around. They smelt rotten. There were pigeon feathers on the ground, too, and quite a lot of bird crap. There was a soft cooing sound from somewhere.
‘Dreadful things,’ the old lady said. ‘Rats with wings.’
Mark barely heard her. He was turning in a slow circle. On the left of the room there were a couple more doorways, one to an area with metal grilles in the walls. At the far end of the space was another pair, but much lower, and on the right side of the room, which he assumed must be a kitchen, he saw the rusted remains of … he wasn't really sure what it was, in fact.
‘The range,’ the old lady said. ‘Where meals for the entire household were cooked. There would have been a big table here, right where we're standing, but I'm sure that was sold many years ago. Probably a dining table up in London now, or someone's desk. People stopped living this way seventy or eighty years ago. In most houses all this has been turned into a basement flat.’
Now Mark thought about it, he realized he knew this. His mother had a friend in London who lived in Notting Hill, in an apartment that was below ground level, like this. Hers was all white walls and down-lighting and big paintings with splashes of colour, however. It was hard to imagine it could ever have been something like this.
He pointed at the small room with grilles in the walls. ‘What was that?’
‘It's where the meat was stored.’
‘They had a room, just for the fridge?’
‘There were no refrigerators. The meat was hung. The grilles in the walls are so the air could circulate.’
‘Didn't the meat go off?’
‘Sometimes. The space next to it is the oven and bakery area. Then …’ She turned to indicate the two low doors at the end. ‘Storage areas. Vegetables and fruit on the left, dairy – milk, cheese – on the right.’
Mark went over and entered each area in turn, having to crouch slightly to get inside. The ceilings were curved, like a vault. There were shelves on either side of both rooms, again holding nothing but years and years of dust. They could have stored a lot once, though.
When he came back out he noticed a couple of broken wooden boxes on the other side of the kitchen space. They had wire netting across the front, and looked like very basic rabbit hutches that had fallen apart.
‘Chickens,’ the old lady said.
‘Chickens? They had chickens in the house?’
‘Of course. Fresh eggs every morning.’
Mark laughed, trying to picture a state of affairs in which it made sense to have live chickens in a place where people lived. Beyond the coops was a shallow recess in the wall, about eight feet wide and four feet deep. ‘Was that a fireplace?’
The old lady smiled. ‘No, dear. That was where the cook slept. And the scullery maid, too, unless she just bedded down in the middle of the floor.’
‘It's cold, though,’ he said, trying to picture this.
‘Of course. It's almost underground. But it would have been different when the range was alight. Then it would have been the one warm place down here. The cook was lucky, in winter. In summer … not so lucky’
Mark tried to imagine what it had been like. Two people sleeping in this area – in the kitchen, another in the other tiny room he'd seen at the end of the side corridor. Meat hanging in the space over there, a range puffing out smoke and heat, chickens clucking and walking around, the cook clattering around at the stove…
He wandered back over to the bakery area – and was startled when a bird suddenly appeared from nowhere, flapping within inches of his face. It scrabbled chaotically out into the main area, careering through the air, circling round and bashing into the glass of the skylight. Though she was standing directly underneath, the old lady paid it no attention at all. Eventually it found the broken pane and burst outside, shooting upwards into the gloom and rain.
‘Who was the other servant?’ Mark asked. ‘You said there was another one who had his own room.’
‘Not his, her,’ the old lady said. ‘Perhaps the most important one of all.’
‘I thought the butler…’
‘The butler was the public face of below-stairs. He was the one visitors saw, if they saw anyone at all.’
‘Why wouldn't they see anyone else?’
‘Servants were supposed to keep out of sight. As if everything happened by magic. They even had their own staircase, at the back of the house, weren't allowed to use the main one. In a house like this all the rooms upstairs would have counters on the landings outside, so that trays of tea or food could be left or collected without the family having to deal with a housemaid directly. Fires would be built and lit in all the rooms before the family got up – and the ash cleared away after they went to bed. The newspaper left ready on the table every morning. Shoes cleaned and left outside bedroom doors, ready for the next day. Silent and invisible. Like living with a team of elves.’
‘So who…’
‘The housekeeper,’ the old lady said, as she led Mark out of the kitchen and back into the main corridor. ‘She gave the housemaids their jobs. She talked with the mistress, discussing what meals would be required that week, and did all the ordering of the food. She organized the linen, made sure all the tasks got done. She was … the queen bee. Down here, anyway’
‘Where did she sleep?’
‘She had the best room of all.’
The old lady walked out through the big door and waited for Mark to follow her. He felt reluctant to do so – he wanted to go back and look some more – but he could tell by her demeanour that the tour was finished.
The old lady pulled the door shut, and locked it again with the big key. Then she nodded into her flat.
‘That's where the housekeeper lived. She needed to be at the front to deal with all the tradesmen who would call throughout each day. Things didn't last. You didn't go to a supermarket like you do nowadays, and buy food frozen for the next month – you had it delivered, every day’
Now they were back in this small front area of the building, it was hard to remember that the rest of it even existed. The big, solid door, the old lady's small, tidy room: it was as if that was all there was.
‘It's weird, all that being back there,’ Mark said.
She looked tired now. ‘People are like that too.’
Mark didn't understand what she meant but it seemed as if she didn't want to say any more. His time down here was over. That was all right. It sounded as if the rain had started to slacken off. A walk along the seafront sounded okay now. The old lady walked behind him to the front door, and stood there as he stepped out.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You're most welcome.’
He started up the narrow metal staircase up to the street, but hesitated, and turned around. ‘Do … other people know that's there?’
‘Other people?’ She knew who he meant. The person who owned this whole building. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don't believe he does. I've lived here for a long time and I don't get many visitors. The only person who knows about it is me. And now, you.’
She closed the door gently.
When Mark got up to the pavement the rain had stopped, though the sky was still low and a uniform grey. He pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets, and set off towards the promenade. He had some change in his back pocket. He thought maybe he'd go down to The Meeting Place and ask for a cup of tea, and ask them to make it strong.
He felt a little better than he had before.
So David didn't know everything there was to know, huh.