‘Eliza, do stop this nonsense about Dorcas!’ Tilly said. ‘You are in danger of turning her into something a great deal more important than she is.’
‘As you have too, Mum,’ Eliza said stubbornly. ‘And you can’t say you haven’t.’
‘I know,’ Tilly said after a moment. ‘But we must be sensible. Now, let’s see about tonight’s dinner, and see if we have time to make something special for Duff. He needs a few creature comforts, feeling as he does.’
Eliza brightened. ‘Indeed, we shall, Mum! I’ve some lovely damsons I put up that’ll be fit and ready for a good pie. It won’t take me above twenty minutes or so. He loves a nice damson pie, does Mr Duff, and I’ve some lovely thick cream to send to table with it, for the dairy man came just this morning with the eggs and I took an extra pint of best cream thinking it might come in handy – it’s like it was meant, ain’t it? The Lord looks after them that looks after themselves.’ With which gnomic utterance she hurried out to the larder to get to work. And Tilly sighed with relief and set about her own evening duties, as happy as it was possible to be under the circumstances. At least one of her problems had been solved. Duff was home, and even though he was a mostly unhappy Duff, to have him under her eyes again was all she needed to lift her spirits very high indeed.
Her delight in having him with her persisted for the following days and greatly reduced her shrinking at the idea of once more taking Polly to the countryside to see her brothers as she had promised; for to do so with Duff to keep them company on the journey, and help with carrying the baskets necessary for such a trip, would be much more agreeable than doing so with only an over-excited and nervous Polly.
The first time she had taken Polly to Kent had been an unhappy experience; the boys were very content on their farm, and were clearly thriving in their new lives. They had, like Polly herself, fattened up considerably and had the agreeable weather-beaten look that comes from outdoor work. They did not live in great comfort, it had to be admitted, since they were accommodated in the barn, and slept in hay, but since all the young labourers working there lived under the same conditions (unless they chose to marry, when they were found a cottage) and the barn was snug and dry, this did not constitute a great hardship. Indeed the boys seemed to enjoy the rough and tumble of life with their fellows and had shown only a brief interest in their sister’s arrival. That was the first thing that had made the expedition an unhappy one. After their initial huge interest in the basket of good things that Eliza had provided for Polly to take to her brothers – some plum cake and a dozen or so fruit tarts left from the previous day’s luncheon service, together with pots of jam and some honey as well as a number of other treats – they had been about their own interests, leaving Tilly and Polly, together with a now tired and fractious Georgie, to wander about the farm on their own.
They had admired the cows and the fruit trees, neither of which had much to offer in the way of interest in these dank winter months, and became very damp and chilled. The farmer had been too busy to do more than welcome them cordially enough and to offer them luncheon at his wife’s lavish table, which had quite overawed Polly, for there had been so many people there all bustling and coming and going at different times, and they had made their way home to London in a less than happy state.
This time, Tilly promised herself, it would be better and she assured Polly the same thing.
‘You should be glad they are so happy and busy, Polly,’ she said. ‘If they were weeping and clinging to you as they used to do, that would make you a great deal more unhappy, would it not?’
‘Yes, Missus,’ Polly said lugubriously. ‘I dare say it would.’ She brightened then. ‘But maybe this time they’ll have a bit more time for us? It’s dark of winter now ‘n’t it? There can’t be that much to do on a farm when it’s freezin’ cold, like this.’
It was indeed bitter January weather, and Tilly wore her thickest fur-trimmed shawl mantle and carried a muff as well, and added a soft woollen scarf to protect her ears beneath her bonnet. Polly was bundled into a thick brown ulster coat that had once been Duff’s and which served perfectly well for so small a girl, with a pair of thick black woollen stockings and well made boots to protect her feet, as well as a good bonnet and scarf like Tilly’s. Eliza had looked at her sharply when she was dressed and stood in the kitchen, very neat and respectable, and bade her to mind her manners and to be grateful for Mrs Quentin’s great goodness; at which Tilly shook her head in discomfort and Polly looked sulky. But that she was grateful was undoubted, for she stroked the thick cloth of the coat surreptitiously and with much pleasure.
Duff was silent for most of the journey, ostensibly reading a newspaper as the train they took on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway bore them south-eastwards from Victoria Station, a cluster of somewhat battered wooden buildings at the end of Grosvenor Road, and Tilly was glad of that. Polly was silent too, and the baby Georgie slept, which pleased them all, and the time passed agreeably as the train rattled through the fields of Kent, leaving a great plume of grey smoke on a sky which was not very much brighter on this dreary January day.
At the farm, which lay some mile or two outside Faversham, their welcome was an improvement on their first visit. As Polly had suspected, the farm was less busy than it had been last time, and her brothers were given more time to spend with her by the farmer, who was a cheerful enough man and somewhat garrulous. He bade them take their sister about the place while he entertained Tilly and Duff with some splendour in the heavily furnished parlour, plying them with ratafia and cake in quite the modish manner, as he talked busily about his view of the world and his place in it. His wife, a thin bony woman with a blank face and quite unlike the usual image of a farmer’s helpmeet, sat silently, clearly well accustomed to saying nothing.
‘It’s a great benefit to these boys to get the chance to work on a farm,’ Mr Milstead boomed. ‘When I recall how they looked when they was brought here, all shivering and white as they was, well, it does my heart good to look at ‘em now. It’s the third set of such lads as I’ve had through my hands, Mrs Quentin, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m right proud of the ways they turn out. Two of the first lot is wed now to local girls and living in cottages on our land. One’s shaped into a very good cowman and the other’s as good a fruit grower as you’ll find in these parts, now I’ve trained him, and you can’t say fairer than that. These lads can do just as well.’
Duff seemed to brighten a little and said, ‘What sort of cows do you keep here, Mr Milstead?’ The question made the farmer’s eyes light up with enthusiasm as he launched himself into a panegyric on the subject of good English dun-coloured breeds like Norfolk polled cattle, as compared with Jersey or Guernsey breeds and Friesians which, Mr Milstead avowed, were good milk producers but, of course, gave nothing like as much cream as a well cared for Lincoln Red.
Duff joined in with some animation and Tilly listened, startled by the interest he showed. Oddly, though, she realized as the conversation went on, that it was not so much the cows that interested him as their produce. He seemed to know a good deal about the quality of milk and the cream that was skimmed from it, of the making of good butter and even of cheeses, and equally as much about the way the beef each breed produced cooked and ate and how much hanging it needed to give it the right toothsome tenderness. I must tell Eliza how knowledgeable he has become, she thought. There’ll be a lot she can learn from him.
And this was a notion that grew when the discussion left cows and turned to fruit. Mr Milstead had a mixed farm, dairy and fruit (‘For which Kentish farmer doesn’t grow his apples and pears, I’d like to know?’ he said with a great guffaw) and now Mrs Milstead began to show some interest too.
‘The best for cooking, in my estimation,’ she announced in a surprisingly deep voice, ‘is Ribstons. They makes the fairest apple pie you ever set your knife to. But if you wants to make apple butter now, to preserve it, then you wants a good Nonsuch. For plain eating, though –’
‘But what about Colvilles for baking and such-like cooking?’ Duff interrupted. ‘They are excellent.’
‘They’re good enough,’ Mrs Milstead allowed, ‘if a shade tart for my fancy. For eating, as I was saying –’
‘Codlings and Summer Pearmains,’ said Duff. ‘Good summer apples, they are. But for the autumn I prefer Dontons and small Russets. And of course, there’s the sweet little Beauties of Bath –’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Milstead and sank back into silence, but now Duff was well away and Tilly relaxed, grateful to see him animated for the first time since his return from Leicestershire a few days ago.
When it was time to bid them farewell, collecting Polly from the barn where she had clearly spent a reasonably contented time with her brothers and was leaving in a much better frame of mind than she had after their last visit, Mr Milstead shook Tilly by the hand firmly and bade her take his good wishes back to the committee at St George’s Hospital.
‘For I tell you, Ma’am, they got the best idea about dealing with young beggary. None of us is about to take care of the full-grown beggars, for we have enough indigents of our own and the Poor Law rates enough to cripple a hard-working man like myself, comfortable though I may be, but these children are not past redemption and I’ll gladly take more when I can. I works ‘em, I don’t deny, but you can see for yourself they’re happy enough, and well fed into the bargain.’
Indeed they did look well, and were grinning happily enough at their master, and not showing undue fear of him, though undoubted deference.
‘If they’d stayed in the city, why, all they’d do is drive their betters to distraction with their pestering and then go crawling into places where they got no right to be and doing all sorts of damage. Why, I heard only last week of a house over Covent Garden way where the owner was away abroad and he comes back and found no less than seven of ‘em bedded down in his chambers! That’ll never do, will it, Ma’am? So you tell the committee that they can send me their children – boys only, mind – girls makes trouble, if you’ll forgive me saying so.’ And he cast a sharp look at Polly who stared back at him mulishly. ‘And are better off in service to a good mistress like yourself to watch over them. But boys I’ll take any time and glad to. Good day to you, Ma’am, and I thank you for your visit and wish you well.’
‘Are the boys happy, Polly?’ Tilly asked her in the brake that carried them back to the railway station at the end of the afternoon, through the darkening countryside where the ground was developing the silvery sheen of frost under their eyes as the wheels clattered over the frozen ruts of the road. ‘They look well enough, but they may have spoken more to you?’
‘Oh, they like it very well,’ Polly said. ‘They has to work and very hard at that, but don’t we all? I works too –’ She looked at Tilly from beneath lowered lids, a glance she caught even in the dim light of the swinging lantern fastened to the front of the brake as the horse trotted on its swaying way.
‘Work never hurt anyone,’ Tilly said, a little uneasily. Was she making this child work too hard in the house? She must talk to Eliza about that, for in truth she could not really know.
‘I knows that and so do the boys. They ain’t complaining. It’s just the way he goes on about beggars all the time that frets ‘em, they says. It’s like we was born to be different, when all we was, my brother says – Tom, the one that got under your wheel that day, Missus – he says we was just unlucky. Our pa was as caring a man as any he’s met here, he says, only he was unlucky, so when the master goes on about beggars and the wicked things they do ‘e’s fair to ‘it ‘im. Not that ’e would, because that’d prove to old Milstead ’e was right in what ’e says, and Tom won’t ‘ave that –’ She too lapsed into silence and stared out into the blackness of the Kentish night, at the way frosted stars were caught in the naked branches of trees and small rustlings in the hedges showed where frightened animals had been put up by the sound of the wheels.
Tilly said no more about it, either, but was very aware of Polly’s uneasiness. That she was happy to see her brothers well was clear, but she was still fretful, and Tilly wondered why. And then put it down to the girl’s natural tendency to be argumentative, and since they were on the train and on their way back to Victoria by now, allowed herself to doze off with her head against the dusty cloth of the carriage rather than to make conversation.
Duff saw them all into a four-wheeler cab at Victoria and Georgie woke for a while and wailed, but Polly shushed him back into quietness and they all sat in the rather bemused state tiredness created – for it was now well past eleven o’clock and they had left Quentin’s at eight in the morning – thinking longingly of their beds.
Until the cab reached the end of Brompton Road and took the great curve that brought them within sight of their own front door. Tilly, who had started to doze again, was roused by an unusual light or sound; she could not be sure which it was, and then realized it was a smell that had dragged her back to the here and now. She had been dreaming she was in the kitchen so early that no one had set and lit the fire; and that Eliza was crying aloud in distress at that fact as she set a flame to the paper beneath the sticks. The smell of the new fire filled her nostrils agreeably and she tried to tell Eliza not to worry so, it did not matter she was late, they would manage well enough. But Eliza went on shouting, louder and louder; and then Tilly was awake and staring about her in alarm, her heart racing.
Duff had his head out of the window of the cab, staring ahead into the darkness, and the noise Tilly had heard in her sleep changed and became not one woman’s dream voice but the cries of several, and she sat bolt upright, just as Polly too woke and stared about her.
‘Duff, what is it?’ Tilly cried and tried to push him aside so that she could see out, but he wouldn’t let her. He was calling to the cab driver who had pulled hard on his reins.
‘Driver, get that horse going, will you? That house – it is close to ours – we must get there as fast as we can!’ Duff cried but the cabbie shouted something unintelligible back at him and Duff opened the door and jumped out, swearing. Tilly was taken aback; she had never heard him speak so before.
He reappeared a moment later at the window. ‘Mamma, I don’t know what’s happening but it seems the horse will go no further according to this dolt of a driver. He says it’s afraid of fire – I shall run ahead and see what’s afoot. You remain here safe and I shall return for you.’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘A fire? Oh, Duff, not Quentin’s? Tell me it’s not –’
‘I don’t know,’ he cried, for now the noise of shouting had increased and there was a roaring sound and Tilly thought, That’s burning, I can hear burning, and pushed against the door, still held by Duff, to get out.
‘I’m coming with you!’ she cried. ‘Polly, stay here.’ And not waiting to see that she was obeyed, took her skirts in both hands and began to run after Duff, who was haring along in front of her. And as she ran she saw it as well as heard it and smelled it. The sky was a glorious golden and crimson ahead of her, and she was certain, absolutely certain, that it was her beloved Quentin’s that was creating that glow.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE NOISE WAS dreadful as people shouted and the roar of wooden beams and brick walls being consumed by the leaping flames rose higher and higher. The light was lurid, and as Tilly arrived, breathing so hard that her chest felt constricted and her lower teeth ached, her eyes began to sting with the acrid smoke.
On the far side of the road, staring up at the great fire, was a knot of people and she recognized several of her neighbours, some of them in their dressing-gowns and night caps, and then her chest tightened again, for in one cluster of people were her own guests. She could see Mr Grayling holding his wife hard by the shoulders as, her head tied up in a turban, she stared up open-mouthed at all that was going on, and the Misses K and F, with Miss Barnetsen shrinking between them, standing august and severe and almost daring the fireman, who was trying to urge
the unlookers to go further away, to move them on any pretext. Silas was there too, and she ran across the road towards him, past the snaking leather hoses that stretched from the fire-engine that stood to one side of her own front door.
‘Silas!’ she cried, and her voice was thick, for she had inhaled some of the smoke that was billowing along the street. ‘What happened? Is anyone hurt? Is everyone here? The maids – where is Eliza? And the –’
‘It’s all right.’ Silas took her elbows and held them tight, and bawled in her ear because of the hubbub that was increasing now as a second fire-engine, drawn by four very excited, stamping horses, came thundering along the street. ‘It’s not Quentin’s – it’s all right –’
She clung to him for a moment and then pulled back. ‘Is everyone out?’ she shouted again. ‘Have you made sure that everyone is all right?’
‘I told you it isn’t our house – it’s next door. The empty one. There’s no need to be worried at all. The guests came out only because the fireman said we should, for safety’s sake in case it spreads, but he is doing all he can to prevent it – Oh!’
He stared over her shoulder as the newly arrived engine stopped, spewing out a cluster of brawny men in the uniform of the London Fire Engine Establishment, who pulled their hoses away from the equipage to seek a water hydrant. The light gleamed on the brass and leather helmets and coats, and made them look like emissaries from hell; and they were very fast.
So fast that by the time Tilly was aware of what it was that had alarmed Silas, it was too late to stop it. The man in charge of the second engine, an excitable fellow with a great deal of showiness in his behaviour and a most stentorian voice, had shouted to his men some unintelligible instruction and they had turned their hoses on the front of Quentin’s, even though Tilly could now see by squinting through the smoke and shifting light that it was indeed the adjoining house that was the seat of the fire. Dorcas’s house.
Paying Guests Page 34