Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  Mrs Waterland approved of Eliza’s dressing in the pink tulle gown, but Eliza could never make anything out of a compliment from her mother, possibly for lack of practice, since they were expressed only rarely.

  She scrambled to upright from her curtsy, saying, ‘Well, I do not care for pink, Mama. It reminds me of a pig.’

  Mrs Waterland sighed. ‘Must my advice fall very completely on deaf ears, Eliza? I beg you not to launch a conversation so. No one wishes to hear swine mentioned in polite company.’ She shared an irked smile with me and straight away I presented her with my praise-seeking alternative to Eliza’s blunder. ‘Madam, if it pleases you, may I study your drawing?’

  The delicate forefinger that Mrs Waterland raised to her lips hinted at a demurral, before giving way to assent. ‘How very kind of you, Em.’

  ‘I am sure my interest will be amply repaid.’

  Eliza expanded her considerable eyebrows in my direction and I knew what she was thinking. Once when Lady Broome visited Sedge Court she brought with her a confection made by her French man-cook, a hard froth of pounded sugar all airy light in a paper coffin, and a pretty creamy colour. It was called a meringue. Eliza said that the meringue reminded her of me whenever I was in the proximity of her mother – so sugary it made her teeth hurt. True, I can be overly delightful around Mrs Waterland, but as I explained to Eliza, since I lack her entitlements, there is nothing for it but to render myself damnably adorable.

  Mrs Waterland said, ‘Can you guess the subject?’ Her design showed kinked lines that I took to be waves and fronds of seaweed and branches of coral. I identified it as the underneath of the sea.

  ‘You have hit it exactly. The design is meant for the mosaic in the summer house and I hope that you will help me with the application, my love. I shan’t be able to do it without your keen eye and nimble fingers.’

  As I sank into an acquiescing curtsey Mrs Waterland said, ‘You know, Em, you are growing into quite a beauty. Let us hope that those freckles will fade in time. I wager you could snare a husband of the first water, all things being equal.’ She laughed merrily, and I could not tell if she had made a joke or not.

  The object of our visit lay spread out on a low table in front of the couch: a tea equipage and a kettle of hot water positioned on a trivet above a spirit lamp. Eliza was to practise her service. The potential for disaster – the horribly fragile bowls, the simmering kettle, things balanced on top of other things – seemed great to me. I envy Eliza her obliviousness to such potential hazards. Far better to be knockabout and a whirligig at one’s ease than to be a slinking charmer, who must extort commendations night and day in order to survive. Mrs Waterland patted the couch next to her chair and invited us to sit down.

  Eliza said, ‘Mama, have you heard from Johnny? Will he soon be home? I am unbearably dying to see him! I do hope he will be here for my birthday.’

  ‘You shall be the first to know when I have word, my love. Now let us rehearse the tea. When we have next the pleasure of Lady Broome’s company I should like you to make a good impression, if that is not too dizzy an ambition.’

  Eliza gave no sign of noticing her mother’s sarcasm, but she did eye the tea service with a certain amount of wariness. Mrs Waterland commenced then to speak in low, sweet tones of warming and steeping, while the tall Delft flower stands on either side of the fireplace looked down on us like a couple of corpulent fops. Their midsections were studded with pockets sufficient to hold an entire garden’s worth of blooms.

  A knock came at the door and Rorke was admitted with a letter. He carried it in on a salver, which he gripped like a man at the reins of a mettlesome horse. Mrs Waterland rose to standing and her chin went up as Rorke approached with his large head and beaky nose thrust forward and bendy legs lagging behind. He looked like the outline of a question mark. After offering the salver to the mistress with stiff arms, he delivered a departing bow with the air of an individual who had done us a favour.

  Mrs Waterland invited Eliza to pour the tea and then turned away to a window that overlooked the garden. From my seat I watched her reflection in the glare of one of the looking glasses as she unsealed the letter. Even the offensive clang of teaspoons which accompanied Eliza’s ham-fisted management of the service did not distract her. As she read, she began to twist one of her ringlets around a finger to restore its bounce.

  And then I noticed, as I shifted in my seat, that I was also reflected in one of the panels of gold-framed glass. The compliment that Mrs Waterland had paid me was still uppermost in my mind. I smiled at myself rather nervously. I was elated of course that my appearance pleased the mistress, but I felt troubled too. I wondered if there was not something dangerous about beauty – I mean in the way that it could set one apart and attract harmful attention. But I am sure that Abby does not think such a thing, and she is lovely in my opinion. She, like me, has the look of winter, I would say, with cold white skin and sea-coloured eyes and black hair. And we are both small and wiry with a lively way of moving.

  ‘Why are you simpering at yourself in the glass?’ Eliza asked in a loud voice.

  I jumped up, mortified at having my conceit exposed, and straightaway trod on the hem of my gown. I stumbled and fell to my knees. My face flamed with embarrassment, my vanity well and truly punished.

  Eliza burst into laughter. I looked anxiously in Mrs Waterland’s direction. I couldn’t bear for her to see me look a fool.

  But she was completely absorbed in her letter. She was gazing at the page in her hand with an expression of deep satisfaction or even a kind of euphoria.

  The Servants’ Hall

  March, 1758

  For months Mrs Edmunds had guarded our store of candles with such ferocity you might think the world was running out of tallow, but from the moment that Mrs Waterland unsealed that letter, the moods and interiors of Sedge Court grew lighter. There was a fizz in the air as if great changes were abroad. In fact, that very evening Eliza was invited to dine with her parents, which was a noteworthy event in itself, and Miss Broadbent and I were asked to take our dinner downstairs.

  We arrived in the servants’ hall to the merry sight of candle flames in abundance, reflected in the glass of the water bottles set upon the table and in the copper pots hanging on the wall, and there was a hearty fire flourishing in the grate. Even Downes looked more or less thawed. Miss Broadbent appeared below stairs infrequently – we usually dined in Eliza’s dressing room – and I wondered if there might be some demurring at her company, because she did not properly belong to the basement, but Mr Otty welcomed her with bonhomie, saying, ‘Draw yourself up cosy, Miss Broadbent, for it is crisp out tonight.’ He was the picture of informality with coat flung aside, neck-cloth untwined, and paunch liberated by an untrammelled waistcoat. I am not sure of his age. His whiskers are white and he has a face that has been blasted by all kinds of weathers during his career as a driver – it is as rubicund and wrinkled as an overwintered beetroot – but he is sprightly on his legs for an old man. Actually Miss Broadbent seems to carry a greater burden of years, although she is probably scarcely in the middle of her thirties.

  At the head of the table, Mrs Edmunds was carving a joint. With something very close to a smile she said to me, ‘No need to stare like a throttled earwig, wench,’ and, pointing her knife at Downes, ‘Ease up, missus, and make room for the lass.’ Rorke arrived with a plate-basket of dirty dishes and said that they were drawing out their dinner upstairs. Then he winked at me and said, ‘They won’t begrudge us our junketing down here tonight. After all, it has passed more than a twelve-month since we were given our wages.’

  This was not the first time I had heard of the wages being long delayed, but since I myself was not paid in coin, I had not appreciated the seriousness of this state of affairs.

  ‘Abby!’ Rorke shouted. ‘Come now and bustle off these plates.’

  Abby was making conversation with Andy Croft, an ungainly, good-natured boy with big-knuckled hands and a speckled
complexion, but she followed Rorke into the scullery, and I did as well, for I was keen to know what was afoot in the house.

  Rorke said, ‘It has been stark bad right enough. The master was well nigh jigged up and we were all feared for our situations.’

  ‘What do you mean, jigged up?’

  ‘Near to bankrupt. Has Miss Broadbent taught you the meaning of that or is it all dancing and folderol upstairs?’

  ‘I know that bankruptcy is a miscarriage of money.’

  ‘You are not wrong there. The prospect of it has put the terrors on us.’

  Now I understood the cause of the house’s anxiety. The rumours of the master’s languishing income were true. Miss Broadbent had been right to attribute his prickliness to the worrisome responsibilities associated with this and I felt abashed at having mentioned my fear of eviction to her. Recalling the overheard exchange between the master and mistress in the light of this news, I began to see that I had leapt to conclusions. The master had spoken of a child, yes, but was I indeed the child in question? Mulling it over again, I wondered if he had been referring to one of the servants – Abby, perhaps? In truth, I am so minor as to be beneath remuneration, my position as Eliza’s companion being compensated for in perquisites rather than pay. How vain of me to think that Mr Waterland gave any thought at all to my existence. Of course Miss Broadbent had been too kind to observe that only a nonentity with a runaway imagination and an altitudinous opinion of herself would presume that she, and not his debts, had rattled the master’s composure.

  ‘But we are all safe now, don’t you know,’ Rorke said, and sallied out with his platter.

  I took my place at the table next to Miss Broadbent, and Hester hastened the pease pudding towards us, and the gravy boat. Mr Otty asked Croft to fetch more beer. ‘And cork the barrel well,’ he shouted after him, ‘else all the virtue will go out of it!’

  ‘Thank you, Hester,’ I said, helping myself to pudding. ‘I am glad to dine here. It is much jollier than in Eliza’s apartment.’

  Downes said, ‘How fortunate that you feel that way, miss, for I wager you must get used to the servants’ hall. The mistress will be looking to put you out of the way, I warrant.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? I wonder,’ said Miss Broadbent. ‘The child knows full well that Mrs Waterland finds her very obliging.’

  Downes pursed her lips. ‘I am only saying that if this young lady is not careful she will vex the mistress by showing up Miss Eliza’s wants.’

  ‘Ah, here is Croft,’ said Miss Broadbent, making a point of ignoring Downes. ‘Shall we raise a toast to the young master, Mr Otty?’

  I could not help feeling unsettled by Downes’s remarks and resolved to be on my guard against any inadvertent eclipsing of Eliza. Everything about my conduct – whether I stepped forward or hung back – was qualified by Mrs Waterland’s opinion.

  We stood then and cried the good health of Johnny Waterland and when we had sat down again, Mr Otty made a rather rambling speech. I gathered that after a long and nerve-racking delay, the mistress’s uncle, Sir Joseph Felling, had agreed to sponsor Johnny for a future at the bank of which he was a principal and there was even hope that Johnny might be favoured as Sir Joseph’s heir. This was the news imparted in the letter Mrs Waterland had received, although the servants seemed already to know most of it. The intelligence, I later found from Hester, was owed to the combined efforts of the servants, their individual differences notwithstanding – Downes, for instance, poking into the correspondence tucked away in Mrs Waterland’s secretary-desk, Rorke doing likewise with the master’s, and Mrs Edmunds and Mr Otty drawing on a network of connections developed over their long years of service in the respective families of the mistress and the master. They worked together for the common good in this regard, since their fates were, naturally, bound up intricately with their employers’.

  Croft charged our cups again. The beer was sour and tasty and made me feel as if I were leaning slightly to one side. Another toast was made, this time to Sir Joseph. Abby asked, ‘Now but who is he, though?’ and Mr Otty explained, ‘Sir Joe is the spigot who augments the flow of cash. He is the uncle of our mistress, head of the Felling family and a man bowlegged with brass.’ Mr Otty speared a flap of mutton and used it to emphasise his remark that it would be a strange thing if young Johnny did not get a legacy when Sir Joseph shuffled off. ‘A handsome one it will be too,’ he said, ‘and when that comes to pass not a cloud will darken Sedge Court never no more.’

  ‘I would not count your chickens, Mr Otty. The Fellings were always right snooty about the Waterlands.’ In response to Miss Broadbent’s enquiring gaze, Mrs Edmunds added, ‘The Waterlands come from millwrights, but the Fellings on the other hand have always been much further upstream, if you get my drift. They were right flummoxed when Henrietta Felling condescended to Bernard Waterland, but it wasn’t such a surprise to me. Her branch of the Fellings had very dry pockets and it seemed he had a fortune.’

  ‘That is not so unusual, is it?’ Miss Broadbent observed. ‘A pedigree in exchange for cash.’

  ‘Leave something for the poor footman!’ Rorke slogged into the dining hall with another basket of used plates. ‘It’s all right for you lot; I’m the one obliged to be in and out like a fiddler’s elbow, but I will dip my beak now, if I may.’

  ‘Go on, man –’ Mr Otty poured Rorke a foaming draught of the beer – ‘take a quick sup on the wing.’ Then he turned to Miss Broadbent and said, ‘The master’s father, Jack Waterland, was a terrible canny man. My dad was a ploughman time back on Sedge Farm and he knew all about it. The farm was a place oozing springs and swamps when Jack Waterland bought it, but he would have none of their mischief. He found ways of removing wetness from the land by making drains, you see.’

  Mrs Edmunds chipped in. ‘Parkgate weren’t nowt but a village in them days and just a few shrimpers and fisherfolk living there and a bad, chocky road between the village and Chester.’

  Mr Otty scratched the grizzled nap of his head and went on, ‘The old master contrived all sorts of drainage machines and sold them all over the kingdom as well. He was desperate keen to get on top of the difficulty of the Dee and make Parkgate a reliable stop for trade.’ He paused to remove a well-masticated lump of gristle from his mouth, and lobbed it into the fire before going on. ‘He made a powerful penny out of his machines, and levered himself up and Parkgate along with it. When the old quay at Neston was finally jacked in because of the silt, the trade came up here and Jack Waterland found himself in right good buckle.’

  Miss Broadbent said, ‘Why did the Waterlands’ fortunes dwindle then? I wonder.’

  ‘Old Jack Waterland planned to build drains under the Dee, so that Parkgate would not succumb to sludge, but he died before he could realise his design. A committee of Chester men, who were after business themselves, had the New Cut dug in the river instead. That pushed the course of the Dee over to the Welsh side and Parkgate fell into difficulties with the loss of trade.’

  Rorke said, ‘In any case, the Dee cannot hold a candle to the Mersey. They can ram any amount of two-hundred-tonners up that waterway.’

  Mrs Edmunds said, ‘You must not dawdle your time away down here, Rorke. They will be wanting the cheese taken from the table.’ Rorke slugged the last of his beer and wiped his chops with the back of his hand.

  Miss Broadbent said, ‘Do you think, Mr Otty, that the present master walks in the shadow of his father?’

  ‘Our master is no dullard, but he wants the ability of his father to convert his brains into brass. Her upstairs, nor her father, didn’t know that when they accepted Bernard Waterland. He, of course, had given her to expect that he had the moon in his pocket.’

  Mrs Edmunds said with lowered voice, ‘He was a different man in them days. He was bowled over by Miss Felling something fierce and it was all right merry at the outset of the marriage. But by the time Master Johnny was born she was coming to see there was nowt but a few shillings rattling r
ound at Sedge Court.’

  Miss Broadbent said, ‘And the lady was brought up to a certain style, of course.’

  ‘Oh aye, she will want things when she wants them and it is not in her make-up to do without. All credit to her silver tongue though, because she went to her aunt Lady Paine in Derbyshire, who was the older sister of Sir Joseph, God rest her soul, and she coaxed the lady into settling an annuity on her, a good amount of which went into schemes to revive the master’s fortunes.’

  ‘They went off travelling hither and yon,’ said Mr Otty. ‘They were up and down every coast of the kingdom and beyond. The master went to look on the way that tides circulate. He was pondering after the success of his father and the plans for drains that went under the sea. But his studies came to nowt, him not being the type who is much of a manifester, and it is many a year now since he went abroad. Not since they brought young Em back for Miss Eliza to play with.’

  ‘Where did they get you from, Emma?’ Abby asked.

  ‘My name is not Emma,’ I said. ‘It is M for Mary. Eliza coined the name when we were little and she saw M. Smith written on my conduct book.’

  Miss Broadbent said, ‘Mrs Waterland brought you from London, didn’t she?’

  Downes said in a lofty manner, ‘In point of fact, I have heard quite a different story about the origins of Smith here.’

  I stiffened myself against a tale that was bound to mortify me.

  ‘Mrs Waterland got her from Chester,’ Downes said darkly, as if Chester were Hades itself, ‘in the days when she and Lady Broome went out of charity to pray for prisoners at the assizes. On one such occasion the mistress came across a condemned man who was to be hanged as an incorrigible poacher. This scurvy wretch was lamenting his fate and that of his motherless child, and what do you think the mistress does out of the kindness of her heart?’ Downes aimed her beady gaze at me. ‘She brought the poacher’s daughter to live at Sedge Court.’