It was as if his words had been a prod, for almost throwing the baby from her and onto the coverlet and her voice cold and thin, Florence cried pettishly, ‘What a pity I wasn’t fortunate enough to be educated into hardness!’
‘Oh my God!’ The atmosphere in the room was suddenly changed. Konrad was on his feet, shouting now, ‘Don’t get prim and virtuous all in one breath, madam. Indeed you have been fortunate in not being educated into hardness, but it is no merit that you were so born. If we all got our due there’d be many positions reversed in this life…Here, girl, take the child away.’
Her head down, Kirsten hurried to the bed, picked up the baby and scurried from the room. After closing the door behind her she put the child into the cradle, then slowly walked to her own room beyond, from where she could still hear the master’s voice.
She stood now looking out of the window, her thoughts in a turmoil and all circling around the mistress.
The mistress, she realised, was just a young girl; perhaps when she stood up she wouldn’t be much taller than she herself. Why had she wanted the child, for it was plain to see she couldn’t bear even to touch him?
She felt a sadness on her, not for herself but for the child. The woman in that bed would never accept him as her son; not as the master did. But then, of course, he didn’t know that it wasn’t his son. What if he should find out that the child was none of his? She began to shiver. He looked a man who would do murder in his anger. Although he wasn’t very tall, he was so broad and strong. Everything about him spoke of strength, particularly his voice. She was glad that Miss Cartwright had made her swear to go as soon as the child was weaned, for now, knowing how the mistress felt, she would never feel easy in this place. Only yesterday she had felt she never wanted to leave it, but since coming out of the bedroom she knew she would be better gone.
From her window that was the nearest to the front corner of the house she looked into the waning light. To the left, and facing the front, the drive ended above a terrace and sunken garden, but to the right of the terrace she could see down through parkland, right down to the still faster moving river, and beyond, in the far distance, a hill rising, on which there appeared what looked like a house, or a tower. In the changing light it looked as if it were floating. It looked like this world she was living in now, not real. She had a strong wish to be away out in the open, even on Hop Fuller’s cart. No! No! Not on Hop Fuller’s cart, on one of her own.
The door opening startled her, and Mrs Poulter came in saying quickly, ‘Are you tidy? The master wants to see you. Come, hurry.’
She stood in front of Kirsten and looked her up and down; then straightened her collar, smoothed her white lawn apron over her flat hips and, gazing into her face, said, ‘Now there’s no need to worry, he just wants to talk to you.’
‘Have…have I done anythin’…anythin’ wrong, Mrs Poulter?’
‘No, child. There now, don’t let it flicker’—she pointed to the eye—‘there’s nothing to worry about. Come along.’ She turned about and led the way out of the room, down the corridor, across the landing, down the curved staircase, across the wide hall and to a door at the far end, and here she stopped. Before knocking, she smoothed her own bodice over her high bust, adjusted the chatelaine at her waist, then raised her hand and tapped twice on the door.
When she was bidden to enter she went in, drawing Kirsten after her. Then closing the door, she stood and looked across the room to where Konrad Knutsson sat in a high-backed leather chair behind a desk that was littered with papers, and she said quietly, ‘I’ve brought her, master.’
‘Ah! Yes. Yes…Come.’ The big fair head jerked upwards and Konrad Knutsson pushed himself back in the chair, placed his hands over the carved ends and looked at Mrs Poulter a moment before saying, ‘You may go.’
The housekeeper paused for just a second, then said, ‘Yes, master,’ and turned away.
Kirsten wasn’t affected by the housekeeper leaving her alone with the master of the house. She stared at him, and when he rose from the chair and came round the desk and stood before her he appeared taller than she had imagined, for she had to put her head back slightly in order to keep her eyes on his face.
Konrad looked steadily into the face before him for a moment, then he put his hand out and, gripping the chin gently but firmly, said, ‘You have a weak eye. It’s a pity; it mars what would otherwise have been a beautiful face. Sometimes it’s more loose than others, why?’
‘When, when I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Oh. When you are afraid. Are you afraid now?’
She stared up into the clear grey eyes. She took in the lines at the corners of them, she took in the three deep lines that ran across the forehead, and the two lines that started at the corners of his broad nostrils and ended one each side of his upper lip. The lines made the face hard looking, but the light in the eyes wasn’t hard, and she could say in truth, ‘No, sir.’
‘Why aren’t you afraid?’
Both eyes wavered away as her mind asked herself this question; then they returned to his and she answered, ‘I don’t know, sir; I can’t tell.’
‘Most people are afraid of me.’
She made no reply to this.
‘Sit down there.’ He pushed her gently backwards onto a high embroidered stool. Then going to the front of his desk, he rested against the edge of it, leaning slightly forward, and said, ‘How old are you really?’
‘I was fifteen on the first of January, sir.’
‘Fifteen…How did you come to be married so young?’
Her head drooped deeply onto her chest now and she said quietly, ‘I never was, sir. Ma Bradley, the woman who saw to me, she sold me to the tinker, Hop Fuller, because I was bringing evil on the house.’
‘You were what?’
‘Bringing evil on the house with…with me eye.’
There was another pause before he asked, ‘How did you come to be living with this woman, this Ma? And where did she bide?’
‘Outside Maryport, sir. She took me when my parents died of the cholera.’
‘What were your parents, what was their business?’
‘All that I remember, sir, was that my father was called doctor and we were making our way to Hexham by coach. We had come all the way from London an’…and both my parents took ill in the coach and we stopped at an inn. They died there, and everybody left the inn. Then Ma Bradley came and she took me away to her house. And there I stayed lookin’ after the children until Hop Fuller bought me.’ Her head moved farther down as she finished, ‘If he hadn’t bought me I would have been sent to the House.’
‘The House?’
‘The workhouse, sir.’
He was standing in front of the desk when he asked, ‘Did no-one enquire for you? Have you no relatives? Can you not remember?’
‘No, sir; only that we moved several times. All I can recall is a number of long journeys in a coach.’
‘This Ma, did she treat you well?’
She looked up at him now straight into his eyes and for answer she said, ‘She took children like me an’ those who people didn’t want, sometimes as many as twenty. I looked after them.’
He moved from the table and came towards her, and again he held her chin, tilting her head upwards, and he said, ‘There will be nothing happen to you in this house to make your eye flicker. You see to my son, attend to him well and I will see to your welfare. You understand?’
She swallowed deeply on her spittle before she could say, ‘Yes, sir.’
He continued to hold her chin and look into her face. And he now said, ‘If your father was a doctor, did he attend your eye?’
‘I…I don’t remember having it afore they died, master; no-one pointed at it until…until I went to Ma Bradley’s.’
Still holding her chin, he said, ‘Mrs Poulter tells me that you can read and write tolerably well. Is that so?’
‘Yes, sir. I cannot remember a time when I couldn’t read, but…but there hasn�
��t been much to read.’ Her voice trailed away, and he said, ‘You shall have books to read; you and my son shall read together. He shall have a governess as soon as he can talk. They are slow around here about the education of the young.’ He took his hand from her chin and her head drooped forward as if losing its only support, and he turned from her and walked round the desk now and sat down, and she remained still while he stared at a paper on his desk without touching it. Presently, his head coming quickly upwards, he said. ‘That is all, you may go.’ But then checking her movement with a lift of his hand he said, ‘What is your name?’
‘Kirsten MacGregor, sir.’
‘Kirsten MacGregor. Ah yes, you told me before. It’s a nice name. Scottish, is it not?’
She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’
He smiled now, saying, ‘Well I think it is, and MacGregor surely is. You’re a Scottish lassie.’ The smile was broader. ‘Go on now, and see to my son, and keep that eye straight. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She dared to smile back at him, a wide smile that lifted up her thin cheeks and made her eyes glow; and after she had gone he stared towards the door, the smile still on his face. Then shrugging his shoulders, he nodded to himself as he said aloud, ‘She’ll do.’
As Kirsten mounted the main staircase the smile was still on her face, and in her mind his words were sinking deep: ‘There will be nothing happen to you in this house to make your eye flicker.’
Then something did happen, a slight thing in itself but telling. When she reached the top of the stairs Slater barred her way, his tall thin body seeming to stretch with indignation, and before he deigned to speak to her he thrust out his arm over her head and his finger pointing at a downward angle, he held it there for a moment, its meaning plain, before he said, ‘The back staircase with you!’
The butler’s voice was low but his words were clear and carrying, and they carried down into the hall to Konrad as he came from the library.
When he walked round the curve of the stairs to the foot it was to meet Kirsten making a scrambling retreat. He stopped her with a motion of his hand that did not touch her; then he looked upwards to where the butler was descending the staircase and he waited for the man to speak. And when Slater, his body not so stiff now, his head not so high, said, ‘I was directing her to the servants’ staircase, sir,’ he looked at him for a moment before, his voice quiet, he said, ‘So I heard, Slater. But as you know she is my son’s wet nurse, and as such you will permit her to use this staircase until such time as I countermand the order.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Slater stood aside as his master put out his hand and turned the ‘road piece’ about and with a slight pressure on her back indicated that she go on her way.
Before the staff retired that night the incident was discussed heatedly in the kitchen, and not more tolerantly in the housekeeper’s room between Slater, Harris the valet, and Nurse Walters, until Mrs Poulter put in quietly that although the girl had come off the road it appeared she had originally come from good-class people, her father being a doctor. And not just a country doctor, mind. No, a doctor well known in London, and he and his wife had died of the plague, and their only child had become ill and near death and had been taken into the house of what appeared to her to be a baby farmer, who had made use of her ever since until she had sold her to a tinker.
Could one say that Mrs Poulter had been eavesdropping? Anyway, she had the art of embroidering a story and she put the final stitches in when she said that she had detected class in the poor young thing the minute she set eyes on her, for she asked them to ask themselves, did the girl look like a road piece, and did she talk like such? Moreover, did any of them know of any road pieces that could read or write?
Mrs Poulter had set the pattern for a minority of the staff who were to look kindly upon the wet nurse, but the butler was never to be one of them.
It was Mrs Poulter, who, the next day, suggested tactfully to Miss Cartwright that the wet nurse was looking peaky. Didn’t she think that a little fresh air might do her good, and in consequence that the child would benefit? Would Miss Cartwright be agreeable if the girl went out for an hour or so?
Miss Cartwright was agreeable, but she personally warned Kirsten that she must be back within two hours, yet at the same time Bella was issuing the warning she was wishing wholeheartedly that the girl would take it into her mind to run off. But no; she could see that the creature knew that she was well set.
Kirsten put around her shoulders the brown shawl that Mrs Poulter had given her, and although her room opened onto the main landing she did not go down the main staircase for she did not want to upset Mr Slater further.
The first footman, Bainbridge, was standing near the oak door that led off from where the landing ended and the picture gallery began and gave onto the servants’ staircase, and when bending towards her, he whispered, ‘You can go down the main one you know,’ she whispered back, ‘Ta, but it’s all right,’ and they nodded at each other knowingly.
This way she had to go through the kitchens, for as yet she did not know of the door that led from the kitchen passage, and which also served the staircase of the east wing. As she was going tentatively along the dark narrow passage Rose Miller came from the still room and greeted her like an old friend, saying, ‘Eeh! There you are. Are you off out?’
‘Aye. Yes. I’m…I’m to have a breath of fresh air.’
‘Not afore time I’d say. How you liking it?’ She bent her face close to Kirsten’s.
‘Very nicely, thank you.’
‘You’re not frightened of the old dragon, are you?’
‘Miss Cartwright?’
‘Aye, Miss Cartwright.’
Kirsten remained quiet for a moment, then said, ‘We get on all right.’
‘You’re about the only one then. Don’t take no notice of her. Although mind, I shouldn’t have said that, ’cos she runs the place. But just be on your guard against her; an’ it would pay you to butter her up for she’s got influence with the mistress that one, being a relative you know. She’s supposed to be her maid, but she’s more like her mother, or her stepmother. But’—she pushed Kirsten in the shoulder—‘the master’s for you. Everybody in the house knows he’s for you. He’d give you the dinin’-room plate ’cos you stopped the bairn yammering…You’re looking better.’ Rose put her head on one side and surveyed Kirsten; then, confirming her statement, she nodded, ‘Aye, heaps better than when I first saw you up in the loft. Eeh! You were in a mess, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, I was that.’
‘Well, go on.’ She pushed her. ‘Enjoy your walk. I won’t say go and have a walk by the river’—she giggled now—‘I should think you’ve had all of the river you want in your lifetime.’
As Kirsten passed through the kitchen, Ruth Benny lifted her head from where she was chopping almonds at the end of the twelve-foot scrubbed kitchen table and she said brightly, ‘Oh, hello. My! You off out then?’ But before Kirsten had time to answer the girl, the cook, from where she was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair to the side of the cooking ovens, said quickly, ‘Get on with your choppin’, Ruth Benny, lest the knife should slip and clip your tongue for you.’ She ignored Kirsten’s presence as if she were invisible; but as Kirsten was going out of the kitchen door into the yard the cook’s voice, loud and carrying, stated, ‘It’s comin’ to something, by God it is! The world’s turned topsy-turvy. It would never have happened in the old master’s time.’
The words need not have applied to Kirsten, she need not have taken them to herself; but she knew that they did apply to her and she did take them to herself. Some people were nice and some people were nasty. It was the same wherever you went.
She walked away from the kitchen, then paused at the end of the courtyard, undecided which way to go. She’d better not pass in front of the house because that might upset somebody. She turned back and walked along by the curving wall and into the stable yard, where she sai
d to one of the boys, ‘Is Mr Dixon about?’ and he answered, ‘Oh aye, he’s in there.’ She went in the direction he pointed and stood at the stable door, and when Art Dixon turned and saw her, he came straight towards her, saying. ‘Ah lass; there you are.’ It was the first time he had seen her since she had crossed the yard with Mrs Poulter. She looked changed, bonny, and he said so. ‘By! You’re lookin’ fine. You’re puttin’ on flesh, lass. How are you?’
‘Very well. Thanks Mr Dixon.’
‘You’re likin’ it in there?’ He jerked his head.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Everybody all right to you?’
She paused for a moment while she looked at him, and then she said, ‘Yes. Yes.’ And he nodded his head at her as he replied quietly, ‘Aye, I know; some are, and some aren’t, and I could put me name to them that aren’t. But that’s life, lass.’ Bending farther forward he whispered, ‘I know what you’ve come for, you want to see the grave.’
Her eyes stretched wide, she had actually forgotten about the other child.
‘Just a minute an’ I’ll take you down.’ He moved away from her and, lifting his coat from a peg on the wall, he pulled it on, then led her out of the yard and through a shrubbery walk, down a long winding path that skirted the gardens and most of the park, and when the path widened out into grassland and the park itself he made his way towards two trees, one an oak and the other a beech. The beech branches were forcing their way up through the upstretched arms of the oak making a deep shaded canopy and on the ground, about halfway between the two trees was a small mound. He stood beside it, and she beside him, and they both looked down on it without speaking. And then he said, ‘Well, there he lies, lass, your first-born. But don’t you worry, you’ll have others, you’ll see. Likely you’ll want to stay for a while. It’s sheltered here, I picked this spot. I’ll leave you, then; you’ll find your way back, eh?’
She looked up at him and said quietly, ‘Yes; and thank you, Mr Dixon.’
The Slow Awakening Page 10