Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  Like shit-coloured islands in piss-yellow sea. Like shit-coloured islands. Does it ever occur to Mr Billcliff when she brings him his dinner and sets it in front of him that every day she sees his shit? Does he ever think that it’s her who knows that more often than not he misses the chamber pot when he pisses in the night?

  She’s like one of the servants in the books she used to read about who lit the fires and scrubbed the floors and got in the coal and did the cooking and the work. Except she never thought about those servants because the books weren’t about them. They just came in and out of the rooms and if they spoke, what they said was usually so simple and silly you would laugh but not for long because you would want to get on with the real story.

  Servants were just there and nobody cared about them. In the books, though, there were stories where girls and boys were forced to work in factories or as servants because the life they were really entitled to was stolen away from them by wicked people. David Copperfield is forced by the Murdstones to work in a bottle factory and Sara in A Little Princess has to live in an attic and be a maid. Well, then, first Daddy stole Pansy’s chance from her and now Mrs Smithson steals Pansy’s time with her I want and I expect and, worst of all, she steals Pansy’s own thoughts away from her with all those words she flings at her, words that hover about her so she can scarcely breathe for them, words so sharp they stab into her skin, words that sit on Pansy’s head, pressing and pressing.

  Meg Bright, well isn’t that someone who thinks she’s above everyone else, wouldn’t give me the time of day when I saw her in Currans this morning they say the Baders talk German in their house why don’t they go back there if the King’s English isn’t good enough for them that Miss Appleby, there’s a young lady keeps herself to herself some other young ladies need to take a page out of her book not that I’m naming anyone particular mind though Mavis Owens, well all I’m saying is some young ladies for want of a better word are no better than they should be.

  She should have been here, Miss Appleby, we would’ve looked after her here but then Ada Peterson had to go and push herself forward, it can’t have suited her though not good enough for that young lady she’s got the cottage now, lovely she’s got it though as Elsie Grant says, a young lady living on her own, well, people will talk.

  What she should have has been taken from her. Mrs Smithson is wicked because she works her too hard and doesn’t pay her enough for what she does. But if Pansy were to leave Daddy would thrash her and Ma would stand by and let him do it and then she’d just be sent to another place like Smithsons. Daddy takes all her money so she can’t run away nor has she anything of her own. It’s no wonder the boarders and the overnighters treat her as if she’s nothing with her dresses so shabby and tight she has to be grateful for the aprons that cover them over.

  In the books those boys and girls suffer and sometimes they feel nothing will ever turn out right for them, except in the end it does, with the evil people who’ve kept them back and been cruel to them getting found out and punished and getting what they deserve. Sometimes they just have to wait until they grow up and can run away, like David running away from Murdstone and Grinby’s factory to Aunt Betsey. And sometimes someone strong enough will come along to rescue them, like Sara’s father coming back or Nicholas Nickleby rescuing Smike from Dotheboys Hall and Wackford Squeers.

  So why couldn’t that happen to her? She thinks back to what Miss Appleby said to her way back when she was in the little ones’ class: You have a gift, Pansy, a gift like yours shouldn’t be wasted. If it’s true, what Miss Appleby said, then she’s not just like the servants in the books, she’s one of the boys and girls who are special. The trick, Pansy thinks, is to not mind the waiting too much and to be ready for when the right time comes either to run away or to see it when the right person, strong enough to rescue you, comes along.

  One day after another. One day after another and trying not to mind too much. Pansy has finished making the pastry; it’s in the white china bowl in the cold room and she’s peeling apples for the pie. She hears the front-door bell and she hears Mrs Smithson in the hallway. ‘Now who’d that be? If it’s that butcher’s boy around the front again, I’ll give him what for.’ She hears the door opening, she hears the voices and she stands quite still.

  ‘Miss Appleby is here to see you.’

  Miss Appleby is behind Mrs Smithson, who is standing in the doorway looking at Pansy as if she has somehow done something so wild and excessive she can’t make head nor tail of it. How can it be that a teacher has come to speak to her kitchen girl?

  Miss Appleby steps into the kitchen. ‘What a lovely sunny room, Mrs Smithson.’

  Miss Appleby’s eyes rest on Pansy’s apron and the flour coating her hands. Pansy hears how Miss Appleby’s voice is too clever and too vivid for this room; the way she says love-lee is what Mrs Smithson calls la-di-da of any overnighters who speak the same way. Mrs Smithson doesn’t like la-di-da and Pansy knows that she will imitate Miss Appleby’s voice after she leaves.

  Should she put down the knife and the apple and take off her apron? But if she takes it off, Mrs Smithson will think she is forgetting her place and so she stands there, frozen. She wants to take it off, wants so much to untie the tapes binding it to her, to pull it over her head and fling it on the floor, this apron with the deep red bloodstains down the front from cutting up the steak and kidneys this morning, carving through the dense white fat, lifting out the kidneys nestled in the fleshy casings, slicing through them and gathering all that bleeding red jelly up in her hands to put into the iron pot. She feels her face turn hot with the shame of it.

  ‘Please don’t let me keep me from your work, Pansy,’ Miss Appleby says, and Mrs Smithson gives her such a look: this young miss, all la-di-da, barging in thinking she can give orders in my own kitchen. Mrs Smithson is putting on an apron herself now and measuring cups of flour into a bowl for the scones, even though she always leaves them for Pansy and she’s cut the butter and she’s rubbing it in, oh, her back is turned to them right enough, but she’ll be listening hard because of course she will want to hear all of what Miss Appleby has to say to Pansy and the other ladies of the town will want to hear it as well.

  Pansy feels the flush moving down her face and across her neck as she peels a strip of skin from the apple. She’s made a little test for herself to make the job more interesting by trying to keep it in one long strip and most of the time she can do it. But now it’s broken already, her fingers are fumbling so much.

  ‘Why didn’t you come back to finish up the school year, Pansy?’

  ‘Daddy got the job for me, Miss,’ she mumbles, her head down.

  ‘Mr Kennedy and I believed that your intention was to go on to the High School. We made the application for you for the scholarship.’

  Miss Appleby is opening her purse and taking out a folded sheet of newspaper and holding it out so that Pansy has no choice other than to take it. ‘I think you should look at this, Pansy.’

  It was the Grey River Argus from yesterday, but what should she be looking at? ‘Robbery at Greymouth’. ‘Explosion at Brunnerton’. ‘Sale of boots, shoes and slippers’.

  Miss Appleby leans forward and taps with her finger topped by its clean, clipped nail halfway up the third column:

  WEST COAST/WESTLAND EDUCATION BOARD SCHOLAR-SHIP RESULTS

  Pansy Williams (Blackball): Junior Scholarship. £40.

  Forty pounds? And there at the bottom, her name again:

  Pansy Williams (Blackball) has been awarded a Board scholarship of £25 for two years.

  Miss Appleby’s voice is loud and excited. ‘You scored the highest marks for Proficiency in the whole of Westland and Canterbury. It’s not too late, you can accept the scholarship and start in the first term.’

  Forty pounds? And twenty-five more. That makes sixty-five pounds.

  ‘This won’t cost your parents any
thing at all. Your uniform, your books, your board in Greymouth, everything will be covered. The school offers Latin, French, English, History, Geography, Physics and Mathematics. Oh, Pansy.’

  She would live in Greymouth and go to the District High School? She would wear the tunic frock with pleats, the white blouse, black stockings, shoes and the blazer and the hat like the girls she’s seen waiting for the morning train?

  The trick is to not mind the waiting too much and to be ready for when the right time comes either to run away or to see it when the right person, strong enough to rescue you, comes along.

  Could it be Miss Appleby? Has she been rescued already?

  ‘Your parents will have to give their permission, of course, but once they understand the opportunity—’

  Pansy looks carefully at Miss Appleby. At her small, clean hands and her pretty, soft face. ‘Does Mr Kennedy know? That you’ve come to see me?’

  ‘Well, no, Pansy. Mr Kennedy has been transferred to a school in Hokitika.’

  So it’d be just Miss Appleby against Daddy.

  She carefully refolds the newspaper, lays it on the table beside Miss Appleby’s purse and picks up the knife and another apple. ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘You’re not telling me you won’t take the scholarship, Pansy?’

  ‘I’m wanted here.’ She says it quietly. She’s managed almost the full strip this time and now she cores the apple, slices it and picks up the next one.

  ‘Don’t you be staying on here, Pansy Williams, if it’s not good enough for you. There’s plenty other girls need a job.’ Mrs Smithson’s voice is sharp. She’s turned around and she’s facing Miss Appleby. ‘I’m not keeping the girl against her will. I’m only training her up as a favour to her father.’

  Miss Appleby’s face is flushed but her voice is calm and steady. ‘I’ll call on your parents tonight. I’ll bring all the information with me and we can go through it then, all of us together.’

  ‘No.’ Pansy puts down the apple and the knife and faces Miss Appleby. ‘I like working here and I don’t want to go. I don’t want to do Latin and all that tommyrot. You keep your nose out of my business.’

  ‘Pansy!’ Mrs Smithson’s voice is severe but it’s filled, also, with malicious delight: You should’ve heard the way Pansy Williams talked back to her and good on her and all, Miss Appleby and her la-di-da ways. ‘I won’t have you being rude to Miss Appleby in my kitchen.’

  Miss Appleby stares back at her, then shakes her head, ‘A clever girl like you, Pansy. Well, it breaks my heart. You could really have made something of yourself.’

  Pansy hears Miss Appleby’s footsteps as she walks down the passageway, her boots clip-clapping on the wooden floor. She hears her pause for a moment, the front door opens and the lock clicks back in place as it closes.

  She wants to run after Miss Appleby, run down the street after her, to catch her by the arm and say she is sorry for being rude and she does want to go, she wants it so much it is like something bursting beneath her skin. But she can’t. Miss Appleby isn’t strong enough. It’d be like David Copperfield’s mother trying to stand up against the Murdstones.

  ‘Schools and learning,’ Mrs Smithson says, ‘is all very well for some but it’s not for a miner’s daughter. You’ll be best off staying here with us till you find your fate.’

  Finding your fate is Mrs Smithson’s way of saying getting a husband. Pansy goes out to the cold room and brings back the pastry, sprinkles flour on the table and begins to roll it out. You have to do it quickly to keep it cool. She flips it over once, twice. She’s worked out it’s best to put the rolling pin in the cold room as well. No point in getting the dough cold and then roll it out with a warm rolling pin. She lines the dish, fills it up with the apples, sprinkles over sugar, nutmeg, covers it over nice and snug, cuts along the edges and pricks the top with a fork.

  Oh, Miss Appleby with your glossy brown hair and trip-trapping boots, take me to your Aunt Betsey cottage to live with you and to go to the High School. I would make you proud. Oh, Miss Appleby, I never wanted to break your heart.

  Mrs Smithson watches as she puts the pie inside the range. ‘You can make a bit of custard to go with that. There’s those eggs in the safe need using.’

  The trick is to not mind the waiting too much. To try not to mind.

  8

  Well, she’s come to like the house well enough and she doesn’t mind the work too much neither; not that she’d ever say so to Mrs Smithson. After she’s cleaned up the breakfast things she starts on the cleaning, buffing up the wood panelling to get it shining and getting the windows so clear it’s like they’re open and the coloured glass in the door into the kitchen so bright the colours gleam, ruby red and yellow and blue like the sky on the clearest day. She has the place spotless by the end of the mornings, the floors mopped and polished, the carpets beaten, the stove blacked and glowing. She fills little vases for the tables; ferns and berries today since there’s no flowers with winter coming.

  Back then the words had stung and they’d kept stinging right on for months to come. She’d be on her way to or going back from Smithsons and she’d remember Miss Appleby’s eyes all clouded up with disappointment. What she’d said to Pansy was like a wasp sting buried deep inside her flesh.

  You could have made something of yourself. You could really have made something of yourself.

  She’d felt it hard. Well, she’d not long turned thirteen then, and easily shamed.

  Not for a miner’s girl.

  Yes, the words had stung but she wasn’t one to give in, even back then she wasn’t, though she’s learned a lot more since. Learned you don’t get anything from staying quiet, though there are the right ways for going about getting what you want. She bided her time, did her job well and didn’t complain, though Mrs Smithson had her there all hours doing all the cleaning and cooking.

  As well as having her working for the main house, the Smithsons had built huts out back to board young, single miners. They came in for their breakfast — bacon, eggs and sausages that Pansy put in front of them — and she got their cribs done as well, ready for them to take to the mine and then there was their dinner, they can’t be in the dining room, my word, no, but they can eat out here with you, Pansy, you can see to them.

  Mostly they didn’t stay long but the huts were occupied most of the time which meant there’d be a lot more money coming in for the Smithsons. For Pansy, it meant nothing except extra work but she saw, if she used her head, there could be something in it for her as well. She’d talked to the men and she knew they paid the Smithsons enough to put quite a few extra quid in their pockets. She deserved the extra money and she knew Mrs Smithson knew it and all. She waited until the place was full up with others coming the following week and she asked Mrs Smithson for more money.

  Well, the mean old biddy’s face had turned tight as a chook’s bum and she’d started shaking her head. That was all right, though; Pansy’d known she’d be in for a fight and she was ready for it.

  ‘I don’t think so, Pansy. What with building the huts and all, the costs have gone up. Five bob a week for a girl helping around the place is fair enough and there’s plenty of girls in town looking for jobs. Ask me again next year and we’ll see about it then.’

  ‘Mrs Peterson wants me to go over there and talk to her. If you don’t want me here, I’ll be calling in on the way home.’

  ‘It’s not I don’t want you. Dear me, no. It’s what I can afford to give you and don’t tell me Ada Peterson’s going to offer you any more. Her business being what it is, she won’t be able to give you any more than I can.’

  ‘I’ll go and see her anyway. She said she wants someone just for the cooking and I could have Sundays free.’

  Mrs Smithson turned a bit red at that; Pansy was supposed to have Sundays off but it never happened. Pansy picked up the baking tray with the scones cut li
ttle and dainty and put it in the oven. There was afternoon tea to get ready for Mrs Smithson’s friends she had in on a Monday. Her scones were the best the ladies had ever tasted, nice and light, everyone said it. She had the serving dish all set to go out with the curls of butter and jam in glass dishes and the nice plates and the little knives and teaspoons and cake forks shined up.

  ‘Well, I must say I’m disappointed in you, Pansy. I’ve spent a lot of time training you up and now you say you want to leave. Are you telling me you’re not happy here after all Mr Smithson and I’ve done for you?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, Mrs Smithson.’ She said it quiet and calm but she wanted to laugh out loud. She could see from Mrs Smithson’s face she didn’t want to lose her but didn’t want to give her the extra money either. She wanted to keep a workhorse without feeding it, was how she was.

  ‘I don’t think much of you talking to Ada Peterson, nor her trying to take my girl away from me, neither.’

  There was the mutton in the lower oven, roasting for dinner. She peeled the spuds, rolling them in a bit of flour she’d seasoned with salt and pepper so they’d crisp up and be tasty. She knew Mrs Smithson was waiting for her to speak up and argue but she kept her head down, quiet.

  ‘I suppose I could manage another two bob. No more, mind. Seven bob a week, Pansy, and you won’t do no better than that with Ada Peterson.’

  ‘I’ll take nine.’

  Pansy said it straight out and Mrs Smithson said yes, right away, which meant, Pansy thought, she might have gone up a bit more to keep her. Still, she’d keep that up her sleeve for another time.

  She didn’t tell Ma or Daddy about the extra, she just kept on handing over the five bob a week. The rest was for herself and the first thing she did was to open a bank account because she knew if Daddy set eyes on any money she kept in the house, it’d be the last she saw of it. She felt so grand walking out of the bank with her own bank book tucked inside her purse.