When Day is Done

by When Day is Done (retail) (epub

  Josie was unable to believe at first that she would be the sole occupant of the attic. ‘There’s another bed from when there were two maids,’ Kate said, ‘but this is your own room and you can arrange it how you like. You’ll have a candle but you must be very careful with it because of fire.’ She showed Josie the curtained alcove for clothes and the washstand with basin and ewer, and a small cupboard with two shelves. ‘You can keep your doll in there – or in bed with you if you like,’ she said with a smile.

  Josie settled in happily. She was a cheerful girl used to hard work, and very happy with the plentiful food and her comfortable bed in the privacy of the attic. Mildred provided her with two print dresses and aprons, a sacking apron and a pair of second-hand boots. ‘I’ve made the dresses so they can be let out as you grow, but boots are different. No sense in getting new ones you’ll soon outgrow.’

  The explanation was for Kate’s benefit more than Josie’s, because she felt that her niece was watching her critically, but Josie was delighted. ‘I’m made up havin’ me own clothes,’ she confided to Kate. ‘In the Home you never had nothing of your own. You just got a clean dress and any underclothes from the pile and sometimes there wasn’t nothing left hardly. Isn’t the missus kind?’

  Kate smiled but said nothing. Privately she thought that Mildred was taking advantage of Josie. She made her work twice as hard as Martha had done, in spite of Kate’s efforts to protect the girl.

  Inexperienced and eager to please, and with no one in her background to speak up for her, Josie was vulnerable and Mildred exploited her. Before Josie came Mildred had cleaned her own rooms and spent most afternoons in the kitchen preparing food. Now Josie cleaned Mildred’s rooms – usually while Mildred was out at night, often after the evening meal at which she had waited at table – then helped Kate with the mountain of washing-up.

  Mildred now spent the afternoons either out at events at the Mission, or in her room, emerging to drive Josie upstairs to replenish bedroom fires or to do other chores she had found for her. Mildred had always worked hard herself in the kitchen, but now her sole contribution was cooking the meals.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to skive a bit, girl,’ Mrs Molesworth told Josie. ‘Pity you wasn’t here when Martha was. She’d soon have learned you. A master at it she was.’

  ‘I don’t care how hard I work, I’m just made up to be here, and Kate helps me when the missus is out,’ Josie said, but she looked exhausted, her face white and dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  ‘Aye, if it wasn’t for Kate you’d have cracked up long ago, girl, but you’re just getting wore out,’ said the charwoman.

  Kate said nothing, but she made up her mind to speak to Mildred about it and went to her aunt’s rooms the same night, before her courage failed. ‘I’ve come to say I think Josie is working too hard, Aunt Mildred. She hasn’t complained but that’s what I think.’

  ‘If she’s not complaining, what’s it got to do with you?’ Mildred demanded.

  Kate said bravely, ‘You said I should have some say in running the place, and I think it’s wrong. I’m looking to the future too. Josie’s a good worker but she’s wearing herself out and we won’t get anyone as good to replace her.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Mildred exclaimed. ‘Hard work never hurt anyone.’

  ‘Hard work, but not the way Josie’s being driven. She works twice as hard as Martha did. She’s been here nine months but she hasn’t grown at all, and I think that’s why,’ said Kate.

  ‘My word, you’ve found your tongue and no mistake,’ exclaimed Mildred. ‘So you’re looking to the future? Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, miss.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Kate said, blushing indignantly. ‘I’m just talking about the next few years. And there’s another thing. I only found out today that Josie’s doing all this for just her keep. She should have some pay, no matter how little.’

  ‘Oh, so this is your way of saying you should have had pay the first year you were here?’ Mildred said. ‘I gave you a good home, miss, the same as I’ve given that orphanage girl, but there’s no gratitude in young people nowadays.’

  Kate looked at her in amazement. ‘But – but that’s got nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘You said yourself there shouldn’t be talk of money between relations, and my allowance was your idea. I didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘Hoity-toity,’ Mildred exclaimed. ‘But you didn’t refuse it either, I notice.’ She forbore to say that her hand had been forced in the matter of Kate’s pay.

  ‘What about Josie?’ Kate said quietly, and Mildred replied sharply, ‘Very well, I’ll pay her a shilling a week, but I’ll expect hard work for it.’ Kate looked at her, and Mildred said impatiently, ‘Sort it out between you about the work. I’m not satisfied with the way the food is prepared, so I’ve decided I’ll be in the kitchen with you again while it’s done.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you, Aunt,’ Kate said, and escaped wondering how she had dared to speak so to Mildred. Nevertheless she had achieved her object in getting less work and some pay for Josie. She was not deceived by Mildred’s face-saving comment about the food preparation, and knew that she had won a small reprieve from extra work for Josie.

  The episode marked a subtle change in her relationship with her aunt, and gradually Mildred left more and more of the decisions about the cleaning of the guesthouse to her niece.

  Josie was delighted to receive her shilling a week pay, and before long Kate had also negotiated a half-day off for her. ‘What does she want a half-day off for? She’s got nowhere to go,’ Mildred grumbled, but Kate insisted and gained her point. She also persuaded Mildred to raise Mrs Molesworth’s wages because she was so dependable and in spite of her small size such a prodigious worker.

  ‘And she doesn’t just do the rough,’ Kate argued. ‘She’ll turn her hand to anything, and she’s very good and careful at washing china and ornaments. I couldn’t manage without her.’

  ‘Oh yes you could,’ Mildred retorted. ‘If I sacked her today I’d have another woman in her place tomorrow just as good.’

  ‘You’d have to engage two to do the work she does,’ Kate said, greatly daring, but though she grumbled, Mildred agreed to the rise, and humoured her in small ways to suggest that she was a partner. She decided that Kate should accompany her sometimes to choose fresh meat and vegetables, so that the shopkeepers would know her and she could shop for fresh food when Mildred was not free, but she still told Kate nothing about the financial side of the business.

  Kate liked Josie, whose cheerful company was a welcome change from the constantly grumbling Martha. Josie, for her part, idolised Kate. She tried to copy the way Kate walked and spoke, and asked her to correct her when she spoke badly. She quickly realised how Kate felt about Henry Barnes, but she never jeered as Martha had done, instead weaving romantic dreams about the pair of them.

  Kate now thought she knew the truth, that Henry and Agnes Tate were in love, although they were still very formal and correct with each other in the house. Miss Tate had talked to her about women’s rights, and had taken her to a meeting addressed by Eleanor Rathbone. Henry had joined them there, and Kate realised for the first time that he and Agnes were meeting away from the guesthouse.

  ‘We know that we can rely on your discretion, Kate,’ Henry said, smiling at her, and she managed to smile back and promise, showing no sign that she was abandoning a dream. Later Agnes told her that they had no hope of marriage for several years so would prefer to keep their feelings for each other private.

  ‘I am still repaying my parents’ life savings which they used to support me through college,’ she said. ‘And Henry has a widowed mother and a delicate sister dependent on him, so we’ll just have to be patient and save as much as we can.’

  Kate felt hurt that Henry had said nothing of these plans to her, unaware that they existed mainly in Agnes’s mind; and often she wept in the privacy of her room. Until now she had drifted along happily, weaving
vague dreams of Henry telling her he loved her, but now she had to face reality. He had been kind to her, had comforted her and brought her small gifts, but only as an adult to a child, because he was a kind young man. He likes me – I know he does – she thought, but that was all and she must be content with it. She was at the age to feel most intensely, but she hid her agony during the day, and no one was aware of it. She even managed to smile at Josie’s fantasies about her and Henry.

  Kate’s thoughts had been so full of Henry that she had had little interest in other members of the opposite sex, but Rose, although two years younger, had been interested in young men for some time. One of her many grumbles when they met was that she had no opportunity to meet any.

  ‘The only boys I see are the gardener’s boy and the boot boy,’ she grumbled. ‘If we see any young men on the way to school, Annie drags me past them as though they have the plague.’

  Kate laughed. ‘Oh Rose, you’re a bit young to be worrying yet,’ she said. ‘Aunt Beattie must plan for you to go to dances or parties, or she wouldn’t buy you all those lovely frocks.’

  ‘Oh, I wear those for handing round cakes to the old trouts at her bridge parties,’ Rose said carelessly. ‘Parties for me are the last thing she’d think about. We were adopted to be useful, Kate.’

  Kate was sorry to hear Rose being so cynical. Although she accepted that her sister was much cleverer than she was, she felt that in this case Rose was wrong. She was sure that Beattie truly loved her and planned a happy future for her, but she decided not to argue.

  Rose was now talking about the dancing teacher at school and declaring that all the girls were madly in love with him. ‘He’s so graceful, and he wears lavender oil on his hair and sprinkles his handkerchief with lavender water,’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t sound much of a man to me,’ Kate said bluntly, thinking of Henry Barnes.

  ‘He’s Byronesque,’ Rose said indignantly. ‘Grace Duncan, one of the older girls, crept out to meet him one night in the summerhouse in their garden. She lives in a big house near Breck Park.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘Grace said he is all man!’

  ‘I hope you never do anything silly like that, Rose,’ Kate said anxiously, but Rose said flippantly, ‘Some hope. They all watch me like hawks in case I do anything to upset dear Beattie.’ Kate was relieved to hear it, and not surprised when some months later Grace Duncan was hastily removed from school and sent abroad, and the dancing teacher was dismissed.

  The visits to Rose and Beattie were less frequent now that Mildred was becoming more and more involved in the Mission, but in the summer when Rose was fifteen she had momentous news for Kate. The Select School had been sold and taken over by a progressive headmistress, and the lessons in deportment and fancywork replaced by more academic subjects, at which Rose shone.

  ‘The trouble is, I’ve lost so much time footling about with those silly lessons in deportment and dancing,’ she said. ‘But Miss Tasker says I’m an intelligent girl and she’s taking a special interest in me. She’s giving me homework, but the only trouble is getting time to myself to do it.’

  ‘But surely Aunt Beattie will be pleased that you’re doing so well, and you don’t have any work to do, do you?’

  ‘Not your sort of work, Kate, but I’m kept fully occupied dancing attendance on Aunt Beattie,’ Rose said tartly.

  ‘Oh Rose, try not to be so bitter,’ Kate exclaimed. ‘Think of the good things in your life. Your room and clothes and things.’

  ‘I know, Kate, but they’re not important,’ Rose said. ‘The only way I can do my homework is in bed when I’m supposed to be asleep, and even then Essy creeps round spying on me, so I suppose Aunt Beattie knows but turns a blind eye.’

  ‘Be careful though, love,’ Kate said anxiously. ‘If Aunt Beattie doesn’t like the school being changed, she may move you somewhere else.’

  ‘Not her,’ Rose said carelessly. ‘She’s too lazy to make the effort, and anyway one of her very superior friends has a daughter there.’ Once again, Kate was distressed that Rose was so cynical, but she dared not say any more in case she made things worse.

  On the next visit some weeks later, Rose told her that she was top of the class in English and her essay had been read out at assembly. She was also top in mathematics and was the most fluent French speaker. Miss Tasker, the headmistress, had said that Rose had a first-class brain. ‘Not that I have much opposition there,’ she said ruefully. Kate, she said, was the only one she could talk to about it. ‘Aunt Beattie’s so stupid she doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I speak about my essays, and Essy’s a fool. She said I would overheat my brain.’

  ‘Could you talk to Jane?’ Kate suggested, but Rose only sneered.

  ‘Jane? Jane’s only concerned about her own affairs. She’s keeping company with some hobbledehoy and she goes about her work in a dream. If it wasn’t that Aunt Beattie was so soft-hearted, Essy would have got rid of her long ago.’

  ‘I hope you’re only repeating Essy,’ Kate said with spirit. ‘I wouldn’t like to think you felt like that, Rose.’

  Rose laughed and hugged her. ‘Still my big sister, aren’t you? Yes, I was quoting Essy, and I don’t know why because I hate her. She’s jealous of me, you know, and she’d do anything to stop me being happy.’

  Kate was troubled by Rose’s attitude but she only said mildly, ‘Be careful, love. Try to keep such thoughts to yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I’m careful,’ Rose said bitterly. ‘That’s one thing I’ve learned here; to play a part.’ She looked at Kate’s worried face and suddenly flung her arms around her. ‘All my moans,’ she said remorsefully, ‘and you never grumble. It can’t be easy living with the stick of liquorice. Does she ever smile?’

  ‘Not often,’ Kate said, delighted to see the old Rose that she loved. ‘And I do plenty of moaning, but not to you.’

  ‘You don’t get much chance, do you?’ Rose said ruefully. ‘You can’t get a word in while I’m complaining all the time.’ She kissed Kate, and they wandered round the garden arm in arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rose went on. ‘I know I’m lucky to have all this comfort when I think of your life, but honestly, Kate, I’d give anything for some freedom.’

  Kate squeezed her arm and Rose laughed. ‘Here I go again, moaning,’ she said. ‘Come down to the orchard and I’ll show you how I let off steam.’ When they were out of sight of the house, Rose did four high kicks in quick succession, singing ‘Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay’, then did handstands with her feet against the trunk of an apple tree. She laughed at Kate’s astounded face.

  ‘I come here with Wang. I walk him very sedately while we can be seen from the house, then we come here and I make him run. Then I do my handstands and high kicks. You should see him lying there panting with his tongue hanging out and his eyes nearly popping. I think it’s the sight of my bloomers.’

  Kate laughed. ‘I think I must’ve looked like him just now, but it wasn’t the sight of your bloomers, honestly.’

  Now they could hear Annie calling anxiously: ‘Miss Rose, Miss Rose,’ and Rose grimaced. ‘Here we go,’ she said, and they started back to the house.

  The aunts had evidently been discussing the Select School, and Beattie said immediately, ‘Rose is a favourite with the new headmistress, aren’t you, dear?’

  ‘I quite like the lessons,’ Rose said in a colourless voice. ‘And Miss Tasker is very strict. I like to know what I can or can’t do. The school seemed to have got very lax with the Miss Simmonds.’

  Mildred and Beattie exchanged a meaningful glance and Mildred said sharply, ‘So I’ve heard. But you won’t be there much longer. You’re about fifteen now, aren’t you?’

  ‘The girls stay until they’re eighteen at the Select School,’ Beattie said. ‘It’s like a finishing school too, you see.’

  ‘But not now, surely, with this new woman?’ said Mildred.

  ‘Essy said that,’ Beattie said languidly. ‘But we’ll wait and see.’ Rose stood by mee
kly, secretly rejoicing in the by-play between the two women. She knew that Essy had been pressing for her to leave school and that Beattie’s obstinacy would be reinforced by Mildred’s interference. Essy’s new ally had effectively lost her case for her.

  ‘Miss Tasker called all the girls aged fifteen to eighteen together,’ Rose said into the silence. ‘She said that we were at the age when we needed most supervision and she would see that we got it.’

  The two aunts again looked at each other, and Mildred said triumphantly, ‘So I was right in what I heard.’ Beattie said only, ‘Ring for more tea, Rose dear.’

  So Mildred had heard about Grace Duncan, Kate reflected as she and her aunt walked home. Perhaps she could stop worrying about Rose now. At least her sister realised that she was lucky in many ways, and now with Miss Tasker and the interest of the lessons she should feel less frustrated.

  Kate was surprised that Mildred had not discovered her feelings for Henry. I suppose the truth is she doesn’t realise I’m old enough to feel like this, she thought. Although Josie and Mrs Molesworth knew how she felt, Kate had been unable to tell them about Henry and Agnes, and she’d had no success in trying to discourage Josie from talking about Henry.

  Josie was convinced that Henry loved Kate. One morning when they were in the kitchen and had been talking about Rose, she said, ‘There y’are. You’ve got posh relations too, so there isn’t nothing to stop youse two getting married, you and Mr Barnes.’

  ‘No, no,’ Kate protested. ‘Don’t say things like that, Josie. It’s just not true.’

  ‘Gerraway,’ Josie said. ‘The way he looked at you and winked this morning and said “Goodbye, Kate. Be good.” I went all funny. I’m sure he loves you, Kate.’

  Kate said briefly, ‘No. It’s just that he’s a kind man and he thinks I’m still a child.’ She picked up a tray of cutlery and went swiftly up the basement stairs, and Mrs Molesworth emerged from the scullery where she had been scrubbing.

  ‘Do you think I’ve put me foot in it?’ Josie asked anxiously. ‘Kate seemed vexed, like.’