The Ragged Heiress

by Dilly Court

  ‘Our domestic arrangements are my domain, Edwin. I wish you would not interfere,’ Fanny retorted in a low voice.

  ‘Miss Cutler assures me that she is a good worker, and you are known for your charitable deeds, my love. Perhaps a week’s trial might be appropriate?’

  Lucetta clasped her hands demurely in front of her, keeping her eyes cast downwards to hide the bitter disappointment raging in her breast. All her hopes of finding an ally in the mistress of the house were fading fast.

  ‘How old are you, girl?’

  Fanny’s sharp voice made Lucetta jump and she looked up. ‘Seventeen, ma’am.’

  ‘Too old to train,’ Fanny snapped. ‘Show me your hands.’

  Lucetta held her hands out for inspection, but she knew that they would give her away. She had seen the calloused fingers and palms of the kitchen maids and tweenies in her parents’ house, although she had taken little notice of them at the time. It had never occurred to her that their reddened and rough skin was due to hard work; it had simply been a fact of life amongst the lower classes.

  ‘This girl has never done a hard day’s work,’ Fanny announced triumphantly. She leaned towards Lucetta, eyes narrowed. ‘You have never worked in a kitchen, have you, Miss Cutler?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ Lucetta cast a despairing glance at Edwin, but he answered with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘I thought as much,’ Fanny said with obvious satisfaction. ‘Leave the room, if you please. I want a word in private with my husband.’

  Lucetta was only too glad to get away from the stifling atmosphere of the parlour, but she left the door ajar, eavesdropping unashamedly.

  ‘The girl is obviously up to no good,’ Fanny said angrily. ‘It’s obvious that she has never done manual work. What cock and bull tale did she tell you, Edwin?’

  ‘She is unemployed through no fault of her own, Fanny. She is destitute and needs our help.’

  ‘She was probably dismissed for pilfering her mistress’s jewellery or having an illicit liaison with one of the male servants,’ Fanny hissed. ‘I won’t have a girl like that in my household, Edwin. She will corrupt our maids and most probably do a moonlight flit with the best silver plate.’

  ‘I think you are being a little harsh in your assessment of Miss Cutler’s character, my love.’

  ‘Harsh? I am the most public spirited of women, as you well know, Edwin. I work tirelessly for charity, but there are limits. Send her on her way and don’t encourage her by giving her money.’

  Lucetta backed away from the door as she heard Edwin’s heavy tread on the floorboards. He emerged from the room with an apologetic smile. ‘I expect you heard most of that, Miss Cutler.’

  ‘I did, sir. I’m sorry I put you in such an awkward position.’

  He regarded her with a thoughtful frown. ‘I don’t know what your true story is, but I can see that you have come down in the world.’

  For a moment she thought he might have seen just a little similarity to her former self and she met his gaze without blinking. ‘What I told you was the truth, Mr Wilkinson.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I see no resemblance between you and the person you claim to be. I think my wife may have been closer to the truth when she said you were a lady’s maid. Perhaps you were on the Caroline and your mistress was drowned, leaving you without a character or the means by which to live. Perhaps you saw this as an opportunity to better yourself, and who could blame you. I have eyes in my head and I know what a harsh world it can be, especially for young females such as yourself.’ He put his hand in his pocket and produced two silver crowns, pressing them into her hand. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but this will pay for a few nights’ lodgings, and enable you to seek employment elsewhere. Good luck, Miss Cutler.’

  The sun blazed down from a clear sky and sparrows skittered about on the grass, pecking and squabbling over minute scraps of food. Lucetta stared up at the house where once she had been a welcome guest, but the door was firmly closed to her and she was alone, friendless and homeless. She shivered despite the heat, and her belly growled with hunger. She had not eaten since last evening and then it had only been a doorstep of bread smeared with what was left of the dripping after Stranks and Guthrie had had their fill. She had not completely recovered from her illness and the living conditions in the basement room had not been conducive to a speedy convalescence. Her knees trembled and she feared that she might faint.

  Taking a deep breath she forced her weary legs to move, although she had no idea where she was going. For some unknown reason she found herself heading back towards the City Road Basin. Perhaps she hoped to find Guthrie, who seemed to be her one friend in the whole of London. She was tired, hungry and confused and one way seemed as good as another. Most important of all, she knew that she must find food quickly before her strength ebbed away. Within minutes, she found herself walking alongside the Regent’s Canal in Frog Lane. The smell of beer and tobacco smoke belched out of open pub doorways, mingling with the enticing aroma of hot savoury pies and roasting meat, but the raucous sound of male voices and laughter made her think twice before entering such alien territory. The coins were hot in the palm of her hand, and she clutched them tightly as she tried to choose between the Fox and Cub, the Flower Pot or the inn facing her with an intriguing sign of two frogs pulling a plough. Suddenly their bowed green legs began to move and their pop-eyes bulged as they attempted to pull the heavy farm implement. Lucetta blinked and looked again. She must be delirious. The fever had returned. She must get food …

  Chapter Nine

  Something wet was trickling down her face. She was drowning. She struggled for breath and opened her eyes with a strangled cry for help, but it was not the dark waters of the Thames that met her terrified gaze, but a swarthy face masked with a beard, moustache and sideboards that merged into a head of curly black hair.

  ‘The frogs,’ Lucetta murmured dazedly. ‘They were moving.’

  ‘She’s either mad or out of her head with fever, Bob.’

  Another face, this time a woman’s, peered down at her. Lucetta made a feeble attempt to sit up but a further bout of dizziness made her collapse back onto the hard wooden settle. ‘I must have fainted. I’m all right now.’

  The man called Bob jerked upright, staring down at her as if she had just spoken in a foreign tongue. ‘This ain’t no guttersnipe, Peg. What have we here, I wonder?’

  Peg pushed him aside. ‘Get back to the bar, and serve the customers afore they goes next door for their ale.’ Wiping her hands on a none-too-clean apron, she helped Lucetta to a sitting position. ‘You collapsed in the road outside the pub, ducks. One of our regulars brought you in, although there’s plenty as would have left you there thinking you was dead drunk. I hope you ain’t got nothing catching.’

  Lucetta managed a wobbly smile. ‘No, I’m not sick, just hungry.’ The rich aroma of roasting meat and hot pastry made her stomach rumble as if to confirm her words. ‘Might I have something to eat, ma’am? I can pay.’ She unclenched her fingers but to her horror her palm was empty. ‘I – I had money. I must have dropped it outside.’ She struggled to her feet. ‘I must find it.’

  Peg pushed her back down on the seat. ‘Even if that’s true, it won’t be there now, love.’

  ‘I’m not mad and I’m not lying,’ Lucetta protested. ‘I had two silver crowns in my hand. I felt dizzy and the frogs on your signboard were moving, I’d swear to it.’

  Bob stuck his head round the kitchen door. ‘Two steak and kidney pies and mash with plenty of gravy, Peg.’

  ‘Coming up.’ Peg moved away to the range where a tray of hot pies was being kept warm beneath a piece of grubby cloth.

  Lucetta’s mouth watered as she watched creamy mashed potato being heaped onto plates to accompany the pies, and she licked her lips as Peg ladled rich brown gravy to form a pool around the steaming food.

  ‘Don’t move from there,’ Peg said sternly. ‘I know exactly how much grub there is so don�
��t go picking bits off the crusts of me pies. I’ll see to you when I get back.’ She opened the door with the toe of her boot and backed into the taproom with a plate grasped in each hand.

  Lucetta fumbled in the pocket of her skirt, hoping that by some chance she had put the coins in a safe place before the dizzy spell had overtaken her, but her searching fingers found nothing. She sat staring numbly into space. Without money she was well and truly lost and she doubted if she had the strength to cross the flagstone floor, let alone walk out of the pub in search of work. She turned her head as the door opened and Peg staggered into the kitchen carrying a pile of dirty crockery.

  ‘I could wash those for you, in return for something to eat.’ Lucetta said hopefully. ‘A slice of bread and butter will do, and a cup of tea – anything.’

  Peg cleared a space on the table with her elbow, setting the plates down with a clatter. ‘You ain’t no skivvy. I can tell by the way you speak. You look like a common drab, but you talk like a lady. Who are you, girl?’

  The appetising smells were a torment and when she attempted to move her head swam. Lucetta knew there was no point in telling her story to this kindly but suspicious woman. ‘My name is Lucy Cutler,’ she said, eyeing a piece of crust that someone had left on their plate. She licked her lips and swallowed hard. ‘I was a lady’s maid and my mistress was drowned when the Caroline went down in the Thames a few weeks ago. I was saved but I lost all my possessions and now I have no money and no one left alive to give me a character.’

  Peg’s eyes widened and she made sympathetic clucking noises. ‘Well now, there’s a pickle and no mistake.’ She spooned mashed potato onto a clean plate, covering it with a steady stream of gravy. ‘Eat this, ducks. We’ll talk about payment later.’ She thrust the plate into Lucetta’s hands.

  Lucetta murmured her thanks, spooning a little of the sticky mash and gravy into her mouth. It was not the type of meal that would have been served at home or at the British consulate in Bali, but it was undeniably tasty and much better than anything she had been given by her former captors. She abandoned table manners and began shovelling heaped spoonfuls into her mouth.

  ‘Slow down, you’ll choke yourself,’ Peg said, chuckling. ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of tea and then you can tell me what it’s like living with the toffs. We don’t get no carriage trade here in Frog Lane.’ She bustled about making the tea but was interrupted by Bob who poked his head round the door to demand five more pies with plenty of gravy and two servings of sausages and mash.

  ‘Rushed off me feet, I am,’ Peg grumbled as the door closed on him. ‘It’s like this every day of the week and that stupid workhouse girl has been took off to hospital with a quinsy. I haven’t had time to go for a replacement, but they’re a sickly bunch, always getting poorly with something or other.’ She rolled up her sleeves and began plating the food. ‘If you’ve finished, you could give us a hand, ducks. Then we’ll have that cup of split pea.’

  Lucetta scraped her plate in order to spoon up the last of the gravy. She resisted the temptation to lick it clean, and she rose a little unsteadily to add it to the pile of dirty crockery. She felt better already, and she was able to look round the kitchen without feeling dizzy, but what she saw filled her with dismay. The ceiling was blackened with soot and grease and the roughly plastered walls were scabbed yellow where the whitewash had peeled off in huge flakes. Strings of onions and dried herbs hung from the beams and a couple of hams dangled in the ingle nook above the range, their skins glistening with salt as the smoke from the fire cured the blackened flesh. What should have been a sight that would gladden the heart of any cook was spoilt by the clouds of bluebottles buzzing around the meat, and the spiders’ webs which festooned the herbs and onions, some of which looked shrivelled like prunes and gave off a distinctly unpleasant odour.

  It was stiflingly hot in the room and the one small window which overlooked the back yard remained firmly closed. A door on the far side led into what looked like a scullery. Lucetta could just make out a clay sink and a wooden draining board cluttered with pots and pans. Dirty crockery was piled on the floor and small grey mice were busily feasting off the congealed grease.

  It was obvious that Peg needed all the help she could get, and Lucetta rolled up her sleeves. She had never washed a dish in her life, but it couldn’t be that difficult. Without disturbing Peg, who was busy with the food orders, she picked her way carefully over the greasy flagstones and mice scattered in all directions as she entered the scullery. If the kitchen was grubby and untidy, the scullery was a filthy mess. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like fishermen’s nets put out to dry, and the cracked windowpanes were opaque with dirt. Flies buzzed around her head and the sink was green with slime. The smell rising from the drain was evil enough to fell an ox, and Lucetta thought for a moment that she was going to be sick. She opened the door that led into the yard and gulped in a lungful of the city air. It was not country fresh but anything was better than the rank odour in the scullery.

  She looked around for a bucket and found one outside the back door. Taking it into the kitchen, she filled it with hot water from one of the boilers on either side of the range. Peg was too occupied to pay her any attention and Lucetta staggered back to the scullery to fill the sink. The green slime waved at her like water-weed in the river that had once flowed outside the Wilkinsons’ home in Duncan Terrace, but there did not appear to be anything to help cleanse the dishes other than soda crystals and a crock filled with sand on one of the shelves. As a small child, Lucetta had sometimes ventured into the kitchens of Thornhill Crescent where Cook had been a kindly soul and had allowed her to sample jam tarts or a slice of seed cake still warm from the oven. She had watched the scullery maid pouring Hudson’s extract of dry soap into hot water when she washed the dishes from breakfast or luncheon, but on finding no similar product to this, she threw a handful of soda crystals into the water and hoped for the best.

  Within minutes her hands were red and wrinkled but she was determined to repay Peg’s generosity, and she continued to wash the crockery, piling it on the draining board and leaving it to dry in the humid air.

  ‘Well now, you’ve done a better job than Poppy and that’s for sure.’

  Lucetta had not heard Peg come into the scullery and she almost dropped a plate as she turned with a start. ‘I wanted to repay your kindness, Mrs er …’

  ‘It’s Potts,’ Peg said, grinning. ‘But everyone calls me Peg. Anyway, you done enough for now, ducks. It’s gone quiet in the bar and I’ve sold out of pies and sausages. We’ll have that cup of tea I promised you a good half-hour since.’

  The water in the sink was tepid and thick with grease, and Lucetta’s back was aching. She was only too glad to follow Peg into the kitchen.

  ‘Take the weight off your feet, ducks,’ Peg said, pouring tea into two china cups. ‘You’ve paid for your dinner, so what are you going to do now? Have you got lodgings nearby?’

  Lucetta accepted the cup of tea and sank down gratefully on the wooden settle. ‘No. I’ve nowhere to go and no money now.’

  Peg lowered herself onto a chair at the table. ‘Ain’t you got no family?’

  ‘I’m an orphan,’ Lucetta said truthfully, and her eyes filled with tears. Until this moment she had been too intent on survival to dwell on her loss, but now the realisation that she would never see her parents again hit her forcibly. She bowed her head, to hide the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks. ‘And I have no relations living in London,’ she whispered. ‘I must find work.’

  Peg cleared her throat noisily. ‘Well, love, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you won’t get a job anywhere looking like something the cat’s dragged in. I seen better dressed scarecrows than you.’

  Lucetta wiped her eyes on her sleeve, sniffing. ‘I know, but I’ve nothing else to wear. I’ve lost everything.’

  ‘But the family you worked for,’ Peg said, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Where was they from? Did they have a house in London
? If they was rich enough to employ a lady’s maid, they must have had other servants who would vouch for you.’

  Lucetta choked on a mouthful of tea. ‘I went to the house, but the master’s brother and his wife live there now. They sent me away and told me not to bother them again.’ She shot a sideways glance at Peg, wondering if she would swallow such an unlikely story.

  ‘That’s the way of the world,’ Peg said, nodding sagely. ‘There’s one rule for the toffs and another for the likes of us. Tell you what, love. You can stay on here and help in the kitchen until Poppy gets out of hospital. I’ll pay you in food and you can have her cot in the attic for nuppence a week. How does that sound to you?’

  Lucetta glanced down at the grime-encrusted flagstones and the small mounds of vegetable peelings left to moulder away under the deal table. It would take a Herculean effort to create a semblance of cleanliness and order in this chaotic kitchen, but Peg was kindly and she was a good cook. A cot in the attic was preferable to sleeping in a shop doorway, and Stranks would never find her here. She looked up and met Peg’s enquiring gaze with a smile. ‘It’s a fair offer, and I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’ Peg refilled her cup with tea. ‘You can make a start by peeling them spuds.’ She pointed to a bulging sack under the window.

  ‘All of them?’ Lucetta said faintly.

  Peg chuckled. ‘Not unless you’re expecting an army to come for their supper. You start peeling and I’ll tell you when to stop.’ She put her feet up on a stool. ‘When you’ve done that you can chop up the beefsteak for the pies. Anyone can do that but it takes a proper cook to make pastry as light as mine.’

  By the end of the day Lucetta was so exhausted that she could hardly put one foot in front of the other as she climbed the narrow staircase to the attic. The flickering pool of light from Peg’s candle bobbed unsteadily ahead of her and the flame was almost extinguished by the draught from the open door.