But as to her master, she was in two minds how she regarded him. Sometimes she liked him and other times she didn’t; it was the way he spoke to people. She considered he treated Abbie like dirt. But then perhaps there was something to be said for that because Abbie didn’t give him his place; he never addressed him as sir or master. He was a grumpy old man was Abbie. Yet he seemed a hard worker, and he had been civil enough to her and had gone out of his way to show her how to go about things in the dairy, and so he had surprised her by saying, ‘Remember, I’m not doin’ it because he said I was to show you the ropes.’
There were a number of things she found puzzling about the house and its occupants. True, she had only been here a week but nobody as yet had called, except the doctor, and the miller bringing the flour. You would have thought the mistress, bedridden as she was, would have had some personal friends to call and see her, but she supposed it was early days yet …
Then someone did call. The back door opened abruptly and a small plump woman entered. Her face spoke of her age as being in the mid-fifties, but her hair was already snow white. She wore a felt hat that apparently had seen much weather for its once fawn colour was now green in parts. Her long black coat had a fur collar and this, too, showed years of wear. But her voice and smile were bright and she said immediately, ‘Oh, there you are then. I heard Larry had got somebody. Where is he?’
Emily clapped her hands together to get the flour off them, then wiped them on her apron as she said, ‘The master? Oh, he’s out an’ about; on the farm I think.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. How are you liking it?’
‘Very well, thank you, ma’am.’
The short woman now came slowly towards the table and, looking straight into Emily’s face, she remained quiet for a moment before saying, ‘You look strong and healthy, you’ll cope I should think. How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, ma’am.’
‘Aw, don’t call me ma’am, I’m Mrs Rowan, Hannah Rowan from a couple of miles over yonder.’ She jerked her head backwards. ‘I’m known to most by my Christian name. I’ve known Larry since he was a bairn…How is she?’ Her head was now bobbing towards the ceiling, and Emily answered, ‘Oh, the mistress. Oh, she seems about the same as when I first met her a week gone.’
‘Aye, she’ll be worse before she’s better will Rona…Are you troubled with your nerves, girl?’
‘No, I…I don’t think so, ma’am, I mean Mrs Rowan.’
The woman laughed and said, ‘You’re a highly respectful piece, I can see that, and a bonny one into the bargain. Has anybody told you you’re bonny?’ She now poked her face forward and Emily blushed and suppressed her laughter with tightened lips, and the little woman said, ‘Oh aye, I can see it’s no news to you. But as long as your nerves are all right you’ll last out. Sixteen, you say? Chrissey Dyer, the one before you, was coming up eighteen and a bundle of nerves she was, and her mother not much better. And then you would have thought she’d have had more sense at her time of life. Still, there’s nothin’ like a change, and as Larry said there never was a good one but there’s a better. And it’s up to you to prove it to him, girl. You prove it to him…What are you making there?’
‘A rabbit pie.’
‘And what you using in your crust, lard or dripping?’
‘Dripping.’
‘That’s it, that’s it; there’s nothing like dripping for savoury pastry. Well, I suppose I’d better go upstairs; but if Larry pops in you tell him where I am, will you?’
‘Yes, yes, I will.’
When the little woman had marched across the kitchen and out into the hall Emily let a slow smile spread over her face. Now there was someone she understood. It was like being back home in Shields, no hoity-toity about her.
She went on with the preparation of the meal until about ten minutes later when through the kitchen window she saw her master. He had entered the courtyard from the farm, but he wasn’t making for the house, and so she ran to the door and called, ‘Mr Birch! Sir!’
When he met her halfway across the yard she said, ‘A Mrs Rowan has called; she’s gone up to see the mistress.’
She watched his face show his pleasure, and he nodded to her, saying, ‘I’ll be in in a minute,’ and was about to move away, but paused and asked, ‘Are you very busy inside?’
‘I’ve just finished the pie for dinner, sir; and then there’s the vegetables.’
‘Can’t Lucy see to them? What’s she doing?’
‘She’s polishing in the drawing room, sir.’
‘Well, she can leave that. Put her on the vegetables; I’d like you in the dairy as much as possible today, there’s too much milk going sour.’
‘I’ll slip over as soon as I get the pie in the oven, sir. As you say, I’ll put Lucy on the rest.’
He still did not turn from her, but stared at her as he said, ‘You were a long time upstairs this morning. I was in the kitchen twice. What was the matter? Anything wrong?’
‘No, no, sir.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘Only I had to wash the mistress down an’…an’ do her hair.’
‘Do her hair!’ He screwed up his face at her. ‘Since when have you been doing her hair?’
She was hesitant now as she said, ‘Well…well she asked me to do it this mornin’.’
‘And this washing down…you mean bathing her?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Every day?’
‘Well…this last day or so, sir.’
He hesitated, then said, ‘Later on tonight, I must have a talk with you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He turned away now towards the kitchen gardens, and she, hurrying into the house, went through the kitchen and the hall, and into the drawing room, there to catch Lucy sitting in one of the French chairs gazing out of the window. Her reaction was to bark at her sister, crying, ‘Get out of that, our Lucy, and on your feet!’ only immediately to put her hand over her mouth and glance upwards as she whispered harshly, ‘This is a nice kettle of fish, isn’t it? I thought you were polishin’.’
‘I’ve done it, Emily.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes; well, nearly.’
‘I told you you had to polish everything.’
‘I get tired, Emily. I can’t help it, I just get tired. I was only sittin’ down for a minute.’
Emily sighed. ‘All right, but what if anybody else caught you. I’m just warnin’ you. Now come on, I want you to do the vegetables. I’ve got to go into the dairy; there’s a lot of milk spoilin’.’
On her way out of the room she stopped and, turning to Lucy, she said, ‘That’s another thing: drink as much milk as you can. There’s piles of it here; stuff yourself with it; it’s bound to do you good.’
‘Yes, Emily, but…but I don’t feel hungry. And Emily.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve had a bit of diarrhoea.’
‘Well, what do you expect coming off starvation meals on to rich food, it’s bound to affect your stomach. Now come on. And do the taties properly mind; get all the eyes out; and scrape the carrots away from you so you won’t muck up your apron.’
Back in the kitchen, she hurriedly put the pie in the oven, sorted out the vegetables for Lucy to prepare, threw another bucket of coal on the fire; then telling herself, since she was going to the farm she might as well kill two birds with one stone, she filled a tin can full of tea from the ever stewing teapot on the hob, cut off a two-inch-thick shive of currant loaf, placed a square of cheese on the middle of it, then, admonishing Lucy for the last time, ‘Do them properly mind,’ she hurried from the kitchen, across the yard, through the arch, and into the farmyard.
Abbie Reading was coming out of the barn and she called to him, saying, ‘I’ve brought your bait, Mr Reading,’ and when she handed it to him she said, ‘I’ve got to go into the dairy, the master says there’s a lot of milk souring. Will you show me what to do?’
He did not smile, nevertheless his voice was b
right as he answered, ‘I showed you t’other day; but go on, I’ll come and watch you at it while I eat.’
They passed the byres from which a thick warm smell wafted at them, which caused her to sniff as if at a perfume. The dairy was the last in the line of buildings, one wall of it being that which separated the farmyard from the courtyard. It consisted of two rooms, both spotlessly clean. In the middle of one was a stone table with a rim round it, which was intended to hold water in the warm weather. Against one wall was a long slate slab. On this was an array of milk dishes, and under it a line of wooden pails. On another slab, there stood three shallow glazed earthenware dishes and a similar number of hair sieves. In the other room stood a wooden churn, and in the corner of the room was fixed a boiler and to the right of it a long wooden bench with a cold tap at the end.
‘Well now—’ the old man seated himself on an upturned wooden keg, then said, ‘What did I tell you t’other day?’
‘Strain the milk through the hair sieve and then leave it for twenty-four hours.’
‘Well, that lot’s been left for twenty-four hours and more. Then what do you do?’
‘You skin the cream off with the slicer and pour it into the earthenware dishes to turn.’
‘Then what?’
‘Well, when it’s ready you put it in the churn and start turnin’.’
He laughed here and said, ‘Aye, you start turnin’. An’ that’s where the knack comes in. That’s what you’ve got to do now. But it’s how you turn, lass, it’s how you turn. And you know somethin’? This is no time to start turnin’, twelve o’clock in the day; early morning’s the time, twixt five and six.’ He was nodding at her. ‘And how did I tell you to turn?’
‘Steady like.’
‘Aye, steady like. Well, go on, make a start with that lot there.’ He pointed. ‘It’s ready.’
She carried one dish of cream after another to the churn and tipped it in; then putting on the lid, she gripped the handle and started to turn, while Abbie sat drinking his tea and chewing on the bread as he watched her in silence.
Of a sudden he startled her by crying, ‘That’s too fast! Every time you get tired you go fast, thinkin’ the quicker you turn it the quicker it’ll be done. Steady does it, else you’ll have it so blown up with air it’ll come out soft as pap, and as likely come out without a vestige of colour in it. I should’ve told you about the carrot.’
She was gasping slightly as she repeated, ‘The carrot?’
‘Aye, the carrot. You get a nice bit of colour in your butter by scraping a nice deep coloured carrot into a piece of linen cloth, then squeezing it into the cream. Give it a dip in water first then squeeze. It makes all the difference. Or you can use arnatto. But I like the carrot, an’ to do things really properly every bit of that milk should be scalded. You do that when you want thick cream for your fruit, like in the summer, you know?’
She nodded while her body swung up and down as she turned the handle.
‘But what’s just as important as scalding the cream is scalding your buckets and dishes after. I’ve seen more ruined butter come from a mucky bucket than enough. It’s hard work, girl, isn’t it? But nothin’s easy in this life.’ He pushed the last of the currant bread into his mouth, then mumbled, ‘No, nothin’s easy; ’cos livin’ itself ain’t easy.’
He now wiped the crumbs from his bristly beard and, leaning towards Emily’s sweating face, said, ‘I’ve been on this farm since it was first made thirty years ago. Do you know that? There wasn’t any farm here thirty years ago, but the old master—and he was a master, a proper master, not like some I could mention—the old master created this farm when they sold the other two an’ most of the land. There used to be a lot of land to the house, acres and acres of it. It isn’t a farmhouse that, you know.’ He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘But I was reared on a farm, one belongin’ to the house.’
‘Oh.’ At the moment this was the only response she was capable of making. She was used to wielding the poss stick and turning the mangle, scrubbing floors and whitewashing ceilings, but this continuous movement, which had to go on for at least twenty minutes, was breaking her back. Either she was too tall, or the handle of the butter tub was too low, one or t’other.
‘No; never was a farmhouse.’ The old man was still going on. ‘Gentleman’s residence Croft Dene House was, a gentleman’s residence, a manor. The colonel kept one farm for his own use, rented t’other out. The Rowans rented it for years, then they bought it. God only knows where they got the money from, for they were like the one that plays master now, hadn’t one penny to rub against t’other. But the master, the real master, the colonel, her father’—he now jerked his head back in the direction of the house—‘Miss Rona’s father, he was a gentleman. He’d turn in his grave if he knew the plight she was in now. Adored her he did, thought the sun shone out of her. That was her trouble, she had got everything she wanted in life. But why in the name of God she wanted him, I’ll never know.’
Emily kept on turning. The sweat was running off the end of her chin, the ache in her back had reached her finger tips and her knees. She looked at the old man. His head was slightly bent as if he was no longer aware of her, but he was still talking. ‘Scum he was beneath her feet. All right, all right, they can say he had a farm, or his father had, but what was it? A few shippons attached to the house. And no loss I said when the land enclosure swallowed his bit land up. He looked upon it as a comedown when they went to live in the little but an’ ben up in the hills. But as I’ve said afore, an’ I’ll say it again, it was their rightful habitation. Drovers they were at one time, his grandfather and his father afore him, nothin’ but drovers. An’ then he comes here.’ He now lifted his head. ‘Do you know that? Do you know what that fellow, that one you call your master was when he first came here? An odd-job man, a farmhand. That’s what he was…Well, that’s surprised you, hasn’t it?’
It had surprised her. She had stopped turning the handle and was staring open-mouthed at the old man as she repeated, ‘A farmhand? The master? Just a farmhand?’
‘You’ve said it, lass, just a farmhand. But an upstart one right from the beginnin’. Thought he was somebody; put on the act of a gentleman what was in reduced circumstances, so to speak. And I’ll tell you something else, lass, and that’s atween you and me.’ He was now leaning well towards her and his voice was just above a whisper. ‘He knew what he was after from the minute she came dashing back from America. She went on a long holiday to see a cousin, and then she got word that her da had died. Just nine years ago this month it was. There she was, a high-spirited lass, alone in the world you could say, although she had friends all around who stood by her then. But not the day they don’t. Oh no; there’s not one of them shows their face here the day. An’ can you wonder at it? Anyway, he saw his chance. I’m tellin’ you, he played her like salmon, an’ she, like a salmon battling against the tide, gave in. What else could she do? Two years he had been here when he marries her. An’ he didn’t marry only her, he married the farm an’ the house. Oh, he wanted that house. I used to watch him at nights standing on the drive there, staring, staring at it. He coveted it, he did, and the whole place, more ’n he did her. Oh, I know what I know. An’ you know something else, lass? The day they married I stood in this very dairy, and I leant against that very wall, and I cried the first tears of me life. And I’m not tellin’ you a word of a lie.’
She shook her head at him.
And he shook his head back at her as he ended, ‘And I’d like to bet you I wasn’t the only one crying that day. I bet you young Lizzie Rowan had a wet face an’ all. She’s the daughter of them that bought the other farm I was tellin’ you of, and afore that upstart came here him and her were as thick as thieves an’ would have been wed if it hadn’t been for her old man. But Dave Rowan knew a thing or two; he kicked his backside out of his gate.’
Her mouth was agape. She was amazed at all the old man had said. She had thought her master was a gentleman…w
ell, except for his voice, which at times she thought was a bit ordinary. Yet at other times he spoke like a gentleman; when he was giving orders he spoke like a gentleman.
She asked softly now, ‘But…but the mistress’s accident?’
‘Oh, that. Well that was the strangest thing, and it happened quite simply. She came downstairs for something in the middle of the night once, slipped on one of the slabs in the kitchen and put her back out. They found her there the next morning. They thought she was going to die.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘Aye, as simple as that, lass. The doctor said she must have come a toss. At first she could move about a bit, then it got worse, and now…well, she’s there till they carry her downstairs.’
Again they were staring at each other until Emily, turning towards the churn, said, ‘Eeh! I’ve forgotten; did I do the time?’
‘We’ll soon see.’ He lifted off the lid; then nodding at her and giving her a thin smile, he said, ‘It’ll do, not bad. It’s almost the colour of lint but it’s not soft.’
‘Oh, thank goodness. About the water from it, I mean the buttermilk.’
‘Oh, Con likes that. I should make your sister drink it an’ all, it’s good for the disease, the rest’ll go to the pigs.’
She swung round from the churn. ‘Disease? What disease?’
‘The consumption. The youngster’s got it, hasn’t she?’
‘Lucy? Consumption? No, no.’
‘Well, if that cough doesn’t spell consumption I’ve never heard one that does.’
The Tide of Life Page 12