by Jo Baker
And then—Sarah nearly dropped the chamber pot, had to clutch and steady it—Mr. Bennet did not simply send Mrs. Hill away, but instead raised his voice over hers, and then there was a tangle, the voices spiralling up and growing louder, then suddenly hushed, to be followed by a furious hissing, which stopped abruptly, like a cut thread. There were footsteps, and then a fumbling at the inside of the door, and the handle turned. But Sarah had already slipped away, out through the side door, and was closing it behind her, and turning to face the rain; she did not see Mrs. Hill come out of the library, shut the door, and stand there a moment, chest heaving, to calm herself, struggling with the constriction of her stays.
As Sarah headed away from the house, she could hear Mary still picking out her music, and another squabble brewing between Kitty and Lydia, and in a moment Jane and Lizzy would intervene again, and the rain fell thick and heavy on Sarah, who crossed the gravel and heaved open the door of the necessary house, and leaned into the cold stinking little room to slop the contents of the chamber pot through one of the holes, down into the foul pit below. Everything was as it always was, and yet everything was different.
Six years old, heartsick, and all alone in the world, Sarah had blinked up at Mrs. Hill, a person of substance with her clean apron and her white cap and her vast kitchen. Mrs. Hill had chivvied the Parish Overseer out of the door, and clapped it shut behind him, and said he was a fox set to guard chicks, and then had drawn up a stool at the kitchen table for Sarah, and then produced bread-and-milk in a pretty blue-rimmed china bowl, and grated sugar over it. Then she had sat down to watch Sarah eat. All shyness flown, Sarah, straight from the poorhouse, had scraped the bowl clean in a trice. And so Mrs. Hill, tutting and shaking her head, calling it criminal the way they starved these poor children, had taken the bowl, and filled it again with good bread and sweet creamy milk, and set it down in front of Sarah, and then scraped more sugar over the top of it.
And for that second bowl of bread-and-milk with sugar on the top, and for all the uncountable kindnesses since, to her and then to Polly when she had joined them—similarly saucer-eyed and starving—Mrs. Hill deserved better than this. Sin or no, Sarah knew she would not eavesdrop again: nothing good could come of it.
… the entrance of the footman …
Sarah’s thoughts were tugged away across the courtyard by the sound of old furniture being shifted, of wood crumping down on flagstones, all of it accompanied by a faint whistling. The rain had stopped now, and the new man was hard at work clearing out the stable loft. The tune seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite catch it. It fluttered around her like a moth, distracting.
Not that the task in hand required particular attention. She was elbow-deep in the slate sink in the scullery; condensation beaded the lead water-tank, its tap dripped, and the washing-up water had become grey and cool and greasy. Polly, having dried up a stack of plates, wandered through into the kitchen with them; Sarah could hear her dragging a stool over, then clambering up on it to reach the shelves and put the plates away. And all the time, all that Sarah could actually think about was the man across the way.
Of men, she had scant experience. She steered around Mr. Hill: he was old and worn-out, and offered nothing by way of interest or engagement. She had very little to do with Mr. B., who was, after all, only really present in the physical sense. She kept her distance from the farm lads; it was kinder to ignore them than to pay them any attention at all—say good morning and they’d be blushing and mumbling and wiping their hands down their britches and staring off out across the fields, as if there was something of great interest on the horizon.
The egg pan sank deep into the sink; Sarah watched the glair whiten and lift. Jane did well with men—with gentlemen. One of them had even written her some poems. How did you get a man to do a thing like that?
Jane, well, she sat nicely, and smiled, and she listened with her head tilted, and replied politely when spoken to, and she always seemed quietly pleased to be spoken to, and to dance if she was asked to dance. But Jane was really very lovely indeed—a beauty, in fact—and she was dealing with gentlemen, not men. An ordinary girl, Sarah thought, such as herself, would be taking quite a risk with that approach—she straightened her shoulders, smiled, tilted her head—on an ordinary man. Only a gentleman would have that kind of time on his hands, would have the leisure to devote his hours to winkling a female out of herself.
Sarah looked down at her sore, pruney fingers, and the limp folds of her bile-coloured dress. She lifted her hands to sniff them: grease and onions and kitchen soap. This must be the smell she carried with her, wherever she went, whenever it was not something worse. Sarah was not confident that she was lovely at all; far from it.
She lifted the ham pan, dipped it into the sink. Water bubbled up over the copper sides and cascaded in.
“These done?” Polly asked.
“Yes, take them.”
Elizabeth. She was a different, much more active, creature, when it came to dealing with gentlemen. Sarah had seen it at dinners, and at supper-and-cards, when she handed round the anchovy toasts. Elizabeth was always ready with a what-do-you-call-’em, a witticism. Bright-eyed and quick and lovely, making the young men blush and stammer, and the old fellows smile and wish they were half their age, and that bit sharper in their wits.
Sarah bit at what was left of a nail. She wasn’t up to that.
Lydia and Kitty—whom Sarah sometimes struggled to think of as two separate persons, but saw instead as one collective creature of four limbs, two heads, and a bundle of frocks and ribbons—Kitty and Lydia always had a hum of men around them. Curl-tossing, a bold look: it wasn’t hard to copy—she copied it now, as there was no one to see her do it. They pitched themselves at every unmarried man who came their way, which made for rowdy card-parties and dances. Their approach required nothing more of a girl than enthusiasm, stamina and a copper-bottomed sense of self-importance. But really, did it amount to anything? Any man at all, gentle or otherwise, would surely be squeamish about attaching himself to a woman who had already flirted with every other man of her acquaintance.
Sarah lifted the copper milk pan, tilted it, watched her reflection spindle up and down the side: tadpole head, tapering body; swelling body, shrinking head. Bringing the pan close up, she regarded herself with a bull’s eye. There was little benefit in making a show of yourself, when you were a wrung-out dishrag of a thing.
She could not model herself on Mary, either; she was unfledged still, a shabby nestling, her plumage not yet grown.
Mr. and Mrs. B., then. Married love. No good in that at all. The mistress had no understanding of her husband; she persisted in tackling him head-on, when, as everybody else already knew, you were better off taking a more circuitous path, and weaving your way around the obstacles.
If anything, the Hills were a better model of understanding between the sexes. Mrs. Hill maintained a calm and mild demeanour towards her husband, and Mr. Hill was always respectful, and deferred to her in all material things, and insisted too that others show deference and respect. Sarah had had plenty of cross words off both of them in her time, but she had never once heard a cross word between them. Maybe that was just what it was like, when you had been married for ever: all fell still as a pond, and passionless.
She was, she realized, entirely on her own, and without example or a guide.
The best that she could think of—and it did have a pleasing simplicity to it—was to be civil. To be civil and polite and welcoming; natural manners were always considered the best—she’d heard Miss Elizabeth say so.
So she would say, “Good morning.” That would start things off.
She rubbed the mist from the window and looked out. Low sun now, after all the rain. The light was golden: it caught on the damp flagstones and made them brilliant. And there he was. He was wiry, of middling height, his shirtsleeves rolled back and his forearms bare and weather-tanned, and he moved with a pleasing briskness about his work. His
shirt, she supposed, had once been white, but was greyish now with wear; he kept his long dark hair tied back in a queue. She noticed all this through a welling sense of delight.
“Polly!” she called. “Polly, come and see.”
Polly came down the step from the kitchen, wiping her hands. They both leaned in against the sink, and peered out through the clear patch in the misty window.
“Oh my—”
Sarah put her arm around Polly’s waist. The girl rested her head against Sarah’s shoulder.
“That,” said Sarah, “is one job we won’t have to do.”
They watched in silent happiness as the new man swept the yard.
When she went out—cap neat, cheeks pinched, teeth rubbed shiny with a corner of her apron—to feed the gallinies, she could hear him moving around in the stable loft. Could she go inside and call “Good morning” up the ladder to him? Then he might look—or even climb—down, and she could say thank you for all his hard work, and he’d have to reply to that, and that would be almost a conversation in itself.
Mrs. Hill came bustling out of the house; Sarah looked down at the bowl of chicken scraps, and then up at the housekeeper: she could summon no excuses for loitering there. Mrs. Hill, though, was too busy to notice Sarah’s dawdling. She had a sheaf of old clothes slung over her arm, and was dragging the clothes-horse out behind her. She thumped it down, then set about battling with its wooden rungs.
“Can I help you there, missus?”
“I can manage, thank you, Sarah.”
Mrs. Hill heaved the clothes in a heap on the stone bench, then lifted a jacket off the top of the pile. She shook it out, and turned it round, inspecting it. She snapped it out again, and draped it over the top rung of the clothes-horse. Seeing Sarah still lingering there, she said, “Them chickies do need fed, miss, though. Hop to it.”
The rest of the morning Sarah kept crossing the yard. He could not stay in the stable loft all day, she told herself; he must come out at some point, and when he did, she would say “Good morning,” and he would say “Good morning” back. Then she would thank him for sweeping up the yard for them, and he would say “You’re welcome,” and it would go from there, and that would be that.
But if he did emerge at all, in the middle part of that day, she missed him. She caught the smell of fresh whitewash, though, and from time to time the sound of him whistling.
The afternoon stretched out like catgut. She thought he might come across to the kitchen to beg a cup of tea. She wondered if she ought to take a cup over for him, but then she’d have to ask Mrs. Hill to brew up, and dinner preparations were now in full flood, and Mrs. Hill would not welcome the suggestion that she pause in the middle of all that, just to put the kettle on.
Sarah was chopping the fennel, the aniseed-smell of it sweet and clean, her lip caught between her front teeth while she considered the likeliness and otherwise of tea; Mrs. Hill was gutting the carp, with Puss twining and coiling around her ankles, demanding notice; she dropped the innards for it to catch. Polly, meanwhile, pumped the bellows at the fire, watching as the fuel flared and sparked. They could hear Mr. Hill thumping around below them, down in the cellar, where he was selecting the wine. Mrs. Hill took up her scaling knife and set to scraping the milky-silver scales from the flank of the fish. Then her hands went still.
“The apple pie!”
“Apple pie?”
“I forgot all about it.”
“I thought it was to be gooseberry.”
Sarah had seen the pastry made the night before; she’d topped and tailed the gooseberries with her own hands. She had watched Mrs. Hill grate the sugar over the berries.
Mrs. Hill flapped a fishy hand. “It was to be apple, and I forgot all about it.”
“What’s to do then, missus?”
“You run and pick the apples; I’ll make the pastry.”
Sarah was on her feet and heading for the door before Polly could realize what was happening, and volunteer herself for a jaunt down to the orchard in Sarah’s stead.
“How many do you need?”
Mrs. Hill looked down at her fists, uncurling one finger then another in an attempt at calculation. Though she must have been distracted by the state of them, red and thick, and slippery with oil from the fish, because the numbers themselves continued to elude her.
“Just fill that trug with them nice Broad-eyed Pippins, they’re good cookers and they’re ripe. They’ll do just fine.”
Sarah undid her apron, and grabbed the gallon trug from the low shelf by the door. She was half in, half out when Mrs. Hill called out to her, “And thank you, lovey. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”
Basket on her arm, Sarah was out of the fug and fluster of the kitchen, and into the autumn cool. She dawdled past the stable door; dust motes hung in the air, along with the limey smell of whitewash. The top half of the door was open. Inside, it looked warm; she got a glimpse of the chestnut mare’s glossy flank, and sun shafting through a high window. Of the new manservant, still no sign.
Every step she took was as slow as a step could possibly be. And still he did not come out.
The ladder had been left against the pippin tree. Head and shoulders amongst the leaves, she stretched out for the heavy blushed fruit, taking whatever was within easiest reach, with little thought to size or ripeness. As soon as she had filled the trug, she scrambled straight down the ladder, skirts gathered. She hurried up to the house, the basket handle hooked over her folded arms. The apples might bruise a little, knocking about like that, but they’d hardly have time to spoil.
As she strode along the side of the stable block, the basket bumping against her thighs, feeling bright with possibility, the new manservant was at the same moment striding along the front of the stables, pushing a heavily laden wheelbarrow before him. The two met as they swung round the corner from opposite directions: the corner of the wheelbarrow hacked into Sarah’s shin; she grabbed at her basket; he stumbled to a halt, clutching the barrow handles.
They stood face to face. She was wide-eyed, lips parted; he was a mess of loosened hair. The barrowload of ripe and stinking stable-muck steamed faintly in the autumn cool between them.
“Sorry!” she said.
He pulled the barrow back, then pushed the hair out of his eyes. His skin was the colour of tea; his eyes were light hazel and caught the sun. He peered down at her skirts, where he’d hit her.
“Does it hurt?”
She bit her lip, shook her head. It really did.
“I didn’t see you—”
“You should be more careful.” She could feel the trickle of heat where her shin bled. “I nearly dropped my apples.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I see that. Apples.”
“Yes. Well, you should really—”
“So, if you’re all right—” He jerked his head: “Kitchen garden down this way?”
She nodded. He wheeled the barrow back another step and swerved past her.
“Right, then. Thanks.”
Then he was away, rattling down the track and round the bend, his waistcoat hanging loose around him, britches gathered in at his middle like a flour sack, one boot sole flapping half off. So this was the fine upstanding young man. This was the great addition to the household. As far as Sarah could see, he was no great addition to anything at all.
“And a good afternoon to you, too!” she yelled after him.
Sarah’s shin was bloodied, red seeping through her black worsted stocking. Not really a cut, more a split in the skin, all blue with bruise and oozing blood. Her stocking was not torn, however, and for that she was not entirely grateful. If it had been ruined too, then she could have allowed herself to be proportionately more cross. She shook down her skirts.
“I finally met the new man, missus,” she said.
“Oh yes?” Mrs. Hill, her forehead beaded, was rubbing lard into flour, but paused at this. “Pleasant lad, I think.”
“He ran smack into me. With a barr
owload of dung.”
“And were you running too, by any chance?”
“You needed the apples, so I was, perhaps.” She looked pointedly down at her shin. “He hurt my leg.”
“Could you get on with the peeling, do you think?”
“It’s really sore.”
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Hill still did not look round.
“I think my leg’s going to fall off altogether.”
“What a shame.”
“It’s only hanging on by a bit of gristle.”
“Well, never mind.”
Sarah got up from her seat and limped emphatically to the kitchen table. She took up a paring knife. Mrs. Hill glanced up at her then; she ran the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving behind a fine dusting of flour.
“Are you all right, though, Sarah, love?”
“No. And he’s not either. Not in the head. I’ll bet that’s the only reason we could get him. That’s why he’s not in the service of some earl or away fighting in the war. Because nobody else would have him. Nobody wants him because he’s a cack-handed lummox who’s a danger to everyone around him.”
Mrs. Hill gave Sarah a warning look.
“Well—”
“Sarah. Don’t you dare go blaming others for what you’ve brung upon yourself.”
Sarah lifted an apple and chunked her knife into it. She peeled away a ragged strip of skin and watched it coil onto the scrubbed tabletop, her lips pressed tight. Everything was wrong. This was not how things were supposed to be at all.
“I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country for my part …”
James Smith had presented himself in the kitchen for Mrs. Hill’s inspection some hours previously, as Mr. Bennet had required him to do. Mrs. Hill took one long assessing look at him. He was thin. He was very thin. You could see his skull through his skin, at the edge of his eye sockets; you could see the ridge of his jawbone and its joint by the ear. And he was dirty: his fingernails were black, his hair filthy, there was a rime of grey about the skin and clothes. And the clothes themselves looked as though they’d been stolen off half-a-dozen different washing lines. He had a beard. It was straggly and unkempt, but it was certainly a beard. He had been on the tramp a while.