The Black Velvet Gown

by Catherine Cookson

  As the two young men stared apprehensively down on her Stephen said, ‘Oh, my God, no! Try her heart.’

  Laurence put his hand inside the collar of her dress. At first he could feel no beat until his fingers moved; and then he nodded and, looking at Jean, who was kneeling on the floor opposite him, he commanded, ‘Go and get the housekeeper, quickly.’ Then he looked to where Stephen was standing over his younger brother, growling now, ‘By God, I’ll take it out of your skin for this, young ’un. And wait till I tell our father. If you want to sport, sport with those that can strike back.’

  Paul was holding his jaw and he looked defiantly at his brother as he said, ‘She pushed Lucy into a butt.’

  ‘There must have been a reason for it. There’s a reason why you two are in here. What brought you? As for you—’ He turned and looked to where Lucy was standing staring towards Laurence as he knelt on the ground by the side of the hated girl, and he said, ‘This will put the final stamp on it, miss. Mama won’t be able to save you now. You had a warning last time: one more escapade and it’s away to school with you, where they might knock some manners into you. But as regards manners’—he was glaring at Paul now—‘school doesn’t seem to have done much for you. For two pins I’ve a mind to kick your bare arse till you can’t sit on it.’

  ‘Look here.’ Laurence was beckoning to Stephen now and gently he turned Biddy’s face to the side to show a red weal rising from the middle of her ear down to the side of her chin. ‘What does that signify?’ he asked, and Stephen, now glaring at his sister, was almost made speechless when Lucy, staring back at him, said, ‘And I’ll do it again.’

  ‘By God, you will, miss!’ He strode to her now and, swivelling her around as if she were a bundle of straw, he almost lifted her off her feet as he hopped her up the laundry and thrust her out of the door. But when Paul made to follow her, he said, ‘You stay where you are, laddie. There’ll be work for you to do if I know anything.’

  Mrs Fulton came hurrying into the laundry, only to stop and look aghast for a moment at the scene before her. Then, as she stood above Biddy’s prostrate form, she muttered, ‘That girl again. She’s always in trouble.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  The little prim face became tight as she said, ‘No-one’s but her own, sir, I would say.’

  ‘And would you say there was any reason for her to be strung up to that contraption?’ Laurence thrust his arm back. ‘What if she had died from shock?’

  ‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t have been my fault, sir, as I had no hand in the business.’

  No, she was right; she’d had no hand in the business. The hand or hands had come from her betters. He looked at the little woman with dislike as he now said, ‘Get someone to carry her to the house and put her to bed, and see that she’s attended to.’

  As she turned away, Stephen cried, ‘No need to get someone, Mrs Fulton, my brother here will be only too pleased to carry his victim to the house. Won’t you, Paul?’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘You won’t? But, by God you will!’ The heavy boot caught the young fellow in the buttocks and nearly lifted him from the ground, and his face red with anger, Stephen cried, ‘How many more of those will I have to give you before you do what I tell you? Pick her up.’

  ‘I could never carry her; she’s too heavy.’

  ‘She wasn’t all that heavy when you strung her up, was she? Now get at it, or do you want another?’

  The boy’s teeth were clenched, his face almost as red as his hair, and as if he were being forced to touch something unclean, he bent and slipped one arm underneath Biddy’s thighs and the other under her shoulders. But he could not have got to his feet with her except for Laurence’s help. Then he was staggering up the laundry with his burden, and would surely have dropped her had not Laurence taken the girl from him, crying, ‘Open the door,’ as he did so.

  Paul stumbled forward and thrust open the doors and stood aside and watched the man whom for years he had thought of as his brother and whom he had never liked, stumble out and across the yard under the gaping mouths and wide eyes of a number of the staff, and into the house through the boot room.

  Paul now walked out of the laundry and into the house by the main door, then made his way up to his sister’s room. He went in without knocking, and as he looked at her he was surprised to see that she was crying. He put an arm around her shoulders and said, ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll get our own back on that creature one way or another. It might take time, but you’ll see, we’ll do it. You’ll do it your way and I’ll do it mine. Oh yes, I’ll do it mine.’

  Five

  There was a feeling of excitement running through the staff, and none so high as in the laundry, for tomorrow was the thirty-first of July.

  The laundry staff had always been aware of their status in the household. No-one could get lower than the laundry staff except the cesspool cleaners, but they came from outside and weren’t even allowed anywhere near the house. The nearest they got to any of the staff was when they delivered their loads to the farm and this only happened three times a year. So the combined efforts of the laundry staff—with the exception of course of Mrs Fitzsimmons—was to show them.

  It just might have been possible that Biddy would have taken notice of Davey’s warning with regard to the signing of names had it not been for the incident in the laundry. It had left a deep mark on her that she could have been subjected to such torment through, in the first place, no fault of her own, except for being audacious enough to answer the young master and mistress back, but to be held responsible for what had happened by those in charge, including both the butler and the valet besides the housekeeper, had incensed her.

  What had happened, Mrs Fulton had informed her, had happened because she was what she was, a troublemaker, a harbinger of ill fortune. Nothing, Mrs Fulton said, had been the same since she entered the household, for, before that, who would have thought of Mr Laurence and Mr Stephen going for Master Paul and Miss Lucy, especially when, as everybody knew, she doted on Mr Laurence. All right, they had strung the girl up. She hadn’t been the first one that had been strung up; and, too, she had got off lightly because she hadn’t been flogged. If it had been in the days of the old master she would have been, and she wouldn’t have dared open her mouth. Well, Mrs Fulton had informed her, the matter had gone before the master and mistress and they had agreed that she was to have another chance. If it had lain with her, she knew what chance she would have given her. And poor Miss Lucy being sent off to school when everybody knew Miss Lucy hated school. She would hardly attend to Miss Collins’s lessons, all she wanted to do was ride. And what was wrong with that for a young lady? As for Master Paul, his allowance had been cut. What did she think about that? Couldn’t she see that she was a troublemaker?

  Biddy had lain in her bed for three days, and for the first day she had hardly known where she was. Her mind played tricks with her, taking her into the fanciful stories she had read. She had seen herself gambolling through forests, sailing over seas that were beyond imagination, and, strangest of all, being wooed by a prince. She had hung on to that part of her delirium. They had called the doctor in to her the second day and he greeted her with, ‘Well, well! The lively pupil.’ He had examined her and found her unhurt except for the weal down the side of her face, which, he had said, would fade with time. How the news of the incident had spread to her mother, she didn’t know, but she came on the third day and said she was going to take her home; and in spite of this being her dearest wish and then her hope, she had refused to go. The reason for her change of mind escaped her at the time, but shortly afterwards she knew that the reason was to do with defiance, for she meant to show them. She meant to show that she was different from the lot of them; she was learned. She was determined not only to read more, but to carry on studying her French and Latin. This she knew might be difficult without guidance, but she was going to try.

  But now the excitement
that ran through the staff section of the house would reach its highest point tomorrow at the end of the corridor of the north wing, for the four laundry girls were going to sign their names when they received their half-pay.

  The procedure of pay day was similar in a way to that of the present receiving on Christmas morning. The only difference was, they went one after another into the library where, at the head of the long table that ran down the middle of the room, sat the master, while standing to one side of him on this day was his new steward, Mr Daniel Yarrow, and to the other side of him, his butler Thomas Froggett.

  As each member of the staff approached his name was called out by the butler and the steward checked it from a long list and stated the amount to be paid; then the master counted it out before handing it to the butler, who handed it to the recipient, then said, ‘Sign,’ which meant in every case a mere cross. The head of each department had preceded its underlings; and now at the end of the long list Mrs Jinny Fitzsimmons sidled into the room, subservience oozing out of every pore of her large body. When she received her six pounds ten shillings, she dipped her knee, looked at the master and said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ to which he did not reply with a movement either of the eye or head, but sighed as he continued to look down on the long list of wages he was being forced to meet. When the steward now read from the list saying, ‘Florrie McNulty, assistant laundress, three pounds nine shillings,’ Mr Gullmington counted the money out, handed it to the butler who then, handing it to Florrie, said, ‘Sign.’

  And Florrie signed. Slowly, in copperplate writing, she wrote, ‘Florrie McNulty.’

  A cross takes but a second to make, but fourteen copperplate letters took over forty seconds and brought three pairs of male eyes on her. When she had finished she straightened her back, smiled, dipped her knee, and said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ backed two steps from the table and marched out. And march is the descriptive word.

  The three men now looked at each other but said nothing.

  Then there entered Sally Finch, and the steward read out, ‘Sally Finch, staff scrubber laundress, two pounds twelve shillings.’ The master handed the money to the butler and the butler handed it to Sally, saying after a slight hesitation, ‘Sign.’ He pointed to the paper, and Sally, before signing, looked up at him and smiled. She had only ten letters to her name, but it took her almost as long to sign as it had Florrie. After she had dipped her knee and said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and departed, the master looked at his butler and said, ‘What is this, Froggett?’ And Froggett, after a slight gulp, said, ‘I…I wasn’t aware that they…could write, sir.’

  The steward was now saying, ‘Jean Bitton, scrubber laundress, one pound sixteen shillings and threepence.’

  Jean looked nervous. She was remembering what Davey had said: unlike Biddy and the rest, if she got the push she had nowhere to go, only back to the poorhouse. But nevertheless, she wrote the name that had been given to her when at the age of six months she had been placed in the care of the poorhouse authorities, Jean Bitton.

  There was silence among the three men now as they waited for the last laundry assistant to enter, and at least two of them knew who was the instigator of this insurrection. The butler had no doubt whatever in his mind; and the master had heard of the poem reading on Christmas night, but more so, there was in his mind now the incident when this girl entering the room now had so enraged his daughter and son by ridiculing their French pronunciation that they had strung her up, and in doing so had created a division in the family, which was apparent to this very minute.

  Anthony George Gullmington considered himself an easygoing man. He did not demand much from life, so he told himself: a good table, good wine, his body needs satisfied, but most of all some good horseflesh between his legs. That’s all he asked. For the rest, he paid a large staff to see to the running of his house. By God, he did pay too! Look at the money that had passed through his fingers this morning, besides which he had to pay to clothe them from head to foot and allow them to eat their heads off, and drink his wine. Oh yes, he knew what went on all right, he was no fool. But as long as they kept their place he closed his eyes to lots of things. That was the main thing though, they keeping their place. He was not a religious person, not like his wife, at least he was no fanatic, but he did believe that God had ordered a certain way of life for different beings and that way could not be carried out unless the lower classes were kept in their place and accepted their place; and their place was to work with their hands and only to use their heads as much as was necessary to achieve the best results of their labour. So far and no further. But once a man started reading and writing, then you had trouble. He had an example of it among his own. Well, not exactly his own. Stephen was no scholar and Paul was going to follow suit, but Laurence preferred a book to a horse. And that wasn’t natural for a gentleman, except he intended to turn into a crank, like that one who had died recently over at Moor House. Yes. Oh yes. And this was the result of his crankiness coming towards him now. How old was she? She was tall; she looked sixteen or more, and good-looking. She’d be a beauty in a year or two’s time, with a figure to go with it. Well, if she was wise there were uses for that figure. But he doubted if this one would be wise, for she had already got a taste of the power of the pen and she had sent three examples in before her. My God! He felt an anger rising in him. Here was the kind of person who instigated trouble and upheavals. If she had been a man there was no knowing what she would have caused. Anyway, she had already caused enough in this household, but she’d cause no more.

  The steward called out, ‘Bridget Millican, laundry’—he paused on the next word—‘runabout’. Apparently he had not heard of such a title before. ‘One pound six shillings.’

  Anthony Gullmington counted the money out, handed it to the butler, and the butler, pushing it across the table to Biddy, pointed to the paper and in a voice that sounded like the knell of doom said, ‘Sign.’

  Biddy looked from one to the other of the men; then she signed her name. It did not take her many seconds and she did it with a flourish. When she went to dip her knee and say, ‘Thank you, sir,’ the master looked at her and he said, ‘Since when have you been given authority to teach my staff to write?’

  The response of Biddy Millican from the pit row might have been, ‘What…what do you mean, sir?’ But Bridget Millican, who had come under Percival Miller’s tuition, said, ‘I did not think I needed permission, sir; I did it in my spare time.’

  ‘You knew that it was forbidden.’

  ‘No, I did not, sir.’

  ‘Well, miss, let me tell you, it is forbidden. You are here to work. You have been assigned to a certain position. That is all that is required of you. If I wished my staff to be educated, I would give the order for it. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The big brown eyes showed no fear of him. There was a strange quietness in their depth that, for a moment, made him want to retaliate, just as his son and daughter had. Who was this girl anyway? What was she? How dare she! What were things coming to! The platitudes raced through his mind. Now turning his glaring gaze on the butler, he said, ‘Fetch me the housekeeper.’ Then to Biddy, ‘As for you, wait outside.’

  Biddy might have appeared calm, but it was only on the surface for inside she was trembling, and she felt sick. There was a slight commotion in the hall, a bustling of servants, some of them looking up the stairs. The butler now passed her with the housekeeper and if she had any doubts that her time here was short, their looks confirmed it.

  They had no sooner entered the library than the master’s voice could be heard bawling at them, and as he preceded them from the room still bawling, two footmen carried Madam Gullmington’s chair down the last of the stairs and placed it in the hall.

  It was her custom on a fine day to be wheeled around the garden, and this was a fine day, a soft windless day, but the old lady gauged immediately there was a high wind of temper blowing through the house, and as she saw her son approaching her, s
he stopped him, saying, ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘What’s all this?’ he repeated. ‘Defied in my own household.’ He pointed to where Biddy stood waiting with downcast eyes. ‘That individual has been running a tutoring under my very nose, under the nose of this entire staff presumably. Four sluts from the laundry signing their names in full. How many staff have we here, Mama? You tell me. Have any of them been able to read or write? Oh…Fulton’—he waved his hand to the side—‘she can write her name and count, and that’s about all, because she has to. But for the rest…’

  ‘Be quiet.’ She was staring fixedly at her son. Then she ordered Jessie Hobson, ‘Take me to the drawing room,’ and Jessie, obeying, pushed the wheelchair into the drawing room, and as she turned to leave, Grace Gullmington entered.

  She was dressed for the carriage in a voluptuous skirted blue taffeta gown over which was a cream lace coat, its skirt kept up balloon-wise by the dress. Her hat was of cream straw. It was a tall hat, its crown bedecked with flowers, its intent to give height to its wearer, but it achieved only the opposite effect. She had the appearance of an overdressed doll. But her voice was by no means doll-like as she demanded. ‘What, may I ask, is this narration about?’

  ‘You may ask, woman.’ Her husband was bawling at her now. ‘If you saw to this staff as you should do, the present occurrence would never have happened: nor would that incident three months ago have taken place. You haven’t any idea how to bring your family up, madam. If you stopped praying and did a little more saying, this household would run more smoothly. We never had anything like this in Mama’s time, did we?’