The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  Thankfully there was no sign of Mrs Tate or Jimmy as they entered the shop. Just as well, thought Hetty. She was angry enough to give that one a piece of her mind!

  They walked along the road past the school. The sound of children repeating the three times table came out of an open window and, to Hetty’s surprise, Charlie joined in.

  ‘Three times four is twelve,’ he called out in a good imitation of the sing-song voices within. Then he stuck the lollipop he had bought with his halfpenny back in his mouth.

  Hetty looked at him, her eyebrows raised. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you say any more?’

  ‘’Course I can.’ And he recited the whole lot, following on with the four times table for good measure.

  ‘But where did you learn that, Charlie?’

  ‘Aw, just hanging about. I can hear them, they do it every day. I wish I was at school, Hetty.’

  He was clever, she thought, looking at him. He was small and thin but he had a good brain – not that she was any judge really. Was that why he wasn’t so popular with the other boys? Was he too clever for them? She would have a word with his father, she decided.

  All thoughts of Charlie and his intellect were driven from her mind, however, as they rounded the bend into Overmans Terrace. For there, lounging against the gate, was Matthew Fortune.

  ‘Afternoon, Hetty,’ he said and grinned. Lazily he straightened up and ceremoniously opened the gate for her. She ignored the gesture.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. Suddenly her stomach was churning, making her feel sick.

  ‘Looking for you, of course, what else?’

  Matthew looked around him as though to say that there was nothing else about the village that could possibly bring him here.

  ‘Go away, Matthew, I don’t want anything to do with you ever again,’ Hetty said, her voice rising slightly. She bit her lip and glanced anxiously at the house, afraid that Mr Hutchins might come out to investigate. ‘Go away, Matthew. Please, go away,’ she repeated more quietly.

  ‘Go away, Hetty doesn’t want you here. I’ll get my dad if you don’t.’ Charlie stepped forward, his little chin stuck out pugnaciously. He stood squarely in front of her as though his small body was some sort of shield.

  ‘Fetch your dad, will you? You go and do that, kid, I’d like to see the man my girl is living with.’

  ‘I’m not your girl and I’m not living with anyone, I work here—’ Charlie was going through the gate, taking Matthew at his word, and Hetty panicked. ‘No, don’t, Charlie! Don’t disturb your dad, he’ll be asleep. Don’t, pet.’

  ‘But …’ said Charlie, stopping and looking doubtfully at her.

  ‘I’m all right, really I am. My … friend just wants to talk to me.’

  ‘He’s not your friend. If he’s your friend, why did you tell him to go away?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I was just angry at him. Look, Charlie, why don’t you go back to the school and meet Audrey and Peter? It’s almost time for the bell.’

  He looked uncertainly from her to Matthew.

  ‘Yes, go on, kid, run along and play,’ said Matthew. He put an arm round Hetty’s shoulders and she stepped quickly forward as though his touch burned her. He laughed softly.

  ‘Do I have to go?’ Charlie asked her.

  ‘Yes, go on, pet. We’re just going to have a talk.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the lace curtain of the neighbouring house twitch. She had to get Matthew away from there before he did or said something outrageous. ‘Go on, Charlie, it’s all right.’

  He headed off down the road, his whole body registering reluctance to go. After a few yards he stopped and looked round at her reproachfully and she smiled and nodded, willing him to go. He went on, head down dejectedly.

  ‘Come on, walk up the road, then,’ she said to Matthew and he fell in beside her. Oh God, she thought, there’s his car. People are going to notice, it sticks out like a sore thumb. She quickened her pace until they rounded a bend and were out of sight of the village altogether then she turned and faced him.

  ‘Leave me alone, Matthew,’ she said. She crossed her arms in front of her as some sort of shield.

  He laughed. ‘You don’t want me to really. Tell the truth, you’re gasping for it!’ He took hold of her upper arms and pulled her to him, holding her against him. His hands slid down to her wrists and forced her arms open, lifting them around his neck. His eyes darkened as he bent his face to hers. The next minute he had stepped back, an angry curse springing from his lips.

  ‘Bloody hell! What did you do that for?’ There were four flaming marks on his cheek which she had raked with her fingernails. He stepped back automatically and put a hand up to his cheek, the fingers coming away tinged with blood.

  ‘Now will you let me alone?’ she cried, and turned and ran back to the village. She’d forgotten his car again. Oh Lord, he had to come back for his car.

  Her chest was heaving as though she had run for miles. Standing behind the net curtains she watched as he came into view. Don’t let him come to the house, she prayed, and slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. But even as she went back to the window, the car’s engine started and in a second or two it was roaring off on its way to the main road.

  Chapter 15

  Matthew drove away from Smuggler’s Cove full of anger and strange emotions he couldn’t put a name to and which he refused to acknowledge. Who did she think she was? Nothing but a pitman’s brat, a skivvy in his father’s house she had been. He had seduced her, hadn’t he? It had been easy. Why didn’t she fall into his arms now, grateful that he still sought her out?

  Why did he seek her out? That was the real question which nagged at the back of his mind. Of all the women he had known she was the only one to obsess him like this.

  Matthew swerved to avoid a farm tractor. ‘Hell’s bells!’ he snarled. He was so distracted he had almost crashed the car. He forced himself to keep his attention on the road but his unruly thoughts were beyond control. He almost turned the car round when he got to the crossroads; the road was wide enough. He would go back and force his way into that hovel, drag her out by her hair. He saw red when he thought of her there with a man, a bloody miner and his brats. Randy lot, the miners, look at all the kids they had. But he went on, arriving at Fortune Hall eventually and stopping the car just anyhow in the drive. He stalked into the house, ignoring the shout from his brother who was cantering towards him on that great black horse of his.

  Thank God, Richard would be back at York next week. Matthew was sick to death of his questions, his accusations. Richard had been seeking Hetty, had said so.

  ‘You know something. I’d say you know where she is,’ Richard had said. ‘You’d better tell me where. Her family don’t even know, and they’re worried about her.’

  Matthew had smiled. He smiled now at the memory of it. Goody-goody Richard, sanctimonious Richard, so upright, so bloody hypocritical! Why was he really looking for Hetty? Because he wanted her himself, that was why. Matthew flung himself on his bed, heedless of the dust on his shoes smearing the snowy counterpane. He picked up the packet of cigarettes from the bedside table and lit one, flicking it so that a red spark from the end fell on the whiteness and flickered and died, leaving a small, blackened hole. He smoked furiously, blowing the smoke up to the ceiling, then suddenly swung his legs off the bed and stubbed out the cigarette in an ash tray.

  Whitby, that was where he would go, find himself someone willing. Some girl who knew her trade, someone who could take away the tension and ask only money in return. He strode out of the room not ten minutes after he had entered. He hesitated for a moment; he was short of cash. He tapped on a door further along the corridor but there was no reply. He opened the door quietly and went in. His mother was asleep.

  ‘Mother?’

  He looked at the form on the bed, so still, so white. She wasn’t dead, was she? He stepped
closer. No, her mouth was open and a small soft snore came from her. She wasn’t going to wake up, he could tell. No doubt that stuff his father got for her would see to that. Going over to the dressing table, he began to search through the drawers – the piles of silk underwear, the chiffon scarves. He knew what was there, had often seen his father doing the selfsame thing as he was doing now. Ah, well. He permitted himself a sardonic grin. They said the chip never fell far from the block.

  He had found it, the chequebook with three or four cheques already signed. Elizabeth Fortune. Oh yes, his father was a sly ’un all right, getting her to sign blank cheques when she was dopey with sleep. Dopey was the word! Carefully he tore a cheque from the book, taking the stub with it, not the next one in line but the last one which was signed. Glancing over to the bed he saw that his mother hadn’t changed her position.

  ‘Thanks, Ma,’ he said and went out, closing the door softly behind him. Now for Whitby.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Havelock, who was standing on the lawns having a word with Bill Oliver. ‘Start on the boundary wall then, Bill, check it’s in good repair.’ He walked over to Matthew who was climbing into his car.

  ‘Whitby,’ he said. Stupid old sod! What the hell did it matter to his father where he was going?

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been to see your mother?’ asked Havelock. ‘Get out of that car, I want to speak to you. It’s time you settled down, got yourself a wife – someone who will curb your wild ways. I’ve been thinking … that Joan Hunter, she’s just the one for you. We’ll ask her to dinner – hey, where’re you going?’

  Matthew had revved the car and was off, almost causing his father who had been leaning on the nearside door to fall into the gravel. As Matthew looked in his rear-view mirror he could see Havelock waving his arms in the air, stamping with rage. His figure grew smaller and somehow more grotesque until it disappeared as Matthew rounded the bend.

  Get wed indeed! Not bloody likely. He remembered Joan Hunter, the daughter of a neighbouring landowner. Though there was some money there, he supposed. The thought gave him pause but not for long. Joan was a plain woman with wispy fair hair and a petulant mouth. Still, if it had not been for Hetty he might have considered her. He smiled grimly to himself. God, what was the matter with him? Marriage to Joan was just what he needed. With all her money he would be free of his blasted father. And he certainly had no intention of marrying Hetty, no indeed. But he wanted her … oh yes, he wanted her. He would give her a little time, enough for her to sicken of slaving after a working man and his brood. God help that peasant if he was trying to get into Hetty’s bed! The very thought brought on a black ugly mood. Matthew couldn’t bear to think of it.

  Now, he told himself as he turned on to the Whitby road and increased his speed, he would find himself a woman to take away the urgency of his need for Hetty.

  Hetty was anything but fed up with her life in Overmans Terrace. She was happy to look after the little house, which reminded her so much of home, and the children too. Charlie especially was carving himself a niche in her affections.

  ‘If only …’ she said aloud a few days later. She paused from working up a batch of flour for bread and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her forehead.

  ‘If only what?’ asked Charlie. It was a lovely day but he was sitting under the table playing with a wooden engine and waggon which his father had carved for him. Mr Hutchins was quite a hand at making such small things out of wood.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Hetty. ‘I was just thinking aloud.’

  Charlie conidered this gravely, his brow puckered. ‘I didn’t know you could think aloud?’ he said.

  ‘No, well, you can’t. I mean, I had a thought and said it aloud,’ she explained. Charlie nodded and went back to his game. She watched him for a minute. He was a worry sometimes, she thought. Why didn’t he go out and play more? He was thin and pale too. But he seemed happy enough.

  Her thoughts returned to her own problems. Every day she dreaded to hear a car, expecting it would be Matthew come back. When she’d been out and came into sight of the little terrace of houses she could hardly look at them in case she should see him lounging against the gate once again. Not that she was afraid of him now, oh no. But she was afraid that he would say something to Mr Hutchins, and she didn’t want to lose this job.

  Hetty finished pounding the dough and put a clean cloth over the bowl. Carrying it to the hearth, she set it on the fender to rise. It was time to get in the washing from the garden at the back of the house, then there was the ironing. Ironing was very different here from in her mother’s house. Electricity had been put in recently and Mr Hutchins had bought an electric iron which was a delight to use.

  A car drove up to the terrace and her heart jumped into her mouth. But it was only Mr Watts, the tenant of the house at the other end. He had recently bought a second-hand Austin 7 to replace his motorcycle and side car, and was the envy of the village.

  Hetty need not have worried that Matthew would come that day, he was on his way to Whitby once again. He parked his car down by the harbour and walked to a door tucked away between two shops in a street just off the front. He did not have to ring the bell, he had a key for the door. Inside there was a flight of steps covered with a dusty carpet which had once been red. At the top there was another door and he opened it and stepped inside.

  ‘Harry! Don’t you ever knock?’ The woman who turned from contemplation of her reflection in the wall mirror hid her irritation in seconds but not before he had noted it.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he growled. ‘Don’t I pay you enough?’ He surveyed her. She had curling rags in her hair even though it was already the middle of the afternoon and a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth. She was wearing a chenille dressing gown, unbelted and open, showing a lacy petticoat over which her bust bulged. Nothing else as far as he could see. Certainly no knickers.

  ‘Just as well you’re not dressed, Diana,’ said Matthew. ‘You can go straight back to bed.’ Already he was pulling off his tie, the familiar urge hastening his actions.

  Diana giggled. ‘My, Harry! You are in a hurry, aren’t you? Have I not time to finish my fag, then?’ But she was walking into the bedroom as she spoke, her ample buttocks swaying below her surprisingly slim waist. He grinned. Diana was as likely to be her real name as Harry was his.

  At least she was clean and so was the bed, he thought as he flung off the last of his clothes and slid under the sheet. And she knew a thing or two about how to please a man, not like that little bitch from Durham.

  Afterwards he flung himself off her and lay back on the pillows. Diana curled up against him and he moved irritably.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend any feeling for me,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I pay you for.’

  ‘Oh, Harry.’ She pouted. ‘Don’t you like me a little bit?’

  He blew out a long line of smoke and considered her critically. At least she had taken those bloody curlers out before she joined him in bed. Her lipstick was smeared, going over the line of her thin lips; it didn’t matter that it was he who had done the smearing. There was a smell of sweat from her, mingled with Evening in Paris scent. He knew it was Evening in Paris, the bottle stood on her dressing table and he had seen her dab some behind her ears. Cheap, he thought, common.

  Hetty now … Hetty smelled of household soap and water, and something else, indefinable, exciting, something he could drown in.

  ‘What’s the matter, Harry?’ the girl asked. She felt uncomfortable, he was staring at her so coldly, his eyes hard and unreadable. ‘What are you looking at?’ she cried when he didn’t answer.

  ‘Not much.’

  Matthew swung his legs out of the bed and went to the wash basin, pouring water into the bowl. He washed himself carefully and she watched, knowing he was trying to wash away all traces of their coupling. She got out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, feeling the need to cover herself. She was humiliated, ang
ry.

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, Harry,’ she said.

  ‘I can say what I like, damn you!’ he replied. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice you weren’t exactly pleased to see me.’

  He dressed quickly, pulling on his clothes roughly, using a comb he took from his breast pocket. Then he went to the door, not bothering to look at her where she stood at the foot of the bed, face red with impotent anger.

  ‘Don’t forget my money,’ she shouted at him as he opened the door.

  ‘There’s your money,’ he snapped, pulling a note out of his pocket, one of those he had drawn not half an hour ago on his mother’s cheque. He threw it at her and it fell on the floor.

  Slamming the door behind him, he ran down the stairs and into the fresh air. Even the smell of fish on the quay was welcome to him after the atmosphere of the room he had just left. Pushing his way through the early holidaymakers, he found his car and drove back to the Hall. His father was just coming out of the door of his study.

  ‘You’re back, then,’ he said. ‘Come in here, my lad, I want to talk to you.’

  Matthew lifted his eyes to the ornate ceiling in a long-suffering glance but behind his father’s back. He followed the older man into the study and flung himself down in a leather armchair. Havelock went behind his desk and father and son glared at one another, and never was the similarity between them more startling. The same cold eyes, the same thin line of the lips, the same set to their jaws. Even the way they held their heads was similar though Matthew lounged in his chair, one leg slung over the arm, while Havelock sat straight as a ramrod in his swivel chair.

  ‘I won’t tolerate your insolence any more,’ he started. His voice swiftly rose in anger. ‘Sit up straight in that chair when I’m talking to you!’ he bellowed and, surprising himself, Matthew did just that.

  ‘Steady on, Father,’ he said, and tried an amused smile which Havelock totally ignored.

  ‘You will smile on the other side of your face if you don’t mend your ways!’