The Forgotten Room(43)
“Now, Olive,” said the cook. “You stop banging that china around for a moment and listen to me. Olive!”
Olive sighed and set down the sugar bowl.
Mrs. Jackins’s right index finger appeared out of nowhere, scolding the warm kitchen air. “I’ve been in service near all me life, and I’ve never seen it turn out well.”
“Seen what turn out well?”
“You know what I mean.”
Olive marched to the nearest stovetop, where the enamel coffeepot sat on a round back burner, keeping hot. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“You and Master Harry. I’ve seen the way the two of you look at each other. Like I said, I’ve been in service me whole life, and I knows a look when I sees it.” Under moments of emotion, Mrs. Jackins’s original accent slipped out, a relic of her upbringing an ocean away. She had moved to America when she was eight or nine, she’d once told Olive over tea one evening, and had started as a scullery maid in a house off Washington Square, moving both upward and uptown as she grew apace with Manhattan itself. While Olive couldn’t guess how old the woman was—her hair was still dark, but her face was red and wrinkled—she could well imagine that no aspect of downstairs life hid for long from Mrs. Jackins’s experienced eye.
Still, Olive had no choice but to brazen it out. She poured hot coffee into the elegant porcelain pot, replaced the lid, and set it carefully on the tray, without so much as glancing in Mrs. Jackins’s direction. “You’re imagining things. I wouldn’t dream of looking at Master Harry, and as for him, why—”
A hand closed gently around her arm. “Now, Olive. You just listen to me one minute. One single minute; that’s all. I’m not casting no stones. I’m not after tattling on you to herself. But I seen all this before, masters and servants, and trust me, my dear, no good can come of it. No good, do you hear me?”
“It’s not like that,” Olive whispered.
Mrs. Jackins removed her hand and sighed. “And there it is. All you girls think it’s different for you, that you’re the special one. It’ll all work out for you, won’t it? But listen to me, dearie. Listen good.” She leaned toward Olive’s ear. “It never does. You ain’t special. The world don’t work that way. Masters and servants, mixing together. Never did, never will. Take my advice, Olive dearie. If you want to be happy, set those sights of yours a wee bit lower. A fine man like Master Harry might fancy a pretty housemaid like you, but curse me if he ever marries her. Why, we had a housemaid just last summer, didn’t we, who set her cap for Master August and wound up in a right fix—”
Olive pulled away and picked up the tray. Her face was hot and tight. “Thanks very much for your advice, Mrs. Jackins. I’ll just run this coffee upstairs, now, won’t I?”
Mrs. Jackins rolled her eyes upward and turned away. “Have it your way, dearie. But Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be? Right here on Sixty-ninth Street, ironing them tablecloths, hoping you ain’t in a fix of your own.”
The tray was heavy, but Olive was strong. She bore Harry’s coffee up the five long flights of stairs until she arrived at his door, which was closed. Propping the tray against one arm, she knocked with the other. “Coffee, sir!” she said, into the paneled wood.
“Come in!” called Harry’s familiar voice.
She turned the knob awkwardly and backed her way in.
She had entered Harry’s room before, of course. Many times, in fact, since he had returned home from college. Dusting and polishing the family’s rooms was part of the ordinary course of her duties, and while one of the more senior housemaids usually attended the boys’ rooms—or so they were called, anyway, though both Harry and August had long lost any resemblance to their innocent younger selves—she often filled in. She knew the details intimately. There was Harry’s bed, still unmade, probably still warm, hung in green damask and plump with white pillows. There was his desk, covered with sketches and half-finished letters. His wardrobe stood open, in need of a thorough thinning out, or perhaps the services of a professional valet. The bookshelves at one end were crammed full in a comfortable, messy-scholar way that Olive found endearing. She set down the tray and turned to the chair, where she expected to find Harry himself, dressed and smiling, but it was empty.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Olive spun around and gasped, filling her eyes with the sight of Harry’s bare chest, which gleamed a beautiful pale gold between the open edges of the dressing gown that hung from his shoulders. His face was half-spread with shaving soap, and the wicked edge of a razor hovered above the other side, ready to strike. He grinned and turned back to the mirror above the sink, framed by the open doorway of his private bathroom. (Her father’s own design, naturally.) “I was hoping they’d send you up. I don’t suppose you have a moment or two before you have to go back?”
Olive was too astonished to speak. Harry stroked the blade in confident lines across the foam that adorned his cheek, while the soap-fragrant steam from his recent bath billowed around him. He looked radiant and well rested, lean and marvelously built: each contour immaculate, like an Italian marble touched by God’s finger and brought to life. Her eyes dragged helplessly along the width of his shoulders, the lines of his waist, the curves of his calves beneath the edge of the robe, and she felt as if someone had doused her in kerosene and set her quietly alight. Her mouth watered and her insides melted. He was too much. He was too exalted, too magnificent. He was unreal, a different species altogether.