stared at the strip of light between the jamb and the door. I heard panting as the maid plumped cushions, a lady sighed, a drink was poured.
‘Where is the girl?’ the sighing voice enquired. Footsteps approached the door again. From the maid’s face as she pulled the door open, I realised I should have been bold enough to follow her in initially. A less polite girl than me would have thought of a name for that woman, even if she would only have hissed it under her breath to her on passing.
The lady, lying on a mauve chaise-longue, was as graced in charm and sensitivity as her maid lacked it, but that, then, is because she was the lady, and not the maid.
‘Thank you, Buncie,’ she said, by way of dismissal to the maid, and turned to me. ‘The little bookbindress!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come, sit here by me. Let me see you!’ But it was her I wanted to see – and not be seen by – and this glorious chamber too. It was a paradise of femininity and sweetness; she was not the only treasure in it. Everywhere was silken, shiny, smooth and soft: fringed shawls bedecked with roses and peonies were draped over the backs of chairs and occasional tables; the mantel was pelmetted with pink and green tassels, some so deep I feared they would catch fire. The sound of birdsong was such that I had never deemed possible to hear in London – it seemed louder even than when I had stood in Berkeley-square itself – and the dried spiced petals in bowls gave off the smell of roses so strongly it was as if every fabric in the room had been rinsed only yesterday in pure rosewater. Everything beckoned ‘touch me’, but the moment I entertained that thought the room seemed to shriek at me, ‘but not with those grubby common little hands!’ and so I swelled and shrank my way round the room by turns.
The walls were papered a tender duck-egg blue. The gold beading between the panels glimmered as if they were nothing less than solid strips of real gold. The buds on the chintz looked as if they could burst into flower at any moment, and the blooms as if they could have been picked off the sofa and displayed in a vase. And from the ceiling hung three enormous, glass gasoliers, cleaner than my common gas-lamps ever were. There were wide window-seats in the vast windows, which offered views that were paintings in themselves: trees, and a sky that was so blue it could not have been the one I had left outside in Berkeley-square, and certainly not the one that hung over our heads in Lambeth. Here there was an abiding sense of purity about the room, a luxuriance, a peace.
I glimpsed my journal lying on her desk next to a charming blotter and inkstand, pen-tray and paper knife. It was the one bound in blue silk embroidered with pink, gold and silver flowers, and it did, indeed, match the décor of the salon. Then the lady patted the chair next to her again, and I saw her hands, and curled mine under in shame.
The cuff from which her hand appeared was finely embroidered in red and blue threads, as were her hems, and round her waist was an elaborate sash dripping with red and blue beads. Her face was not exactly beautiful: her features were meaner than the expansiveness of the room would have suggested, and she had small, almond-shaped eyes that did not seem to see me. Her mouth was thin, and when she smiled at me it was close-lipped and practised, but at least, as my mother would have said, she smiled. Descriptions such as ‘enigmatic’ and ‘wan’ would no doubt have pleased her. Her complexion was such as one of our modern painters would have delighted in; like the room, she had a subtle gold-tinged glow about her.