The Observations

by Jane Harris

  ‘Well,’ says the missus when she looked at it. ‘That is better. But it still wants further elaboration and detail.’

  So I says in jest Oh should I have elaborated what was in the pisspot, marm? (And then I could have kicked myself, for dear sake it was not the kind of pleasantry fit for a lady.) The missus just gives me a look and says no, but this account doesn’t speak to me. I tellt her that I was truly sorry but I didn’t know what else to write about. And she sighed and tellt me that the next day it would please her greatly if when I wrote in the little book I wasn’t just to write what I did, the chores and all, I was to write down how I felt about what I did and what thoughts went through my head as I did it.

  Jesus Murphy I thought to myself what possible interest could that be to any man jack and I may have said as much except not in those exact words and then the missus says if you do it I will give you another shilling so I thought well gob if it made her happy.

  But I am being too pert. To tell the truth I did not care a ducks beak for the extra shilling. I just wanted to please my missus.

  3

  Friday

  got up on time i was glad not to be late fire would not take i was happy when it did porridge too salty i was disappointed fed hens with missus fed pig on my own i like the hens but not sure about pig ripped a hole in my apron on the fence i was not at all pleased about that swep and dusted rooms and got dinner potatoes burnt but i was hungry and ate every pick missus showed me how to clean silver i was pleased then she showed me the garden vegetables i was interested and where the sheep got in to eat them last year i was shocked then i carted about a ton of manure across yard i was highly delighted when that was done while working i was thinking about my mother if only she was still alive and doing her good works especially with the poor men down on their luck just a smile from her and a kind word as she passed by on her way to worship brightened their day she was truly an angel sent from heaven

  4

  What I Did Not Write

  THAT WAS WHAT I wrote in the book. But that wasn’t all what happened on the Friday, not by a long chalk. For instance when I went into the kitchen that morning the missus was already up, it seemed like she had been waiting on me for as I walked in she jumped to her feet.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ she says, very excited.

  Her face was pale and there was shadows under her eyes, she had the look of someone that had not slept overmuch. I give her good morning and went to light the fire but as I passed her by she reached out and gripped my arm.

  ‘Let the fire wait,’ she says. ‘There’s something I want to do first.’

  She released my arm then stood aside and gestured to a straight-back chair in the middle of the floor, she must have moved it there before I came down.

  ‘Sit,’ she says.

  When I had done as bid she started walking to and fro in front of me her hands clasped behind her. She had on a lovely charcoal coloured silk frock, the skirts whispered to me as she moved back and forth, the cut of the cloth showed off her slender frame. A real Aphrodite she was, only with arms. After a moment or two she stopped pacing and looked at me, straight in the face.

  ‘Now Bessy,’ she says very stern. ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Marm?’ I says. ‘In what sense?’

  She hesitated, then she says, more kindly, ‘I mean—do you think I would do you any harm?’

  ‘No marm,’ I says and was surprised to realise I meant it.

  ‘So you do trust me,’ she says.

  ‘Well yes,’ I says.

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Now—be a good girl and close your eyes.’

  ‘What—what for, marm?’

  ‘Do you trust me, Bessy?’

  ‘Yes, marm.’

  ‘Then close your eyes.’

  I closed them.

  She walked about me a bit more like a big whisper and then she stopped nearby, somewhere to my left. I waited, not knowing what to expect. I ½ imagined that I might all of a sudden feel her touch somewhere, a stroke on the cheek maybe, her breath on my face or her fingers in my hair but she kept her distance and after a moment of silence she announced very loud in the flat voice, ‘Stand!’

  I got to my feet then waited to be told where to go but all she says, again in the flat voice was, ‘Sit!’ So I sat down and—thinking I had disappointed her in some way, began to open my eyes.

  ‘Keep them shut!’ she says quickly. And then she says again, ‘Stand!’ in the flat voice. And so I did. And then she says again, ‘Sit!’

  What she was up to I hadn’t an inkling. She just kept on in the flat voice, Stand! Sit! Stand! Sit! I was up and down like a drabs drawers until about the 5th time of asking I could not bear any more to be told what to do whereupon I opened my eyes and says a bit sharp, ‘Please missus I’m not going to do this any more so don’t make me please.’

  She was gazing at me, her eyes glazed over, she looked for all the world like she was in a Trance but when I spoke she nodded and muttered to herself, it sounded like, ‘Of course. Of course she would.’ Then she blinked and says out loud, ‘Well done, Bessy. You may light the fire.’

  Then off she goes, sailing out the room without a backward glance.

  About ½ way through the morning a letter come for her. I had my ears pricked up for the postman partly because it would have been just nice to see another face but also on account of what he might be bringing, if indeed the missus had wrote to Crown House for my character, I was worried about the possibility of a reply.

  This particular postman must have been the human equivalent of a badger for you never saw hide nor hair of him, only found his droppings on the mat, and this day was no exception. He was supposed to blow his horn to let you know he was on his way but despite the fact that I had my ears and eyes peeled and could have swore that nobody come up the drive there—like magic!—was the letter on the floor one time as I was passing through the hall. The heart went sideways in me for I thought it might be from Glasgow but on closer examination I seen that it was postmarked London so all was well. I thought it might be from the missus husband.

  She had been closeted away in her room all morning and I was glad of an excuse to visit her so I took the letter upstairs immediately. I knocked the door and when I entered she was sat at her desk, she had a pen in her hand but oddly I could see no writing paper anywhere.

  ‘This came for you, marm,’ I says and give her the envelope.

  She glanced at the handwriting on the front.

  ‘It’s from London,’ I says.

  She smiled. ‘Yes, I see that.’

  I waited for her to open it but she just put it on the desk and turned back to me expectantly. Up until that moment I didn’t realise I had anything to say to her but then I blurted out, ‘Marm, about this morning,’ I says. ‘I wanted to apologise.’

  ‘Apologise? What for?’

  ‘Marm for not doing what you wanted me to do. Stand up and sit down and all this. I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to do it. And I’m sorry.’

  She shook her head. ‘No matter, Bessy,’ she says. ‘You did very well.’

  ‘Did I marm? Did I really?’

  ‘Yes you did.’

  ‘Do you want to try it again, missus—marm? That’s to say—I don’t mind, we could do it again now if you want. Downstairs—or here?’

  ‘Perhaps not just this minute, Bessy,’ she says. ‘Perhaps on some other day.’

  ‘You sure now, marm?’

  ‘Yes, I think I’ll read my letter now.’

  ‘Oh certainly, go right ahead.’ I waited for her to open it but she just sat there and smiled hard at me until I realised that of course she was expecting me to withdraw.

  I left her to it, closing the door quietly behind me. I don’t know what made me linger there on the landing. I expected to hear her slicing open the envelope but instead what I heard was a key turning in a lock and a drawer sliding open and shut, then there was a faint ‘clink’ I couldn’t place and finally
once again silence, so that I had to walk away on the very tips of my toes, and grab onto the wall for balance.

  An hour later when I called her downstairs to eat I seen straight away that she had been crying. Her nose was red and her eyes was all swoll up and watery. Bless her she was putting a brave face on it, whatever it was, and I didn’t want to pry so I kept my mouth shut until after we had ate. And then I says, very gentle, ‘Forgive me asking marm but—did you have bad news?’

  All at once, her eyes welled up. I’m afraid my imagination ran riot and I jumped to the worst and most Romantic conclusion.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, marm?’ I says, ‘Is it blackmail?’

  That kind of thing was always happening in The Peoples Journal.

  The missus looked at me askance. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says. And then she stood up. ‘It’s nothing. I’m fine. Now, it’s time you got on with your work.’

  And with those words she marched out the room. At the time I thought it was something in her letter had upset her but looking back on it now, I’m not so sure.

  By the evening, missus seemed to have recovered her composure. After I had cleared the table she tellt me to make Fridays entry in my book and then asked to see it straight away. I stood there very anxious while she read it over but she smiled when she finished and said it was a great improvement. Most of all she seemed to like the part about my mother and her good works which for dear sake was the bit I had invented! on account of I had forgot to remember what I was thinking about whilst I was working so I just made up the first thing that came into my head.

  ‘This part about your mother,’ says missus. ‘Write more like this.’

  ‘I’ll do that marm,’ I says, thinking well for dear sake if she can’t tell the difference that’s easy enough, I’ll just make things up all the time.

  Then she went and fetched a piece of paper she had wrote on herself. She laid it on the table beside my open book and said, ‘Now Bessy, you spell very well but let’s just have a look at these.’ So the two of us stood there looking down at her writing and mine. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for, but I looked all the same. Her piece of paper was the first page of a letter she’d wrote to her father in the village of Wimbledon England. Hoo-rah! I thought to myself, secretly delighted to have the opportunity to read something private of hers but the first paragraph was only about the weather and then she started in about some book she had been reading dear gob it looked a very dull letter indeed with nothing very revealing at all but perhaps that was why she had chose it.

  After a minute she turned to me and smiled.

  ‘You see?’ she says.

  I thought about lying but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t have done me much good. So I said no, I didn’t see. Missus kept smiling.

  She says, ‘What is the difference between this piece of writing and that one?’

  I says, ‘This one is a letter to your father and that one is my book you give me.’ A stupid answer I know but I was flustered and perhaps a bit cross for I hated to be put on the spot and made to look daft.

  ‘Any other difference?’ says the missus, still smiling.

  I looked again. She leaned in and says quietly, ‘Look at the spaces between the words.’

  It was a clue. Well I looked hard at her ‘Dear Father’. There was a space between the two words right enough. Then I looked at my ‘got up’. There was a space there too. But the two spaces seemed much the same to me and one space plus another space is just a bigger space no matter how long you look at it.

  The missus sighed and pointed at her page putting her finger next all the full stops. Then she pointed at mine. Not a full stop in sight. Then she showed me all the commas in her letter. And then she put her finger in my book. Not even a sniff of a comma there.

  ‘I am very pleased that you are writing at greater length, Bessy,’ she says. ‘But do you see how what you have written is all one sentence from the top of the page to the bottom. You write as you speak without pausing for breath. Have you never heard of punctuation?’

  Well I tellt her I knew all about punctuation it was just I was never sure where the flip I was supposed to put it.

  That was when the missus decided she would be responsible for my education. She got quite excited about the notion, she sat me down and tellt me that when she was young she had it in mind to tread the streets of London town to gather up all the little ragamuffins who couldn’t read and write and take them home to Wimbledon to teach them their ABC. I don’t suppose her father would have been pleased about that, dirty wee beggars sitting on his chairs and mucking up his Turkey carpets but as it happened the furnishings was saved.

  ‘In the end, Bessy,’ she tells me. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  She was smiling still but she wore a little frown and there was no mistaking the sadness that had crept in behind her eyes, she had fell once again into Melancholia.

  ‘Why was that, marm?’ I says very quiet. ‘What happened?’

  Now I was only chancing my arm, thinking she would more than likely change the subject or walk out like she’d done earlier. So you could have knocked me down with a feather when she leaned towards me, took my hand in hers and looked me deep in the eyes.

  ‘Not many people know this, Bessy,’ she says very earnest. ‘Can I rely on you not to tell a soul?’

  Well flip me I could have cheered. To be took into her confidence! But instead I pursed my lips put my head on one side and made my face very reliable. You could not have found a more reliable person in the whole of Scratchland. I was reliability itself.

  ‘Indeed you can, marm,’ I says. ‘I would take it to my grave whatever it is.’>

  She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I believe you would.’

  And then she told me her story.

  Of course I didn’t write it down because it was tellt to me in confidence. And although as far as I knew she and I were the only ones to look in my book I was very aware of what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands. The missus wouldn’t want her private business bandied about by the likes of Biscuit Meek or AP Henderson, the scuts, and neither would I, that was why I was always very careful what I wrote in there.

  However.

  Several years have passed since. I have thought long and hard about it and decided to write a brief version of what she told me here since it may be of use and I have been assured that this document is only for the PRIVATE perusal of one or two gentlemen.

  This is what the missus said. Sure she herself hadn’t known the first thing about cows either when she originally came to Scratchland, a young girl only a few years older than I was then, all the way up from London with her new husband, that is my master James as was. He had went down to that Great English City to spend a few weeks seeing the lions and attending concert parties, Promenades, Conversaziones and the like. Reading between the lines (not the lions) he was there to find a wife. And find one he did, in the delectable form of missus age 19. He tellt her he had trained in the law but that he did not practise any more what he done instead was dabble in a number of business interests he had inherited. After a few weeks courting he went down on his one knee in Wimbledon. ‘Castle Haivers is yours, my dearie,’ he’d said and that’s what he tellt her father too though I don’t expect he called him dearie and off they set after the wedding the new bride next her wealthy husband, her cheeks flushed and attar of roses in her hair, ready to greet the staff at her grand new home.

  What master James neglected to mention, of course, was that Castle Haivers was just the name of the estate. Right enough, he had a queer few hundred acres and some tenant farmer buckos and he did not otherwise lack in wealth and business interests, but there was not a castle in sight only dirt land none of it too pretty and a crumbling old mansion and the Mains. Missus tellt me that on her first night in Castle Haivers she cried until she couldn’t see out her eyes.

  At that the both of us had a little weep thegether about her misfortune. Then she wiped he
r cheeks and wiped mine. I asked her why she hadn’t ran away and she said Oh she had, the very day after they arrived. While master James was out talking to his foreman, she packed a little bag, ran down the road, got a ride on a cart, then jumped on the first train to London and threw herself on her fathers mercy back in Wimbledon which thinking about it now was a very brave thing for her to do.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked her.

  She says everything was grand at first, her father said ‘there there’ and of course she didn’t have to go back. But then he asked her about the nuptials.

  ‘What about them, missus?’ I says.

  ‘Whether they had taken place,’ she says and looked crestfallen. From which I gathered that they had and that she’d been daft enough to tell her father as much. Well my missus was back on the road north before her feet could touch the ground with her ears still ringing and her poor wee titties didn’t stop bouncing till she was right back at Castle Haivers, missus didn’t say that last bit, I did.

  ‘And so you see I never did get to help the little ragamuffins,’ she says.

  ‘Och dear,’ I says. ‘Sure that’s a terrible shame.’

  My heart went out to her. In the back of my mind I was also thinking to myself that there’s beggar children all over the place not just London and she could always have helped the ones in Glasgow or even them that passed through Snatter but I didn’t want to spoil the moment when we was so cosy and she was telling me her secrets and all. By Jove I could have sat there holding her hand all night, it was lovely, more like being mother and daughter or very best friends than mistress and maid. A thought occurred to me now that we was so friendly, about that burnt accompt book I’d seen the day I arrived.

  ‘Marm,’ I says. ‘Who is Morag?’