‘Go home, there’s a good girl, you’ll be frozen and stuck to the porch if you don’t move soon. Thank you for coming to wish me luck,’ he added kindly, kissing her lightly on her cold brow. ‘You’re my most thoughtful and loyal friend.’
‘Can’t I come with you? Oh please, Barrass, I’ll be so quiet you won’t know I’m there and I never have a ride on a horse. Please, can I? Go on, say yes.’
‘You know you can’t. Your dadda wouldn’t be best pleased if you went off without telling him, and he thinking you lost again. Besides, I don’t know how the horse would take to having a fidget like you on his back!’
‘Would you take me if you could?’
‘One day you’ll come with me, I promise.’
‘I could run behind?’ She looked at him, wide-eyed and hopeful. ‘I can run a-w-ful fast.’
He laughed again. ‘Run home, there’s a good girl.’
‘I bet you don’t call those others “good girl”,’ she retorted as he pushed her gently on her way.
‘Go you, and good luck when you start work for Dorothy Ddole.’
‘Any messages for Penelope Ddole?’ she asked cheekily. The only reply she received was another low, chuckling laugh as he ran away from her towards the stables where a sleepy boy would have the horse saddled ready for his journey.
Her feet felt like balls of ice and refused to move easily as she stepped out into the increasingly strong wind that had wetness in its teeth from the surface of the sea. The shawl seemed as thin as paper and gave no warmth. She tried to run but her legs were stiff and refused to obey her.
Remembering how her father warmed himself after a long cold time in the boat, she stopped near a tree that gave at least the illusion of protection from the fierce gusts and began to bend and stretch, swing this way and that, then tapped lightly on her feet, left, right, left right, stiffly at first, the movements easing as the blood began to flow faster. Then she ran up the steep cliff path to the cottage, where a light now shone, and by the time she had opened the door to her mother’s surprised face, she was breathless and glowing.
‘I thought you were in bed!’ Mary gasped. ‘What a one you are for wandering off without a word! Where have you been to, girl?’
‘To see Barrass and wish him luck.’
‘Take Dic, will you, and try to feed him some of this thin gruel – and don’t show your father. He says it’s too like the skilly they were fed in prison, and hates to see me feeding it to his son. Only a little, mind. Just a taste.’
There was no fishing that day and Spider and Dan spent the morning checking their boat and making new nets. At mid-morning Mary wrapped Dic firmly and cosily against her and set out with Olwen to see Dorothy Ddole.
‘Will she like me, Mam?’ Olwen asked anxiously as they hurried across the fields.
‘Be polite and try not to talk too much,’ was Mary’s instruction. ‘She won’t want the noise of a chatterbox to add to her other troubles.’
‘What troubles, Mam?’
‘Never you mind. Just be as helpful as you can to her and you’ll be all right.’
Although Olwen had seen Ddole House from a distance many times, the size of it, when she and her mother reached the back door, was impressive. Her own home was tiny – the Ddole kitchen was larger than the two floors put together. Mary left her in the care of Florrie, whose red hair was neatly folded into a bun and half hidden by a lace cap.
‘Just go and I’ll show her her duties,’ Florrie said in her brisk, no-nonsense voice. She closed the door on Mary and Dic before Mary had managed to say her goodbyes.
Olwen felt a knot of fear as she looked around the large room with its shelves and cupboards full of strange instruments. There was a huge fireplace fronted by a contraption of cogs and wheels and long powerful chains which frightened her. If she were to get caught up in its complexities she would never escape. She had a strong impulse to run for the door.
‘I want the vegetables prepared,’ Florrie announced, and Olwen at once felt relief. Preparing a few potatoes and washing the leaves of cabbages was something she often did. But the potatoes and carrots and turnips that arrived in front of her were in bucketsful and she thought she had never seen so many cabbages except in Dadda’s plot of land on the cliff.
When the task was finally finished, her hands were raw and tender, and she looked out at the storm-tossed trees and hoped that she could now go home. She thought of her mother and the smell of a savoury meal cooking in the small overcrowded room and compared it with the huge, impersonal kitchen in which she stood.
‘Come on, Olwen,’ Florrie called, ‘take them peelings out for to be boiled for the pigs, and wash out the bowl under the pump. There’s plenty more work for you, slow as you are. You’ve saved me a bit of time today and you can save me some more by getting to wash these pots.’
Olwen stared in dismay at the pile of dishes and pans that Florrie had been using to prepare the luncheon for the Ddole family.
‘There’s a lot of dishes for only three people,’ she gasped. ‘How d’you make so much work? You wouldn’t suit my mam at all! We all have to wash up as we go!’
Florrie frowned and with arms on her hips looked ready to scold the girl, but instead her face broke into a smile and her laughter rang out.
‘Plenty to say, that’s what your mother said about you, and she’s right!’
Olwen looked at the red-haired woman and decided that although she scowled a lot and spoke with a bark like Arthur’s dog, she was going to be all right. Dozy Bethan was dreamy but kind enough, and thankfully, Carrie Rees had been promoted to the house. She could not have worked with Carrie, hating the girl because Barrass liked her. She had seen them together several times, walking in that slow yet purposeful way towards their private cwtch in the beach. A place where they could hide from passers-by. She climbed onto a stool and reached for the first of the dirty pans.
By the end of that first day, she began to enjoy setting the muddle of food preparation to rights. She sighed her satisfaction when the pans were hung on their hooks, and the dishes neatly stacked on shelves, and did not complain too bitterly when she was set to scrub the huge expanse of slate floor with a hard broom and a bucket of sand to remove the spilt grease.
‘Small you are,’ Florrie remarked as Olwen put her shawl around her to go home, ‘small, not to say skinny, but no one could call you idle. You’ve done well here, and I’ll be telling Mistress Ddole the same. There’s no doubt she’ll keep you on, you’ve got a job for life just so long as you keep going as well as you’ve started. No idling or skimping on the work you’re set, mind, or she’ll have you out of here faster than straw burns.’
Weary so she doubted if she could walk home, her arms feeling pulled half out of their sockets, hands stinging with soreness, Olwen had the fleeting thought that she would be nothing but relieved if Florrie had told her she would not be wanted any more. Then she looked at the coin in her hand, and up at the firm but kindly face of Florrie, and nodded.
‘Thanks, I’ll see you bright and early on Monday.’
‘No, I’ll see you in church tomorrow!’ Florrie said firmly. ‘All the staff sit with the family. Remember to look your smartest not to let the master and mistress down, mind. Boots shiny and your hair as neat as neat.’
‘I don’t sit with Mam and Dadda?’ Olwen asked in surprise. She had always shared a pew at the back of the church with her family. ‘That will seem very strange, watching them from another seat.’
‘And don’t forget to sing loud!’ was Florrie’s parting shot. ‘They can’t abide not being heard above the rest.’
‘It’s my brother Dan you want, then. I sound like the organ with holes eaten in the bellows by mice!’
* * *
The church was full when the Ddole family and their servants arrived. As they entered the old building, heads turned to watch them settle into their usual places. Olwen, nervous as she walked in behind Florrie, Carrie and Dozy Bethan, scuttled to the end
of the pew behind the one used by the family, with the stable boys and the rest filing in behind, and she bent her knees unnecessarily to sink out of sight. She was dragged out by Florrie, who insisted that she stood beside her.
‘Where I can listen to make sure your voice is acceptable,’ she said firmly.
When the vicar began to sing the first hymn, Olwen couldn’t find a voice at all. Used to having her brother’s strong voice one side and her mother’s sweet soprano on the other to swell out and give her confidence, the idea of Florrie actually listening to her and judging whether or not she sang well, was too much for her.
‘Sing, child,’ Florrie urged.
‘I can’t, got a cold and my voice has gone to my stomach,’ Olwen whispered back. ‘Sound like a frog I would, if I tried to join in. Perhaps next week, is it?’
Florrie clenched her mouth in a disapproving and disbelieving grimace. ‘Sing, or I’ll have you standing on the table practising in front of the other servants when we get back home!’
Wide-eyed and anxious, Olwen sang.
Chapter Ten
During the first few days that she worked for Dorothy Ddole in the kitchen, Olwen gradually explored the big house. Her days there were so different from her life in the small fisherman’s cottage, she exhausted herself with curiosity.
Her first foray from the big kitchen was through the thick door which led, by long dark corridors, to the dairy at the back of the house. There she met Dozy Bethan idly turning the up and over churn to make butter. After each half dozen turns of the wooden cask, she would press her eye to the peep-hole to make sure she was not turning for a moment more than necessary, although from the sluggish way she worked, Olwen doubted that the butter would ever come.
‘Like working here, I do,’ Bethan told her dreamily. ‘Better than being at home. My mam has had another baby and there’s nothing but noise and frantic activity, with all of us falling over everyone else. Fourteen we’ve got now and all surviving and running about like their feet were on fire. Peaceful here, I love working for Mistress Ddole.’
Olwen nodded politely but wondered how Bethan could call what she was doing, work.
‘Cook sent me for the buttermilk. Seems she’s expecting Henry Harris to call and he loves it, so she says.’
Bethan ponderously peered in through the eye-hole in the cask, shook her head slowly, and replied, ‘Nowhere near ready,’ and to Olwen’s amusement, added somnolently, ‘you can’t rush these things, you know.’
Before running back to tell Florrie that the butter was not turned, let alone washed, she could not resist opening the door into the stillroom. She knew it was where Dorothy Ddole made her medicines and ointments, and the soaps and polishes that were used in the household. At home her mother dealt with that part of her housewifely duties where she dealt with everything else – beside their one fire. She wondered how different this household was that it needed a whole room for such things.
The room was painted white and everything looked spotlessly clean. The measurements were far less than the dairy, but the lightness gave the impression of greater space than she had ever seen in a building. Frightening almost, this emptiness. She crept a few steps in from the door, but could go no further, trepidation at being caught there making her unable to let go of the door edge.
There were bowls and containers of every size and shape and she longed to examine them, perhaps to recognize some found in her own home, but she had already learnt a healthy respect for Florrie’s hand, and did not want to risk feeling the sting of it on her ear. She was just closing the door when a voice startled her.
‘Is that you, Olwen? Do come in.’
Quaking with fear at being caught where she had no right to be, Olwen slinked around the door to see Penelope behind it, holding some candles.
‘Come inside and see what we do here,’ Penelope said with a friendly smile.
Olwen’s face twitched as she tried to smile back, a tic moving her cheek like some terrible ague.
‘Sorry, Miss Penelope,’ she stuttered, ‘I was waiting for the buttermilk and—’
‘You’ll wait for ever if Bethan is dealing with it,’ Penelope whispered conspiratorially. ‘Best I come and help her if Cook has need of it.’
‘Thank you, Miss.’ Olwen bobbed a curtsey as Florrie had taught her.
‘Have you seen the rest of the servants’ area?’ Penelope asked. ‘Through there is the pantry which leads back into the kitchen. Come and I’ll show you.’
Still nervous, her voice too unreliable for questions, Olwen’s eyes nevertheless took in most of what Penelope pointed out. She saw the slate trough where pig meat was salted for winter, and the jars and small buckets for salting fish. Dry-cured bacon hung above them from the beams on S-shaped hooks, and cheeses were stacked on airy shelves above a marble-topped table in one corner, near the enormous cheese presses that looked fierce enough to hold her a prisoner if she stood too close. Earthenware jars of butter stood on a shelf near the cheeses. Penelope took down one of the jars and asked,
‘Can you carry this? Best we don’t wait for Bethan to finish, she’ll be ages washing the butter before it’s ready.’
‘It wasn’t butter she wanted, Miss, Henry Harris is calling and he loves a drink of buttermilk,’ Olwen burst out.
‘Oh dear, I think he’ll be disappointed today,’ she laughed, stretching up to replace the unwanted butter. ‘He’ll have to make do with ale.’
As Penelope stretched to replace the jar of preserved butter, something fell out of her pocket. Olwen stooped to retrieve it but before she could return it Penelope heard her mother calling, and making hurried excuses, left the room. Olwen stood there holding the piece of paper, and idly opened it. Moments later, while she still stood undecided whether to take it to Florrie or go through the door after Penelope and try to find her, Penelope returned and snatched it from her angrily.
‘What are you doing with that!’
‘You dropped it, and as I picked it up you went from the room.’ The unfairness tacit in the words and the expression on Penelope’s face made Olwen forget her position and glare at her, head slightly forward, hands on hips.
‘You opened it. Did you read it? You’ve no business to open letters concerning other people – did you learn no manners?’
‘I didn’t read it!’ Olwen glared back, then lowered her eyes and added, ‘I can’t read, no one’s ever tried to teach me.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted like that.’ Penelope was concerned with the contents of the letter being revealed and forgot she was talking not to an equal but to a newly acquired servant. She looked at Olwen and felt a warmth towards the small, fiery girl.
‘Sorry I spoke like that. Mam warned me I shouldn’t,’ Olwen said. ‘Will I have to leave now?’ She felt a surge of hope that this girl would send her away from the strangeness of Ddole House where she had to be mindful of what she said and how she said it: back to her comfortable home where she could be her natural, lively self and where no one expected her to act a part.
‘Do you think you will like working here?’ Penelope asked, crumpling up the letter and pushing it deep into her pocket.
‘I feel a bit like someone performing in one of the Interludes, the small plays showing stories from the bible that I sometimes go to see,’ Olwen admitted. ‘I’m told how to talk and when not to – and that’s the hardest part for me, for sure! I have to think about everything I do and not act natural like I do at home. But I think I’ll like it well enough, and Mam is glad of the few pence I take home for her.’
‘No, you won’t have to leave,’ Penelope smiled. ‘Now, come through this door and you’ll be back in the kitchen.’
‘To get a clout from Florrie no doubt for wasting time and coming back without the buttermilk!’ Olwen groaned. ‘You couldn’t come with me and explain, could you?’ she asked hopefully, then groaned again. ‘I’m a-w-ful sorry Miss Penelope, I’m forgetting the part I’m to play again.’
Penelope laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry too much about me, but you’ll have to be very careful not to annoy Mistress Ddole. My mother has a very sharp tongue and she expects servants to behave impeccably.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Olwen said, then added quickly, ‘—Miss Penelope!’ She smiled as she said it, a reminder that she was beginning to accept her position, even if she still lacked the necessary subservience. ‘Mam told me not to worry Mistress Ddole, she having enough problems at present.’
‘What problems?’ The sharpness was back in Penelope’s voice, startling Olwen. ‘What do you know about my mother’s trouble?’
‘Only that she’s ill and doesn’t want to believe it,’ Olwen replied, frowning. ‘It’s not forbidden for me to feel sympathy for her, is it? Funny old place if I can’t be caring about someone.’
‘She doesn’t want people to know. She would be angry if she knew that you had been told.’
‘No secrets in this place! There’s never a baby coming, or a sick person going, without we all hear about it. Kenneth is better placed to tell the news than those news-sheets they have in the town, for sure. But I won’t talk about it, I promise. Now come and explain me to Cook or she’ll knock me into the middle of next week!’
Penelope hesitated a moment, then asked, ‘You’re a friend of Barrass, aren’t you? Does he have work now and a place to live?’
‘He was helping Pitcher at the alehouse, but now Pitcher is out of prison with the rest, perhaps he’ll have to find something else.’
‘Why? Is he not a good worker?’ Penelope asked.
‘Barrass can do anything!’ Olwen retorted. ‘Good at everything he is, and that strong you’d never believe.’
‘Then why is he being made to leave? Pitcher needs someone besides Arthur, surely?’
‘Pitcher is feared for his daughters.’ Olwen pulled herself up to her full height and spoke the words proudly. ‘As if Barrass would want to bother with any of that fussed and pampered trio!’
‘There’s someone else he follows?’ Penelope asked. She knew she should not be talking to the servant girl like this, but curiosity led her on – though caution made her lower her voice for fear that her mother might overhear. ‘There’s a young woman he is fond of?’
Summer’s Last Retreat Page 18