Emily pulled off the top sheet, and then gathered the bottom one round the inert limbs, wiped them as she gradually decreased the sheet into a ball before tugging it away and dropping it onto the floor. She now folded the top sheet in half and placed it under her mistress’s buttocks before picking up the dirty sheet again and taking it into the linen room and dropping it into a wooden bucket.
When she returned to the room she stopped in the middle of it as her mistress rasped at her, ‘Don’t leave me exposed like this, girl!’
Emily stared hard at her mistress and swallowed deeply before she said, ‘You have hands, madam, you can pull the blanket over you.’ On this, she actually heard her mistress’s teeth grind together.
Emily now turned to Lucy who was entering the room staggering under the weight of a can of warm water, and having taken it from her, as she poured the water into the dish she said, ‘Perhaps you will wash yourself, madam, before I put the clean sheets on.’
‘You’ll finish the job you started, girl!’
‘Madam’—Emily backed from the bed—‘the master said you could wash yourself.’
‘The master said…? The master said…? Listen, girl, I am master here. I’m both master and mistress of this house. Get that into your head.’
‘The master doesn’t seem to think so, madam.’ Even as she chastised herself for daring to say such a thing she sprang back, her hand before her face, crying, ‘I’ve warned you, madam. I warned you once, an’ I mean it, you throw anything at me…’
Slowly Rona Birch replaced the soap dish on the bedside table; then slapping the flannel into the water, she said slowly, ‘I’ll see my day with you, girl, remember that, as I will with the man you call master.’
Emily made a motion for Lucy to leave the room; then she went into the linen room and leant her head against the tallboy as she told herself that she couldn’t stand this, while at the same time reminding herself yet once again that it was now deep winter and her Aunt Mary’s house was crowded, and if both of them went into lodgings the sovereigns sewn to her petticoat band would soon disappear. If only she knew where she could sell the watch without questions being asked, she’d be out of here like a shot. But there was a snag. Wherever she went Lucy would have to go too, and it wasn’t every house that would take a consumptive in.
A banging on the side table told her that her mistress was ready. The soiled nightdress was on the floor by the side of the bed, as were the towels. The soap and flannel had not been put back in the dish but had been placed on the polished top of the bedside table.
Silently Emily eased the clean linen sheet onto the bed and in the process it was impossible not to touch her mistress’s flesh and the contact created in her a feeling of revulsion. Finally it was done, and she was drawing up the top cover over the stiff legs underneath the bedclothes when the neck of her dress was gripped and she was pulled upwards until her face was within inches of her mistress’s.
‘How much did he give you? Where did he take you last Monday?’
There was an unpleasant smell on the breath that wafted in her face. She tried to strain away from it as she gasped, ‘The…the master gave me nothing…only me wages.’ She was almost choking and now in desperation she gripped the wrists that were gripping the collar of her dress and stuttered into the face, ‘Le…leave go of me, madam.’
‘When you tell me how much he gave you. Don’t think you are the first. Oh, not by a long chalk! Why did Chrissey leave? And there’s the other one, dear Lizzie, you’ll find out about her too.’
‘Madam!’
‘Tell me, girl, or I’ll wrench this off your back.’
‘You do, madam! Just you do!’ Anger was replacing her fear again, and what she would have done if her mistress had carried out her threat she didn’t know for at that moment the door opened and Larry Birch stood as if struck dumb looking at them.
After thrusting them apart, he stood glaring down at his wife, where she was now lying back on the pillows, panting like a horse that had finished a race and with the froth round her lips very like that seen on such an animal, and he cried at her, ‘You’re insane, woman, mad!’ Then jerking his head back towards Emily, where she stood supporting herself at the foot of the bed, he demanded. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘She…she won’t believe I bought me frock meself, she…she says…’ When she stopped he said, ‘No!’ Then looking down at his wife again, he brought out slowly, ‘I tell you you’re going mad, woman, you’re a maniac.’
Rona Birch’s chest heaved a number of times before she managed to speak, and then she said, ‘Well, tell me, dear husband, where our maid-of-all-work got the money to buy a dress such as she’s wearing and to deck her sister out too in a matching outfit of finery that is seldom seen in these parts, except as I myself wore when I was a child?’
He did not answer her, but turning now to Emily, he said, ‘Go and bring that hat and coat down.’
‘What?’
‘Do as I say, bring your hat and coat down, the one you bought with the dress, and the other things you got that day.’
She did not move immediately; but then slowly she went from the room and she passed Lucy, who was standing biting hard on her thumbnail against the foot of the attic stairs, without a word.
Within a few minutes she returned to her mistress’s bedroom. Across one arm was laid the coat and hat, across the other a long grey skirt sporting a mud fringe on the bottom, and on top of it a striped linen bodice.
She had scarcely entered the room before Larry whipped the coat from her and, holding it at arm’s length and to the side, cried at his wife, ‘Look at that! Now look at it.’ Then without glancing at Emily, he said, ‘Put that hat on top of it. No, better still, put it on. Put it on your head.’
Slowly she put the hat on top of her mob cap, and there she stood looking at her mistress. Then, as if waving a cloak, he swung the coat in front of her and as he held it there he shouted, ‘She went to a second-hand shop and this is what she bought! And all for a few shillings. And she caused such a stir in the village that they’re still laughing, I’m told.’
A deep silence now enveloped the room, which he didn’t break when he told Emily to take her clothes and herself away, for he just waved his hand and she went out onto the landing and up the attic stairs to her room.
She was no longer a tall bonny young lass with her wits about her, for she was seeing herself as a low-type serving maid, one of no consequence, one so ignorant that she didn’t know when she was making a laughing stock of herself …
‘And she caused such a stir in the village that they’re still laughing, I’m told.’
Four
It was strange and not understandable to Emily, but from that Sunday afternoon when she had stood before her mistress’s bed wearing that hat, that ridiculous hat which had brought her low inside herself and which now she couldn’t imagine herself ever being persuaded to buy, things had been easier in the house.
The very next morning she had been amazed to encounter a different Mrs Birch, someone who spoke quietly to her, civilly, and even smiled. What, she had asked, had made her buy such clothes?
‘Because I’d never seen anything like them before, madam,’ she had answered dully. And to this her mistress had nodded as if in understanding and said, ‘Yes, that is the way of it, we always want to own things and people that are the antithesis of us.’
And that morning her mistress had washed herself without demur and put the soap back in the soap dish; she had also combed out her long thin hair straight away, taking the loose hair from the comb and rolling it into a ball between her fingers when she was finished, but she had never said she was sorry for how she had acted the previous day. But then, Emily didn’t expect her to; mistresses, especially if they were ladies, couldn’t be expected to apologise to maids…But why shouldn’t they? There you go again! she admonished herself; why do you keep asking yourself such stupid questions?
But from that morning
until New Year’s Day, 1903, comparative peace reigned, and Emily in a way would have been happy in her work now but for two things.
First, she was becoming more worried each day over Lucy. Lucy had spasms of sickness; she wasn’t eating as she should, yet she was putting on weight. It showed not only in her face now but in her body. Strangely she was coughing less, even though she always coughed more in the winter, and already it was hard winter, an early one for they’d had two falls of snow with drifts high enough for the men to have to dig out a path to the road.
Secondly, there stuck in her mind the meeting she’d had with the former maid, Chrissey Dyer. It had been on another Sunday afternoon walk, a short one this time, and not in the direction of the hills and the wee stone house up there but straight along the carriage road and to the fork where a signpost said: To Chester-le-Street and Durham. But she hadn’t gone along that road, she had continued along the carriageway and taken another path off to the right.
She was alone on this walk because Lucy was complaining more and more of being cold, but she herself had felt she must get away from the house if only for an hour or so in the week. Even if the weather was no great shakes for walking, as today, for the wind was blowing up her coat, dress and petticoats and almost lifting her from the ground, she was glad she was outside.
For three weeks now he had said he couldn’t take her into Fellburn on a Monday because, after delivering his produce, he would be going to Durham, and wouldn’t be coming back that way, so couldn’t pick her up. She had thought about the carrier cart, but the last one from Fellburn in the winter left at 2.30 and that wouldn’t leave her enough time to get to her Aunt Mary’s and back. She was longing to see her Aunt Mary; she was longing to have a natter and a bit of a laugh; oh yes, she needed to have a laugh.
She must have walked more than a mile along the narrow lane when it suddenly broadened out and there to the side of the road was a stone cottage similar in design to that other one up in the hills, but this one had no shippons, only small gardens to the front and back of it. The front porch, she noted as she passed the wall, was full of winter broccoli.
She continued to walk on for another five minutes or so, then she retraced her steps and as she came in sight of the cottage again she saw a young girl standing at the gate. She had a shawl over her head and her hands were muffled in it, holding it tightly up under her chin.
It was as Emily came abreast of her that she said, ‘Hello, there.’
‘Hello!’ Emily stopped and smiled. It was the first time anyone around here had given her the time of day. ‘It’s bitter, isn’t it? The wind would cut you in two.’
‘Then why are you out?’ The question was sharp, and Emily hesitated as she stared at the girl before answering, ‘Well, you see, I’m in service along…’
‘Yes, yes, I know where you’re in service at, you took my place…not that I mind that. Oh no, you’re welcome to it. I’m Chrissey Dyer. How are you gettin’ on…I mean back there, with her and him?’
Emily saw at once that it was no good painting a bright picture of the condition in the house; although things had been easier of late, especially in the mistress’s bedroom, yet she had to admit to herself that she couldn’t get to like the woman, not even to the extent of being sorry for her.
‘Has she thrown anything at you yet?’
At this Emily laughed, while grabbing at her hat and putting her head to one side to meet the wind. ‘No, but she’s tried it on.’
‘What do you mean, tried it on?’
‘She threatened it but I told her what I’d do if she did.’
‘You did!’ The two hands came away from the chin, the shawl fell open and the wind caught it and the young girl grabbed at it and folded it once again round her neck before she asked now, ‘What did you say?’
‘I told her if she threw anything at me I’d throw it back at her.’
Emily was laughing now at the expression on the girl’s face. Then her laughter died as the girl said flatly, ‘I don’t believe you; nobody’d dare say that to her an’ be able to stay on there. I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, I can’t help it if you believe me or not, but I did. And I was goin’ to leave, but he, the master, asked me to stay on.’
‘Aw aye, he would. I’d like a penny for every time he persuaded me to stay on. Three years I put up with it. It made me bad, do you know that? It made me bad. I thought I was going batty. There were things that happened in that house that scared the daylights out of me, an’ things that I got the blame for when it was Con all the time. I used to like him at one time, feel sorry for him, but not any more. He’s not so green as he’s cabbage lookin’; it’s all pretend with him; he’s not so daft that he didn’t know how to put Bella Goodyear in the family way. Mind, I didn’t credit him with that ’cos he never tried it on me. He knew better with me ma about. But there were other things…her.’ She now moved her hands within the cover of her shawl, and what she next said convinced Emily that the girl was indeed ill. ‘There’s things goes on there. Oh, just you wait, you’ll see for yourself. There’s a ghost there sort of.’ Her head was bobbing. ‘I’ve seen it with me own eyes, an’ I screamed an’ he came dashing out. And when I saw him I screamed worse ’cos he was in a long white nightshirt. The next day he went for me; he said there was no such things as ghosts, not in that house anyway; and he said if he heard any more of it what he would do. But me ma’d had enough with one thing an’ another, so she didn’t give him time to do anything, she whipped us both out of the place an’ told him what he could do with his job. She said she’d never died of winter yet, an’ neither have we. An’ we’re movin’, we’re goin’ into Fellburn, me da’ll be nearer the pits there anyway.’
Emily moved away from the wall, but she continued to look at the girl. One thing was evident, she was a very nervous type of person.
The girl was shouting above the wind now, and Emily shouted back. ‘What d’you say?’
‘I said, look out for that Con an’ him pinchin’ stuff.’
‘Yes, yes, I will. And thanks, thanks for tellin’ me. Goodbye.’
The girl didn’t answer, and Emily turned away, thinking, Poor soul, she is bad.
Well, she told herself, she had been in the place over two months now, and if she was going to see a ghost she would have seen it before, wouldn’t she? But just as a prevention, she would, she told herself, keep Lucy with her when she went about the house late at night, because, as she understood it, ghosts never made themselves known to two people at once, they always waited until they caught you on the hop, alone …
But now it was Christmas week and she was excited and, in a way, happy. Yesterday he had given them a lift into Fellburn and she had gone into Gateshead and simply staggered her Aunt Mary by giving her a whole half sovereign to spend on the bairns’ stockings. Moreover, when in the town she had bought both Con and Abbie a present, paying ninepence for a tin whistle for Con, because he could play good tunes on a whistle and the one he had was, to her mind, the worse for wear because the painted design between the holes had worn off, and for Abbie, a new clay pipe and an ounce of baccy. She hadn’t bought anything for the master or mistress although she had thought about it, but had decided it would be out of place. Now if it had been Sep.
It was strange but she seemed to be missing Sep more now than when he had first died, yet strangely enough she was glad that she wasn’t married to him. Now wasn’t that odd, she asked herself?
For the three days before Christmas Eve she had stood at the table baking raised pies, rice loaves, bacon and egg pies and gingerbread. The Christmas cake she had baked almost three weeks ago. She had also experimented in the making of fancy cakes, such as making thin layers of light pastry and putting different mixtures such as jam and fresh churned cream from the dairy in between them.
And there was laughter in the kitchen, real laughter, when her master slyly sampled her efforts. Lucy and Con’s laughter became hilarious when Larry, in passing,
nipped up some of her pastries when her back was turned and swiftly gave one to each of them.
And then because she was feeling unusually happy she made a proposal to the mistress.
It was in the afternoon of Christmas Eve. She had scrambled up to her room, put on a clean apron, and she herself had taken the tray from Con and carried it up to the bedroom. On the tray was a plate holding an assortment of her latest efforts, and she pointed to them as she looked at Rona Birch and said, ‘I made these special like, small, dainty. I…I hope you like them.’
‘Thank you, Emily.’
It was the third time in the past week her mistress had called her by her name. Wonders would never cease, she told herself. Then she put forward her idea. ‘Madam,’ she said, ‘may I say somethin’?’
Rona Birch’s hand became still on the handle of the small silver teapot and she looked at Emily as she said quietly, ‘Yes. What do you wish to say?’
‘Well, madam’—Emily smiled and looked down—‘Con, I mean Master Con’—this was something she had always to be wary of; she had been pulled up about it before—‘he…he was saying last night that you were grand on the piano, an’ you played lovely, and I thought if…if we put a big blazing fire on in the drawing room, the master could, well’—she bounced her head now—‘he could carry you downstairs and they could place that big chair with the movable back near the piano and…’
‘No!’
The word was spoken in a deep, sonorous tone. There was about it a finality that caused Emily to move back from the bed and nod her head. But before she turned towards the door, Rona Birch spoke again. With her eyes still on the hand that held the teapot, she said, ‘It…it was a kind thought of yours, but it…it is very painful for me to move, and I always feel more ill after exertion.’
The Tide of Life Page 17