Tilly Trotter

by Catherine Cookson

  "No, sir."

  "Are you willing to learn?"

  "Yes, sir. Oh yes, sir."

  "Well, I understand the nursemaid that looks after my children has left suddenly, in tears I understand."

  He smiled now. "You see, my four are a little wild. I'm packing two off to school shortly, but in the meantime they all need some attention. Are you willing to take them on?" Again he smiled at her.

  Four children! As he said, and rightly, she knew nothing about children. She couldn't remember playing with children because the village children rarely got out this far; sometimes on a holiday she would see them playing down by the burn, but she had always been too shy to join them. More than once she had lain hidden and watched them at play, especially the miners' children because they, too, worked down the pit, and so they usually came in a group by themselves on a Sunday in the summer and would swim like fish in the water and yell and shout and struggle with each other. They always enjoyed the water, the miners' children.

  "Are you deterred?"

  "Pardon, sir?"

  "Have I put you off accepting the position?"

  "Oh no, sir. No, sir. I'll take it and gladly, an' ... an' do me best."

  "Well, you can do no more. But I must warn you, you may have a rough time of it."

  "I'm used to rough times, sir."

  Her face had been straight, her voice low, and he stared at her for a moment as he thought, Yes, yes, indeed, you're used to hard times; and likely, looking as she did, there were many more ahead of her. There was something about her. It was in the eyes perhaps, they seemed to draw you. This had likely frightened the villagers and yet at the same time had the power to attract the men, like that McGrath individual in particular.

  There had been McGraths in the village as long as there had been Sopwiths in the Manor, and strangely history noted that every generation of McGraths brought its own particular kind of trouble; highway robbers, sheep stealers, wife abductors.

  Wife abductors. The word brought his chain of thinking to a halt for it had reminded him, that's if he needed reminding, there was that dinner tonight with the Mytons.

  Agnes delighted in making a cuckold of the old man, and he had the idea that Lord Billy wasn't unaware of it, which made him think that maybe he wasn't unaware of his own part in her latest escapade. That he was merely one in a long string of offside suitors he recognised, and he was sorry that he had ever started the affair, but Agnes had a quality about her. Like this girl here, only of a different appeal. Yet perhaps not all that different, for this slim girl, who still had a childish look about her, had certainly aroused the fires in the man McGrath.

  "Can you come along to the house tonight, you don't want to sleep here any longer than is necessary ... do you?"

  "No, sir. I mean yes, yes, I could come tonight."

  "Have you any belongings?"

  "Only what I stand up in, sir, and a few pots back there." She inclined her head towards the woodshed.

  "Well, you won't have need of ... the pots."

  He laughed gently. "Be there within the hour. Ask for Mrs Lucas, she is the housekeeper, I shall tell her to expect you... .all right?"

  "All right, sir. And thank you."

  He had half turned from her when, looking at her again, he smiled broadly and said, "I would reserve your thanks, my crew are little demons, they'll likely put you through it. But I give you leave to take a firm hand with them. Do whatever you think is necessary to curb their high spirits."

  "Yes, sir. Yes, sir." As she watched him go, her mind was in a turmoil, one part of it thanking God she had a post, the other frightening her in a number of different ways: She was going into a big house where there were lots of servants. Would they be like the villagers? And then there were the children.

  Terrors he had called them. How would she manage them? Suddenly she smiled to herself, a small tentative smile, as she thought, Well, I can only follow me granny's pattern with meself: smacked me backside when I was bad, an' a bit of taffy when I was good.

  The night was already settled in firmly before she reached the Manor gates. Timorously she went through them, passed the lodge from where no one called out to ask her business, then almost groped her way for half a mile up the drive until it opened out to show, standing beyond a large lawn, a big house, some windows illuminated, others like great black eyes.

  She skirted the lawn, went round the side of the house and came upon a courtyard lit by a lantern swinging from a bracket. She now made her way to the far end from where the sound of muffled voices was coming.

  There were four doors in this wall, but she didn't stop until she was opposite the end one.

  This one was partly open and the voices were clearer now, and mixed with laughter. She leant forward and knocked on the door and waited a full minute before knocking again, louder this time. The chatter ceased abruptly and presently the door was pulled open to reveal a girl of about her own age who peered at her, then said, "Oh, "tis you from the cottage, is it?"

  "Aye, yes."

  "Oh well then, you'd better come in."

  The girl's face was straight and she stood aside to let Tilly pass her before closing the door. They were now in a small room which she could see was used as a cloakroom of sorts for, hanging from the pegs, were rough coats and shawls, and along one wall a number of pairs of boots ranging from heavy hob-nailed ones down to slippers. The room was also lit by a lantern hanging from a bracket and Tilly almost hit her head against it as she followed the girl into the kitchen.

  Just within the doorway of the long stone-flagged room she stopped and gazed at the scene before her. Sitting around a table opposite a great open fireplace were a number of people, three men and four women, and all their heads were turned towards her. No one spoke until the girl who had shown her in said, "She's here."

  "I've got eyes in me head, haven't I?"

  This came from a short and enormously fat woman who was sitting at the head of the table and who turned now and looked at the man who was sitting at the foot of the table, saying under her breath, "You better go and tell Mrs Lucas, hadn't you?"

  "It can wait. Anyway, she won't thank me if I break into their meal."

  "Sit down, lass." It was one of the two men from the bottom end of the table speaking to her now, and this remark brought a dark look on him from the cook and the footman, and as if they had spoken their displeasure aloud he leaned forward and looked along the table towards the top end, saying, "Well, she's the master's choice, whatever she be, and it would pay some of us not to forget that."

  This remark seemed to affect the whole table for those sitting round it moved uneasily on the forms; and now Jane Brackett, the cook, taking control of the situation before Robert Simes could challenge her position as head of the table, lifted her small, thick arm and, pointing to a cracket near the fire, said, "Sit yourself down; you'll be seen to in a minute."

  Tilly sat down. Her heart was thumping against her ribs, her mouth was dry, she knew her eyes were stretched wide as they were apt to do when she was nervous or upset. For a moment she imagined she was back in the courtroom, so thick was the hostility in the air about her. But then there appeared a ray of warm light as a young woman, rising from the table and going to a delf rack, quickly took down a mug and returned to the table and poured out a cup of tea from the huge teapot that was resting on a stand between the cook and the footman.

  So taken aback by this forward action, the cook was lost for words for some moments; then she demanded, "And what do you think you're doin", Phyllis Coates?"

  "Well, you can see what I'm doin', can't you, Mrs Brackett?" The answer sounded perky and was given with a grin. "I'm pourin' out a cup of tea."

  She nudged the cook now with her elbow. "Live and let live. We'll wait and see how things turn out. Anyway--" she bent close to the cook's ear now and whispered something which brought from Jane Brackett the retort, "I'm not afeared of charms or any such damn nonsense." Yet there was no conviction in the
words and her voice was muted.

  Phyllis Coates was first housemaid at the Manor. She was thirty years

  old and had started in the kitchen twenty years ago as scullery maid. She was of medium height, and thin, with a pleasant face and happy disposition. She considered herself fortunate to hold the position that she did, and much more so because in a year or two's time she was to marry Fred Leyburn the coachman. She had taken her cue from Fred. He had been kind to the lass, telling her to take a seat, so she would be an' all, she would lose nothing by it.

  Bending down to Tilly now, she said, "Would you like a shive?"

  "No; no, thank you."

  "Go on, you must be hungry."

  She went to the table again and amid silence took from her own plate a large crust of new bread and having put on it half the ham that was still on her plate she brought it to Tilly, saying, "There.

  There, get it down you," and bending further until their faces were on a level, she grinned at her and said,

  "People never look so bad when you've got a full belly."

  If Tilly could have smiled she would have at that moment, but a softness came into her eyes and she had the desire to cry; and she almost did when the girl's hand lightly touched her shoulder and patted it twice.

  There was silence until Phyllis returned to the table; then it seemed as if everybody was bent on speaking at once. And this went on for some time until the cook, her voice high and strident now, said,

  "Sup up your last, Ada Tennant, else your backside will get glued to that form."

  Tilly saw the girl who had let her in gulp at her mug, then quickly rise from the form and go to the sink at the far end of the kitchen where the dishes were piled high on each side of it.

  "And you, Maggie Short, get along and see if Mrs Lucas an' that lot's finished."

  "Yes; yes, Cook." The girl rose hastily from the table and, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, went up the kitchen towards the far door with the cook's voice following her: "Straighten your cap and pull your apron down else you'll hear about it if she sees you like that. And ... and tell her that--"

  She now paused and, looking towards Tilly, said,

  "What's your name again?"

  "Tilly, Tilly Trotter."

  There was an audible giggle from the table, but the cook did nothing to stop it; instead, looking at the kitchen maid, she said, "Tell her that she's come, the Trotter girl."

  "No need to do any such thing." Robert Simes the footman had risen to his feet now. "I'll see to this matter. Come along you." He jerked his head. It was a gesture one might have used to raise a dog from the hearth, and Tilly rose from the cracket and followed him.

  He didn't wait for her as he passed through the green-baized door at the end of the kitchen and it swung noiselessly into her face. She paused a moment before pressing it open again and when she found herself in a broad corridor with doors going off at each side, she again paused, only to be jolted forward by Simes's voice, calling, "Come on! Look slippy." He hadn't turned his head while speaking to her.

  He was standing now outside a door, the last but one in the corridor. She saw him knock on it, and she was standing to the side of him when a voice from inside said, "Come."

  He opened the door but did not go over the threshold, and his tone now dropping to one of polite subservience, he said, "It's the girl, Mrs Lucas, she's come."

  "Oh." There was a murmur from inside the room, and presently a woman of medium height wearing a grey alpaca dress, the bodice of which seemed moulded to her thin body, stood confronting the footman, who had now taken a step back into the corridor.

  Staring unblinking at the thin-lipped, sharp-nosed face of the housekeeper, Tilly experienced another tremor of apprehension as the round dark eyes swept over her. She knew, even if the atmosphere hadn't warned her, that her history had preceded her; she was already feeling that she had been thrust back into the middle of the village.

  The housekeeper was now joined by the butler. Mr Pike was a man nearing seventy. He had a long, tired face, his shoulders were slightly stooped, and when he looked at her his eyes gave nothing away

  --his gaze was neutral.

  "Well, let's get it over. Come, girl,"

  said the housekeeper.

  "Does she want to see her tonight?"

  The housekeeper turned her head to look at the butler. "My order from Her Ladyship Price was to take her up as soon as she arrived."

  "I don't think the mistress will thank you for taking her up at this time of night."

  "What has the mistress got to do with it when that one's about? Come on, you."

  Again it was as if the command were being given to a dog.

  Tilly followed the housekeeper and that part of her not filled with fear and apprehension noted that the woman didn't seem to take steps

  as she walked, her head didn't bob or her arms swing, it was as if her feet were attached to wheels beneath the hem of the full alpaca skirt.

  She was reminded of a toy she once had called Bad Weather Jack and Fine Weather Jane: according to the atmosphere they glided in and out of miniature doors set in a box painted to represent a house.

  She followed her up a narrow staircase on to a small landing, then up a short flight of four stairs and through yet another green-baized door; and now she was walking across what was to her the biggest room she had ever seen. She only vaguely took in that it was partly railed in and that a broad stairway led from the centre down to the ground floor because the housekeeper had now turned and was gliding quickly up an even broader and longer corridor than the one below. The length of it was indicated by the three coloured lamps set at intervals on tables along its walls. Everything about her seemed to be wrapped in a soft red glow: the carpet was red, the wallpaper was red; there were deep red colours reflecting from some of the pictures hanging between the doors. She was dazed by the wonder of it, even transported out of herself for a moment; that was until the housekeeper came to a stop and, her voice a muted hiss, she said, "Only speak when you're spoken to. And keep your head down until you're told to lift it. You heard what I said?" The last words were delivered in an almost inaudible whisper, and for answer Tilly nodded once.

  "Then when I speak to you answer "Yes, Mrs Lucas"."

  Her head already bent forward, Tilly looked up under her eyelids at the housekeeper and obediently said, "Yes, Mrs Lucas."

  The housekeeper glared at her. Why did the mistress want to see this girl? It wasn't her place to engage staff. She was acting like an ordinary small-house mistress, the engaging of staff was the duty of the housekeeper. There was something fishy here. Another of Madam Price's tactics, she'd be bound.

  In answer to the housekeeper's knock on the door, Mabel Price opened it and, after looking from one to the other, she turned her head and said quietly,

  "It's the girl, madam."

  "Oh, I'll see her now."

  As the housekeeper went to draw Tilly forward Miss Price said, "It's quite all right, Mrs Lucas, you won't be needed."

  The women exchanged looks that only they could have translated; then Miss Price, touching Tilly's shoulder with the tip of her finger, indicated that she enter the room, almost at the same time closing the door on the housekeeper; then her fingers still on Tilly's shoulder, she

  pressed her forward until she was standing about a yard from the couch on which a lady was lying. She could only see the shape of her lower body underneath what looked like a silk rug because, obeying orders, she had her head down and her eyes directed towards the floor.

  "Look at me, girl."

  Slowly Tilly raised her head and looked at the lady; and she thought she was beautiful, sickly looking, but beautiful.

  "My husband has recommended you as nursemaid for our children, but he tells me you have no previous experience. Is that so?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Do you like children?"

  There was a pause, "Yes, ma'am."

  "How old are you?"


  "Gone sixteen, ma'am."

  "You have lived on the estate since you were very young, I understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Your grandmother and grandfather died, did they not?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And there was the unfortunate business of your cottage being burned down, at least my husband's cottage being burned down."

  Another pause. "Yes, ma'am."

  "Well, Trotter, I hope you realise that you are very fortunate to be given this position, having had no previous experience."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You will find that my children are very high-spirited. I...

  I expect you to control them, to a certain extent."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "How long you remain in my service depends on their reaction to you, you understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You may go now, and Miss Price will instruct you as to your duties."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She was about to turn away when she was hissed at again. It was a different hiss from the housekeeper's, it was a high, thin, refined hiss. "Thank the mistress," it said.

  She gulped; then with head down and eyes cast towards the thick grey carpet, she said, "Thank you, ma'am."

  A few minutes later, after having led her not into the corridor but

  through a dressing-room and into what Tilly took to be a closet, for it held two hand basins on stands with big copper watering cans to the side, while in the corner was a wooden seat with a hole in it and on the top a decorated porcelain lid, and underneath a porcelain pail with beautiful paintings on it and a square straw-bound handle dangling down the side of it, Mabel Price looked at the new nursery maid with deep interest. She knew all about her, her business with the parson's wife, the murder of that man, the case in Newcastle, the cottage being burned down because she was a witch, and as she stared at her she wondered why it was that the master had insisted on taking her into his employ. One thing was certain, if the mistress had got wind of the witch business Miss Tilly Trotter wouldn't have got through the back door of this house. That's why he had warned her. And how he had warned her! Almost threatened her. "You say one word about this girl to the mistress, Price," he had said, "and you'll be outside those gates quicker than you've ever passed through them before. And no pleading from the mistress will make me change my mind. You understand me?"