The Kitchen Maid

by Val Wood

  ‘What?’ Arabella yawned lazily. ‘What did your mama say?’

  ‘Oh,’ Jenny hesitated. ‘Just that thinking about a malady might bring it on.’

  ‘Mothers are so wise, are they not?’ Arabella remarked. ‘Mine was very sensible. I declare if I was a mother I don’t think I would be half as practical as she was.’

  ‘She would have taught you to be, if she had lived long enough,’ Jenny replied cautiously, thinking that her own mother was not at all wise, but she was shrewd.

  ‘So was your mother displeased with you when you went as housekeeper to Stephen?’ Arabella continued. ‘She probably had something else in mind for you, such as governess or teacher?’

  Jenny blushed. ‘I don’t think she had anything in mind at all,’ she said. ‘It was my decision.’

  ‘Ah!’ Arabella nodded her head significantly. ‘She would have preferred you to stay at home until you married? Or did you have a position before you went to Stephen’s?’

  ‘Oh! Please excuse me, Arabella. I can hear one of ’children crying.’

  ‘Can you?’ Arabella leant her head to one side. ‘I can’t hear anything, but I suppose your ears are attuned to their every little sigh!’

  ‘Yes, that’s so.’ Jenny hurried out of the breakfast room and upstairs, where she met Dolly on the landing. She was holding Christina by the hand. ‘All ’babbies are fast asleep again, Mrs Laslett,’ she said. ‘And I was going to tek Miss Christina into ’kitchen to see Cook.’

  ‘I’d like her to stay with me, thank you, Dolly.’ She put her hand out to Christina, who pouted. ‘Aunt Bella is waiting to see you, dear.’ She took a deep breath. If Christina were with her, perhaps Arabella wouldn’t ask such awkward questions.

  ‘I’m so afraid of being found out,’ she wrote in her diary that night. ‘As Arabella questioned me I was conscious of being here under false pretences. My pleasure at being able to delegate and arrange responsibility has evaporated, and I’m aware that I’m just the same as the people downstairs. I’m masquerading as someone better who is called ma’am by the servants, when they should be calling me Jenny. If only Stephen could be here to protect me from the questioning. He knows who I am and some of what went before. Though not all. I have never told all of what happened that last morning with Christy. It is, and always will be, too painful to relate entirely.’

  ‘I’d like to go home for a day or two,’ Jenny told Arabella three weeks later. ‘Would your father mind, do you think? I’d take Thomas and Christina with me, of course, but Dolly would perhaps look after the twins?’

  ‘But how will I manage?’ Arabella looked aghast. ‘And why would you want to travel when it’s so cold?’

  ‘But the weather is good,’ Jenny exclaimed. ‘It is cold, yes, but bright and sunny and no sign of snow.’

  ‘Oh, but it will come, be assured of that, Jenny. I would hate to think that you couldn’t get back.’

  ‘I will get back.’ She smiled. ‘But I really do want to see Stephen. I worry as to how he’s managing alone. I must do some baking for him and see if he’s all right.’

  ‘Cook will give you something to take,’ Arabella said. ‘Then you needn’t stay too long.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about your brother, Arabella?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘No,’ Arabella said candidly. ‘He’s been away from home so long that I rarely think of him at all now. I was worried at one time, of course, which is why I came to see him, but he has his cosy little house and his needs are negligible from what I can see.’

  ‘You came to ask him to come back,’ Jenny said, frowning. ‘You didn’t want to be left alone here with your father!’

  ‘That’s right.’ Arabella smiled brightly. ‘And now I’m not. And’ – she leant forward towards Jenny – ‘I’m going to try to persuade Father to start entertaining again; some of his farming friends, you know. I shall tell him that we should introduce you to our neighbours.’ She gave a little giggle and a shrug of her shoulders. ‘And it will mean that we shall be invited back and then who knows whom we might meet.’

  The young men you might meet, I think you mean, Jenny thought, and she worried again that she might be asked personal questions about her background. ‘I can’t meet anyone unless Stephen is with me, Arabella,’ she said. ‘People might think that we are estranged, and we are not.’

  She travelled home the following Saturday morning with Thomas and Christina and it was arranged that she would be collected the next afternoon. Mr Laslett was reluctant to let her stay longer and made the excuse that he couldn’t spare the driver or the carriage on any other day. The day was cold and sharp and the roads rutted, and they bumped and jarred uncomfortably along. Christina started to cry and complain that they would turn over, and that she wanted to go back.

  ‘It’s better than walking, Christina,’ Jenny told her. ‘Think how long it would take us to walk to see Papa, and how your feet would ache.’

  Christina stuck her feet out and looked at them. ‘I shall show Papa my new boots,’ she said. ‘And my coat.’ She was wearing the coat which Pearl had sent to them.

  ‘Papa will hardly know you.’ Jenny smiled. ‘You’ve grown since we’ve been away.’

  Christina nodded, her discomfort forgotten. ‘Perhaps Papa has grown too,’ she said.

  But he wasn’t there when they arrived. Christina ran down the path, shouting, ‘Papa. Papa, we’re here. We’ve come back. Where are you?’

  The door was closed but not locked and as Jenny lifted the sneck to open it, a bedraggled hen flew out. She glanced down the side of the house and saw that the hen house door was open, but only a few hens were scratching around in the neglected vegetable garden. The pigpen was empty but as she looked down towards the orchard she saw her snuffling and rooting around the base of the apple trees. She also saw up on the hillside a wide embankment with horse-pulled waggons filled with rock and chalk running along it, and gangs of men working alongside. The tracks are laid, she thought. The railway has come.

  ‘Look. Look,’ Christina shouted from inside the kitchen. ‘Here’s an egg.’ The hen, trapped indoors, had laid an egg on a chair.

  ‘You can have it for your supper,’ Jenny told her and looked despairingly around the desolate kitchen. The table was littered with dirty plates, the floor was muddy and the hearth was unswept, with ashes still in the grate. Jenny put her hand towards it. It was quite cold. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll put Thomas for a sleep, then Christina, will you go outside and collect some kindling, please? I’ll light a fire so that when Papa comes home it will be a nice treat for him to see a warm blaze and ’kettle singing.’

  ‘And a pie for his supper,’ Christina piped, for she had seen Cook pack up a basket of food.

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘That too.’

  It took her the rest of the day to clear up. She made a fire, then went upstairs and opened a window, and saw that the gypsies were camped in one of the fields. She took her broom and swept the floors and stairs, brushed the kitchen floor and washed the dishes. She was sitting down with a cup of tea when she heard the bark of dogs, the door opened and Stephen walked in. He looked at the tidied room, at the fire burning in the grate and Jenny in her usual chair, Thomas in his crib and Christina sitting on the rug in front of the fire, and put his hand to his forehead.

  ‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘I thought I was imagining things when I saw the smoke from the chimney.’ He put his arms out to Christina, who jumped into them, and leant towards Jenny and kissed her. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d be gone until the spring.’

  ‘I was worried about you,’ she said. ‘I wondered what you were eating, though I can see you haven’t eaten much. You’ve lost weight, Stephen,’ she admonished. His face looked thinner and his eyes were shadowed.

  ‘No time to eat,’ he mumbled, glancing at the sleeping Thomas. ‘The job has to be done. You’ll have seen the track up above?’ He gave a toss of his head in the direction of the embankment.

&
nbsp; ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘And the—’

  ‘Grave?’ He finished for her. ‘It hasn’t been disturbed. A fence has been put round it, and a gate, so that we can go and tend it. But we have to cross the track to get to it.’ He looked and sounded very weary.

  ‘And the compensation for the land?’ she asked. ‘Have you had that?’

  ‘No. Soon,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want to talk now. I’m so tired. I just want to go to my bed.’

  ‘Eat first,’ she said. ‘There’s food ready.’

  He pulled a chair up to the table. ‘I nearly didn’t come home tonight. I’m working further down the track and almost stayed in the hut with the other navvies.’

  ‘What would you have done for food?’ She put a bowl of mutton stew in front of him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Somebody would have had a bottle of whisky and a hunk of bread. We’d have played cards.’

  She gazed at him. She had thought she could smell alcohol on his breath when he had bent to kiss her, but had dismissed the thought as her imagining. ‘Would you have won?’ she murmured. ‘Or lost?’

  He paused in the act of putting the spoon to his mouth. Then he said scathingly, ‘I work hard, Jenny. I have to have some relaxation!’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But you took this work on so that we would have money to spend on food and clothes for ’children.’

  She didn’t mean to sound petulant, but he got up from the chair and angrily paced about. ‘You’ve been comfortable enough, haven’t you?’ he snapped. ‘You’ve had good food and new clothes too by the look of you.’

  ‘These were your sister Pearl’s clothes, Stephen. Hand-me-downs, not new. I don’t mind,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s what I’ve always been used to. Don’t let’s quarrel,’ she implored. ‘Please. I came home because I wanted to see you. I missed you.’

  He sat down again and passed his hand across his forehead. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ He looked down at Christina, who was watching him with tearful eyes. He gave her a wistful smile. ‘You look very pretty,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve got a new dress.’

  ‘And new boots,’ she said. ‘Aunt Pearl gave them to me.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s very kind of Aunt Pearl to give to her poor relations,’ he said sardonically, and Jenny sighed impatiently. ‘No, I mean it,’ he said. ‘I never thought of her as being a philanthropist, but obviously I was mistaken.’

  ‘She’s doing it for your children, Stephen,’ Jenny admonished. ‘I think they’d like you to go home.’

  ‘I am home,’ he said sourly. ‘And I’d only consider it if my father asked me. And he won’t.’

  Jenny tucked Christina up in her old bed, lit a lamp in her and Stephen’s room and turned down the bed covers. When she went downstairs again to fetch Thomas, Stephen was asleep in the chair. She put her hand on his shoulder and he awoke with a start. ‘Go to bed,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be up in a moment.’

  He shook himself awake, then said, ‘I want to talk to you, Jenny.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘In ’morning.’

  ‘No. It has to be now whilst it’s in my mind. I’ve been thinking. I need to tell you what should be done.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This business of the compensation for the land. I’m going to put the money into your name. I’ll have to pay George Hill out of it, of course, and I shall put Lavender Cott into Christina’s name. That way she’ll always be independent of my father.’

  ‘Stephen!’ She was alarmed. ‘Why are you doing this? You’re not an old man!’

  ‘One of the navvies was killed a week ago,’ he told her bluntly. ‘A tip-waggon crashed over. A load of metal track and wood fell onto him. His wife was sent his wages and nothing more. If anything should happen to me, you’ll be secure. My father would look after the twins and Thomas. But Christina isn’t mine; he might not want to take responsibility for her.’

  ‘He’s very taken with her,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes, I dare say,’ he muttered. ‘But the other children are his flesh and blood and he’d look after them until they came of age.’ He gave a sneering grimace. ‘Unless they go off with someone unsuitable, as I did. And he’ll look after you if you keep on the right side of him. But if you ever cross him, be warned, he’d take the children from you.’

  ‘He couldn’t do that,’ she said, alarmed. ‘They’re mine!’

  ‘He could,’ he said emphatically. ‘And he would!’ He got up and went across to the cupboard, brought out a half bottle of whisky and poured himself a large glassful. He drank it down in one gulp. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  Jenny sat on by the fire after Stephen had gone upstairs. She felt nervous and fearful. This wasn’t the Stephen she knew. Could it just have been the death of the navvy that had brought on this decision to secure their future? She gave a deep sigh. But it was good to think that Christina would be safe. With her own property she would always have a roof over her head.

  She riddled the fire, built it up with damp wood and rolled back the hearthrug in case of sparks, then let her hair down, putting her hairpins on the dresser. She noticed that Stephen had emptied his pockets and put the contents there, including an opened envelope. Idly she picked it up. It was his wages envelope for that week with the amount written on the front. Fifteen shillings. A huge amount of money! More than enough for them to live comfortably. But there was nothing in it save a few coins.

  Slowly she climbed the stairs, carrying Thomas on one hip and with a guttering candle in her other hand. What had happened to his wages? Had he lost them playing cards or spent them on whisky? She slipped into bed beside him. He was already asleep but the movement must have disturbed him. ‘Agnes!’ he cried out. ‘Hush!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  He still thinks of her. In his unconscious state, she’s still with him. Jenny lay motionless beside Stephen, with Thomas in the crook of her arm. Do I dream of Christy? Only sometimes if I’m suddenly awakened and I feel the fear that I felt then. Stephen turned over and put his arm across her and kissed her shoulder. Is he kissing me, or her? she thought, but then he murmured, ‘Jenny? You’ve come back.’

  Christina climbing in between them awakened them the next morning. ‘Time to get up,’ she said brightly. ‘Time to feed the hens and let the piggy out.’

  ‘The piggy’s out,’ Stephen groaned. ‘And there aren’t many hens. Your mama’s friends the gypsies have seen to that.’

  ‘What?’ Jenny sat up. ‘I thought ’fox had got them.’

  ‘Fox or gypsies, I don’t know. I only know that I forgot to lock them up one night and the following morning most of them had gone.’

  ‘’Cept for the one in the kitchen,’ Christina gurgled. ‘She hidied away and laid an egg for my supper.’

  Stephen caught one of the hens and wrung its neck. He plucked it, and Jenny cooked it whilst Christina cried over its loss. ‘Who shall have it for dinner?’ Jenny asked her. ‘Papa or the fox?’

  She roasted it, boned it for the breast and the legs and then made a large pot of chicken soup with the carcass. ‘This should last you for a few days,’ she told Stephen. ‘Don’t forget to eat it.’

  He seemed rather vague. ‘Don’t worry,’ he answered. ‘There’s a lodging house near to where I’m working. I can buy food there. I can sleep there too if I want to.’

  ‘But it’ll cost you.’ She was thinking about the empty wage packet. ‘You’ve a comfortable bed here.’

  ‘It’s the company,’ he said. ‘If I come home, I’m alone.’

  ‘We’ll come back,’ she declared. ‘I’ll go back and collect ’twins and come home.’

  ‘No. Stay there until winter is over. There’s snow on the way. The line is due to be completed by May, but I’ll send for you to come back before then. I don’t want you and the children here alone in winter whilst I’m away.’

  ‘Send for me? How? Will you come in person?’

  ‘And darken Father’s doorstep?’ he said sardo
nically. ‘No. I’ll send one of the gypsies.’

  She left him that Sunday afternoon and saw him as a lone figure watching her from the doorway. Christina ran back several times to give him a hug and a kiss, before climbing into the carriage which was waiting by the gate. I’ve heard of families living separate lives, she mused. But I never thought that it would happen to me. I only ever wanted to be with someone who would love me and want me with them always.

  The snow came a few days later and lay thick and crisp on the ground. The leafless trees and hedgerows stood out in stark contrast to the pristine whiteness. The pond at Laslett Hall froze and Dolly dressed Christina in hat and scarf and woollen gloves and took her skating. Now that she had an under maid to help her with the household chores Dolly took charge of the children, dressing them every morning and washing their clothes.

  Dolly had reason to be grateful to Jenny who had one day wandered up to the attic and discovered that although there was a fireplace in the maids’ room, the fire was hardly ever lit. ‘There’s plenty of wood and coal,’ Jenny said. ‘Tell Janet to lay it each morning, and you can light it in the afternoon so that the room is warm by bedtime.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Laslett,’ Dolly said. ‘Nobody’s ever considered how cold it gets up there in ’attic.’

  Ah, Jenny thought. But I remember.

  December was halfway over without a word from Stephen. The weather was bitterly cold but Jenny was seriously considering going home. She was upstairs sewing late one afternoon and was called down. ‘A gypsy woman, ma’am,’ the maid told her. ‘She’s at ’back door. Said she had to speak to you privately. Won’t give a message.’

  At last, Stephen’s sent for us, Jenny thought. But Mr Laslett won’t want to send the carriage out when the roads are icy.

  ‘Bring her into the hall,’ she said to the maid. ‘And ask Cook to give her some bread or pie.’

  ‘She won’t come in, ma’am. She asked if you’ll go outside.’

  ‘Oh. Very well.’ Jenny hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen and out of the back door, leaving a flurry of disarray among the new maids who hadn’t seen her down there before.