The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  Hetty looked at the clock. She had heard Sylvia go out to bring Penny from school. In only a few minutes they would be back.

  ‘Go now, Richard,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise you anything, not now, I have to think. Please go.’ She almost said: Before Penny comes in, but bit back the words. Panic was rising in her. She wasn’t ready for Penny to meet him, she was not.

  Richard got to his feet. ‘I’ll come back. When, though? How long do you think it will take for you to make up your mind?’

  ‘How do I know?’ Hetty took hold of his arm and urged him towards the door. ‘I have asked you. Please, will you go?’

  ‘Tell me when?’ he insisted.

  ‘Next week … yes, next week. In the morning, though.’ She couldn’t afford to have him meet Penny. ‘No, I’ll come to you. To Fortune Hall.’

  Richard was surprised. ‘Are you sure? I can fetch you—’

  ‘I can drive myself!’

  He stared at her face. At last he was beginning to understand her agitation. ‘All right, I’m off. Penny will be in soon, will she? I won’t try to see her.’ They hurried down the stairs and he opened the front door, turning on the step.

  ‘Saturday, then? Is that all right? Come for tea.’

  ‘Yes, I will. All right. Goodbye, Richard.’ She heaved a sigh of relief as he got into his car and drove off, only seconds before Sylvia and Penny turned into the street.

  Chapter 34

  Hetty slept little that night. She rose in the morning, unrefreshed and with a nagging headache, and still had not made up her mind what she was going to do. She sat with Penny and Sylvia, drinking cup after cup of tea and playing with her scrambled eggs, moving them around the plate with her fork.

  ‘Eat your eggs, Mammy,’ Penny said in the exact tone Hetty used on her on many a morning. ‘Remember the starving children in China.’

  In spite of herself, Hetty had trouble holding back a grin.

  ‘Eat your own breakfast, Penny, or you’ll be late for school,’ said Sylvia, but she cast a concerned glance at Hetty. ‘Are you all right, Hetty?’ she asked quietly.

  She nodded. ‘Just a bad night,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m finished, Nanny,’ Penny interjected. ‘May I get down now? I don’t like being late for school. We have to stand in the hall for fifteen minutes if we’re late.’

  ‘But you haven’t had to, you’re never late,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘No, but that’s why,’ Penny replied, proving something about the school’s disciplinary methods, thought Hetty, she wasn’t sure what.

  After they had gone, Hetty sat on, pouring yet another cup of tea. She remembered her own mother’s comments when she felt her only grandchild had been kept from her. No doubt Elizabeth felt the same. But still, Penny was almost six years old now. If Hetty took her to see Elizabeth she would have to explain, tell her something about her origins at least. And it would have to be the truth as far as the child could understand it.

  On the other hand, Hetty’s first instinct was to keep away from Richard and his mother; she had had enough unhappiness to last her a lifetime in that quarter. There was Richard too. For a short time Hetty had thought he had sought her out because he wanted to see her; for a wild moment she had thought he had realised he loved her. Wishful thinking, that had been! Hetty smiled wryly. She had acted like a silly schoolgirl, blushing, showing her confusion. Oh, but she was confused all right.

  There was work to do, she reminded herself. Today she was going to Whitby to inspect the new decorations of the extension she had had built on to the hotel there. It was a sun lounge, light and airy, with huge windows looking over the harbour and the wide sea beyond. A place for visitors to sit on the days when the sea fret swept in from the North Sea, and also a place which caught the sunshine and kept out the north wind in the spring. A place she hoped would extend the season for her. Behind the sun lounge, which opened directly into the reception hall, there was another door leading to new kitchens at the back of the hotel. She had to take Mr Jordan to see them for he had advised the architect on what he considered to be the ideal hotel kitchen.

  Mr Jordan was waiting for her as she drew up before Pearson’s Marine. Dressed in a smart pin-stripe suit, with his thinning grey hair brushed back from his face, he looked every inch the businessman, though a rather elderly businessman. But he was quite sprightly as he came down the steps and put his briefcase in the back seat before getting into the front beside Hetty.

  ‘Sorry if I’m a bit late,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right.’ He watched her as she put the car in gear and set off down the steep winding road to the shore and up the other side by Cat Nab, the Iron Age burial ground at the entrance to the ravine where Skelton beck ran down to the beach and spread over the sands in its journey to the sea. Hetty frowned. As always she was reminded of that terrible day when Matthew had the fight with the van driver and she had scrambled up the cliff path to get away from him.

  ‘What’s the matter, Hetty?’

  She jumped. It was almost as though he had read her thoughts. ‘Nothing, I was just thinking of something that happened years and years ago.’

  ‘There’s something else. Come on, you can tell me. You’ve not got in over your head with the deal for the new place? I do have some savings put by, you know, if you need more capital?’

  ‘No, no, nothing to do with the business,’ she assured him. ‘I didn’t get much sleep, that’s all.’

  ‘Then you must have had something on your mind. Come on, you can tell me, I might be able to help.’

  Hetty glanced at him, his kindly face bent towards her, his shrewd eyes reminding her that she couldn’t fool him that there was nothing wrong. Why not put the problem to him? He had some experience of life, and goodness knows she needed a friend to talk to. She was fond of him and there was no doubt that he had grown very fond of her and Penny, they were his family.

  They were out on the main road to Whitby now, past the turn-off to Staithes and heading towards Lythe. Hetty pulled the car on to the verge, bent her head over the wheel and poured out her troubles. Mr Jordan already knew some of her story. Now he listened quietly as she told him of Elizabeth Fortune and how she wanted to get to know Penny. She didn’t say too much about Richard, she didn’t have to, Mr Jordan could tell what he meant to her when she mentioned his name. Tears were threatening and he handed her the large white handkerchief which he had folded so carefully into the breast pocket of his suit that morning.

  So that was why she showed no interest in any of the young men who would have liked to get to know her better. In a way it was a relief to him. For a long time Mr Jordan had thought she was so scarred by her experience with Penny’s father that she could never love a man again. He thought of his own dead wife. They had not had a lot of time together and they had not been blessed with children, but they had been supremely happy for a short time and he wouldn’t want Hetty to go through life without having known such happiness.

  But this Richard Fortune, what was he really like? In truth, Hetty had not shown very good judgement in the past, not from what he understood about her at any rate. He looked out of the window at a field of standing corn, only just beginning to show signs of yellow amongst the green. Hetty dried her eyes, feeling silly. She should not have bothered him with her troubles, she reproached herself. It was evident he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with all this,’ she said, but Mr Jordan didn’t appear to hear; he was too intent on what he himself was going to say.

  ‘This Richard Fortune, I’m not sure if I know him. I seem to remember Havelock Fortune. Years ago he sometimes came into the restaurant when it was still the George.’

  ‘Oh, Richard’s completely different from his father,’ Hetty assured him. In spite of herself she couldn’t help a warmer tone creeping into her voice. ‘He was the only one who was nice to me when I first went to Fortune Hall. Of course, he was only a boy himself then and I was just fourte
en.’

  ‘Still, he can’t have had much about him if he let you go off and have the baby on your own. And where has he been all these years?’

  ‘Oh no, he did come to see me, but it was difficult … the circumstances, I was in someone else’s house …’ Her voice trailed off as she thought of Cliff House and its owner. Richard had thought she was taking up with Jeremy Painter. That had hurt.

  ‘You seem to be making excuses for him,’ said Mr Jordan.

  Hetty forgot about Jeremy as she tried to convince Mr Jordan as well as herself that Richard had done all he could. (Though why did he always think the worst of her?)

  ‘He has been in Africa since Penny was born,’ she said.

  ‘Africa? Whereabouts in Africa? Doing what? Surely he got home sometimes?’

  Hetty just looked at him, her dark eyes wide in her unhappy face, and he relented. She had said enough to convince him that she was in love with this Richard and he fervently hoped the man was worthy of her.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think it’s any good me advising you what to do. You’ll have to make up your own mind. I’m behind you whatever you decide, you know that, don’t you?’

  Hetty nodded and he put his arm around her and gave her a hug.

  ‘Come on, now,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to Whitby and see what’s been done to the hotel. I want to be back at the restaurant in good time this evening, I have a party of bigwigs coming out from Middlesbrough and they’ll want everything to be of the best. All on company expenses, of course.’

  Hetty started the car and pulled out on to the road. For all Mr Jordan had not offered any concrete advice, talking it over with him had helped her make up her mind. She would go to Fortune Hall, taking Penny. Saturday would be a good day, for Mr Hutchins had sent word that Charlie was not coming to Saltburn that day. Which was another little worry nagging at the back of her mind. The main one was how she was going to explain to a six year old why she was only just being introduced to yet another grandmother and uncle.

  Penny had only once asked why she didn’t have a father and that had been when she’d first started Sunday School.

  ‘You did have a daddy,’ Hetty had said. ‘But he died.’

  Penny’s face had cleared. ‘You mean he’s in heaven, Mam?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hetty had said, though an image of Matthew consorting with the angels was not one she could readily bring to mind.

  ‘He’s my Father in Heaven then, isn’t he, Mam?’

  The pit Hetty had dug for herself took some getting out of but in the end she succeeded in satisfying Penny.

  The news of her once more extended family was easier to give to her daughter than Hetty had anticipated. Penny listened gravely to what her mother had to say and nodded her head, though she had to be assured that it did not mean she would have to give up the relations at Morton Main. And, Hetty thanked her stars, she did not question why she was just being told; she was perhaps too young for that.

  It was with mixed feelings that Hetty drove over the top of the moor to Fortune Hall. They were invited for tea. Hetty had telephoned Elizabeth and been surprised at how firm and strong her voice had sounded; she remembered how tremulous it once had been.

  ‘Come about three o’clock,’ Elizabeth had said. ‘We will have a nice long talk.’

  What about? Hetty thought now as she halted and looked both ways at the crossroads with the main road to Whitby. She turned left and drove the few miles to where a small signpost indicated the road to Fortune Hall. Before long, the walls of the estate came into view and she followed them round to the main gates. Mr Oliver came out to open them for her, an older Mr Oliver but otherwise unchanged.

  ‘Now then, Hetty,’ he said, as though she had been gone days rather than years. But Joan Oliver came out of the cottage and hurried over to greet her with a big smile of welcome.

  ‘Hetty!’ she cried. ‘I’m so pleased to see you. You look so well, too.’

  ‘You look well yourself, Mrs Oliver,’ Hetty replied as she got out of the car and hugged the old woman.

  ‘Aye, we’re both tolerable. Now, who’s this you have with you?’ she asked, smiling at a grave-faced Penny.

  ‘I’m Penny Pearson,’ the girl replied for herself. She too had got out of the car and was standing close beside her mother. ‘Are you my grandmother?’

  ‘Bless you, love, no. I’m nobody’s grandmother, I’m sorry to say,’ replied the old woman.

  ‘Come on, Joan, let them get on. I said I’d send them straight up,’ urged Bill Oliver impatiently.

  ‘Maybe we’ll have time to talk later,’ his wife said to Hetty. ‘You know, I often wondered how you were doing. I missed you, Hetty.’

  She promised to call in if she had time and got back in the car. All she wanted was to get the coming interview over with and be away from this place, the scene of so much unhappiness for her. She had hardly slept the night before for thinking about it. They got back into the car and waved to the Olivers and Hetty went on up the drive to the wide gravelled circle before the main house.

  Penny’s eyes were wide as she stared at the great house. ‘Is this it, Mam?’ she whispered. ‘Is it a hotel? I didn’t know they lived in a hotel.’

  ‘It’s not a hotel, Penny. It’s just a house, there’s nothing to be frightened of. Come on, out you get.’

  ‘It’s not like Grandda’s house, is it, Mam?’

  Hetty thought about the tiny miner’s cottage in Morton Main then looked at the imposing frontage of Fortune Hall and laughed. Somehow Penny’s remark made her feel better though she didn’t know why. She felt like going round to the back door, the one which opened directly into the farmyard of the home farm, the way she always used to do when she was in service here. But the imposing front door was opening and it was not a servant but Richard who stood there. As she stared up at him he smiled and ran down the steps to greet them.

  ‘Hello, Hetty, I’m so glad you came,’ he said, taking her hand. His grip was firm and cool and she could still feel it when he turned to Penny. The child stood huddled into her mother’s skirt but when he bent to her and offered her his hand, she came out and put her tiny one in his.

  ‘This is Penny,’ said Hetty, and as if to emphasise that the child was hers alone, ‘Penny Pearson. Penny, this is Richard Fortune.’

  ‘Hello, Penny,’ he said. ‘I’m your Uncle Richard.’

  ‘Does this house belong to you?’ she asked. ‘It’s a lot bigger than our house and our house is a hotel.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Richard agreed. ‘I’ll show you round it later on, if you like. But now we have to go in and meet your grandmother.’

  The house was just the same, thought Hetty as she entered the hall. There was the same highly polished wooden floor which she had worked on so often in the early mornings before the family were up. At the rear there was the same narrow passage to one side leading to the green baize-covered door which led to the kitchen. Of course it’s the same, she told herself, how could it be different?

  Penny hung on to her hand as Richard led them into the drawing room and Hetty squeezed it gently for reassurance. Elizabeth Fortune had risen to her feet to welcome them. For all Hetty had been told she was so much improved, it was a shock to see her there, so changed, so normal. Her silver hair was dressed in becoming waves from a centre parting, much as the Duchess of Windsor wore hers. There were faint lines on her face but otherwise, Mrs Fortune was a beautiful woman, her eyes the same colour as Penny’s, the same colour as Richard’s. All this Hetty saw in the few seconds it took her to cross the room from the door and hold out her hand to Elizabeth.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you, Hetty,’ said her old mistress. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’ But her eyes were on Penny; she could hardly spare Hetty a glance at first. ‘And for bringing my granddaughter to see me,’ she added almost in a whisper, and for a moment her voice weakened with emotion and Hetty was reminded of the days Elizabeth was so ill with her ‘nerves’.


  Penny was quiet. When they sat down on the elegant satin-covered sofas which stood facing each other before the fireplace, sofas which were new since Hetty’s day, Penny stood close by her and stared at her grandmother.

  ‘Don’t stare so,’ Hetty whispered, and Penny blushed and looked away for a moment but her gaze soon returned to Elizabeth. There was an awkwardness about the two women now they were together; neither seemed to know what to say to each other at first and Richard jumped in to try to bridge it.

  ‘Would you like to come with me to see the farm, Penny?’ he asked. ‘There are horses and pigs and hens. Do you like horses?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘There are donkeys on the beach at home and sometimes they bring horses there and paddle them through the water. Mr Jordan says the water is good for their feet.’

  ‘The horses are from the riding stable. There’s a stable nearby,’ Hetty put in.

  ‘Well, there are the cows too, we could go to see them,’ said Richard.

  ‘Uncle Frank has whippets,’ said Penny. ‘He races them and wins a lot of money. And Grandda has pigeons, he’s got baby ones too. They have learned to fly now, though.’

  ‘Well, Frank doesn’t win a lot of money, Penny,’ said Hetty, going red with embarrassment. But Richard and his mother were smiling at the little girl.

  ‘Really?’ said Elizabeth. ‘How interesting.’

  ‘Have you any dogs?’ Penny asked her politely. She seemed to have found her tongue, thought Hetty, rather dreading what she might say next.

  ‘There are sheepdogs in the farmyard,’ Richard said. ‘And there’s a terrier too. Well, are you coming? Or are farm dogs not as good as racing whippets?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll come to see.’ Penny released Hetty’s hand for the first time and went with Richard to the door where she stopped and looked back at her mother. ‘You won’t go home without me, will you, Mam?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Hetty. ‘I’ll be here when you come back, of course I will.’