by Dominic Luke
She might even take flowers.
Chapter Seven
Mama came unlooked-for to the day room. ‘Here you are, Elizabeth.’
Where else would I be? said Eliza silently, mutinously, as she sat at the table picking the threads from her unfinished sampler: Where else? But her heart sank. It must be about the new governess. Why else would Mama have come up here?
One governess had already come and gone since February, a prim and rather fussy woman who’d decided after a month-and-a-half that the climate didn’t suit her and the location was not propitious. She was used to the modern amenities of a town; life in the countryside was positively medieval. And the people, so unfriendly: the way they looked at you in the village! She couldn’t, she really couldn’t.
But Mama had not come about the new governess. There was no new governess. ‘I haven’t had time, what with one thing and another, and these headaches: I keep getting headaches. Colonel Harding’s daughter – one of his married daughters – has been so kind as to invite me to Scarborough for a few days. The sea air may do me some good. It can’t hurt. I shall be away a week, two at the most.’
Eliza experienced a sudden surge of excitement. A week, a whole week, to do as she pleased, to enjoy herself! With Mama away and Roderick not home, the house would be hers: she would be mistress.
Mama gave her a sharp look. ‘Now, Elizabeth, you must be a good girl whilst I’m away. I don’t like to leave you really but there’s a house full of servants and Roderick is due back any day from his friend’s.’
Eliza did her best to look as if butter wouldn’t melt. ‘I will be good as gold, Mama, I promise.’
Mama departed. The sense of freedom was exhilarating. Eliza waltzed around the house, walking on air.
That first morning she found Basford in the dining room polishing the table. She stopped to speak to him. They’d hardly exchanged two words when the door flew open and Mrs Bourne swooped in. She glared at them. What was all this giggling and gossiping? Why hadn’t Basford finished with the table yet? She couldn’t abide idling and sloppiness. She would be having words with Mr Ordish. As for Miss Elizabeth, she must not distract the servants from their work, she must not get under their feet: she would confine herself to the nursery – her proper place – and do her lessons as Mrs Brannan had instructed.
‘I shan’t and you can’t make me!’
The words were out before Eliza realized: she had no idea where they’d come from. Mrs Bourne flushed bright red, her eyes grew wider and wider, her hand twitched: she was obviously resisting the urge to slap. It was terrifying, the Dreadnought at action stations bearing down at her, but Eliza knew she had to stand her ground or lose all the advantages of Mama’s absence.
Something stirred within her. Courage?
‘I shan’t do what you say, I shan’t!’
Mrs Bourne bristled. ‘Your mother will hear of this!’
‘I don’t care! You can do what you like! I’m not scared of you!’
‘You brassy-faced madam! I’ve never come across such impertinence in all my life!’
Mrs Bourne’s fury lashed over her. Eliza found fortitude in the sight of Basford, who was standing behind the housekeeper with his cloth in his hand and grinning from ear to ear.
Mrs Bourne abruptly turned away. Basford’s grin snapped off at once and he began assiduously polishing the table. Mrs Bourne barely gave him a glance. She swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Basford stopped polishing. He and Eliza looked at each other, rather breathless. They could hear voices in the corridor, Mrs Bourne and Mr Ordish. It was impossible to make out Mr Ordish’s words but the housekeeper’s shrill voice carried clearly.
‘. . . never been spoken to in such a way . . . a mere girl . . . seventeen years in service and no one has ever, ever . . .’
Eliza could not have endured another clash with Mrs Bourne. Her reserves for the moment were depleted. Even Mr Ordish would have been too much and he was no more terrifying than a fly. Leaving Basford to his polishing, she hurried to the back door and let herself out, seeking sanctuary away from the house.
Climbing a fence at the far end of the stable block, she jumped down into the meadow known as the Old Close. The stable block was on her right. Washing was drying on the grass, white in the sun. There was no sign of the laundry maid.
As she weaved between the spread-out sheets and pillowcases, Eliza reached the conclusion that she did not like arguments, not even when it was Mrs Bourne. She tried to remember what it was that Kolya had once said about a spirit of fellowship and cooperation. Was it too much to hope that this spirit of fellowship and cooperation might blossom at Clifton Park?
In the vegetable garden she found Becket the old gardener thinning out carrots, stooped over. He seemed less than delighted to see her.
‘Just stay out of my road today, Miss Eliza. I’ve no time for chopsing. There’s too much to do, and my arthritis is playing up, and that boy is next to useless.’
That boy was Jack Britten, one of the baker’s sons from the village, almost the same age as Eliza. She made a note of the fact that he was useless: she could chaff him about it later.
‘Don’t worry, Becket. I’ll help you.’
‘Eh? What’s that?’ He was growing a little deaf.
‘I said, I’ll help you: I’ll help with the garden.’
‘Now, why would you want to do that?’
‘Because of the spirit of fellowship and cooperation.’
‘Oh, aye.’ He eyed her dubiously. ‘Well, you could do a little weeding, I suppose.’
‘I’ll start right away!’
‘Mind it’s weeds you pull up and naught else!’
But it proved impossible to avoid pulling up several cabbages and a good handful of young lettuce along with the weeds. Becket muttered darkly and shook his head and seemed disappointingly relieved when she said she had to go now, it was time for luncheon.
‘I’ll do better this afternoon, I promise!’ said Eliza, wiping her muddy hands down her frock. ‘I shall come back this afternoon!’
‘If you must, miss.’
Back in the nursery, Eliza found that news of her collision with Mrs Bourne had spread throughout the house. Daisy was full of admiration.
‘I wish I had your pluck, Miss Eliza! I’d like to tell that sour-faced old crow exactly what I think of her!’
‘Why don’t you, Daisy?’
‘I’d be out on my ear, that’s why. I’d have no job and no money and I’d end up in the Spike. We can’t all be as free-and-easy as you, miss.’
Eliza pondered over this whilst she ate her cutlet. Fight against tyranny, Kolya had said. But how could Daisy fight against tyranny when to do so would land her in the Spike? The Spike was the name Daisy had for the workhouse in Lawham: a terrible place, she said, where the old and unwanted were ground up and used as manure, whilst surplus children were killed and made into pies. Dorothea had suggested that Daisy might perhaps be exaggerating a little, but even Dorothea had not had a good word to say about the workhouse.
Perhaps the tyranny of the workhouse was even worse than the tyranny of Mrs Bourne.
After luncheon, Eliza hurried to keep her promise to Becket. She let herself out by the side door. In the stable yard she stumbled on the tail end of what had obviously been a protracted and rather violent tussle between Billy Turner and Jeff Smith. Turner had Jeff Smith in a headlock and was dragging him across to the water trough. Both young men were dusty and dishevelled and breathing heavily.
As Eliza watched, Billy Turner ducked Smith’s head under the water and held it there. There was an explosion of bubbles. Smith kicked his legs wildly but couldn’t break free.
Eliza ran across the yard. ‘Stop it, stop it, he’ll drown! How could you, how dare you, you’re nothing but a . . . a . . . a tyrant!’
Billy Turner looked round in some consternation. He also loosened his grip. Jeff Smith wriggled free. He was bedraggled and dripping and h
is hair was plastered to his head, but his eyes were glaring and he looked ready to resume the fisticuffs. Seeing Eliza, however, he seemed to think better of it. Casting a last louring look at Billy Turner, he slunk away across the yard.
Eliza in high dudgeon turned her back on Turner and went marching off towards the gardens.
‘That don’t sound like our Billy,’ said Daisy as she served tea in the nursery. ‘He’s a lummakin great lad but he’d never pick on someone for no reason.’
‘I did ask him later,’ Eliza admitted, ‘and he said that Jeff had been chelping away at him all morning.’
‘Well, that explains it. He’s a lippy one, that Jeff Smith. Thinks he’s it, he does. I daresay he only got what he deserved. You oughtn’t to be so quick to judge, Miss Eliza!’
‘I’m sorry, Daisy.’
‘It’s not me who needs to hear it.’
‘I’ll tell Billy, too. I’ll tell him straight after tea.’
‘As you like, miss.’
‘Why are you being so horrid, Daisy? I’ve said I’m sorry!’
‘Oh, don’t mind me, miss. I’m just in a narky mood. It’s Zack. I never get to see him. I’m always late finishing since I’ve been filling in downstairs, and Zack’s working all hours down Manor Farm haymaking. It’s enough to make anyone down in the dumps!’
‘Why not write him a letter? It’s the next-best thing.’
Daisy wrinkled her nose and looked shifty.
‘What’s the matter, Daisy? You can write, can’t you?’
‘Of course I can write! What a thing to say! I’m just not much good at it, that’s all. I never could get the hang of all those fiddly bits. It didn’t help that our Nora – our Billy, too, for that matter – could write like clerks from the day they was born. And oh my, weren’t they smug about it!’
‘Let me write the letter, Daisy! Tell me what you want to say and I’ll put it down.’
Daisy brightened. ‘That would be something, if I could send Zack a proper letter!’
Eliza pushed aside the remains of her cake. ‘We’ll start now!’
Once the letter was finished, Eliza went to look for Billy Turner as she’d promised. She found him, of course, in the stable yard. He was cleaning out one of the loose boxes. Two interested horses were watching. Eliza watched too, hanging back. It took some nerve to approach Billy Turner in cold blood.
He was working with his cap on and his shirt open at the collar. He had a tanned face and neck, a dimple on his chin, cuts and bruises from the fight, bandy legs. (‘Our Billy couldn’t stop a pig in an entry,’ was how Daisy put it.)
Jeff Smith was perhaps a head taller than Turner but he didn’t have Turner’s muscles. Billy was throwing great bales of hay around as if they were nothing. He was also scowling ferociously. Eliza shrank from approaching him.
Billy paused in his work to have a word with one of the horses: Roderick’s Conquest, it was, an aristocratic beast. Billy tickled Conquest under the chin, muttering softly all the while. The horse snorted and deigned to lower its head, allowing Billy to stroke its neck, nuzzling Billy’s shoulder. Billy’s expression changed. He looked almost good-natured now. But when after a moment he caught sight of Eliza loitering by the water pump, his scowl came back at once. He stepped away from the horse, touched his cap.
‘Miss.’
Eliza took a deep breath. She proceeded to make her apology. Billy listened, scratching his neck and glowering. It was quite all right, he muttered. It was all forgotten. He’d do his best to get on with Jeff Smith in future if that was what Miss Eliza wanted. He hadn’t got anything against Jeff Smith. He hadn’t got anything against anyone.
‘Not even Zack Hobson?’ Eliza bit her lip. It was a mistake to mention Zack Hobson.
‘Who’s been talking to you about Zack Hobson?’ said Billy gruffly. ‘It weren’t our Daisy, were it, miss?’
Eliza sidestepped the question. ‘Who is Zack Hobson?’ Could he really be the ragamuffin boy she remembered?
‘He’s a good-for-nothing fellow, that’s what he is, but our Daisy thinks the sun shines out his arse.’
‘Out his what?’
‘Out his – never you mind, miss.’ Billy peered at her, suspicious. ‘Has our Daisy been talking to you about him? Has our Daisy been talking to him?’
‘No, of course not, she hasn’t said a word to him.’ A letter, after all, was not the same as talking.
‘Aye, well, that’s good. But just you steer clear of Zack Hobson, miss, and tell our Daisy to and all. They’re a bad lot, those Hobsons.’
Eliza began to feel guilty about the letter. She had wanted to be helpful, she had wanted to get on Daisy’s right side, but she wondered now if it might be better to be on Billy’s right side instead. This was a rather surprising thought. She had never paid much attention to Billy Turner. She had always found him rather daunting.
Billy scratched his neck once more, shuffling his feet. If Miss Eliza had finished, then he ought to be getting on. There were a dozen and one things needed doing and the afternoon half over. He had to go to the village later, too: his ma expected him on a Tuesday. And whilst he was in the village his granddad, no doubt, would want him to go traipsing down to his bit of land to help with the pigs and the hens and whatnot. It was a dog’s life and no mistake.
Eliza was rather taken aback. She had never heard him say so much all in one go. ‘Isn’t there anyone to help you?’ she asked. ‘Mr Ordish has Basford, Cook has Merrells, and Becket has Jack Britten.’
‘When I started here, miss, a dozen or so years back, there was three of us in the stables and I were the lowest of the lot. Now there’s only me – unless you count Jeff Smith. But he’s no help, polishing his motors all day long. His brother used to lend a hand: he was a good mate, was Stan. But don’t you take no notice of me, miss. A bit of hard work never hurt anyone.’
It didn’t seem fair, all the same, that so much should be heaped on his shoulders, broad though those shoulders were.
‘I shall help you, Billy. I’ve been helping Becket today. Tomorrow I will help you. It’s my new idea, to be helpful. It’s because of the spirit of fellowship and cooperation.’
He didn’t really understand about the fellowship and cooperation but at least he’d stopped scowling quite so hard. She wished she could get him to look at her the way he’d looked at Conquest. But perhaps it was only horses he looked at that way.
How busy she would be in the coming days! Her heart swelled at the thought as she made her way back to the nursery. The spirit of fellowship and cooperation was blossoming already.
There was a magnificent view from the summit of Rookery Hill. Rolling countryside stretched away in every direction, an endless patchwork of fields and trees and hedgerows to the far-off horizon. Hayton was spread out on one side, its houses like child’s toys; on the other there was a glimpse of distant Brockmorton. Eliza had spent some time admiring the view, she had gathered handfuls of foxgloves, and now she was lying on her back in the grass. The tall poplars swayed and hissed in the breeze. White fluffy clouds sailed across the blue summer sky forever changing shape, reminding her of a face in profile one moment, a fire-breathing dragon the next.
She had taken some time for herself this morning. She felt she deserved it after all her hard work. Not only had she been helping in the garden and in the stables, she’d found time to lend a hand in the house, too. She’d polished the silver with Basford, carried coals for Kirkham, dusted with Daisy, and helped the laundry maid, working the mangle and folding and squaring the freshly clean tablecloths. Days passed in a blur of activity. Eliza had lost count of time. At least a week had gone by, probably two. Mama had not come home. What could she be doing in Scarborough all this time?
Eliza’s tummy rumbled, reminding her about lunch. She jumped up. Running helter-skelter down the steep grassy slopes of the hill, she left a trail of foxgloves behind her. Oh, well. She could always pick more another day. Tossing the rest of the flowers into the air, s
he joined the bridleway from Brockmorton and was speeding past Becket’s cottage before she knew it. She leapt up the front steps of the house and flung open the door with a crash.
‘Miss Eliza! Do be careful! You nearly had me over!’
‘Sorry, Basford, sorry!’ She made a dash for the stairs – and lunch – but Basford’s next words stopped her in her tracks.
‘Wait, miss! Master Roderick’s been asking for you. He said to tell you that—’
‘Roddy’s here? He’s back?’
‘Yes, miss, in the drawing room. He said—’
Eliza spun on her heels on the stairs and headed full pelt for the drawing room, suffused with sudden joy. She found her brother spread on the couch. He was not alone. Kolya was with him.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come!’ Eliza’s smile expanded to take in the Russian as well as Roderick.
Roderick looked her up and down. ‘What on earth have you been doing? You’re out of breath, your face is bright red, and your clothes—’
‘I’ve been up Rookery Hill.’
‘And through a hedge backwards by the look of you. Now, what’s all this I hear about you running wild? Shouldn’t you be doing your lessons? What is your governess thinking of?’
‘The governess has gone. She’s left.’
‘Another governess gone? What do you do to them? I see now why Mother was so keen for me to hurry home. She needs someone here to keep you in line. That’s all very well, but she can’t expect me to alter my plans merely for your sake.’
Eliza looked at him with sudden suspicion. ‘What plans? Aren’t you home for the rest of the summer?’
It appeared not. Roderick and Kolya were off next day to Wales where they were to join Miss Halsted and her friends.
‘It’s not fair!’ cried Eliza, throwing herself onto the settee. ‘Everyone is leaving me! First Doro, then Mama, now you!’
‘Don’t be absurd! I’m only going to Wales for a week, not emigrating.’
‘That’s what Mama said. She went away for a week but it’s been ages!’
‘In which case she can hardly complain if I go away as well. As for you, kiddo, it’s high time you were taken in hand. A finishing school was mentioned, I believe.’