Evie's Ghost

by Helen Peters

  Polly reached for the towel. “Wouldn’t that be nice? And imagine a world where pigs could fly.”

  After we had washed our hands and faces, we hung our coal-streaked brown aprons on hooks behind the door and changed into white ones. Then it was back to the bedrooms and dressing rooms, where every surface had to be dusted, every rug brushed on hands and knees, every inch of the floor swept and all the heavy bedclothes put back on the beds perfectly smoothly. By the time we got to the last room, every bone in my body ached and I was ravenous again.

  Polly gave me a look of concern as we took our places at either side of the bed. “You look fit to drop.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. If I flaked out now, Polly would have to do my work as well as her own. And after all, I was only here for a day. I could put up with it for one day. Poor Polly would have to do this again tomorrow, and the next day, over and over again.

  “It’s hard at first,” Polly said. “I thought I’d die when I started. There were times when I wanted to die. The thought of everlasting sleep sounded like bliss.”

  “Do you get a lie-in at weekends?” I asked.

  “Weekends?” Polly sounded puzzled. Maybe they didn’t use that word back then.

  “You know, Saturdays and Sundays. Don’t you have those days free?”

  She looked at me as though I was mad. “Free? Then who’d do all the work? Besides, it’s Sunday today, and does this feel like a day off to you?”

  “But you must have some days off, surely?”

  “Some Sunday mornings we go to church. I always doze off during the sermon, but old Hardwitch pokes me awake with her nasty sharp elbow.”

  “But don’t you get any proper time off? What about holidays?”

  Polly’s face brightened. “One day last summer we was all allowed the evening off to go to the fair in Lambton. Proper laugh it was. Four men ran a footrace and two of them ran without shirts. One was in breeches and the other had nothing on but a pair of the flimsiest calico drawers you could imagine.”

  Drawers, I guessed, must mean underwear.

  “Well, the ladies said it was disgusting and they turned away and wouldn’t watch the race, but me and Eliza, we kept watching – we weren’t going to miss the fun for anything. So they all started off, and in the middle of the race the man’s drawers burst clean off him. He was crying out as he was running, ‘Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, I cannot keep my tackle in, oh, I cannot keep my tackle in!’ The ladies were disgusted and they all swept off in their carriages. Eliza and I nearly killed ourselves laughing, and some gentlemen came along and told us we should be ashamed of ourselves. Well, that just made it funnier, of course. We stayed to watch the wrestling afterwards, but that wasn’t half so entertaining.”

  “So,” I said, “you’re telling me your favourite moment of the whole year was watching a man’s underwear fall off at a fair?”

  Polly looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, “Yes.” And we both laughed so hard we nearly fell over.

  “Right,” she said, giving the quilt a final smoothing down with her hand, “you can sweep the back stairs and I’ll do the front. Then we sweep out all the passages and scrub the front steps.”

  “Do you ever think,” I said as we picked up our boxes, “that one day there might be machines to do all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, imagine if there were some contraption that would suck up dirt and dust from floors, without us having to go down on our hands and knees with a dustpan and brush.”

  “Now, wouldn’t that be lovely,” she said. “But since there is no such contraption, you’d better go and sweep the back stairs. Start in the attic and work your way down to the basement.”

  Sore knees weren’t something that had ever bothered me before. Now they were so painful that I couldn’t even kneel. I sat on each stair instead, twisting my back to sweep the dust off the stair above me into the dustpan.

  As I worked my way down to the ground floor, I heard light footsteps coming up from the hall. I glanced towards them, expecting to see Polly. But it was Alice, walking towards me with a strange glint in her eyes.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  She carried on up the stairs as if she hadn’t heard. I shunted along the step to let her pass.

  As she passed, she kicked out with her left foot and sent the almost-full dustpan clattering downstairs, spilling its contents over every step and sending clouds of dust into the air.

  I leapt up with a cry of outrage. “What did you do that for?”

  From the top of the stairs, Alice gave a malicious grin. “Oh, dear, what a terrible mess you’ve made. Now you’ll have to sweep it all up again.”

  “How dare you!” roared Sir Henry’s voice from the library.

  Alice jumped. Her face turned deathly pale. Then she bolted back down the stairs and sprinted along the corridor towards the kitchen as though a pack of wolves was after her.

  Good, I thought. Serves her right. I was sure that shout wasn’t aimed at her, but I was glad it shocked her. I was going to have to deal with Alice somehow. I couldn’t let her get away with this.

  I sat down on the top stair to start clearing up the mess. But I’d barely begun when the sound of raised voices from the library made me stop mid-sweep. This time I could hear Sophia’s voice as well as her father’s. It sounded as though they were arguing, but I was too far away to make out the words.

  Still holding the dustpan and brush, I tiptoed along the corridor until I was right outside the library door.

  “Married in two weeks?” said Sophia, her voice shrill and panicky. “But, Father, it is too soon. I pray you, let me wait a while. I am too young.”

  “Too young?” barked Sir Henry. “You’re sixteen. Plenty old enough. Do you think I want you on my hands forever? Your mother was married at fourteen, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Precisely,” said Sophia, with a hardness in her voice.

  “What the devil do you mean by that?”

  “Well, look how much happiness her marriage brought her,” she said.

  “Happiness! What on earth does happiness have to do with anything?”

  Sophia said something in a low voice that I couldn’t hear. Sir Henry gave a roar of fury. “Why, you insolent little— Come back here!”

  The door was wrenched open. I jumped out of the way as it swung back and crashed against the wall. Sophia raced out of the room and along the corridor to the back stairs, throwing me a quick scared glance as she passed.

  I scuttled to my place on the stairs and started sweeping. I just had time to glimpse Sophia reach the ground-floor hall, open the door of the housemaids’ closet and slip inside, before Sir Henry thundered past, almost knocking me down the stairs. At the bottom, he ran along the corridor past the housemaids’ closet and flung open the back door. I heard him yelling in the stable yard. Then the door slammed shut again and he stamped back along the corridor and up the stairs. He caught sight of me and glowered.

  “You!” he snapped. “Where did she go?” His breath smelled of wine.

  “Who, sir?” I asked, trying to look and sound as dim-witted as possible.

  His face grew redder and I braced myself for a smack around the head.

  “My dratted daughter, imbecile. Where did she go?”

  “That way, sir,” I said, pointing in the opposite direction from where Sophia went. “I think she was heading upstairs, sir.”

  He made a sound like a snorting horse and galloped towards the front stairs at the other end of the corridor.

  I walked down the back stairs and knocked softly on the door of the housemaids’ closet.

  There was no sound from inside. I waited for a few seconds and then opened the door.

  Pressed against the brooms and buckets, looking ridiculously out of place in her red velvet dress, stood Sophia. Her expression changed from terror to fury as she set eyes on me.

  “You?” she spat. “Did I not expressly make it clear that
you were never to come near me again?”

  It took a real effort to stop myself from telling her that if that was her attitude, she could die in a locked room for all I cared. But then she wouldn’t listen to me, and I really had to get my message across and get out of this place. I couldn’t stand another day working as a housemaid.

  “I told your father you had gone up the front stairs,” I said politely. “So you’re safe to come out now.”

  She didn’t move. She looked at me through narrowed eyes, as though she was trying to work me out.

  “Who are you?” she whispered eventually. “Has my father employed you to spy on me?”

  “No!” I said. “I’m just a housemaid. I came from London two days ago. To work here.”

  She looked at me in silence for a few moments. Then she whispered, “Why did you say what you said to me in the White Parlour this morning? That my father would try to force me to marry Mr Ellerdale?”

  “I … I just heard it. Housemaids hear things, you know.”

  When she spoke again, she sounded really frightened. “And … that other thing you said…” She tailed off, as if she was too scared to finish the sentence.

  “About you running away with Robbie?” I said helpfully.

  Sophia leapt forward and clamped her hand over my mouth, a look of terror on her face. “Be quiet!” she hissed. She was actually trembling. “Do not ever mention that name again. If my father found out, he would shoot him on the spot.”

  “Sorry,” I said. And I was genuinely sorry, now that I could see how frightened she was. I stepped inside the closet and closed the door, making it pitch black. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “But I’m trying to warn you. You need to run away together. If you refuse to marry Mr Ellerdale, your father—”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor. I held my breath. The footsteps stopped right outside the closet.

  “Evie?” It was Polly’s voice.

  Sophia and I both stood frozen for a second. Then I grabbed all the spare cleaning aprons from their hooks and threw them over Sophia. I heard her stifle a gasp.

  “Coming, Polly,” I called, and I opened the door a tiny bit, slipped through the gap and closed it firmly behind me.

  Polly gave me an exasperated look. “Evie, you drazel, there’s dirt all over the stairs and you’ve left your brush and broom willy-nilly on the steps. If Hardwitch sees that she’ll give you a beating you’ll never forget, and she’d give me one too, for good measure. I can’t be clearing up after you all day. I’ve got plenty of my own work to be doing. So get on with your jobs, and you’d better work faster than you’ve ever worked in your life.”

  I went back to the stairs. Polly bustled off down the corridor. As soon as the kitchen door shut behind her, Sophia slipped out of the cupboard and ran on tiptoes to the back door. She didn’t even glance at me. I stood up to run after her and try to speak to her again, but then Mrs Hardwick appeared from the kitchen, looking even more savage than usual, and I had to get back down on my hands and knees.

  I seemed to be doomed not to be able to get my message across. In my hour off, I vowed, I would find Robbie in the gardens. Maybe I would have more success with him than I had done with Sophia.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Project for Polly

  As the grandfather clock in the hall struck twelve, Polly appeared, carrying her box and broom. I looked up from the floor I was washing. The cleaning solution had got into the cuts in my hands, and they hurt worse than ever.

  Polly smiled at me. “That’ll do. Dinnertime.”

  Dinnertime! I was so hungry I felt faint. The smell of meat had been drifting along the kitchen passage for some time now, making my mouth water.

  But as soon as I sat at the table in the servants’ hall, a wave of exhaustion came over me. All I wanted to do was lay my head on the table and sleep. My eyelids drooped, my muscles slackened and my mind fogged over.

  A thud jolted me upright. Alice had set down a metal plate in front of me, steam rising from the food piled on it: meat in gravy, mashed potato and a huge heap of cabbage. The smell and sight of it woke me up. I was the last to be served and the table was silent except for the sound of eating. Everybody else was clearly as hungry as I was.

  Alice came in again with the beer tray. She gave me a nasty smirk as she pointedly set down a glass of water in front of me. I peered at it suspiciously. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have spat in it.

  George caught my eye and winked.

  “Would milady prefer a glass of Sir Henry’s vintage port?” he asked through a mouthful of mashed potato, and roared with laughter at his own joke.

  I took an experimental sip of water. It tasted all right and I was really thirsty, so I decided to risk it.

  As the eating slowed down, conversations started up, but I was too tired even to listen, let alone talk. The food had made me sleepy again, and I was just closing my eyes when Mrs Hardwick bustled in.

  “No dawdling, you two,” she said. “There’s a pile of mending to be done.”

  My spirits rose a little. Mending presumably meant sewing, and sewing must mean sitting down.

  There was one problem, though. I’d been working since five thirty that morning and I was desperate for a wee. I’d been desperate for some time, but I couldn’t face the thought of what it might involve. Now I couldn’t wait any longer. But what was the right word?

  Then it came back to me – the word Polly had used last night.

  “Polly?” I whispered as I followed her down the passage, “where’s the privy?”

  Polly jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Little wooden shed behind the stable yard.”

  In the stable yard, two boys who looked about my age were brushing horses. They said hello to me and I mumbled hello back. I looked around for Robbie, but I couldn’t see him. I would have to find out where he was working so that I could go and speak to him in my hour off.

  I walked over to the boys. “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know where Robbie’s working this afternoon?”

  The boys gaped at me but said nothing. I repeated the question.

  “Is she talking foreign?” said one of them to the other. And then to me, “Are you foreign?”

  I raised my eyes to heaven. Honestly, how could my accent be so hard to understand?

  “Robbie,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Ah, Robbie,” the boy said. He nodded for several seconds. I waited hopefully. The boy shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been a real help.”

  I walked through the gap between the stables and the laundry. On a patch of rough ground in the distance stood a ramshackle shed with a heap of soil outside. As I approached, my nostrils caught a foul smell, growing stronger as I drew closer.

  I held my breath and opened the door. Inside was a wooden bench balanced on two bales of straw. There was a rough hole in the middle of the bench and, below it, a pit a couple of metres deep. There was no floor, just the muddy ground.

  It was a disgusting experience and I got out as quickly as possible. Never again, I thought, will I take flushing toilets for granted.

  Jacob was sweeping the yard. He looked up as I approached, and then ducked into a stable. As I crossed the yard, he reappeared, holding out a battered horseshoe.

  “Thought you might like this,” he said. “They’re lucky, you know.”

  I looked at him warily, hoping he didn’t have a crush on me. Still, it was thoughtful of him. As long as he wasn’t expecting anything in return.

  “You must hang it this way up, mind,” he said, holding the horseshoe in a U shape. “If you hang it upside down, all the luck falls out.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the horseshoe.

  He nodded and carried on sweeping. The horseshoe was too big for my pocket and I didn’t have anywhere to put it, so I knelt down and tucked it behind a flowerpot at the edge of the yard for the time being. As I straightened up, I saw Alice staring at me f
rom the scullery window, a look of absolute loathing in her eyes. But when I walked into the scullery to ask her what on earth her problem was, she had gone.

  We did the mending in a little room next to the housekeeper’s room on the ground floor. Polly had to sew up rips and tears in lacy petticoats and shirts, while Mrs Hardwick gave me a big cotton sheet to hem. I like sewing, but my sore fingers made it really painful, and it was agony when the thread got caught on my broken skin. The pain was the only thing that kept me awake. That, and thinking about how to deliver my warning to Robbie.

  Mrs Hardwick took her work to her own room. “Has a big fire in there, she does,” Polly murmured, “and an endless supply of the family’s tea.”

  There was something in her tone that made me look at her curiously.

  “Would you like to be a housekeeper one day?” I asked.

  Polly laughed. “Now you’re talking about pigs flying again.”

  “But why not? Why couldn’t you be?”

  “Well, for one thing, you have to be able to read and write to be a housekeeper.”

  I stared at her, open-mouthed. I had taken it for granted that Polly could read and write, but I should have remembered from my history lessons that poor children in those days rarely got the chance to go to school.

  “So … they didn’t teach you in the workhouse?” I said.

  “They didn’t waste their time on fancy stuff like that,” said Polly. “We had to earn a living.” She looked at me. “You was taught your letters, was you?”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering what the best explanation would be. “My mother taught me.”

  And as I said that, an idea popped into my head.

  “I could teach you,” I said. “To read and write.”

  Polly looked almost frightened. She shook her head. “Oh, no, I could never learn all that.”

  “Of course you could. If we do a little bit each day, you’ll soon learn. And then you could be a housekeeper one day. With your own room and an endless supply of the family’s tea.”