The Conviction of Cora Burns

by Carolyn Kirby

  ‘Cora Burns.’

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘I’ve come about the situation.’

  ‘What situation? There isn’t one.’

  ‘Between maid.’

  ‘A tweeny? We don’t have one of those.’

  ‘I think you’ll find, if you ask Mrs Dix, that you do now.’ Cora nodded at the range. ‘Don’t let them pots catch.’

  The girl gave her a sideways look as she picked up the silver fork from the floor. Then she went to stir the pans. Apple sauce. Beef gravy. Cora’s stomach groaned. The girl turned and stood awkwardly.

  ‘Did Mrs Dix send for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why’d you come on a Sunday afternoon?’

  Cora shrugged and took a step nearer. ‘Is she here?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Will you fetch her for me?’

  ‘She doesn’t like being disturbed on a Sunday.’

  ‘If you tell me where she is I’ll do the disturbing.’

  ‘No, no. I can knock at her door for you. But she might not come down.’

  ‘I’ll wait here till she does.’

  Alarm flashed in the girl’s eye. ‘Not in here, no. Outside.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  The girl ushered Cora out along the passageway and shut the door behind her. Cora waited in the cold shadow of the house and listened. A faint trail of footsteps pattered up the stairs. There was a murmur of voices; one shriller than the other. Somewhere in the house, if she wasn’t mistaken, a child laughed.

  Footsteps, louder, were coming back down. The door opened.

  ‘Yes?’

  The woman wore black crêpe, shiny as a fly. A row of stiff curls rimmed her forehead. Cora looked her in the eye.

  ‘I’ve come about the place. Between maid. The letter said to ask for you.’

  Mrs Dix put out her hand. ‘Do you have the letter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or a character?’

  ‘No.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Then you could be anybody.’

  ‘I have walked all this way on the understanding that there would be a situation here for me as between maid on eight pounds a year. Even without a character.’

  The woman glanced at Cora’s mud-crusted feet and sniffed. ‘What work have you done before?’

  ‘Laundry. Rough and fancy.’

  ‘We only boil linens here. The rest is sent out. Anything else?’

  Cora guessed that unpicking old bits of tarred rope wouldn’t strengthen her prospects, and if Mrs Dix didn’t already know where Cora had come from, the mention of oakum would instantly tell her.

  ‘I can sew quite good.’

  ‘Nothing of use then. Let me see your hands.’

  Mrs Dix peered at Cora’s toughened palms.

  ‘I shall confer with the master. And I shall have to explain to him the inadequacy of your things. He may not be prepared to provide you with apparel in advance of employment.’

  ‘So is there a place for me or not?’

  ‘There most certainly will not be if you continue to address your betters in that fashion. You may wait in the wash-house until the matter is decided. Ellen will escort you.’

  Cora followed the girl in the print dress alongside a glasshouse built against a high wall. A smell of horse wafted out of the red-brick stables. Ellen pushed on an outhouse door, scraping the wood against worn tiles. At one end of the dank room a huge copper sat on a curved brick burner. Cora went in and leaned on the wall by the cobwebbed window but the girl stayed at the door, a smile wavering across her face.

  ‘I’m Ellen Beamish. The scullery maid. Are you hungry?’

  ‘A bit.’

  Ellen put a hand in her skirt and held out an apple. Cora took it but kept it tight in her fist. She was so hungry that if she started to eat, she’d gobble like an old sow.

  ‘I hope they take you on. We’ve not had a tweeny before. It would be a boon.’

  Oh, it would, would it? Cora saw how things were going to be; she’d get all the lousy jobs that no one else could face. Somewhere nearby a horse whinnied and Ellen looked over her shoulder.

  ‘I had better go back and see to the range.’

  Cora waited until Ellen had gone before sinking down to the floor. Her swollen feet pulsed inside the dirty bindings. The apple was sour but she ate every bit, even the pips.

  Despite the lingering scent of soap, the closeness of the wash-house walls brought to mind her prison cell. Outside, the whispering of brittle leaves through towering branches tightened the unease in her stomach. There seemed something queer about this house and the people in it. But perhaps all gentlemen’s residences were the same. There’d be rough work and sharp words wherever she ended up.

  Before long, footsteps crunched on gravel and a man’s voice, well-spoken, threaded into a woman’s. Then the fading light at the doorway was eclipsed by a black silhouette.

  ‘Cora Burns?’

  She stood up blinking. It was a man, a gentleman, but jacketless and with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up above the elbows. He stepped inside the wash-house. Pale light fell on to one side of face.

  ‘Ah, yes. That’s her, Mrs Dix. Fear not.’ He turned to Cora. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Cora dropped her gaze to the floor but already sensed that he knew she was lying. Because despite the briefness of her glance and the dimness of the light, she had recognised very well the searching grey eyes of the prison photographer.

  brick dust

  ‘You’d do better to pin them up.’

  Cora guessed it was her sleeves that were at fault. She’d been given an old-fashioned cotton frock, finely made, but too big. The full sleeves hung down over her hands and the cuffs were already grubby from a morning carrying coal boxes. Cook raised her eyes from the floury innards of a stoneware bowl.

  ‘I’ll lend you a couple of pins if you wish.’

  ‘No. Thank you. I can roll them.’

  ‘Just take care to unroll them if you go upstairs.’

  ‘Yes, Cook.’

  ‘You can go up now, in fact. Put on your good apron and take this dinner tray to the missus.’

  The cook was a thin woman in early middle-age. Her words weren’t exactly friendly, but they weren’t over-sharp. She gave no sign of knowing where Cora had come from. Maybe word hadn’t yet got around. But it couldn’t be long until all of the servants started clutching their valuables a bit tighter as Cora went by.

  The tray was laid out with a bone-handled knife and fork on a lace cloth. Gravy curled around chops and potatoes on the gold-rimmed plate along with some green vegetable that Cora couldn’t name. It must be dinnertime here even though the long-case clock had not yet struck eleven.

  ‘Where do I take it?’

  ‘Up the back stairs, to the second door after the sink room. Put the tray on the floor, knock twice and say “tray” loud as you like. Then turn around and come back down the stairs without looking into the room. Herself doesn’t like it.’

  Cora had already been up the back stairs, but only as far as the sink room to leave the coal boxes. She’d seen an assortment of doors leading off the landing at both sides of the main stairs. The front of the house seemed crammed with things but empty of people. The back of the house, the servants’ part, was full of both.

  With all available beds filled by the upper servants, Cora had slept last night in the kitchen. Ellen didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about the arrangement. She had pulled out a truckle bed and her own night things from under the kitchen dresser without comment. But Cora was shocked. Even in gaol she’d had her own cell.

  At the mistress’s door, Cora knelt down to place the tray on the carpet runner. There were voices somewher
e across the landing; a man talking, the master, by the sound of it. But behind his wife’s bedroom door, all was silent. Cora stood up and knocked firmly.

  ‘Tray!’

  Inside the room, skirts rustled. There were footsteps and then a call of Helen! Helen! The tone was shrill, but unmistakably the voice of a lady. As a key twisted in the lock, Cora spun round and was at the top of the stairs before the door fully opened. Mrs Dix’s face as she bent to pick up the tray was grey as wash-water. She didn’t seem to notice Cora.

  In the scullery, Cora put on a rough striped apron and rolled her trailing sleeves above her elbows. Rain beat at the small window and smeared plates filled the deep sink. Although it was the middle of the day, the gas mantle fizzed yellow light on to a heap of dirty green vegetables. Cora began to scoop slops from the sink into a bucket on the floor, each movement hindered by the yards of soft cotton around her legs.

  A draught blew on to her neck as the scullery door half opened. Ellen’s face appeared at the crack.

  ‘Cook says I’m to get on with the wash. You’re to do in here alone.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘All this. Dishes, boots, sprouts.’

  Sprouts would be the mouldy-looking vegetables, Cora supposed. She followed Ellen’s glance to the muddy boots beneath the bench; a man’s pair in knee-length brown leather with laces and buckles and much smaller wine-coloured button-ups; a girl’s. Cora had no definite notion of what to do with any of it.

  ‘Do you mean wash these dishes?’

  ‘Yes. What else would you do with them? And polish the cutlery.’ Ellen nodded to a tray of dusty orange stones with a small hammer laid alongside on the wooden draining board. ‘Do you know what to do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ellen certainly didn’t believe her but was too wary to contradict. Ellen nodded and closed the door.

  The tap ran cold into the big wooden bowl beside the sink. Cora scraped off each of the dinner dishes into the bucket and then dipped them in the bowl. The plates came out of the cold cabbagey water almost clean, and dripped greasily from the rack on the wall. But the cutlery looked more tarnished by the wash-bowl than when it went in. Cora rummaged in the wet pile by the sink and picked out a round, bladed knife with a creamy handle. The stony orange dust, she could now see, was crushed from a house brick. She picked up a fragment and rubbed it along the knife. A streak of silver scored the blade. Harder rubbing with the stone brought up more of the metal to a shine but seemed to loosen the handle. The brick left rusty spots in the pitted skin of Cora’s fingertips. She’d no doubt that she was doing everything wrong.

  At eleven that night, after a cold supper of pork pie thick with meat jelly, Cook turned off the gas, lit a candle and climbed the back stairs to her bed. From below the dresser, Ellen pulled out the narrow truckle bed for herself and unfolded the horsehair mattress on to the floor for Cora. Ellen undressed to her shimmy then slipped under the covers to take it off and wriggle into her nightdress. In the light of a smoky candle she watched Cora unbutton the long row of buttons on the old-fashioned bodice. Before unfastening her stays, Cora blew out the flame but she felt Ellen’s wide-open eyes still on her.

  ‘Are you from round here, Cora?’

  ‘From town.’

  ‘Where did you come from yesterday? Another situation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what happened to your things, your boots…?’

  ‘I had an unfortunate accident on the way.’

  ‘Oh! What happened?’

  ‘I’d rather not describe it.’

  ‘Oh my!’

  Ellen was quiet for a moment. Cora could almost hear the whisper of her speculation.

  ‘Was it a house grander than this, where you was before?’

  ‘It wasn’t a house.’

  ‘Oh? What then?’

  ‘A steam laundry.’

  ‘Oh! Which one? Not Hardman’s on Ladypool Road? My sister works there. I bet you’d know her. She talks to anyone. Never stops!’

  ‘No. Not that one.’

  ‘Or Palmer’s at Digbeth?’

  ‘No. A different one. Smethwick way.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Ellen twisted her head to look at Cora in the whitening moonlight from the bare window.

  ‘Do you think you’ll stay here?’

  Cora was quiet for a moment. ‘They may not keep me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t fret. Cook doesn’t mind about the mess you made today.’

  ‘What mess?’

  ‘The crockery. It was hardly washed. As if you hadn’t used soap and soda or any hot water at all. And the knives!’

  Cora cursed silently. Nobody told her to light the scullery copper. Or to use soap and soda. Well, she’d remember for next time. And put her mind to the best way of applying brick dust to metal.

  ‘I should have done the laundry instead. I know what to do with that.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but Cook said it wasn’t fair to make you do battle with the wash-house copper on your first day. It nearly did explode too. Lor’! It made me scream. Samuel came running. He will think me a right ninny!’

  She giggled in a way that made Cora want to pinch her.

  ‘Is Samuel your fancy man?’

  ‘Cora! No! He’s too good for me.’

  But Ellen’s protests were so threaded with breathiness that she clearly believed the opposite to be true.

  ‘I hope you do stay, Cora.’

  ‘Well, I shall have to, at least until these boots are paid for.’

  ‘They’re good ones too. Buttons not laces.’

  It’d be two pounds at least, Cora reckoned, for the print dress, two flannel petticoats, two bib aprons, cap, boots and underthings. Three months’ work. So she’d not be able to leave until spring was on the way. Ellen’s voice became a whisper.

  ‘They belonged to the missus I shouldn’t wonder. Bet she hasn’t worn boots for years.’

  ‘Because she’s an invalid?’

  ‘That’s one word for it.’

  ‘What ails her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her.’

  Cora realised that all of her new clothes had probably once been worn by her new mistress.

  ‘Mrs Dix looks after her then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the master, what’s he like?’

  Ellen was quiet for a second. ‘He’s an odd one, but is fair to the staff.’

  ‘And his daughter?’

  ‘Daughter?’

  ‘I heard him talking to a child, a girl.’

  ‘That’ll be Violet. Not his daughter.’

  ‘Who is she then?’

  ‘Some relative of theirs, I think. But not Mr Jerwood’s child. He has no children of his own.’

  Ellen said no more and Cora sensed her already falling into sleep. The grey outlines of table and dresser pressed through the darkness. How easy it would be to get tangled up here in the sentiments of the back stairs; the petty jealousies, the lightening strikes of passion. Cora must keep herself to herself, especially when it came to Ellen and her intended. If she couldn’t, she’d walk, boots or no boots, back to the smoky streets of the town. Because nothing of what went on in the servants’ hall at the asylum must ever happen here. She’d die first.

  the cabinet of curiosity

  Towards the end of the week, in the late afternoon, Cora was sent upstairs to lay a fire in a grate. She didn’t let on that she’d never before lived anywhere with a proper fireplace; the asylum had been warmed by hot water pipes and the Union workhouse by the mass of small sweating bodies. There’d been no heat at all in her gaol cell. But she’d lit a fire under the copper in the asylum laundry plenty of times. A fireplace couldn’t be that different.

  The library was at the front of the house by th
e top of the main staircase. Cora listened at the door then knocked. A creak of furniture that might have signalled someone inside was drowned by the cawing of rooks on the lawn. Once inside, though, Cora seemed to be alone.

  The library air oozed mustiness from old books lining the shelves along the back wall. Tranklements of all sorts crammed the cabinets. Cora went to the fireplace, the metal pail clanking against her legs, and kneeled on the hearth rug. Behind her, something seemed to swish between the furniture and she looked around. But, apart from the spinning of one of the coloured balls on the wire contraption by the window, nothing moved.

  She turned back to the ashy grate, heart tapping. Knots of scrap paper went in first, then sticks and coal from the pail. She struck a match and sat back. Flames licked at the kindling and she willed the coal to catch. Above the fireplace, a row of pointy skulls glistened white against the brown velvet mantel. Cora looked at each skull in turn trying to re-clothe it with flesh, skin and fur. She wondered if they were from animals she would recognise; a dog, a cat, a rat, or perhaps from creatures she couldn’t even imagine.

  ‘Who are you?

  Cora flinched then slowly turned. Standing over her was a girl of about ten in a green dress. She must have been here all along, perhaps hiding behind the box of tiny glistening birds, frozen in flight. Unease pricked the back of Cora’s neck.

  ‘The tweeny.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Cora Burns.’

  ‘That’s a funny one.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It sounds like the middle of you is on fire.’ The girl started to smile then changed her mind. ‘My name is Violet Poole.’

  ‘That’s funny too.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘You’re a purple pond.’

  The girl’s smile broke through. Despite the genteel voice and well-brushed hair, something about her pale face, with its small lips and dark brows, made Cora’s heart catch in her chest.

  A latch clicked and Violet turned sharply, her thin auburn plait slapping the back of her dress. Cora was not quite on her feet when Susan Gill came into the room.

  ‘Nothing to do, Burns?’

  The housemaid was the only servant who seemed to wear a uniform; a mauve afternoon dress with a frilled white apron and starched cap. And she was the only one who called the other maids by their second names.