by Cody Young
It’s creeping up on me, she thought. She was dog tired. Even the concrete bed seemed like an inviting prospect just now. “Last one into bed is a rotten egg!” she called, and watched them scramble in.
“It’s Alfie. He’s a rotten egg!” Roy said, in triumph, and Alfie rolled his eyes.
Then Bob’s voice came from over in the corner. “There ain’t no ghost, not really, is there, miss?”
“No. I never allow any ghosts to get past me,” Katie promised. She turned out the light, and closed the door. She sent up a quick prayer to the saints. She’d need to become one to deal with this lot.
Chapter Four
To Katie’s surprise, Michael joined them at breakfast. Mrs. Jessop rolled his chair to the head of the table — looking very much as if she was acting against her better judgment — and Katie rushed around setting a place for him, wondering what on earth a huffy English lord would like for breakfast.
He buttered a piece of toast, very precisely, and said nothing. He pretended to read his newspaper while he ate. He was dressed, immaculately as ever, in a suit of clothes in Prince of Wales check. Inside the open collar of his shirt, he wore a silk cravat, knotted rather loosely, revealing the masculine lines of his neck. He cleared his throat and frowned at his newspaper as if something on the front page had offended him.
Katie told herself not to stare. She tried to concentrate on helping Bob and George with their boiled eggs and cutting up their bread into soldiers for them until she realized Michael was studying her.
Roy noticed too, and chirped up. “She looks like Rita Hayworth, don’t she?”
Michael looked at him sharply and opened his mouth, but he seemed a little lost for words.
“Don’t you think so, Mister?” said Roy. “Dead ringer for her if you ask me.”
Katie could have died of embarrassment. Rita Hayworth, indeed!
A pink tinge of color rose in Michael’s cheeks.
Alfie stepped in. “Maybe Mister Lord doesn’t know a lot about films.”
“He knows about Rita Hayworth,” Roy insisted. “He’s got a picture of her inside the lid of his shaving kit.”
Michael dropped his piece of toast, and mortified horror crossed his face. Alfie and the twins had a bit of a giggle, but the look on Michael’s face silenced them.
Katie didn’t know what to say, but she knew she had to salvage the situation, and fast.
She turned on Roy. “It’s very rude to touch other people’s things!” She turned to Michael and tried to placate him. “I’m so sorry sir, I didn’t realize. I had no idea he’d gone into your washroom — ”
“What the blazes were you doing with my shaving kit?” Michael said, cutting her off, leaning forward to speak to Roy.
Katie noticed that he didn’t deny ownership of the picture.
“I thought I needed a shave,” Roy announced, importantly.
“You needed a shave!” Michael exploded. “That’s absurd when your chin is as smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
Roy scowled. He did have the face of a surly cherub, without a whisker in sight. “I’m shaving twice a week, and that’s a fact,” he insisted.
“I may have to write to your Auntie Madge, Roy,” Katie began, knowing that tact was required with twelve-year-old boys, “to send you up a razor.”
Michael snorted, but Katie sent a pleading look in his direction.
“Sir, he probably will be needing one before long, wouldn’t you say?”
Michael glanced at Roy, and paused. Then he looked at Katie, and frowned.
Katie hoped she hadn’t overstepped the mark. It was so important that everything go smoothly this morning. If his lordship went into one of his sarcastic tirades, if Roy behaved like a little East End tough, if it scared the other children on their first day … who knew where it would lead?
“Well, possibly,” Michael conceded at last. “A blunt one, perhaps.”
Katie didn’t like the postscript, but Roy looked triumphant. He stuck his soft, chubby chin out in front of him, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and took a big, provocative bite out of his toast and marmalade.
Katie rewarded him with a wide smile of relief.
“See!” Roy said. “She does look like Rita Hayworth, when she smiles.”
Michael looked up and studied Katie’s face as if she was an exhibit in the British Museum. “I suppose she does.”
Then he returned to his newspaper and did not utter another word.
• • •
After breakfast, the children clattered into the hall to get their school satchels and Katie followed them, taking the opportunity on the way to explain to his lordship the problem with Bob’s missing suitcase.
“I don’t know if there’s any point in hoping that it will turn up,” she said.
“Probably not. It may have been stolen — people will do anything for clothing now that the shortages are starting to bite.”
“I wish they’d start proper rationing for clothing, to be honest, like they do with food. At least it would be fair. I was wondering if you had any old clothes of your own that you don’t use any more. I might be able to cut them down to make a pair of school shorts for Bob. My sewing isn’t up to a blazer, but I might manage a pair of pants.”
“There’s a stack of my old clothes upstairs in the Chinese Room. It used to be my room when I was … ” he obviously didn’t want to say something like able-bodied. “It was my room when I was at school. Take anything you want. There’s even an old dinner jacket in there somewhere that you can cut that up if you like.”
Katie was surprised. “That’s very generous of you, sir. But are you sure you won’t be needing it?”
He scowled. “Oddly enough, I haven’t felt the need to dress up much, stuck in this thing.”
Katie nearly commented that his lordship always looked “dressed up.” He seemed to have an endless array of elegant, stylishly tailored garments, and though none of them were new, it was all of the very best quality. He could have posed for society magazines. In fact, Katie realized with a slight shock, he probably had.
She turned to leave, but Michael called her back.
“There won’t be a repeat performance of yesterday’s bad behavior, will there? The children cannot be allowed to racket about in my house like bandits.” He waved his hand imperiously at the chairs on either side of the door that led to his rooms. “My mother spent hours making those needlepoint covers for the hall chairs, don’t you know?”
“No, I hadn’t realized. Maybe we could put those chairs in a safer place, sir, where they won’t come to any harm?”
“Perhaps the little ruffians could be taught to treat other people’s things with more respect. My parents would have a fit if they could see what’s going on in their house.”
For the first time, Katie wondered what had happened to Michael’s parents, but it didn’t seem the right moment to ask.
“I’ll do my level best, sir, to encourage the children to be more orderly and civilized.”
“Thank you.”
She thanked him again for his generosity with the clothing, and went to find her hat and coat. She had promised to walk down to the village with the children to show them where the school was, ready for Monday morning.
She hoped, desperately, that the children would behave themselves on their first day. She had a feeling that for Roy, at least, that might be a bit of a challenge.
Chapter Five
It was almost two weeks before Michael began to suspect what had happened. To understand the real reason Katie had walked back into his life. He sat in the bay window of his study watching her run around on the front lawn with the children. Her auburn hair kept escaping from her beret, curls bouncing as she moved. And he loved the way her slim skirt delineated her trim little figure. What a firecracker.
He picked up the receiver of the large black telephone that sat on his rosewood desk, and asked to speak to Mrs. Mallory.
“How did you manage to
find her?” he wanted to know.
“Find who?”
Michael exhaled sharply. “Katie Rafferty, the Irish girl.”
“She was recommended to me by a friend of a friend.”
“Rubbish. She’s the girl I met in London. The one I told you about,” Michael insisted.
“Are you sure? There’s a coincidence!” Mrs. Mallory’s deep plummy voice didn’t lend itself well to feigning surprise.
“Don’t give me that nonsense, Marjory. I told you I’d helped a girl out in a bombing raid, and the next thing I know she turns up on my bloody doorstep.”
Mrs. Mallory must have realized she was caught out, so she gave in gracefully. “You did say you wished you knew what had happened to her, dear.”
“I didn’t say I wanted her living under my roof!”
“Do you have some complaint about the girl? Has she disappointed you in some way?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you must give her a chance. You helped her before. She needs your help now, she needs somewhere to live.”
“How did you trace her? I didn’t tell you her name — I didn’t know it myself.”
“Michael, dear, you told me the girl was in labor when the station was bombed. It was obvious that there must have been dozens of witnesses, and it didn’t take long to find somebody who knew where she was. You could have found her yourself if you’d put a little effort into it.”
“Very ingenious. Why go to all that trouble to find someone I only mentioned once, in passing?”
“You mentioned her several times, Michael, when you were recovering from your accident. Each time I came to see you in hospital. You seemed very troubled about it.”
Mrs. Mallory could be right. He had been in so much pain and distress after the accident, on so much morphine, that he might have said just about anything about anybody. He hoped he hadn’t made a complete fool of himself.
“I wondered what happened to her, that’s all.”
“Yes. And now you have the chance to find out. Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“No, Marjory. This is hideously embarrassing for the girl and for me. She denies all knowledge of that night in London, you know?”
“Does she, dear? Well, you must try using your charm. It hasn’t failed you yet, has it?”
Michael closed his eyes in frustration. Charm, indeed. As if he had any charm now. A broken man who couldn’t do anything, that’s all he was. “You should not have interfered, Marjory.”
“You need a bit of a shake-up. And Katie’s a little spitfire, so I’m told.”
“Will everyone stop going on about bloody Spitfires!”
“Temper, temper!”
Michael sighed. Mrs. Mallory only meant to be kind. “Do you know what happened to her baby?” he said.
Mrs. Mallory paused. “There was some hearsay, but it wouldn’t be fair to Katie to pass it on. She’ll tell you herself, when she’s ready.”
Mrs. Mallory refused to divulge anything else, so Michael put down the phone and gazed out of the window at Katie, so he could continue his surveillance of her.
He always tried to be discreet and surreptitious, but he had taken up watching Katie whenever he got the chance. He didn’t mean to be sneaky, but it was dreadfully boring being housebound, and she intrigued him. If he knew she was in the kitchen, he would wheel himself silently along the corridor and stay in the shadows to peek through the doorway, hoping she wouldn’t notice him there.
He had watched her cleaning and scrubbing the floor. He’d seen her check her lipstick in the reflection of a copper pot hanging on the wall. He’d seen her sorting out his old clothes on the kitchen table, assembling a set of things that Bob could wear. In the late afternoons, when the children came back from school, he wheeled his chair through to the back of the house, and watched them through the window. He saw the children running and laughing outside in the paddock — and Katie teaching them how to play leapfrog and some Irish version of tag. She obviously adored children, so why was she not looking after her own?
Michael heard all about the first day crisis with Roy — how he picked a fight and achieved a sort of celebrity status on the playground as a result. Katie gave him a good talking to, then promised him a brand new set of knuckle jacks if he got through the rest of the week without incident.
She was a determined young woman for sure, and she knew how to manage the little blighters. She took them all down to the village shop to buy new sets of knuckle jacks. She taught the little ones how to play. She removed a knuckle jack that George had experimentally inserted, with tearful consequences, up his own nose. She organized a system of gold stars and peppermint drops for homework done, with extra credit for a low inkblot count. She held races to see who could shine his shoes for school the fastest, and she made bedtime into a great game.
Michael sighed. He wouldn’t have minded playing a few bedtime games with her himself — if things had only been different.
• • •
Katie stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, confronting Mrs. Jessop about the food. “You’re telling me that there isn’t even butter for the children’s tea? Here, on a farm!”
“No, and the margarine is almost gone, too.”
“Where did it go?”
Mrs. Jessop was silent.
“And what am I supposed to give the children for their tea? Bread and water?” Katie’s hackles rose and she knew she was on dangerous ground.
“It wouldn’t hurt them, just for once.”
“But it’s absurd! We’ve got the coupons for something a bit more substantial than that — I’ll go down to the village and pick up some supplies if you’ll find the ration books.”
“The coupons are all gone, Miss Rafferty. There’s a war on, you know.”
Every time someone uttered that sentence, Katie wanted to scream.
“Mrs. Jessop. The children have precious little in their sandwiches each day, and we’ve had bread and jam for supper all week. On Saturday, we had mushrooms on toast, and the long-awaited Sunday lunch was an egg flan with only the merest hint of cheese in it. What, exactly, has happened to our meat ration?”
“It’s been very difficult to get meat this week.”
“Then let me go down to the butcher’s and see what I can find today. Where are the ration books?”
“I told you. We haven’t got the coupons.”
“We seem to be going in circles in this discussion. You’ve been given four extra ration books only last Friday; five if you include mine that you made me hand over when I arrived. I know exactly how many coupons were in mine, and the children’s books were almost full. We have plenty of coupons for what we need today, unless you’ve already spent them.”
“Are you suggesting that I would misappropriate the children’s food?”
“It is looking more and more as if you have, since you won’t show me the ration books.”
“Well! I won’t stand for this.” Mrs. Jessop grabbed her coat and hat. “Over thirty years I’ve cooked for the family, and never had any complaints until you come along. You can cook supper yourself and see how well you can manage it, then, Miss Upstart Rafferty, because I won’t stay here and be insulted.”
“You’ll have to leave me the ration books, because there isn’t anything to cook.”
But Mrs. Jessop was already putting on her coat.
“I’ll have to tell his lordship,” Katie threatened.
“His lordship doesn’t trouble himself with domestic matters, Miss Rafferty. He’s always had complete faith in me.”
It was true, Katie knew. Michael’s disinterest in the way that the house was run was legendary. But she wasn’t backing down now. “The ration books?” she demanded.
“You’ll lose your job over this,” Mrs. Jessop almost spat the words at Katie. “I’ll give notice tomorrow, and I’ll only come back when you’re gone, you little Irish hussy!” With that, she stormed out through the kitchen door, slamming it in bit
ter protest.
“And good riddance!” Katie yelled, still raging inside, though what her employer would say when he found out what she’d done she dreaded to think. She sighed and shook her head, only to turn around and see him in the doorway.
She gasped. He ought to wear a bell, she thought, so he couldn’t slink up behind her like a cat. She knew he had probably heard the whole thing, but he gave her a questioning stare.
“What the blazes were you saying to Jessop?”
“I asked her to give me back the children’s ration books.”
“You said a hell of a lot more than that, Katie. She’s gone home. She’s talking about giving me her notice.”
“Good. You’ll be better off without her.”
“You can’t take it upon yourself to dismiss my servants!”
“You can’t see what’s going on in front of your eyes, can you? Not even if you sit down to a pauper’s meal every night!”
Michael’s blue eyes flashed with anger and confusion.
Katie sighed. “She’s stealing the coupons, sir. The meals she serves us aren’t fit for the pigs. The children need the little bit of meat that we can get for them — they’re growing kids. If you ask me, she’s stealing our rations to feed that great idle lump she calls a husband. He gets a nice beef dinner, and we get the leavings.”
Michael frowned. It was perfectly clear. He sighed.
“For God’s sake, Katie. You should have approached me if you had a complaint.”
“And what, may I ask, would you have done? Precisely nothing. I can’t have the kiddies going hungry, sir. They fight all the time. They hit each other. They steal from other children at school, and they might even get rickets or something terrible like that. Jessop has no right to their food!”
“No.” He paused, taking it all in. “But she was my last servant from the old days,” he said pitifully. “She knows how the place ticks, Katie. She wasn’t the best, but now we have nothing. We have six people to feed, and no cook.”
“I can cook, sir. It’s getting hold of the food that I’m worried about. She still has the ration books.” Katie looked out of the window, still rankling with anger. “And she wouldn’t give them back, no matter how hard I tried.”