A/N: The reference to employers changing names of their servants that I used in the previous chapter came from "Below Stairs/Climbing the Stairs" by Margaret Powell, an autobiography of her life as a kitchen maid and rise to cook in the early twentieth century. Apparently, it was fairly common practice at the time.
***chapter 10***
***News***
Dear Diary
I was serving the servants' breakfast this morning when Mr Carson said for me to stop and put down the plates. I nearly dropped them in shock when I heard but I managed to put them down on the table with a lot of rattling which made everybody look at me and Mr Carson frowned before he started talking again.
Mr Carson said the ship had been on its maiden voyage. I didn't know what a maiden voyage was and I was too shy to ask and the dictionary wasn't on top of the piano, it had gone off somewhere.
I am glad one of the hall boys asked because I had been wondering if it meant it was mostly unmarried girls travelling because they call them maidens in poems and old books, but I knew it didn't make any sense that they would be the only ones going to New York, which is in America, and I would have sounded stupid if I had asked that because Mr Carson said maiden voyage just meant its very first.
Mr Carson is very nice if you work hard, but sometimes he gets a bit annoyed if you ask silly questions and says don't ask silly questions in his scary voice, but he was very patient when he answered Jack and everybody else because everybody had loads of questions. Though nobody did say anything at first.
Everybody just went very, very quiet and you could actually hear the big clock in the servants' hall ticking, the one that Thomas winds up every morning when he winds up all the others, and you NEVER hear that not tick. I think we would have jumped out of our skins if the bell had rung for someone to go upstairs but it didn't ring for a whole five minutes or more. It was as if all the ladies and gentlemen up the stairs had gone very, very quiet to listen to Mr Carson too, though they would have had to lie on the floor with their ears pressed to hear. I think they might have needed ear trumpets as well.
There were suddenly loads of questions after everybody being very, very quiet and Mr Carson had to put up his hand to stop and say one at a time and Jack asked about maiden voyage.
Nobody said we had to, but Lizzie and me mostly spoke in whispers all day after Mr Carson told us the news. Nobody ever, ever thought the Titanic would sink! Not for a minute!
Nellie who is in laundry said when she went to The Plaza in Leeds to see the moving pictures two years ago they showed a bit of it being built in Ireland in a place called Belfast and everybody in The Plaza cheered and waved as much as they did when they saw themselves.*
Mr Carson said it is a very sad day and we should remember those poor people in our prayers.
A/N: *While some short films that told a story were already being made by the first decade of the new century, cameramen also often filmed everyday scenes such as horses, people and trams crossing a bridge, workers leaving a factory, children exercising in the school yard etc. Audiences went for the novelty of seeing themselves on screen. I've taken poetic licence with the idea of a short clip of the building of the Titanic being shown in Yorkshire. It might well have happened.