The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  The light was falling by the time the bus drew into the stop on the main road. This one did not go into Smuggler’s Cove and she had to walk down the narrow side road to Overmans Terrace. She walked in a haze of misery. The day which had started out so well had turned into a nightmare. She slipped in something soft and disgusting and righted herself only at the cost of the oranges jumping out of her basket once again. She scrambled after them, just making them out in the gloom, feeling like yelling out her anger and frustration at the sky. The lights of the pit yard twinkled on one side. She was nearly back at any rate. Wiping her shoe on the grass, she hurried on to Overmans Terrace. Hoss Muck Terrace, the children called it. Hetty smiled wryly.

  Chapter 18

  ‘Hetty, I want you to meet my future wife,’ said Mr Hutchins. The woman with him stepped forward – a large, plump woman with middling brown hair and a fair, freckled skin and horn-rimmed glasses. Her eyes were light brown, almost green, and looked unnaturally large behind the thick glasses.

  ‘Anne Appleby, soon to be Anne Hutchins,’ said her employer. ‘Next week in fact, Saturday, in the Methodist church in Saltburn. Two o’clock.’

  Hetty suddenly realised her mouth had dropped open in surprise. She closed it as she got to her feet and took the woman’s outstretched hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she murmured automatically, though her head was in a whirl.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you too,’ said Anne Appleby, giving her a keen glance. ‘John has told me all about you. I’m sure we’re very grateful to you for looking after the little ones when they had the measles.’ She looked round the kitchen: at the gleaming range, the brass rail twinkling above it, the highly polished press and crisply clean curtains at the window, and nodded. Hetty had the feeling that she had missed nothing at all, especially not the mark on the mat which Peter had left when he came in for his dinner.

  Though it was mid-June and a warm day, the fire was burning in the grate as it was the only means of cooking and the back door was standing open to stop the room getting overheated. It was Sunday and the children were in Sunday School, giving Hetty a welcome break.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know … I mean, congratulations, I hope you will be very happy. Both of you.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ said Anne, ‘but thank you.’ She smiled at Mr Hutchins as though there could be no question but that they would be happy and he reddened slightly and smiled back.

  ‘I … we thought that it was best to be married quickly once we had made up our minds,’ said Mr Hutchins. ‘Best get on with it.’

  So they could save her wages, thought Hetty, panic-stricken. What was she going to do? She remembered the half-written letter on the table and picked it up quickly, slipping it into the pocket of her apron. She could go home, she thought. Oh yes, she could go home now. She had been answering a letter from her father, which was in turn a reply to her own letter telling him where she was. Her father wanted her to go home and, what was more, insisted her mother wanted it too. A warm feeling began to replace the mild panic which Mr Hutchins’s announcement had brought.

  ‘Of course, we will give you proper notice,’ said Anne. ‘A week, isn’t it? That will just work in nicely for us all.’

  ‘A week?’

  Mr Hutchins intervened. ‘Of course, if you have nowhere to go, you—’

  ‘Don’t be silly, John. Of course Hetty will have somewhere she can go. You have, haven’t you, Hetty?’ Anne sounded quite sharp.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I will go to see my family. They’ll be delighted to have me.’

  Anne nodded and smiled. Everything was working out as she wished. Hetty felt a desperate need to get away, to be on her own for a spell. She needed time to take in the sudden change in her position. She was losing control over her life once again and the thought frightened her.

  ‘I think I’ll just take a walk now you’re here,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mr Hutchins replied. ‘Fresh air will do you good, you look a bit peaky.’ He was patently relieved that all had gone well.

  Hetty walked to the cliff path, climbed to the top and gazed out to sea. Though she could go home, there was still the fact that she had to earn a living one way or another. And there was Charlie, little Charlie, so alone in spite of his brother and sister. She suspected he would be a loner all his life. Yet he had taken to her, even today had wanted to stay with her rather than go off with Peter. Now she had to leave him. She could weep for him.

  She wasn’t sorry to be getting away from Matthew, though. He was still there most days, parked close to the house for at least a couple of hours. Even the neighbours had stopped commenting on it now. She had developed a policy of never looking up the road to where he might be whenever she went out of the house. They seemed to have come to some sort of truce since that day on the moors above Guisborough. He no longer tried to force her to do anything, simply sat in his car. On the rare occasions she did look directly at him, he gazed back without expression. He wouldn’t be able to do it in Morton Main, her da and Frank wouldn’t stand for it. That was one good thing about the situation for the feeling of being watched all the time was sometimes unbearable.

  Hetty sighed. She had better get back, it was almost teatime and the children would be home from Sunday School. This was the last time she would think that, she thought sadly, and a picture of Anne Appleby came to mind. There was something cold about her eyes behind those thick glasses. Poor bairns. She hoped Anne wasn’t at all like the storybook idea of a stepmother.

  Mrs Timms was at her door when Mr Hutchins was setting Anne Appleby to the bus stop for her journey back to Saltburn that evening, and of course had to be introduced. Next morning, as she and Hetty were hanging out washing in the narrow gardens, she was forthright about the change coming to her neighbour.

  ‘Mark my words, she’s a hard one, that,’ she said, mumbling through the pegs held in her mouth as she struggled with a sheet in the wind. She managed to peg the sheet out and stuck a prop in the line to lift it higher, stepping back as it flapped noisily. She took the remaining peg out of her mouth. ‘It’s Charlie I feel sorry for.’

  Hetty couldn’t speak. She picked up the washing basket and fled indoors where she cried bitterly over the washing machine, tears mingling with the suds as she pushed the handle forward and back, forward and back. Her own back ached and she stood up straight and rubbed it with both hands. Then she dried her eyes with the kitchen towel and got on, trying to think of nothing except her work. The children would be in for their dinner shortly, she needed to get the piles of washing off the table in order to lay it for the meal.

  There was a letter from her father in the eleven o’clock post.

  ‘… Of course you must come home, lass,’ he wrote, and she could almost hear his voice as she read the words. ‘Mind, I must warn you, there are some rumours in the place about you and why you had to leave Fortune Hall. Sally Dunn has been home and I reckon she’s been spreading a bit of poison, God forgive her. But I said to your mam, we’ll wait and hear what Hetty has to say for herself.’

  But the best thing was, there was a note on the end of his letter from Mam. ‘Just a line,’ she’d written. She always put that on every letter she ever penned, thought Hetty, smiling to herself. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you, pet. Until next Saturday then, we’re all that excited.’ And best of all, she had signed it ‘Love, Mam’.

  Mam had finally forgiven her for Cissy’s death. Hetty was overwhelmed with happiness. What a morning it had been for emotions! This was the second time she had been in tears only this time it was different. Oh, Mam! Hetty attacked her work with renewed vigour, even singing under her breath as she brought in the washing basket after the last of the washing and laid the table for dinner. Then she went to look for Charlie. Where was he? It wasn’t like him to disappear like this.

  Charlie was sitting in Matthew’s car, pretending to drive. Anger swept through Hetty when she saw the boy, with
Matthew next to him, grinning.

  ‘Come out of there, Charlie,’ she called as she hurried up to the car. She didn’t look at Matthew. ‘Come on, get out. Your dinner’s ready. You should never get in anyone’s car!’

  Charlie, crestfallen, let go of the steering wheel and climbed out of the car. ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong,’ he said, his bottom lip jutting. ‘I was only playing, I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I can’t make it go, I can’t reach the pedals.’

  ‘Hello, Hetty,’ Matthew put in. ‘I thought that might change your mind about ignoring me.’

  Hetty took hold of Charlie’s hand. ‘No, I know,’ she said. ‘But don’t do it again, will you? Look, I’m not cross. Go on now, Peter and Audrey will be home in a minute.’

  Charlie ran off down the road and Hetty turned to Matthew. ‘You can sit there as often as you like, you can stay as long as you like, I don’t care. But don’t you touch Charlie or any of the bairns, do you hear me?’

  ‘Dear me, in a temper, are we?’ Matthew laughed. Hetty turned on her heel and walked away. After a minute or two, Matthew started the car and turned it round in the entrance to the pit, going off towards the main road.

  ‘Did you talk to the man, Charlie?’ Hetty asked when she got back to the house. ‘What did you say?’

  Charlie considered. ‘I said that it was a nice car and he said: would you like to sit in it? That’s all.’

  ‘You’re sure that was all you said?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Then he let me sit in his seat and play with the steering wheel. When I grow up, I’ll have a car like that.’

  Hetty was relieved. At least Charlie hadn’t told Matthew she was going away. Let him find out for himself, then if he couldn’t find her he might give up pestering her all the time.

  Hetty sat on the end of the pew in Saltburn Methodist Church, Peter and Charlie beside her, dressed in their Sunday suits with white shirts and bow ties. They were very quiet, looking around them at the rows of empty pews on their side and the ones on the other side of the church filled with men in suits and women in flowery dresses and smart hats. In the pew in front sat Mr Hutchins, his hair slicked back from his forehead with pomade. The smell of the pomade rose above even the scent of the roses on the altar.

  Hetty’s box was at the railway station, only fifty yards from the church. Her sadness at leaving the children was tempered by excitement for she was going home as soon as the service was over.

  ‘You will be able to sit with the children during the service, won’t you?’ Anne Appleby had asked. ‘I mean, in the church. I know you will be anxious to get home or I would invite you to the reception.’

  ‘Oh, surely she can come to the reception, dear?’ Mr Hutchins had said.

  Anne shook her head at him. ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ she had replied. ‘Of course Hetty would rather be on her way as soon as the service is over. In any case, I have booked only for the immediate family.’

  Hetty had assured them she would make up sandwiches, and would rather be on her way.

  ‘There’s a train at twelve o’clock,’ said Anne. ‘I looked it up.’

  The clock in the church said eleven o’clock now and right on cue the organ began to play the ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and Anne came down the aisle on her father’s arm, followed closely by an anxious-looking Audrey, dressed in pink artificial silk with layers of frills on the skirt. She had artificial pink carnations fastened to her hairband and Hetty felt for her. Pink was definitely not the colour for the little girl, it made her look sallow-faced. But Anne had insisted on pink. She herself wore a cream suit with a blue chiffon scarf and blue hat.

  The congregation was standing and Hetty hurriedly got to her feet and motioned to the boys to do the same. Charlie was white and looked as though he might be sick. Hetty prayed that he wouldn’t.

  ‘It would be best if you just slipped away, Hetty,’ Anne had said earlier. ‘Better for the children. I don’t want tears, not on my wedding day.’

  Hetty hadn’t argued, she knew it would do no good. Anne was a very forceful woman. She hoped Mr Hutchins knew what he was about.

  As the service began her thoughts wandered to Matthew. She thought, she hoped, she had succeeded in fooling him, bringing her box in on the bus the evening before after he had gone and leaving it at the left luggage office. She looked up at the ceiling as the minister intoned the wedding service. Please God, she prayed, please don’t let him come after me. Dear God, how did you let me get into this mess?

  The congregation was standing again, the organist playing ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’, Charlie was holding his hymn book out to her so she would find the number for him.

  ‘Hetty?’ he asked. His eyelashes were damp as though he was holding in tears but he didn’t actually cry.

  ‘Are you all right, pet?’ she asked him and he nodded. Oh, poor Charlie. She vowed there and then she would keep in touch with him no matter what.

  The service was over, now was the time for her to slip out while the bride and groom were in the vestry signing the register.

  ‘Sit still, boys,’ she whispered. ‘I have to see to something.’ Peter looked solemnly at her and nodded. Hetty pressed Charlie’s hand, not daring to kiss him in case he realised she was not coming back. Then she slipped out of the church.

  The journey up to Darlington passed in a blur of tears. Every few minutes she was trying to guess what Charlie was doing now, how he was behaving, how he was feeling. For she was well aware that his new mother would stand for no ‘bad behaviour’, or even questions. And Audrey, Hetty prayed she would not make a scene either. Especially not in front of her new stepmother’s relations or Anne would make her pay for it later when they got home. For the family was going back to Smuggler’s Cove that afternoon, straight after the wedding breakfast. Mr Hutchins had not taken any time away from his work, neither he nor Anne deeming it necessary.

  At Darlington Hetty dried her eyes before getting off the train. Then she went into the rest room and splashed her face with cold water. She stared at herself in the fly-spotted mirror, feeling calmer. It was no good weeping over the children, she told herself sternly. She couldn’t help what had happened. Though she knew that Anne had no real regard for them, surely Mr Hutchins would not allow her to hurt them? No, of course not. He would see they were treated decently.

  With this cheering thought Hetty boarded the train for Bishop Auckland. Though it was Saturday afternoon, the compartment was almost empty but for a young girl with a laden shopping basket who, after smiling shyly at Hetty, sat in a corner and buried her head in a copy of Woman’s Weekly. Of course, Hetty reminded herself, most of the shoppers came in and out by bus these days.

  Feeling suddenly hungry, she brought out the packet of sandwiches which she had made up in Smuggler’s Cove and forgotten all about on the Saltburn train. By the time she had munched her way through them and drunk the small bottle of ginger beer she had put in the bag with them, the train was already drawing into Shildon station. The girl got out and walked up the incline to the road. Hetty thought she herself could have got off the train and walked the two miles to Morton Main, it would have saved her half an hour. But the nearer she drew to Morton, the more nervous she became. Nervous and excited. Anxious to get there yet dreading her arrival.

  The train entered Shildon tunnel and the lights flickered on and then suddenly they were out in the daylight again and almost before she knew it were steaming into the station.

  ‘Bishop Auckland! Bishop Auckland!’ shouted a porter and a great lump settled in her throat for there, on the platform, were her da and her gran. And though at first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, there were her mother and Frank too.

  Chapter 19

  ‘You’re not going back to Yorkshire, then?’

  The family were walking down Newgate Street to the stop where the bus came in for Morton Main. The late-afternoon sun cast the street into areas of light and shadow and struck a prism from the cloc
k on top of the Wesleyan Church tower. The familiar street, said to have first been built by the Romans and straight as a die, stretched out before them in a gentle slope down to the market place at the other end. Hetty’s heart was full as she gazed down the length of it: the same Wilkinson’s department store where her mother bought the materials for her sewing, the same Holden’s with the windows full of toys. How she and Cissy had loved to gaze into them!

  ‘Hetty? What’s the matter? You’ve not gone off in a dream, have you? By, as I remember you were always doing that, lived more in dreams than you did in life.’ Frank looked down at her as they walked along the sunny side of the street. Her box was on his shoulder and he carried it as though it was as light as a feather.

  ‘Our Hetty always was one for going off into a dream, all right,’ said Da from behind where he was walking with Mam on one side and Gran on the other. Hetty joined in the general laughter.

  ‘Eeh, I’m sorry, Frank, what did you say?’

  ‘I asked if you were going back to Smuggler’s Cove?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. Now Mr Hutchins is married they don’t need me,’ she replied and a cloud of worry dimmed her happiness for a moment. By, she hoped the bairns didn’t need her either, she thought. Charlie and Audrey at least.

  The bus for Morton Main was standing there and they all piled in, to curious glances from the other passengers. For a second or two Hetty quailed, thinking that she saw Mrs James near the back, but she was mistaken.

  They settled in the rear seat so that they could talk easily together, though Maggie was quiet. Hetty gazed at her, wondering if after all Mam was still going to be reserved with her, though her kiss on the station platform had been warm enough. But Maggie smiled lovingly back and Hetty’s heart lifted.

  ‘Mind, you’ll see a lot of changes, our Hetty,’ said Gran, nodding her head to emphasise her words. She was a little more bent with her arthritis than she had been and the whole family kept their pace down to hers.