Friday's Girl

  About the Book

  When the famous portrait artist Napier Todd stumbles across Edith Hanson scrubbing floors, he is immediately struck by her beauty. Within a few weeks Napier and Edith are married and she moves into his large country house – much to the envy of the other maids. However the marriage is troubled and Edith falls seriously ill. Napier takes her to the idyllic Cornish fishing village of Newbourne to convalesce where Edith meets Celandine.

  Celandine Benyon is a struggling artist who moved to Paris to seek inspiration and fell in love with another painter, Sheridan Montague Robertson. The couple eloped to Gretna Green after Celandine was disowned by her mother, and together they set up home in Newbourne.

  Because Celandine understands Napier–s artistic temperament, she tries to help Edith with her troubled marriage. However, although her advice succeeds beyond Edith's wildest dreams, it also causes tragic repercussions.

  And with the dangerously attractive Alfred Talisman waiting in the wings, will Edith ever find happiness?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  About the Author

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Copyright Page

  FRIDAY’S GIRL

  Charlotte Bingham

  For my favourite Sunday Painter

  This novel is set in Victorian England.

  Chapter One

  Just because you are poor does not mean that you are dirty, although it has to be said, soap never having been cheap, that you might have a bit of trouble keeping clean. Certainly no one could have felt the impact of dirt more than Edith that morning, and no one could have looked poorer. Indeed her skirt and blouse, her apron and cap, could not have felt more depressing to their wearer had they been prison clothing decorated with small distinguishing arrows. What was more, after the weekend the floor of that particular part of the Stag and Crown seemed to be inches thick in dirt from the street and spilled beer from the bar, not to mention pieces of dropped food; and at the edges of the tables and chairs lurked that worst of all worsts for the dedicated cleaner – grime.

  Grime is not dust, not light and grey, but dark and slimy, and it is shifted with difficulty, as anyone who has tried to remove it knows. Luckily Edith had strong arms. They might not be thick and round like those of her stepmother, the second Mrs Hanson, and she might not have short, stubby fingers like hers, but since the time of her father’s remarriage she had been set to work as a general dogsbody at the old coaching inn whose gardens bordered the rolling acres of Richmond Park. This meant that from the age of ten Edith’s slender arms had been toughened year by year, until now, at the ripe old age of sixteen and a half, she found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that she could lift and shift with the best of them.

  Not that she did not still always feel sickened by the state of the inn floor every Monday morning, not that she did not sometimes feel that she would like never to see a scrubbing brush or a pail of water ever again, of course not. A shining floor may be life-enhancing for those who tread across it, but it is rather less so for those who have the duty of cleaning it.

  This particular Monday morning, however, she felt even brighter than the piece of floor she had just scrubbed so dutifully. The reason for her inner exuberance was that she had risen an hour before the rest of the maids, and several hours before her stepmother, in order to steal out, all alone, into the royal park to enjoy the sight of the blossom, to embrace the air and to admire the deer moving stealthily between the old trees and across the carefully tended acres of what she considered to be a little piece of heaven, before bolting back to her duties.

  ‘You’re looking like the cat that got the cream. What you been up to, then?’

  Edith had pretended not to hear the brewery man, and had run down the kitchen stairs with her bucket to fetch more clean water before she would be forced to tell the truth. For it was true, she knew that she did look happy. After all, who would not look happy after escaping into the park of a fine May morning, enjoying an hour away from the smell of stale ale and the heat of the cooking, not to mention the ever-present dread of hearing her stepmother’s sharp voice?

  The kitchens were alive with activity and steam, with large joints of meat being brought in on bare shoulders and huge pots being stirred, and maids running in and out with dishes from the dining rooms; and that was all before the hall boy started getting under everyone’s feet because he was waiting for his well-earned rind of crispy bacon, and his cup of milk.

  Edith ran to the scullery and then back through the kitchen, hoping that when she reached the upper rooms again the dreaded brewery man would be gone. None of the young maids liked the brewery man, for the good reason that he was notorious for taking more than a passing fancy to anyone who stood in his way for more than a few seconds.

  Happily, as she walked cautiously into the main thoroughfare of the public rooms Edith saw at once that he was gone, and she had resumed her scrubbing before she heard something else: not the uneven gait of the departing brewery man, but the quick light step of someone she instinctively knew was different.

  It was an iron rule at the Stag and Crown that none of the female servants were allowed to look customers in the face. This was because Edith’s stepmother was quite sure that it led to nonsense, and Mrs Hanson always said that any nonsense from Edith, or anyone else, and they would all end up in the workhouse along with a great many of the others who had been dismissed from her service.

  The continuous threat of the workhouse hung over the Stag and Crown in the same way as an early summer haze had hung over the park that morning, except that unlike the summer haze it never lifted to reveal beauty or serenity, only fear and panic. Nor was Edith, despite being the only daughter of the owner, able to escape it. She too felt the shadow of it, the fact of it, its cold welcome always waiting, almost a certainty, almost a reality, to those who did not work hard enough or long enough, who were impertinent, or did not realise their good fortune in being employed by Mrs Hanson at the Stag and Crown.

  But fast as all the servants ran, and hard as they all worked, it seemed that Mrs Hanson could never, ever be content. Edith had long ago recognised that contentment was not in her stepmother’s makeup. It was not part of her nature. There was no doubt at all, at least in Edith’s mind, that if her stepmother ever had the misfortune to find herself feeling happy, she would very likely lose her reason. It would mean that she had nothing about which to inwardly rage, about which to become hourly infuriated, or constantly irritated. It would mean that her husband and sons, not to mention her step-daughter, would lose their fear of her. It would mean that she would have to appreciate everyone’s efforts to make her happy, instead of drawing attention to herself by her constant demands. If she were happy and content, her life would be meaningless.

  On the other hand, in sharp contrast to her own open discontent, Mrs Hanson always seemed to be on a mission to make sure that everyone else realised their own good fortune.

  ‘The sooner you recognise how sinful and ugly you are, the sooner you will content yourselves with what God has given you, and the more gratefully you will accept your lot in life,’ she would say to Edith and the other maidservants, which often had the unfortunate effect of making some of them so downhearted that they left the Stag and Crown and took up other occupations, the m
ost popular being prostitution. Walking the streets for a living brought in quick money, but all too often an early death.

  Little wonder therefore that as the early morning visitor to the inn paused by her metal bucket, Edith had no trouble keeping her eyes bent on the bright, clean tiles she had only seconds before scrubbed back to their original blue and green and white and cream glory.

  ‘I hope I am not too late for a good breakfast?’ the visitor said to the hall at large.

  Edith kept her eyes cast dutifully down, staring now at the visitor’s beautifully shod feet. They were the slender feet of a gentleman, and what was more and what was better they were not muddy, so they were not ruining her precious floor, but actually enhancing it. They were a May morning of a pair of feet, and they were very welcome to her floor.

  ‘I said, I hope I am not too late for a good breakfast, hmm?’

  Edith, knowing that Mrs Hanson was never around in the early hours of the old inn’s busy day, slowly lifted her head, and found that the face into which she now dared to look was as unusual as the feet at which she had been staring moments before. It was a startlingly handsome face, and this despite the fact that it was bearded. Any facial hair, even side-whiskers, was, in the view of persons such as Edith’s father and his friends, synonymous with a lazy sort of fellow, a fellow who did not, or would not, make time of a morning to use a proper cut-throat razor. Facial hair was only worn by men who would harbour newfangled ideas, ideas to which her father’s customers would be about as attracted as they would be to fleas in a cat. Worse than that, they made a gentleman look foreign.

  Looking up from her kneeling position on the floor, Edith was so distracted by the fascination of his face, which was almost too handsome for its own good, that, quite against her will, she found herself staring at him for far too long, just as earlier she had stared at the deer moving quietly around her in the park.

  Perhaps everything might have been all right if the visitor had not widened his eyes. And if those same dark brown eyes had not travelled over Edith’s still slender childish figure, and if he had not put out a hand to her shoulder, and tapped on it with some authority, forcing her to respond.

  ‘Stand up, do,’ he commanded, and then he gently placed a hand under Edith’s chin and moved her face from one side to the other, murmuring over and over again, ‘Stunning.’

  He held her chin in his gloved fingers with such confidence that Edith felt it was not the first time he had done such a thing. Finally, he let go of her face with evident reluctance, and turned towards the main room where breakfast was still being served, letting out a sigh of such huge contentment that Edith felt she could have been some sort of buried treasure he had come across while out walking, which must now be put aside in favour of a more practical consideration, such as eating.

  The moment was over, thankfully unobserved by anyone else, and he went in to breakfast without saying more, taking off his gloves and rubbing his hands together at the smell of the bacon cooking and the sight of the kedgeree and the ptarmigan, and every other dish laid out for the delectation of their customers. Edith returned to her floor-scrubbing with renewed vigour. She knew the stranger should not have touched her, and yet she could not help feeling glad that he had. The truth was – her father being distant and unaffectionate to a degree – no man had touched her since she was quite small and her grandfather was still alive. She suspected that it would have meant nothing to the elegant bearded gentleman, and yet, much against her will, she could not help realising that it meant a great deal to her.

  Normally she did not appreciate her father’s customers. They might be conventionally dressed, but they had the upsetting habit of running their fingers over whatever part of Edith’s body they could safely reach without attracting attention to themselves.

  ‘It is no one’s fault but your own if a customer takes liberties,’ Mrs Hanson was fond of saying to the girls, with a strange, cruel little smile. Her expression at those moments was the very opposite of the look that so often came over her face when she was speaking of the Almighty. That expression was always one of proud complacency.

  Mrs Hanson believed in God, and she followed Christian practice, attending every service at nearby St Peter’s, whether it was for the churching of women, or the burying of customers. She was certain that she was protected not just by the success of her husband’s thriving business, or the excellence of the brewers’ ale, but also by the unseen approbation of God. This unshakeable belief in God’s approval left her free to behave exactly as she wished once she had stepped outside the portals of the great grey church that dominated the end of the road. So it was with the memory of her stepmother’s voice proclaiming the guilt of any servant who allowed a customer to take liberties that Edith returned to her work, scrubbing with all the renewed energy of a prisoner determined on reducing a life sentence.

  She had just reached the last, large, square tile when she again heard his voice.

  ‘Would you mind turning round for me, Miss . . . ?’

  Edith started to turn, but as she did so she heard the familiar swish of the silken-skirted Mrs Hanson approaching, and her stepmother’s equally silken voice saying in the tone she always used for customers, ‘May I be of help, sir?’

  ‘You certainly can, ma’am,’ Edith heard the man’s voice asserting, as she turned back to her bucket and cloths. ‘You most certainly can. You can tell me who this beautiful girl might be.’ He pointed across the tiled hall. ‘Yes, and you can tell me how she comes to be employed in this dreadful fashion, cleaning floor tiles on her hands and knees, when paintings of her face and form should be adorning the walls of every house in the kingdom.’

  ‘Who could that be, I wonder? Of whom could you be speaking, sir? I see no beautiful creature, sir, I see only a young maid and her bucket.’

  Mrs Hanson’s voice was rising in amazement, and although Edith did not look at either of them she felt quite sure that her stepmother must have been staring across at her as if she was some sort of necessary evil, like the leavings from the kitchens, which were always donated to the local hospital.

  ‘That beautiful young creature over there cannot be a maid, ma’am. She is surely an angel sent down to remind us of paradise?’

  ‘But you can’t mean that person, surely?’ Mrs Hanson pointed at Edith, who had finally finished cleaning her last tile and was standing up, preparing to pick up her bucket and scuttle off towards the busy, teeming kitchens. ‘You can’t mean that person there?’ Mrs Hanson was trying hard to keep real astonishment from her voice. ‘That person is – Edith,’ she finished, reluctant as always to add ‘my stepdaughter’, which, in the circumstances, and given Edith’s poor appearance, was perhaps understandable.

  ‘Come across, please, mademoiselle, do, if you would not mind?’

  Edith put down her bucket, and did as she had been ordered by the stranger, and as she raised her eyes once more to the startlingly handsome face with the dark hazel gaze she could not help feeling a second, more highly charged, frisson of excitement.

  Celandine stared up at her professor’s face and as usual felt a great deal more than a frisson of impatience. Mr Brandt sported a neat beard such as every teacher in the art department of Munich university seemed to wear, and since at that moment his face was reflecting unshakeable boredom, his mouth beneath the hirsute upper lip was also drooping downwards, a perfect matched set.

  ‘Fräulein Benyon, your choice of subject is, if I may say so, lacking in depth and maturity. When given a free hand you will always return, will you not, to the domestic? However, if you must return to the domestic,’ he continued quickly, observing that Celandine was about to interrupt his brief dissertation, ‘if you must return to the domestic, could you not make it something more – shall we say – elevating?’

  Celandine stared up at him from under her own dark curled fringe of hair, which framed her heart-shaped face and large grey eyes in such a way as to almost over-emphasise the liveliness of her
expression, an expression which at that moment – eyes widening, lips parted – gave every indication of bursting into voluble protest.

  ‘I find subjects such as these just as elevating as anything classical or religious, Herr Brandt.’

  ‘A maid peeling apples is domestic,’ the professor said, sighing. ‘A goddess holding an apple, the apple symbolising love, that would be elevating.’

  ‘But only, surely, Herr Brandt,’ Celandine said, tightly, ‘only if the goddess and her apple had a title such as . . .’ She stopped and thought for a few seconds before going on. ‘A title such as “Insidious Cupid Calling on Diana While she is at her Toilette Finds to his Consternation that she has Already Eaten of the Apple”. In these modern times the titles of paintings, and of course their frames, are far more important to art dealers than the paintings themselves, are they not, Herr Brandt?’

  The professor shook his head in despair. Fräulein Benyon was not wholly European, being, as he now knew, the single issue of a French provincial painter and an American mother; she could not therefore be expected to have the same attitudes as the rest of his comfortingly male class of students.

  ‘Classicism is what is important, Fräulein, classicism, classicism, classicism, copying, always copying, the great masters.’

  ‘Certainly, Herr Brandt, but remember that at some time or another students do have to produce something, rather than re-produce everything.’

  Her professor pointed across the studio to the rest of the art class. ‘These gentlemen are working on paintings that spring directly from the classical tradition, Fräulein. Can you not observe how much deeper their work is than yours?’

  Celandine stared in fury around the atelier. The young men had now broken up into groups and were smoking and talking, admiring each other’s works, most of which she was quite certain would be dutiful evocations of biblical subjects, or adaptations of scenes from the ancients.