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“But Jackson, I was so looking forward to presenting you with your gifts, and I don’t want to deprive the staff of their celebration. I will be terribly disappointed if we can’t find a way around this.”
Jackson smiled. He could never deny me anything. Not since I was a child, and I really wanted to win this battle with Mrs. Web.
“Well, Miss Cruella, the last thing I want to do is disappoint you.”
I had always liked Jackson. Out of all our staff he was most like a member of the family. Always there. Always loyal. Always on my side. And after my father passed, always looking out for me. It’s true, I had resented his attentions and the somber looks he gave when my mama set off on her trip, but he never spoke ill of her. In that moment, as his usually somber face broke into an indulgent smile just for me, he reminded me so much of my papa, who I was missing terribly. I didn’t understand why it had taken me so long to see Jackson in this way. Really see him. The way I had seen him when I was young. I’d adored him when I was small. He always took a special interest in me. And he was doing so again.
Perhaps it was the magic of Christmas, or perhaps I was just happy to have someone to side with me against the Spider, but I saw Jackson clearly that day. And we had won the battle together, Jackson and I. We were allies in combat against the wretched Spider.
“Then it’s all set! We will all have Christmas dinner together downstairs. It will be a scream!”
Before dinner, Anita and I changed. I remember feeling liberated by not having to dress up for dinner. If we had been eating upstairs in the dining room with Mama we would have had to dress like we were having the Queen for dinner. As it was, we both wore something simple and comfortable. I didn’t even wear the earrings Papa gave me.
The servants’ hall was decorated with a colorful garland made of paper rings that were chain-linked together, alternating red and green. There were festive bits of holly and sprigs of pine tied with red ribbons that hung in the doorways. In the corner near the fireplace was a small tree, decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries, and faded gold beads that glistened in the firelight.
It was much more cheerful downstairs than I remembered. I hadn’t spent much time in the servants’ hall; most of my visits were to the kitchen. Anita and I said hello to Mrs. Baddeley as we came down the stairs, but we were shooed away and told to close our eyes. “I’m making something special for you, dears! No peeking!”
Anita and I laughed. It felt like the old days.
The kitchen was separated from the servants’ hall by a large hutch that was built into the wall. There was a hinged, shuttered window in the middle of the hutch that could be opened so those inside the servants’ hall and the kitchen could pass things back and forth and speak to each other without having to go around to the other entrance.
The hall had a long dining table that was already set with old-fashioned Churchill Blue Willow patterned dishes. On the other side of the room was a large fireplace and mantel, with two chairs facing the fire, which I assumed were Jackson’s and Mrs. Baddeley’s. Between the chairs was a small wooden round table, and there were a number of small pillows on an old rug I remembered having in the morning room when I was a child. I supposed that is where the other servants sat when they weren’t at the dining table, perhaps to warm themselves by the fire while drinking their cocoa before bedtime. It was a cozy place.
“I’m so happy you decided to have Christmas dinner down here with the staff, Cruella,” said Anita, beaming. “It would have been lonely upstairs just the two of us. I always felt Christmas was a time to spend with your family.” Anita saw me flinch at the word family, but I wasn’t angry with her. I understood what she meant. It was a time for family, and I was missing my papa and mama more than ever.
“I understand. You think of Mrs. Baddeley and Jackson as family.”
“I thought of Miss Pricket as family as well.” Her voice was sad, but there was something else in there, too.
“I know you’re disappointed, Anita, but I don’t wish to talk about Miss Pricket. Not now, anyway. Not in front of the other servants.”
“But you do think of them as family, don’t you?” she asked.
I thought about it. “Perhaps not in the same way you do, Anita. But I love that they treat you like a member of the family. Because to me you are a dear sister.”
“And you are mine, Cruella. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
Oh, how it breaks my heart to think Anita and I are no longer close. That she no longer loves me as she once did. But I shouldn’t digress. Those were happy days. At least I thought they were. The days before Anita betrayed me, when she was practically my world.
But back to Christmas Eve. Anita and I were in the servants’ hall taking a look around when Mrs. Baddeley abruptly opened the shutters, her red, happy face peering through the hutch window.
“Miss Cruella, hello, my dear. I’m sorry I shooed you away.”
I smiled at the woman. “I understand you’re up to your old tricks again, whipping up some sort of surprise! I bet I can guess what it might be!” I imagined raspberry jellies as far as the eye could see, and laughed to myself.
“Never you mind about that, Cruella! You will just have to wait!” She closed the shutter doors again with a dramatic and playful snap. Anita smiled at me.
“See, she isn’t so bad. I know she annoys you, but she’s actually a very sweet woman, and she loves you very much.”
It had never occurred to me that Mrs. Baddeley loved me. Not until Anita said so. And it made me wonder—had I had it all wrong? Maybe she had always loved me, the way Jackson had, since I was a little girl. Why had it taken me so long to understand that? I suddenly felt so ashamed for sending Miss Pricket away. It was almost like the woman I had been in that moment was an entirely different person than the woman I was now. And she had come out without my knowledge or permission. I didn’t like that person inside me who said and did mean, awful things. But sometimes it felt as if I had no control over her.
I desperately wanted to talk to Anita about it, but not then. It would have to wait until after dinner. The thoughts swirling through my head were too strange to say out loud in this cheerful room. Something within me was changing, something I couldn’t explain.
But there wasn’t time to slip away and talk. Everyone was making their way to the servants’ hall and taking their places around the table.
I was offered Jackson’s seat at the head of the table, but I declined, choosing to sit by Anita with our backs
to the hutch so we would be facing the fireplace and the little tree. “No, Jackson, that place of honor is for you. I won’t take it. I’m your guest this evening,” I said. Mrs. Baddeley seemed touched by my saying that, and I wondered if there wasn’t something between them. I’d often heard stories of butlers and cooks finding love in their older age. Sometimes it was the butler and the head housekeeper. But something about the way Mrs. Baddeley looked at Jackson made me wonder if there was some spark there, and I wondered if it was mutual. Jackson, of course, was too stoic to let on even if he did have feelings for the woman.
