The Rag Nymph (aka The Forester Girl)

by Catherine Cookson

  He drew the pony to a stop, looked down at her hand still lying on his and said, ‘You’re not the only one, Millie. That place is like a dead house when you’re out of it. But no matter’—his voice rose now—‘you’ve got to go there for a time, anyway. And you understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Ben, I understand. But at the same time I keep asking, Why? Why?’

  ‘You know as well as I do.’

  He had almost bawled at her; in fact, so loud was his voice that he turned instinctively, feeling he must have been overheard, and looked towards the two gates which had ‘The Grange’ easily discernible as part of the wrought iron. And just as instinctively lowering his voice, he said again, ‘You know as well as I do. There’s no need to go into it.’

  ‘But there is.’ She was hissing at him now.

  He stared at her while drawing in a deep breath, which expanded his broad chest further; then he said, ‘Well, if you want to know, you shouldn’t look as you do; you attract the wrong kind. That’s the answer, and I’m sayin’ no more. So come, get down. This is the place.’ He pointed to the gate.

  When, a minute later, he pulled on the handle of the iron bell and it clanged loudly, the door of a small house just beyond the gates opened and a man appeared and stood looking at them for a moment before speaking. ‘Well, what’s your business?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘She…Miss Forester here is expected. She’s to meet a Mrs Quinton.’

  ‘Oh.’ The man now moved his head slightly and looked at Millie; then, pointing with his forefinger, he said, ‘Further along the road there’s another gate. You’ll come across the house halfway up the drive.’ He looked beyond them to the pony and cart, then added not unkindly, ‘You could get that up the drive.’

  ‘Ta,’ said Ben. ‘Thanks,’ said Millie. They had spoken together, then turned away, smiling.

  Ben now said, ‘You walk along; you might have to open the gates…He was quite a civil bloke, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, a nice man.’

  ‘Well, as it says in the books, it could augur good.’

  Millie burst out laughing, and as Ben pulled himself up on to the cart, she said, ‘You know, you are funny, the things you say.’

  He looked down at her. ‘Well, you’re not the only one who reads books, you know. I could beat you along that line if I liked. And I will an’ all; we’ll have a competition some day when you start readin’ the grown-up stuff.’ And he slapped the reins along the pony’s back.

  She was walking at its head when she turned and said, ‘Why don’t you go to school, Ben?’

  ‘What! What you sayin’? Go to school? Me? A man!’

  ‘Lots of grown-up people go to school at night, some of them after work. I know Father Dolan has a night class.’

  ‘What! Join the Catholics? Are you askin’ for him an’ all to be stabbed with a pair of scissors?…Oh, I’m sorry, lass. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t be.’ She pulled the pony to a stop opposite this second set of gates. They were open, and, nodding up to Ben, she said, ‘I’ve never felt any guilt or regret over that. She was a horrible woman, cruel. And not only to me. But there are other people taking night classes, Ben; like Parson King. He’s Protestant.’

  ‘They’re all holy Joes. But get out of the way and let me turn him in if you’re not goin’ to lead him.’

  They were now proceeding up a driveway bordered on each side by shrubs: and then quite suddenly they emerged into an open area. It was like a small field, only the grass had been cut; and there to the side stood a house. In comparison with those they had passed along the way, it could be considered small. It looked as if it had only two storeys, but suggested an attic under the skylight in the roof.

  Ben had hardly put his feet on the ground when, from the side of the house, there emerged what appeared to be a mob of children coming at them in a rush and then skidding to a halt about three yards distant. There were five of them: the biggest, a girl, looking not much younger than Millie herself. There were three girls and two boys. And it was the taller of the two boys who looked at the others before explaining, ‘He’s got little legs.’ Then they scattered, yelling, as Ben gave a jump towards them, shouting on a laugh, ‘Yes, but they can run!’

  There now appeared at the door of the house a young woman, and she called in a high voice, ‘Children! Betty! Paddy! You, Daisy, come. Come this minute.’ As if the children hadn’t heard her or were not aware of her presence, they all ran back towards the side of the house, and there they stood as a group, staring at the man with the short legs and the girl with hair that looked almost white, walking towards their mother.

  ‘Oh, you’re here. Good morning. Well, you had better come in.’

  Millie took in at once that Mrs Quinton was a nervous lady and that she wasn’t very old; in fact, she looked young. And her hair was untidy and she was wearing an apron. She didn’t appear to be at all like the kind of lady who would be engaging a maid. Not a bit like Annabel’s mother.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ she said, and led the way across a small hall and into quite a large kitchen, dominated, Millie noticed, by an oblong table under which were a number of stools. And she also noticed straight away that the open fire feeding an oven to one side and a water boiler to the other was very like the one Sister Cecilia had introduced her to.

  ‘Sit down. Oh, dear me, dear me.’ Mrs Rose Quinton now pulled out two stools from under the table and indicated that both Millie and Ben should be seated, and when they were, she stood before them looking slightly helpless but smiling now as she said, ‘You have, unfortunately, already been introduced to my family; at least, all except the baby. They are what you would term a handful, but they are not really naughty children, only impetuous, you know.’

  Millie smiled at her, and she smiled back, saying, ‘I…I must be frank with you. They…need a firm hand. Well, I mean they need to be managed. And again I must be frank in telling you, because if I don’t tell you this, one of the maids of the house will likely inform you very shortly, that I’ve had two helpers already this year. You see, I don’t want you to come on the…well, shall we say’—her smile widened—‘on false pretences. You understand?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, ma’am, I understand; and I have worked with children before…well, when I was at the nuns’ school, it was part of the older pupils’ duty to be in charge of two or three of the younger ones to see they washed properly and…well, things like that, and just before I left I was doing this.’

  ‘You were at the nuns’ school? Oh, yes. Oh yes.’ Mrs Quinton closed her eyes for a moment as if recalling her cousin relating this girl’s history, which had not included the scissors business with Sister Mary as being the reason for her leaving because that might have put any caring mother off from engaging such a virago.

  ‘My cousin did tell you the terms?’

  Millie paused a moment, then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they’re suitable?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Well now, when can you start your duties?’

  Millie now turned to Ben, and he shrugged his shoulders, saying, ‘It’s up to you; but I could bring you back tomorrow, if you would like that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I would like that,’ she said, and looked straight back at Mrs Quinton, saying. ‘I will start tomorrow.’

  ‘Would…would you like to meet the children now? Well, I know you have seen them already, but if I could call them and…’

  Millie rose from the stool and, looking at her prospective and harassed mistress, she said, ‘Oh, it’s all right. We’ll get to know each other tomorrow, I’m sure, and very quickly.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, perhaps that’ll be best. But oh, by the way, you do know there are other duties? I…I have a person who comes in for two hours every morning, but…but she does just the very rough work. I sometimes need help in the kitchen and…’

  ‘Oh, I’d be pleased to help wherever I can.’

  ‘She’s a splendi
d cook,’ Ben said.

  Rose Quinton looked at the extraordinary man and thought as many another had: what a pity! He could have been a handsome man. She said, ‘She is?’ And he nodded his head firmly, saying, ‘She is. You take it from me, ma’am. I like my food, and she’s the best I’ve come across.’

  Mrs Quinton was again smiling down on Millie. ‘Oh, that would be a great asset. Well, you will come in the morning about…at about the same time?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Millie’s new mistress paused as if uncertain what to do next; then, turning quickly about, she led them from the kitchen into the hall and to the open front door again, and looked to where her children were all standing round the pony and cart. In fact, her son Patrick was actually in the cart.

  ‘Oh, dear me! Dear me! That boy! I’m sorry,’ she muttered.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for, missis, I mean, ma’am. It’s a good sign when children like animals and are playful with them. Good day to you.’

  ‘Good day.’

  Standing before her future mistress, Millie did not know whether or not to dip her knee. She decided against it, and so set a pattern which was soon to become questionable. What she said now was, ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ and Rose Quinton answered in a similar tone, ‘Good morning,’ then added hastily, ‘Your name is…?’

  ‘Millie, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh. Millie? Well, good morning, Millie.’ Again Millie said, ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ then turned and followed Ben to the cart, from which there was now a great scattering away of children, before once more they formed a group as if into a combined force. But when Millie, from her seat, lifted her arm and waved to them, they looked at each other, giggled, then all waved back, which Millie took as a good omen and Rose Quinton took as a sign of comparative peace. ‘It was as if,’ she said later to her husband, William, when in bed that night, ‘I felt as if the house had suddenly been blessed. Strange, wasn’t it?’ to which he answered, ‘Yes, indeed. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing this blessing. Indeed; indeed I am.’

  Six

  Millie had been living with the Quintons, in what was called Little Manor, for six months now, and she couldn’t recall a happier period in her life. She still looked forward to her half-day with Aggie and Ben, as she did her whole day once a month; but she was always glad to get back into the Quinton household, where she felt so at home she could never imagine ever wanting to leave them. But looking back, she always recalled her first week as a very testing time.

  Mr and Mrs Quinton had their meals served in the little dining room, whereas she had to take hers with the children at the kitchen table. And when nine-year-old Daisy took a spoonful of hot soup and threw it in her face, and there was a giggle from the others, Millie, rising and going to a side table and deliberately choosing a larger spoon, returned to her seat, filled the spoon with the soup, and levelled it at her opponent, causing a scream from Daisy but silent gasps from her supporters. And when the astonished child screamed, ‘I’ll tell Mama!’ Millie said, ‘Go on then, tell her.’ But when the child went to scramble from her stool, she was checked by Paddy, her younger brother, with the advice, ‘Don’t; Papa’s in. You’ll get your own back: just wait.’

  The ‘own back’ took the form of locking Millie in her attic bedroom, which was reached by a ladder attached to the end of the landing. The hatch had two bolts on the outside. Why they had been placed there and not on the inside, no-one knew.

  The children had shot the bolts after Millie had retired to bed. But when, at half-past six the next morning, she found her way barred, she didn’t, as they expected, bang on the trapdoor yelling her head off in frenzy; no, what she did was to return to her pallet on the floor, pull the clothes around her and lie there waiting. And she hadn’t all that long to wait, for when Mr Quinton came downstairs for his seven o’clock breakfast and found a bare table, he hurried upstairs and informed his wife. Mrs Quinton’s first remark was, ‘Oh, she must have gone. And I thought she was different. I thought she would handle them. Or perhaps she has just slept in. Go and see, William.’

  When William climbed the ladder and found the bolts shot he pulled them back, pushed open the hatch and in the dim light of an almost guttering candle he saw the maid sitting fully dressed on the side of her pallet, her feet stretched out before her, and she was smiling at him. He smiled back as he said, ‘The little devils!’

  What she said to him was, ‘You won’t have had any breakfast, sir, but I’ll get it in a jiffy.’

  She prepared his breakfast while he visited the two rooms in which five of his children slept, but in which three of them were now wide awake, waiting for the screams and the thumps that so far hadn’t been heard. And after clipping his sons’ ears and shaking his daughters, telling them they should know better, he awakened his six-year-old son, Robert, and his four-year old-daughter, Florrie, with hard smacks on their buttocks. Then pointing from Betty to Daisy, and then to Paddy, he said, ‘I warned you what would happen, didn’t I, if we lost another maid? No more school; and you, Betty, would go up in the big house kitchen; you, too, Daisy. There’s a young girl up there who has to scurry around with muck buckets most of the day. As for you, Paddy, it will be the stables. Now, I mean that.’ He lifted his hand. ‘I’m not just saying it this time. This girl is a good, intelligent girl. She’ll likely be able to teach you as much as you would be able to learn at school, because she’s been to school, too. So that’s the last warning I’m going to give you. You understand?’ And he now bawled at his son, ‘Paddy! Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Father, yes.’

  ‘Do you want to go into the stable yard?’

  ‘N…n…no, Father. I…I like engines. I mean, I can draw engines. You know I can.’

  ‘All right, all right. But there you have it, the three of you. As for you, Robert,’ he looked at his younger son, ‘you had better follow their lead or you will end up in a stable yard, too. There’s as young as you had to muck out horses before today.’ On this he turned abruptly and left them.

  His warning had stuck, but resentfully; at least, for the next few days and until Millie was able to break through it because she was a storyteller, and, moreover, because she could play with them. Probably, too, because she told Patrick she liked to hear him play his tin whistle, whereas, apparently, nobody else did. And she broke down the final barrier when, in a clearing in the woodland on an afternoon when the sun was shining and there wasn’t a breath of wind, she danced for them, doing the Irish jig Ben had taught her and which he himself had learnt from Annie when he was a lad.

  Blessed with a quick ear, Patrick was soon able to play the tune that she hummed to him. And then she had them all attempting to jig, the while filling the wood with their laughter, so much so as to attract the attention of two young horsemen riding up the bridle path. Dismounting, they peered through the trees and in amazement watched the young Quintons’ mob doing a weird dance round a girl they had never seen before. She had golden hair tied with a ribbon at the back, but the rest of it bounced from her shoulders with every step of the dance. They weren’t to know it had escaped from its bun with the exertion…

  Millie came to know these young men; or rather, became aware of them as being the sons of Raymond Crane-Boulder, just as she was to come to know many of the people in The Grange through the gossip of Jane Fathers, she being the lowest in the servants’ hierarchy at The Grange because she was merely the slopper-out.

  This term was very appropriate, for Jane took over from the housemaids the chamberpots and china slop buckets and emptied them into iron buckets; then, with the help of Ken Atkins, the boot boy, she carried them all of a hundred yards to the end of the kitchen garden, where lay the cesspits.

  The beginning of the wood lying only a few yards distant from the cesspits, Jane would sometimes slip into the shelter of the trees and flop down and dream of the day when she might become a scullery maid if she kept on the right side of Mrs Potter, the cook, who would put a w
ord in for her with Mrs Roper, the housekeeper.

  It was during one of these appropriated short siestas that she first saw Millie and found a recipient for her knowledge of the members of the household. There was the old master who owned two mills in the town, but who never visited them because he was fat and had gout and hardly ever left his room. It was Mr Raymond, his son, who saw to the businesses, and Jane assured Millie that she would recognise him right away if ever she came across him, because he was tall, thin and handsome. But the mistress now, Jane pointed out: she was another kettle of fish, different altogether, because—and the information had been imparted in a whisper—she had a failing: she liked the bottle, and at times there would be the devil to pay going on upstairs. Flo Yarrow, she was the second housemaid, her and Jessie Kitson, she was the in-between one, they could tell some tales, and they did, about the goings-on upstairs: just like Ridley’s pub on a Saturday night, they said it was sometimes. Then there were the two sons, Mr David, he was fifteen, and Mr Randolph, he was fourteen. They were real rips; they played tricks on the servants. Once they kicked a bucket of slops around her feet. Eeh! She had been in a mess, she said.