‘Yes, yes, I understand, madam, but…but it being Christmas, I just thought…’
Emily watched her mistress lift the teapot and fill her cup. No, not fill the cup, she never let the tea rise above the gold rim which was nearly an inch from the top of the cup; moreover, she poured the cold milk in after, which appeared backside foremost to her way of thinking; it was different if you were putting in condensed milk. Then she watched her lift the cup up almost to her lips. But she didn’t drink, she looked down into it as she repeated, ‘Yes, it being Christmas.’ Then slowly she went on, ‘Everybody should be happy at Christmas: laden tables, the giving and receiving of presents, the Christmas tree sparkling with tinsel and coloured glass baubles, and tiny candles. One Christmas, the tree caught fire.’ She turned her head towards Emily. ‘Every year of my childhood I had a Christmas tree. We danced around it. When Con was three years old we had a great party. The tree was in the drawing room. There were the six Marsden children from the Hall; there were Peter and Gwen from the Priory. Peter was very boisterous; he kicked one of the Marsden boys on the shin. They began to fight and fell against the tree, and that’s how it caught fire. Peter was only six, and if I remember the Marsden boy wasn’t that old. Father held them at arm’s length by their collars; their legs were kicking and everybody laughed, that was after they had taken the tree out…I always loved Christmas trees. Queen Victoria had that to her credit if nothing else. I always disliked her intensely; everybody made such a fuss of her, and what was she after all? A dumpy, plain individual. She was lucky to acquire such a Prince Consort as Albert. And, anyway, it was he who was the instigator of her having a Christmas tree in the first place…She wasn’t a queenly queen at all, she didn’t act like a queen. Did you like her?’
Emily’s mouth had been dropping into a gape. She had never heard her mistress talk so much at one go before, and jumping from one thing to another. Christmas trees, fires, children fighting, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert…Yes, she had liked her; everybody had liked Queen Victoria, because she was like somebody’s granny. She remembered Sep coming in as if it were yesterday—yet it seemed years and years ago, in another life. But it was only in January of last year. He had stood by the kitchen table and moved his head as he said sadly, ‘Well, the old girl’s gone; we’ll never see another like her. This should put a stop to Eddie’s gallop.’
She hadn’t been able to understand the last bit, not then she hadn’t, but now she did, for now she knew the King had been a bit of a lad. Yes, she had liked the Queen and she wasn’t going to say she hadn’t and so she said, ‘Yes, I liked her. I…I thought she was a canny body.’
‘Ho, ho, ho!’
She had never heard her mistress laugh, not like this anyway. She was leaning back against the pillows while holding on to the handles of the tea tray, and three times she repeated, ‘She was a canny body. She was a canny body. She was a canny body.’
As she straightened herself up she nodded towards Emily, saying, ‘She would have been pleased by your description. Then her upper body seemed to slump, she put her head on one side and, her voice quite soft now, she added, ‘Perhaps you’re right, she was a canny body. I disliked her because of her power. I envied her her power. Oh yes, I envied her her power. Do you know something, Emily?’
‘What, madam?’
‘Women will one day rule this country. They’ll be in entire charge of everything, everything that is that requires reasoning and intellect, because women are much stronger than men you know.’
Emily blinked. She didn’t actually disbelieve what her mistress was saying, although at the same time she couldn’t confirm the truth of it in her mind, yet from some recess there oozed the thought that women, given the chance, could beat men at lots of things. But then they would never get the chance.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Well, I don’t often think on such things, madam, but I don’t disbelieve you, madam, ’cos I know women rule the roost in most homes. Men do a lot of talkin’, but the women act. Of course, I’m talkin’ of workin’-class homes.’
‘You are talking of the majority of homes…Can you read?’
‘Oh yes, madam.’
‘And write?’
‘Yes, madam, I learned at school.’
‘Have you ever been with a man?’
‘What!’
‘Have you ever been with a man? You heard what I said.’
Now Emily’s back was straight, her head up and slightly to the side, and her chin out. ‘No, I haven’t, madam! And if I had it would just be me own business.’
They stared at each other for a moment. Then again Rona Birch’s head was back and she was laughing. And as Emily went out, closing the door none too gently behind her, her mistress’s voice came to her clear and loud, crying, ‘And his. And his.’
She was so flustered that instead of going straight downstairs she turned and ran towards the attic stairs and up into her room.
Well, did you ever! Fancy saying a thing like that! And all that talking all at once. But to ask her if she had ever been with a man. It was indecent, nasty. She had been sorry for her when she first went into the room, but she was sorry for her no longer. When she talked, as she had done over the last five minutes, it was hard to believe that she was a cripple and tied fast to that bed because everything she said implied…Well, what did it imply? A sort of strength, a sort of wild strength. It was funny, but she put her in mind of a dog that was chained up, and if she ever got loose she’d tear you to bits.
She sat down for a moment on the side of the bed and as she allowed the air to escape from deep within her lungs she thought, And that was a funny way to describe her, for mostly she’s as weak as a kitten. What was more, she seemed to be getting weaker as time went on, and she didn’t think she was pretending. Sometimes she looked as if she was going to peg out that minute, but she supposed she was like many a creaking door, she would swing on one hinge for a long time yet…And more was the pity.
Eeh, the things she thought!
Five
Christmas had been mainly a time of eating, there had been no real jollification. As Lucy had said to Emily, ‘You would have thought that somebody would have popped in; even that Mrs Rowan didn’t come.’ And she had answered, ‘Well, would you expect her with the roads as they are like glar with the thaw. Whoever thought it would rain on top of all that snow? Why, the master told you what a job he had to get back from Fellburn.’
‘Yes, but,’ Lucy persisted, ‘the master or Con didn’t even go upstairs and stay with her for a bit, they just acted like it was an ordinary day, Christmas Day I mean. And I’d thought they might even have their dinner in here with us.’
‘You thought they would eat it here with us!’ Emily had stretched her face at Lucy, and ended, ‘You’re thinkin’ big, aren’t you?’ Yet at the same time she herself had thought that they might even do that, in fact she had expected it because…because Con had said to her, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice, Emily, if we had a party and a sing-song?’ and she had answered, ‘It would be grand, Con,’ and he had hunched his shoulders up round his face like a child in glee as he said, ‘I’ll ask Larry. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll ask Larry.’
Whether he had asked the master or not she didn’t know, but she served their dinner in the dining room as usual.
But here it was New Year’s Eve, and she was actually running across the hall and into the kitchen up to where Lucy was sitting in a chair close to the fire, and she shook her by the arm as she cried, ‘What d’you think? Go on, tell me. What d’you think?’
‘Eeh! What about?’
‘Well, you were complainin’, weren’t you, about not having any jollification? And what do you think he’s just said to me?’
‘Con?’
‘No, the master himself. He’s just said, “Emily, we’re all going to see the New Year in together.”’
‘All of us, her an’ all?’
‘No, no.’ Emily shook her head firmly
. ‘She won’t budge. Yet—’ She straightened up and, holding her chin in her hand, she looked upwards as she said, ‘I’ve got the feelin’ that if he went out of his way to persuade her she’d let him bring her down.’
‘Why don’t you ask him to ask her.’
‘No.’ Emily slanted her glance towards Lucy. ‘I daren’t put that to him.’ She gave a little laugh now, adding, ‘I’ve forgotten me place more times than enough of late; he’ll be tellin’ me off shortly.’
‘Do you think we’ll have a sing-song?’
‘Oh’—Emily moved her head slowly—‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.’
‘But everybody always has a sing-song when they see the New Year in.’
‘Aye’—she was bending down towards Lucy again—‘everybody in Creador Street, when they were all as drunk as noodles. But they didn’t bring it in with singin’ in Pilot Place, I can tell you that. Mrs McGillby brought it in with a prayer.’ Her head went down further until her brow touched Lucy’s, and then they were holding each other and laughing. And now Emily, dropping onto her hunkers and still holding Lucy’s arm, said, ‘You know, the way things are going, I mean in the house, everything smoothly like, I’d be over the moon if only I could get you to eat.’
‘But I don’t feel like eatin’, Emily.’
Emily sighed. ‘It’s odd. Eeh! It is odd. You remember when you were with Alice Broughton an’ you were always hungry ’cos you never had a square meal from one week’s end to the other, you’d have eaten a horse in those days.’
‘Aye, I know. ‘ Lucy now nodded and her flushed face looked slightly sad as she said, ‘I was thinkin’ yesterday, if only me Aunt Mary’s squad could be here for a day, they could stuff their kites until they burst.’
‘You’re right there.’ Emily’s face took on a veil of sadness as she added, ‘But me Aunt Mary’s lot has something that this house could never give them. With muck, half-empty bellies, bare feet, the lot, they’re still happier where they are than they would be if they’d been brought up here, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right, Emily.’
‘You know what?’ Emily was whispering now. ‘On our next leave I’m goin’ to ask him if I can buy some butter and cheese and take it down to them. He’ll likely let me have it for half the price I’d pay in the shops, an’ wouldn’t she be over the moon?’
‘Oh yes, Emily, I can just see her face.’
Emily now rose from her hunkers, turned a chair round and, sitting on it, she gazed into the roaring fire as she said, as if to herself, ‘You never know where you’re going to land from one year’s end to another. Who would have thought this time last year we’d be in a house like this? I wonder where we’ll be this time next New Year’s Eve?’ She turned a soft smile on Lucy now. ‘Everybody says that, you know. Back in Shields on New Year’s Eve I remember hearing it again and again, in the market, in the streets: “I wonder where we’ll be this time next New Year’s Eve.” They never say it at Christmas, just New Year’s Eve. Anyway’—she let out a long sigh—‘perhaps it’s just as well we don’t know. But there’s one thing we do know at this minute—’ Her mood changing yet again, she thrust out her hand and pushed at Lucy, saying, ‘We’re going to have a bit of jollification the night, and it won’t be me if I don’t persuade Con to play some jigs on his penny whistle.’
And now she sent Lucy into a gasping, choking fit of laughter as, jumping up from the chair, she lifted her skirt and petticoats almost up to her knees and, stepping off the mat onto the stone slabs, she executed a jig.
It was turned eleven o’clock. They were seated around a roaring fire in the library, Larry, Con, Lucy and herself. She had asked earlier in the evening if it would be all right to invite Abbie, and Larry, after a short harsh laugh, said, ‘Well, you can but try.’ And she had tried, and failed. ‘What! Go over there and see the New Year in with him? Never!’ he had said. ‘Anyway, I’m off now to the inn, an ‘you won’t see me the morrow, or perhaps the next day; they know how to bring the New Year in down there. So you can thank him for nowt. Huh! Him askin’ me over there to see the New Year in. Playin’ the lord of the manor, is he?’ Then he had added, ‘Did he ask you to come? Or did you ask for me to come?’
When she made no reply he had nodded at her, saying, ‘Aw well, lass, I hold nothin’ against you, and I’ll drink your health the minute it’s in, an’ of the young ’un an’ all. By the way, do you know she was sick again the day? What’s making her sick like that?’
He had stared at her hard while she shook her head and in answer said, ‘I don’t know, I think it’s when she eats any fat. She always feels bad when she eats fat.’
‘Aye,’ he had said, then with his hand on her shoulder, added, ‘A happy New Year, lass,’ and she had answered, ‘And to you, Abbie. And many of them.’
But now she was sitting here in the warm, glowing comfort of the fire that was scorching her hands and face, and the warm glowing comfort of the two glasses of wine that were warming her stomach and whirling in her head. She had never tasted anything like this wine. He had called it a liqueur. It wouldn’t hurt her, he had said, it was made from cherries.
She still had some in the bottom of her glass, it glowed a beautiful pink. It was more like a syrup the way it clung to the side of the glass.
She put her head back and finished the cherry brandy, and if she had been alone she knew she would have slaked her tongue around the glass to savour the last drops.
The round table behind the couch was laden with food. She and Lucy were sitting on the couch, her master was in a big leather chair to the right of her, and Con was sitting in the same kind of chair to the left of Lucy.
She gazed from one face to the other. They all looked happy, especially Con and Lucy. For a moment, she thought they could be brother and sister, in fact, they could all be members of the one family; she and the master being husband and wife, and Con and Lucy their children…Oh my God! She clapped her hands across her mouth. Fancy thinking a thing like that. She must be drunk. Eeh! She started to laugh. Then looking towards Larry, where he was pulling himself up from the deep chair, she said, ‘What did you say?’ and he answered, ‘You’re not going to wait any longer for something to eat; you must always eat when you drink or you’ll soon be under the table.’
‘You can’t start eating until the New Year comes in.’
‘If you don’t eat you won’t see the New Year in.’
She screwed round and rested her chin on the back of the couch and looked at him. She felt happy as she had never felt happy in her life before, and he looked happy too, easy, all stiffness gone out of him. It could have been Sep…Poor Sep. Poor Sep. For a moment her joy was dimmed. If only Sep had been alive, what a time they would have been having at this New Year. And she would have been able to wear his present. Her hand went to her waist. She was tired of hiding the watch; she had a good mind to lift up her skirt and unpin it…What on earth was the matter with her! Fancy thinking about lifting up her skirt. An’ she’d have to lift up her petticoats an’ all, three of them, ’cos it was pinned to her shift. Eeh, the things she was thinking! It must be that treacly wine. She’d better do as he said and not have any more until they had something to eat; else, who knew, she really would be picking up her petticoats.
‘Here! Get that into you.’ He was handing her a plate with a big shive of bacon and egg pie on it, and she said, ‘Oh, ta.’ Then as she bit into it she looked up at him and, assuming what she imagined to be a high-falutin tone, she exclaimed, ‘You must have a very good cook, Mr Birch, for I’ve never tasted better.’ The next minute she joined in the explosion of mirth that had burst from Con and Lucy. When it subsided Larry seated himself again, and now he assumed an air of pompousness, and nodding towards her, he said, ‘Yes, I am very fortunate in my kitchen staff, my cook in particular is excellent at her work, but—’ and now he leant forward, pursed his lips, shook his head sadly as, his voice changing, he ended gruffly, ‘but she’s
a rotten hand at making butter, delicate as a lily it comes out…’
‘I’m not! It doesn’t! Aw, that isn’t fair.’ She shook her head at him. ‘You said last week I was gettin’ a dab hand at it…You’re funnin’, aren’t you? You’re funnin’.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m funnin’, Emily.’ He leant back in the chair, lifted up his glass of whisky from the side table and drained it; then addressing the glass, he said, ‘Yes, yes, I’m funnin’…because of you I’m funnin’ the night.’
‘That reminds me.’ She was now leaning towards him. ‘When we’re on about butter I was going to ask you something.’
His head was resting in the wing of the chair; he looked at her and smiled and said, ‘Well, go on, ask me something. Ask me anything you like tonight.’
‘Well, it’s like this. I know you sell the extra butter and cheese in Fellburn, but it’s to a shop and…and when they sell it back they double the price, so I was wonderin’ if you’d let me have some for the same as you do them on me day off ’cos me Aunt Mary would be over the moon if she had some fresh butter and cheese; and the bairns…well, I don’t think they’ve ever tasted fresh butter…or butter of any kind.’
‘Oh, Emily. Emily.’ He was shaking his head from side to side and his mouth was wide but the sound that he was making was not like laughter, it was as if he were pretending to groan. When he did speak he didn’t look at her but across at Con, and he said, ‘Well, what about it, Con? Do we trade with the cook?’
Before replying, Con leant well forward from the chair and, putting his hand on Emily’s knee, he stroked it gently as he said quite seriously, ‘I’d give Emily…anything she asked for…Larry, anything.’
‘Oh, Con.’ Emily now placed her hand on his. It became still, and she, bending forward and without laughing now, said, ‘By! You’re a nice lad, Con. I’ve said that from the first time I saw you. Well, not exactly from the first time; but within a few days of bein’ here I knew you were a nice lad, and I don’t care what anybody says I’ll stick to it. And our Lucy likes you an’ all. Don’t you, Lucy?’
The Tide of Life Page 18