The Girl in the Attic

by Wendy Reakes

  That particular day, we didn’t have school on account our teacher, Miss Berryhead, had come down sick. Uncle said, “I’ve got to change the lock on the back door to the kitchen up at the manor. That fat cook has gone and run off with old Culpot and she’s gone took the back-door key with her.” He shook his head as he steered up the long road towards Wilbury House. "She was a fine-looking woman, though. I wouldn't have minded some of that for me self.” He laughed then and I’d got to wondering about what he’d just said.

  “Some of what, uncle?” I’d asked.

  “Never you mind, our Marley.” He didn’t ‘alf scowl. “Don’t you go thinking about any mucky stuff.”

  The only mucky stuff I knew about was what fell out of the back of horses. He had two; horses I mean. The ‘bloody nag’ had been sold for a shilling or two since he’d been responsible for killing uncle’s wife.

  The day I met Celia, it was daytime and I had a bonnet on my head to keep off the sun.

  He’d taken the cart around the back of the house. ‘Never to the front,’ uncle had instructed. ‘If you don’t know the back is the rightful tradesman’s entrance, you’ll never be a true and honest worker. ‘Never forget who you are and where you come from,’ he’d often say. ‘And never forget who they are neither.’ When he said that bit he’d pointed upwards, as if the gentry were gods in the sky.

  “Stay in the cart, our Marley,” he’d told me. “Brent, you can come. Learn how it’s done.”

  I was a bit put out at his insistence I remain in the cart. I’d have enjoyed seeing the house, even if it was just the downstairs.

  Then a voice surprised me. “Hello.”

  My sullenness disappeared when I turned to see a girl who was about the same age as me, but she could have been a year younger judging by her short height. She wore a grey striped dress with a soiled pinafore over the top and a mob cap holding up blonde hair. In her hand was a coal scuttle. I said ‘hello’ back.

  “What’s your name,” she’d asked.

  “Marley.”

  “Are you delivering something?”

  “Not really.” I looked towards the door leading to the kitchen. It was open but all I could see inside were shadows on the side wall of the corridor. I wondered where uncle and Brent were. “My uncle has come to change the lock because the fat cook ran off with Mr Culpot.”

  “Oh, she didn’t run off.”

  That had me all curious. I couldn’t help enjoying a bit of gossip. It got my mind all fired up. “What happened then?”

  The girl took a fleeting glance towards the open door and then she shuffled her way next to the cart as I leaned over to hear her better. “She got sacked, she did.” Both of our eyes widened in shock. I waited to hear more. “She went and done it with Mr Culpot and they got caught. Me mam collared them. She’s the housekeeper here.”

  I was baffled by such revelations, but the suspense was about to make me fall off the cart. “Doing what?”

  The girl’s brow raised up under the white frilled cap. She frowned with a tilt of her head. “It!”

  I decided to make it look as if I knew what she was talking about. Maybe I’d catch on when I knew some more. I nodded my comprehension of the meaning of ‘it’. “What happened then?”

  The girl leaned her arm over the side of the cart, still holding the coal scuttle in her other hand as she balanced her thin body between the two. “Me mam told the Lady, so the cook got sacked. There was a lot of fuss, crying and shouting and all that sort of thing. Then Mr Culpot turned up and ‘claimed her as his own’.” The girl said the words in a breathless, romantic way as if she was repeating something someone else had said. "Then he carried her off into the night," she finished.

  “Oooh,” I said with a whisper. “What happened about the key then?”

  “She took it, didn’t she?” The girl licked her lips. She was talking so fast now her mouth must have been drying up. “They’re all saying she did it to get her own back, but what I think is, she forgot she had it, because before she went and ran off with Mr Culpot, she always carried it around in her pocket.”

  "Yes, I think that too." I'd pondered the details of my new friend's testimony and had already formed my own judgement. "She forgot to give it back," I said. "It's obvious, I reckon."

  She nodded and leaned further onto the side of the cart, which was exactly the moment my friendship with Celia was sealed forever as we stared into each other’s wide eyes and gaping mouths.

  Just as we finished talking about the cook and Mr Culpot, Celia's mother came out looking as straight-backed as a newly polished candlestick. I made the reference because she was tall and thin, willowy, holding her head aloft and patting the back of her hair. When she exited the house and caught us chin-wagging, she shouted, “Celia, get along with you. What have I said about you idling, my girl? You’ll get us both sacked one day you will.”

  “I’m coming, mam,” Celia said.

  Her mother took a look at me sitting in the cart with a bonnet on my head. “Why are you out here in this sun? Come inside.”

  I was just about to step down when my uncle came out the door followed by my brother Brent. "Don't worry about our Marley, missus," uncle said. "She's used to waiting around when I’m working, she is.”

  Celia’s mother looked indignant as she clenched together her fine long fingers. “Even so…”

  “We won’t be long with this ‘ere job, missus. Don’t you fret none.”

  The lady took one last look at me sitting up on the cart and nodded. “Very well.” She patted Celia on the arm. “Come along.”

  When Celia turned to offer me one last look, our friendship had already been sealed, and yet neither of us could have predicted, seven years on, that I’d be at hiding in the attic of the house where she worked.

  That day, after we arrived home a few hours later, it was left to me to start peeling some potatoes for our supper. We had a bit of boiled ham left from the day before so I suggested we have that cold. Uncle said he didn't care as long as there was enough to fill his belly. It was a big belly so I wondered if I might have to go without. Not our Brent, though. Men needed feeding good. That's what uncle always said.

  As I pottered around the kitchen, uncle brought in his work bag holding all his special tools for fixing up locks. He told me to take out what was left of the bread and cheese we’d eaten earlier, so I did as I was told and delved inside. I saw a chunk of the crusty bread I’d baked the previous night and, of course, a good size block of cheddar for the most part uneaten. That morning, I’d wanted to put the lot into a nice basket. I’d fancied the notion of us all sitting on the grass in the sun, enjoying our repast from a checked cloth laid on the ground, but it hadn’t turned out that way at all.

  I’d just put out the food ready to pack it up nicely, when uncle came in with his bag, dropped it on the table and said, ‘Put that lot in ere.’

  Well, I thought, that’s what he did with his meal when he was out working, but since me and our Brent were going along with him, and the sun was shining like a ball of yellow happiness, I said, ‘I can put it in a little basket and I’ve got a piece of rabbit pie too, uncle.”

  “Don’t you go fussing about that sort of thing, girl. I ain’t got no time for no fancy stuff. Just put it in the bag and we’ll get going. No need to fuss o’er everything like you do. A waste of time that is and time’s money,” he growled.

  We ended up eating in the cart on the trip home, off our laps, which was just about as far away from the image of a summer picnic as I could get.

  Returning from our journey, I took the rest of the uneaten bread from uncle’s bag and put it on the table, and when I put my hand back inside, I pulled out a big key. Uncle snatched it from my hand. “Give that to me, Marley.”

  "Did you forget to give in the key, uncle?" I asked. I was hopeful. If he'd forgotten to hand in the key like the fat cook had when she'd run off with Mr Culpot, then uncle would have to take it back to the house and I could go alo
ng with him. It would be a good chance to see Celia again and get an update on how they were all going to manage without anyone to cook them their supper.

  "I don't forget nothing, girl." He held the key aloft as if it were a trophy. He must have felt in a good mood at that moment because he lifted up the small oil lamp on the shelf above the stove and went to the cupboard under the stairs. I’d never been in there before, so when he signalled for me to follow him, I had to confess to being a little curious to know what he kept stored away in his ‘secret little cupboard’, as I’d termed it many times in the past. Offering a smile, I hadn’t often witnessed before, he unlocked the door and waved his hand to usher me in. As he held the lamp aloft, I looked along the under-stairs cupboard that took us from standing up straight to bending our backs. I was reminded of the smell of old leather boots when I was inside, along with an odour of damp airlessness.

  “See that?” he said.

  On each of the side walls, I saw what must have been one hundred or more hooks with keys hanging from them of every shape and size. Old forged metal tags hung from each one, engraved with the key’s identity;Mrs Pepper, Broad Lane, outhouse door; Baker’s shop, front door; Plough pub, Frome, cellar drop…

  Uncle chuckled as I stared at the array of keys. “I’ve kept a copy of every key I’ve ever changed or installed in the villages around these parts,” he said proudly, stroking them as if they were delicate hanging vines. “That’s what makes me good at what I do, young Marley,” he said. “When they lose their key, I just make out I’ve gone and changed the lock. But I haven’t, see! I’ve just given them the spare key I kept from the time before.” He patted the side of his nose with his index finger. “Makes me a good few bob that does.”

  I backed up when he herded me out, and when we got outside and he locked the door, I said something that had occurred to me when he told me about his money-making scheme. “Is that what you did when you went up to the house today, uncle?” I was trying to get everything right in my mind. Had uncle made a free penny out of the lord and lady, or hadn’t he? I needed to know.

  He scoffed. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on that lock to the back of the house for years. It ne’er needed doing before now.” He put the key of the under-stairs cupboard in his pocket. Then his mood changed. “What’s with all the daft questions, girl? Are we going to have our supper soon or not?”

  So that’s how I got into the big house the night I lost my shoes. I had a key.

  Now, she was looking at meas if I had lost my mind. Maybe I had. “I’ve been here for three months,” I said as I watched her sit down on the side of the bed, smoothing her hand across the blanket.

  “What? But why? There was some talk about you running off with a soldier, but I never believed that.”

  “A soldier!” I bowed my head and kneeled on the floor where my little cup of water was boiling. I removed it from the tripod and let the fire burn to provide a small amount of heat. I added a sprinkling of tea to it and while the leaves infused with the water, I looked back at Celia who waited patiently for my explanation. “Something happened to me…something bad.”

  “What was it? I don’t understand.”

  It was a difficult discussion to have. Celia hardly knew me. We had barely spoken, not since that day when we were both seven and we discussed the plight of the cook and Mr. Culpot. We had become friends by an attraction of the eye only, as if we had a silent agreement of friendship, never discussed…but promised. It was bizarre really, and as I thought on it whilst deciding how to tell her the reason I was there, I wondered for a moment if I had gotten the whole thing wrong. Maybe she didn’t think of me as a friend at all, that she would give me up as soon as she knew I was no longer pure, nor a child like her. “I was attacked…by a boy.” I watched her face to see if she knew what I was trying to tell her, but her expression was devoid of any comprehension. I couldn’t blame her for that. “He wasn’t a soldier. He was a terrible man. He did something to me. Without me wanting it to happen. Do you understand?”

  She puckered her lips. I could tell she was trying to read between the vaguely deliberated lines, but really, she was as innocent as I was before the event. Was it even a conversation for girls of our age to have? “Celia,” I said. “I was molested.”

  I watched her face as my blunt statement fed her soul. Then she began to cry.

  I went to her side and sat on the floor at her feet, holding her hand resting on her lap. She slipped off the side of the bed and joined me on the floor. “Who would do such a thing?”

  I thought about her question for a moment and realised for the first time I didn’t even know his name. “Just a boy, a black-haired lout. I helped him home but I was careless…I should have known…” my voice trailed off as I once again, for the hundredth time, regretted my decision to walk home that night.

  When Celia squeezed my hand, I suddenly realised something else; that I hadn’t felt the touch of another human being for three months. Not even a closeness of any kind, except maybe for the time I hid behind the door from the groundsman when I was as naked as the day I was born.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Marley,” Celia murmured.

  I appreciated the sentiment more than I could ever say, but it was difficult for me to believe I was blameless. Stupidity wasn’t a virtue I relished.

  Celia was gazing around my parlour, as if she couldn’t believe where she was sitting and who she was talking to about something so terrible. “But why did you come here? Your family…”

  “I couldn’t go to them. My brother, Brent…he would have killed that boy. I couldn’t risk that. He would have spent the rest of his life in gaol.”

  “Your uncle…”

  I stopped her before she could say another word. “That is the worst part, Celia. I think he knew.”

  She gasped again. “No, surely not.”

  I looked at her and nodded my head slowly as I made her realise my uncle’s input in the event. “Yes, he knew. I’m sure of it. He was with the boy before, you see? He made it happen.”

  Below her black dress, Celia tucked under her feet and sat on the side of her thigh.

  “I had nowhere else to go. I had a key for the backdoor…My uncle was a bad man, Celia. He made duplicate keys of all the locks he’d ever worked on. He cheated people.”

  “But how did you get past the servants?”

  “The only one I saw was the groundsman…no one else.”

  She nodded. “That makes sense. The only people left behind were the gardener and the groom. That’s Mr. Lakely, but he has a house in the village with his wife. The gardener has a place near the stables. That’s old Porter.”

  “Old Porter?”

  She nodded.

  “He didn’t look old.”

  She chuckled. “They just call him that because his predessor was called was Old Jack. But he died. Some said he drank himself to death…” She leaned closer to me and nodded her head to assure me what she was saying was true. “Liked a pint of Somerset cider. And that’s strong stuff, Lottie told me.”

  I smiled then. To gossip along with Celia was the nicest pastime in the world. “And who’s Lottie?” I asked.

  Celia suddenly looked very serious. “Lottie is the old nanny. She’s a holy terror. She’s thought of as a member of the family, but she stays downstairs now, since there are no children left in the house. Master Edward is ten now and he attends boarding school.” Celia lowered her voice to a whisper. “But…listen to this, Marley…There’s a rumour going around that Her Ladyship is having a baby in the Spring.” Celia’s eyes were as wide as an owl’s. “What do you think of that?”

  We both stopped smiling when I said. “Well, she’s not the only one.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have a baby, Celia.”

  Celia was aghast.“You can’t stay here.”

  I nodded. “I know.” I was having a baby. I would need to take care of it. Protect it, despite it coming from the loins of the
black-haired lout…and against my will. “But I don’t know where to go.” I shook my head as I looked at Celia’s face in the decreasing light of the fire and the slow burning candle. “I’d intended to look up family in Taunton, but I can’t go there now. A pregnant, unmarried girl!! They’d kick me out as quickly as you like and they’d probably tell uncle.”

  “What shall we do then?” Celia said beneath her breath.

  I was taken aback by her use of words. “We!?”

  She smiled softly. “Well, you need someone and now you have me.”

  I cried then as her kindness melted my heart. She put her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Marley. We’ll think of something.”

  I placed my cold hand on her sleeve. “There’s another thing. I’ve stolen food. I could be jailed for that.” I got onto my knees and shuffled along the rug to my small kitchen. “You can have this food back. I shouldn’t have taken it.”

  Celia shook her head frantically. “No, I could get caught putting it back in the pantry and that would be worse.”

  “But I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  She pouted. “It’s okay, you won’t. A lot of pilfering goes on around here. Half the time the cook doesn’t know what’s being taken since she likes a tot of sherry or two.” To illustrate, Celia raised and dropped her eyebrows. “We all know about it. She’s too stupid and lazy to take stock and she’s worried the servants will shop her if she gets too bossy with them. Me mam don’t like it –she’s the housekeeper here- but these days she keeps to herself a lot and tells me to as well.” Celia mimicked her mother. “Don’t you go taking nothing, our Celia, she says. They might do it, but it doesn’t mean we have to.” Celia offered a look of disapproval as she tutted. “Me mam’s honest as the day’s long.”