The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I think we should ask at the post office first, don’t you?’ said Thomas, and Richard cursed inwardly. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself last time he was here?

  ‘A good idea.’

  They walked up Amber Street and round to the post office but the postmistress shook her head.

  ‘Unless she’s a householder, I can’t help you.’

  ‘Hetty would be a lodger if she was here at all,’ said Richard. They stood on the pavement and considered their next move. Seeing the worry on Thomas’s face, Richard blamed himself. Somehow he had not thought of Hetty as part of a family, one which worried about her. Which was ridiculous, he told himself. She was the same as most other girls.

  ‘We could try asking at the hotels. Someone might have seen her, she would be needing to work,’ said Thomas. ‘But look, there’s no need for you come with me. It was very good of you to bring me here.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Richard. He did not say that dressed as he was in a good suit and shoes his enquiries would carry more weight with hotel managers.

  They tried the Zetland first, it was the biggest and hence would employ more staff, then the Alexandra, before striking lucky at the George Hotel. Mr Jordan was there, talking to the manager.

  ‘Hetty Pearson? Yes, I know the lass,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to know? You her father?’ He nodded to Thomas. ‘I wouldn’t tell any Dick or Harry where a lass was living, mind.’ He looked suspiciously at Richard.

  ‘I’m her father, aye,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Lost touch, have you? You should keep better watch on a young lass,’ observed Mr Jordan. ‘Though she’s not in any trouble so far as I know. She works for me sometimes, casual like.’ He stared up at the ornate ceiling of the reception hall while Thomas pressed his lips together to stifle an angry retort. ‘Diamond Street, that’s where she lives. The end by the sea.’

  Thomas strode along the front so that Richard had to quicken his pace to keep up with him. The house they wanted was easy to find.

  ‘Does Hetty Pearson live here?’ Richard asked, a second before Thomas.

  ‘No, she damn’ well does not!’ retorted the woman who answered the door. ‘This is a respectable house, I won’t have such as her in it. You should be ashamed of yourselves, coming after a young lass as is no better than she should be!’

  ‘Hey, what do you mean? My lass is a respectable lass, don’t you be telling such lies about her!’ Thomas stepped forward, his face darkening, but Richard put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘Wait, Mr Pearson,’ he said. The landlady took hold of the door as though about to slam it in their faces but she did not as Richard spoke again. ‘This is Miss Pearson’s father and I am her employer. I don’t know why you should malign her like that but if you could give us some information as to her whereabouts, we would be very grateful.’ He put his hand inside his jacket suggesting that he would make it worth her while. Behind him, Thomas fumed and grunted angrily.

  The woman looked him up and down. ‘Her father, eh? Well, she has a look of you. It’s a bit late to be worrying about her though, isn’t it? I tell you, I don’t know what girls is coming to, I don’t, and she’s a fast one all right. Had a man in her room she did, wrecked one of my best chairs too. Are you going to pay for it?’ She looked at Richard’s wallet which he had taken out and was holding in his hand. ‘Belonged to my gran that chair did, a nursing chair it was. Smashed to bits with their carrying on, Lord knows what they were up to! Aye, she lived here all right, for a couple of weeks or so until I found out what she was like. Quiet as a mouse at first. Sly, I’d say …’

  ‘Stop your blathering, woman, and tell us where she is now,’ Thomas interposed. He thrust his hands deep inside his jacket pockets; they were clenched into fists and his eyes flashed dangerously.

  The woman folded her arms and glared at him. ‘How would I know that? The last I saw of them was when I threw the baggage out of the door, and her fancy man with her.’ She looked again at Richard’s wallet and changed her manner. ‘I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you.’ Her smile was ingratiating. ‘I would think the chair could have brought as much as thirty shillings in the salerooms. It was antique. A lovely bit of beechwood.’

  And getting more valuable by the minute, thought Richard grimly. He took a ten-shilling note out of his wallet and handed it to her. ‘Oh, I think ten shillings is fair,’ he said. ‘Well, thank you for your help.’ She took the note though the smile left her face.

  ‘Now I come to think of it, the man she was carrying on with looked a bit like you. Same la-di-da voice he had. Well, I’m glad to see the back of them, I can tell you. Folks like that get a house a bad name.’ She stepped back inside and slammed the door shut. They could hear the key turning in the lock.

  ‘Bloody woman!’ Thomas all but snarled. ‘God forgive me for swearing, but for two pins I could burst that door open and break another few chairs for her. When I think—’

  ‘Come on now, let’s walk up into Milton Street, someone else might know where she is,’ Richard interrupted and Thomas nodded.

  ‘Aye, you’re right.’ He glanced at the younger man. ‘Do you not have to be getting along now? I’ll look for meself, you’ve done enough for me. But I’m right shamed to hear my lass talked about like that. I don’t know, if she has gone wrong, it’s my fault … I can see it all. I should have done something, I should have—’

  ‘I’ll stay a little longer. In fact, I can take you into Middlesbrough for the bus to Darlington, that will make it much easier for you.’ He looked at Thomas’s grim expression and went on, ‘Don’t believe it all. I’ve known Hetty a long time and she never once gave us reason to think she wasn’t a respectable girl. Not until the last, that is …’ The scene in the pub yard on Ethel’s wedding day flashed through his mind, and the other, the one that really hurt though there was no reason on earth why it should. The time his father switched on the light on the staircase landing and there was Hetty, clasped in his brother’s arms. Richard shook his head. ‘That was probably a mistake,’ he told Thomas. ‘Hetty never had the chance to explain herself.’

  They had reached the Wesleyan Church on the corner and turned into Milton Street to consider their next move. In the end they walked past the picture house to the Milton Club, enquiring in the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s but to no avail. All they received in reply to their queries were nods of denial and blank expressions.

  Walking back they came to a fish shop and cafe and looked in, but there was a crowd at the counter and the tables were all filled. The woman serving the steaming pieces of fish looked hot and harassed.

  ‘I’ll go in,’ said Richard. ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he said as he pushed his way through the crowd to the counter.

  ‘Take your turn!’ angry voices shouted.

  ‘I just want to ask the whereabouts of someone.’

  Alice looked up briefly. ‘You’ll have to wait, can’t you see I’m busy?’

  He turned back to the door. It was unlikely that the woman knew anything about Hetty, he thought. No one else seemed to. It wasn’t worth waiting, it was getting late.

  ‘A waste of time,’ he said to Thomas who was standing on the pavement looking through the window.

  ‘I can see that,’ he answered. At that moment Alice looked up again and saw the two men standing outside. There was something about the older man which was familiar, she thought, something about the eyes.

  ‘Two cod and chips, please,’ said a customer and she nodded her head and got on with serving.

  Richard took Thomas into Middlesbrough, despite the older man’s protest about there being no need. Afterwards he drove home across the moors. The darkness was closing in and the spring evening was cold. He felt for Hetty’s father in his distress; was depressed at their lack of success in finding her. He wouldn’t mind betting that Matthew knew something about her, he thought suddenly. He pondered on his brother, how cheerful he had been last time Richard had spoken
to him, the sly grin on his face. Yes, he would have to have a serious talk with his brother.

  Chapter 14

  Hetty got on well with Peter and Charlie Hutchins though she found the girl, Audrey, more reserved. Though only seven, she was the one who seemed to remember her mother the best.

  ‘Mam used Rinso,’ she said to Hetty the very first time she was busy with the washing. ‘She said it was much better than that stuff.’

  Hetty looked down at the packet of washing powder she held, the sort which had been in use at Fortune Hall. She smiled at the little girl just in from school for dinner. Audrey had a disapproving look about her, undermined by the fact that one leg of her navy blue bloomers hung halfway down her thigh, the elastic broken, probably from the usual schoolgirl’s habit of sticking her hanky up it.

  ‘Rinso, eh?’ said Hetty. ‘I’ll have to get some when I go for the messages. Though maybe I should wait until I’ve used this up. Now go and get your dinner, it’s on the table, pet. Then I’ll fix the elastic in your bloomers.’

  ‘Knickers, my mam called them. They’re not bloomers. That’s old-fashioned.’ But Audrey’s tone was not so aggressive this time.

  ‘Knickers, then. Hurry up and eat your dinner, the bell will be going before you’ve finished if you don’t.’

  Hetty shook some powder into the washer – the very latest it was, a zinc tub with a hand-turned paddle and wringer attached. Audrey had informed Hetty that her daddy had bought it for her mam when she was poorly. Poor little Audrey, missing her mother, reflected Hetty, and felt a pang for her own, back in Morton. She left the pit clothes to steep while she ate.

  It was nice working here, she thought as she took up her spoon and began to eat the thick barley broth she had made with the remains of yesterday’s joint of boiled ham. Mr Hutchins was a quiet man who allowed her to get on with her work as she pleased and ate whatever was put before him so long as it was hot and nourishing. And Charlie was a little pet, looking at her with big green eyes which reminded her of Cissy’s. He was always trying to please her and in the evening, when he came out of the tin bath, he loved her to wrap him in a towel and hold him on her knees for a while. They would listen to the wireless, turned down low because Mr Hutchins was usually still in bed, having to go out to the pit at midnight.

  Peter and Audrey would sit with them, and gradually Audrey relaxed and stopped comparing everything Hetty did with the way her mother had done it. Oh yes, it was nice. There was the sea so close and she could walk on the sands just as she had done at Saltburn. If she kept her eyes averted from the land she could even imagine herself there among the jewel streets. Not that Smuggler’s Cove was so bad, she had to admit, built as it was at the mouth of a steep ravine with the hills rising on both sides – dotted with pigeon crees it was true, but wooded and bonny on a fine day.

  Hetty remembered the story of how Saltburn had been built by the railway pioneers, mostly Quakers, on the model of the holy city, the new Jerusalem to come, described in the Revelations of Saint John. Though the streets were just named after precious stones, not actually built of them. And now, seventy years later, some of the houses were shabby and in need of repair. Oh yes, the story was fanciful but she liked it. She had practically been thrown out of Saltburn but she would show them, she thought, she would be back. And when she was, she would have a hotel, or maybe a boarding house. But even if it was just a boarding house she would make it the best, she would supply the nicest food, make it the best value for money in the town.

  ‘Charlie is asleep,’ observed Audrey and Hetty forgot her dreaming and looked down at the short-cropped head against her breast. Charlie was indeed asleep. ‘Now you’ll wake him up to put his nightshirt on,’ said Audrey. ‘And he’ll cry.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ said Hetty. She stood up and pulled down the nightshirt which had been warming on the brass line above the fireplace, holding Charlie deftly in her left arm. He might be four, but he was thin and light, she thought. She would have to try to build him up. He opened his eyes only once before she had him ready and she took him upstairs to the double bed the boys slept in.

  After the older children were in bed, Hetty tidied up the kitchen and then sat by the fire. There was some dance music on the wireless, ‘Little Old Lady’ was the tune and she hummed along with it. At least, she mused, Matthew didn’t know she was here. The thought of him confused her now. Why, oh why, had she gone with him into that hut? Yet she knew why really. She had allowed herself to be fooled by his charm because she was so hungry for affection. And if she was honest, he held a dark attraction for her; for all she had hated him for so long, she had wanted him too in a way. Or was it that she had wanted a man, any man? Was she a bad woman at heart, as the landlady in Diamond Street had implied? Or was it because he was like Richard in some ways at least and oh, how she’d wanted Richard!

  Hetty got up and turned off the wireless. It was time to prepare a meal for Mr Hutchins and make him up some sandwiches. Then she would rouse him so he wouldn’t be late for work. Though he had never insisted on it, she always waited up to see to him before he went out, just as her own mother did when one of the men was on that shift.

  At least Mr Hutchins was very correct, never suggesting she use his first name, careful for her reputation. At weekends, when he was home from work, he went to visit his mother in Saltburn so he and Hetty should not be in the house together overnight. She thought that a bit over-careful, but then, he had to visit the old lady sometimes, didn’t he? And after all, that was how she’d come to get the job, through his association with Saltburn.

  One afternoon after the older children had gone back to school, a bright breezy afternoon with the sun shining on the waves so that the sea looked as blue as the Mediterranean, Hetty took a walk up the path by the edge of the cliff, taking Charlie with her. It wound on up steeply and when they reached the top they were both out of breath.

  ‘Let’s sit on the grass,’ she suggested and they flopped down, Charlie lying full-length and gasping, pretending an exhaustion worse than he actually felt. Hetty smiled down at him; she had become fond of him in these last few weeks, very fond. Her brow puckered, she wondered why he was such a solitary boy, rarely playing with the other children, and why when he did he always had to be the Indian to their cowboys or the German to their brave English tommies. If they were playing a team game, Charlie was always picked, if not last, that place being reserved for the fat boy of the village whose mother had the grocery shop, then next to last. Yet he was an appealing little boy, always anxious to please. Maybe that was the trouble.

  Hetty looked away and out over the sea, such a great expanse of it from this height. The great dome of the sky came down to meet it, the blues intermingling on the horizon in a haze which could turn into a sea fret, or haar, but at the moment was stationary. In the distance a coaster chugged southwards. A collier perhaps from the Tyne, she wasn’t sure, Hetty knew little about ships. Or were they boats?

  ‘“Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked stack, butting through the Channel in the mad March days”,’ she said. It brought back memories of school in Morton Main. John Masefield, she thought, they had had to learn many of his poems off by heart along with those of Wordsworth and Keats and so many others. And take turns to repeat them in class, the sing-song voices making nonsense of the poetry. She remembered how her hands had stung when she’d faltered halfway through that one; Miss Nelson always punished faulty memories with three hard raps across the palm with a wooden ruler.

  ‘Come on,’ said Charlie, breaking into her reverie. He looked up at her with those great green eyes. ‘Are we going a bit further?’

  ‘Will you not get too tired? We have to walk back, you know.’

  ‘I’m not tired,’ he said stoutly.

  ‘You could have fooled me a minute or so back,’ she laughed. Rising to her feet, she took his hand and they walked on. The sun was warm on their backs though it was only early May and for once the breeze was from the land and
warm. She picked a blade of grass and showed Charlie how to whistle with it and he walked on happily, blowing out his cheeks until they were red and making funny little noises for all his efforts.

  At least her period had come, after a few anxious waiting days for it was late. What a feeling of relief that had been! Never again, she had vowed, never, never again would she take such a chance. She watched the gulls swooping above the cliffs, calling to each other, their cries raucous. So different they were from the miners’ pigeons with their soft cooing. Da had pigeons.

  The thought struck her with an almost physical pain; after all this time she had thought she was over her homesickness. Da used to take her down to the pigeon cree: to get the pigeons used to her, he would say. She loved the sound of their cooing, the way they always came back unerringly to their home after a race, the wonder of it never went away. Da. Why had he not defended her? she thought for the thousandth time.

  ‘Are you going to be our new mam?’ asked Charlie, the question such a surprise to Hetty that she stopped in her tracks and stared at him.

  ‘Your new mam?’

  ‘Yes. Jimmy Tate said his mam says you will be. Are you?’

  ‘Nowt of t’sort!’ Hetty lapsed into her native dialect in her surprise. ‘That’s nothing but tittle-tattle. Jimmy Tate’s mother is a go—’ She bit off the word before she said it, Charlie was only a bairn and he might repeat it to Jimmy. But after all Mr Hutchins’s efforts to stop any gossip, it seemed hard.

  ‘Howay, Charlie, I bet I can beat you back home!’ And the pair of them set off, running down the track, Charlie’s thin legs in their leather boots with steel segs in the heels and toecaps beating a sharp rat-tat on the stones. Hetty dropped behind slightly as they reached the village so he got there first.

  ‘I won!’ he shouted, then looked anxious. ‘I did, didn’t I? You never let me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t let you, I’m fair worn out,’ she answered, taking his hand. ‘We’ll go to the shop, eh? You can have a halfpenny to spend on what you like.’