your confirmation that you will never discuss with anyone that meeting yesterday. And when I say ‘anyone’ that includes not only the staff in the house here but your own family when you return home. Have I made myself clear?”
May nodded vigorously.
Sir Philip smiled. “Good. I knew you would understand.”
May left Sir Philip’s study, relieved on two levels. First, she was happy to escape a smell that reminded her of smouldering socks, the result of the accumulated decades, if not centuries, of cigar smoke that had impregnated the ancient stone walls of the Sussex manor house. But mostly she was astonished to have held on to her job and to have been exonerated so completely from the consequences of yesterday’s accident. Considering how things might have turned out, May felt herself to be most fortunate, although she hated to think how much she must have upset Miss Nettlefold. May was startled by the forgiving nature of the woman who, the previous afternoon, had settled herself into the back of the car. As for the caution that she should be discreet about yesterday’s encounter in the yellow drawing room of Fort Belvedere, she felt no anxiety. Keeping secrets had been a way of life for May for as long as she could remember.
Up until the moment when Miss Nettlefold had slid the glass partition aside May had maintained the respectful silence that was expected of a chauffeur. As a courtesy, she had formally introduced herself to her passenger at the beginning of the journey but Miss Nettlefold had been so preoccupied with her bags and parcels and small snuffly dog that she had paid little attention to the driver. However, in her driving mirror May could see the surreptitious stares Miss Nettlefold began to give her from the backseat and had expected to hear the whoosh of the screen that separated the passengers from the driver being pushed back even sooner. The little window had not closed properly from the first day May had begun driving the car and although she had considered getting it fixed she had changed her mind. The almost imperceptible gap through which private conversations reached her was too much of an unexpected bonus to relinquish.
“I do declare you are a girl!” Miss Nettlefold had finally concluded aloud, in a rich and lilting accent that was unequivocally American. “Tell me I’m right,” she said, already chuckling deeply at the accuracy of her deduction. “My, oh my, you certainly have some pluck in choosing this profession at such a young age! And what with you being so pretty in such a male line of work!” she continued. “Tell me, how did this all come about?”
After a little hesitation, May described briefly how she and her older brother Sam had left their home at the sugar plantation in Barbados and had sailed to Liverpool on the sugar consignment boat two months ago. She told her passenger how, with the encouragement of her mother’s London cousins, she had looked in the newspaper and applied for this chauffeuring job.
Miss Nettlefold professed herself to be “quite fascinated” by everything May told her and had kept up her chatter for the last twenty miles of the journey. Both women were amazed to discover they had disembarked from their respective ships at the Liverpool dockyards on exactly the same day. Miss Nettlefold felt certain that the coincidence was a fortuitous sign of a future amicable relationship between them. Indeed, her passenger appeared so effusive that May began to feel a little uncomfortable. But she listened politely as Miss Nettlefold explained how she was on her way to meet an old school friend from Baltimore, Maryland, whom she had not seen for years. If she was honest, she was apprehensive at seeing her again after such a long interval.
“Of course, we stayed in touch by letter, you understand, May? Oh forgive me? Do you mind if I call you May, Miss Thomas? I wanted to ask, rather than presume, especially as we Americans can sometimes run away with our manners over here in England. I guess we can be too informal for some folks.”
“I don’t mind being ‘May’ in the least,” May replied. “In fact Sir Philip asked to call me by my first name only last week, so you are in good English company.”
“Oh, you have no idea how pleased I am to hear that,” Miss Nettlefold sighed. “It’s so good to meet up with someone who understands what it is like to be