The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Let me go, you great bully! This is a nice dress an’ all, me mam made it for me!’ Hetty twisted and writhed to get away but his grip was hard on her shoulder, the fingers biting in cruelly. So she lashed out with her foot, catching him on the shin with the steel segs in the toe of her boot. He swore and jumped back but he didn’t let go.

  ‘Leave her alone, Matt, do. She’s not a thief, she’s the new housemaid. I suspect she’s just got lost on her way downstairs.’

  It was Master Richard who was with him, oh praise the Lord for that, she hadn’t noticed at first. He wouldn’t let this man with his cruel face and slitty blue eyes hurt her. Richard was her friend, she knew it instinctively. He carried some clout too, for the one he called Matt let her go immediately.

  ‘Oh God, where did they pick this one up? I suppose it was a Durham pit village judging by that execrable accent. No doubt she came cheap, that’s all Father cares about.’ He bent down and rubbed his shin, wincing. ‘Get out of my sight,’ he said to Hetty. ‘And don’t think I’ll forget you lashing out at me. What the hell have you got on your feet? A pair of pit boots?’

  Chapter 2

  ‘What are you doing, coming in through the front of the house? The back stairs not good enough for you, then?’ Mrs Peel frowned as Hetty pushed open the baize-covered door to the kitchen. She didn’t seem to be looking for an answer which was just as well, thought Hetty, for she could hardly speak she felt that mortified. That Matt, whatever else he was, was a nasty, superior sort of bloke and he had been so contemptuous of her that her face burned at the memory. She had fled down the grand staircase and instinctively made for the back of the house and found the kitchen. She came to a halt, breathing heavily, feeling sweat trickle down her spine.

  ‘Come on then, fill the bucket and get that passage cleaned up, before the master sees it. He can’t abide muck from the farm in the house and Richard’s a good lad really, we don’t want to get him into trouble. There’s a sacking apron hanging there.’ The housekeeper pointed to a bucket standing by the stone sink under the window and obediently Hetty picked it up and stood it in the sink. There was a hot tap. By, that was a good thing, hot water out of a tap. What would Mam give for such luxury? Even as she filled the bucket and found a bar of Sunlight soap and a rag under the sink, she pondered on where the hot water came from, how it was heated. As far as she could see there was no set pot or any sort of boiler.

  ‘Hurry up now, get on with it, you’re not going to turn out to be a daydreamer like the last one, are you?’ Mrs Peel’s tone was sharp and Hetty hastily lifted the bucket out of the sink.

  ‘No, Mrs Peel,’ she said, wondering who the last one was and why she had left. Maybe if she could make friends with the other girl – Ethel, was it, the housekeeper had called her? – maybe Ethel would tell her all she wanted to know.

  ‘Mind you clean it up properly and then when it’s dry you can polish it,’ Mrs Peel said as she went out through the baize door again.

  There weren’t many marks on the floor and it was easily cleaned for this part of the hall leading into the kitchen was covered in a dark linoleum. It was only when Hetty was on her knees that she could discern the pattern of leaves and squares in various shades of dark brown. She scrubbed away until the linoleum was spotless and then sat back on her heels feeling satisfied. She pushed a lock of dark hair back behind her ear. Thank goodness Mam had cut it for her before she came. Mam was a dab hand at cutting hair. It was so easy to look after when it was cut in a short bob and anyroad it was all the fashion; all her friends were having their hair cut.

  Hetty’s thoughts always went off on a course of their own when she was doing anything so boring as scrubbing a floor. Though her movements were automatic she was thorough if she was thinking of something pleasant, such as how her mam had cut Hetty’s best friend Dorothy James’s hair for her, making a real good job of it and even using a razor on the ends so that the blonde hair nestled into the nape of Dorothy’s neck. Hetty was that proud of her mam. By, she was clever an’ all, she was. And Mam only charged tuppence and Dorothy said that if she’d had to go to the hairdresser in Bishop Auckland it would have cost one and sixpence, which of course Dorothy hadn’t got, being as how her father was locked out of the pit along with most of the miners. Bar the safety men that was. Hetty’s own dad was studying to be an overman and then he would go down the pit even when the men weren’t working just to make sure it was safe. By, she hoped he passed his examination.

  Suddenly Hetty’s attention was jerked back to the present as she heard a door open somewhere at the front of the house beyond the sweep of the staircase. A man laughed and she shrank back. She didn’t want to meet that one again, oh no! Picking up her bucket she retreated into the comparative haven of the kitchen quarters.

  ‘Come on then, lass, take off your pinny and wash your hands and come and have your tea,’ said Mrs Peel, smiling at Hetty, who blinked in surprise, the change in the housekeeper was so marked. Mrs Peel was sitting at the head of the table, which was now laid with a plain white cloth and there was fresh bread and slices of tongue and pickled beetroot and the biggest, ripest tomatoes Hetty had ever seen. There were three men sitting at the table, all of them in their shirtsleeves and corduroy trousers held up by braces and wide leather belts.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Peel.’ Hetty hurried over to the sink to do as she was bidden for as she smelled the food there suddenly seemed to be a gaping hole in her stomach, she was so hungry. It was hours since she’d had the bread and jam at the Olivers’.

  ‘This the new maid, then?’ commented one of the men, the eldest of the three. He was a short man but brawny, with grizzled hair and the weathered red face of a man who worked in the open air all day. Just like the farmer on the hill above Morton Main, thought Hetty, a nice man who used to let the miners’ children look at the lambs when they came in the spring and gather blackberries from the hedgerows in the autumn so long as they didn’t tramp across the fields. Hetty smiled shyly as she sat down at the table and took the cup of tea Mrs Peel handed to her.

  ‘This is Hetty,’ said Mrs Peel. ‘Hetty, this is Mr Jones, our herdsman.’ She was looking at him in a way which Hetty could only describe as soppy. In fact, she was a little embarrassed for the older woman, but Mr Jones seemed not to notice it.

  ‘And there’s Sam and Bob, sitting there making pigs of themselves wi’ the tongue,’ he said. The other two men, Sam, a lad in his teens, and Bob, not much older, grinned, taking no offence at all. ‘You’d best dig in, lass, you look as though you could do wi’ a bit o’ meat on your bones. Are you sure you’re old enough to leave school?’

  ‘I’m fourteen,’ asserted Hetty. She took a slice of bread, thickly spread with creamy farm butter, and placed a slice of tongue on it to make a sandwich. Oh, it was lovely, the meat thick and tasty and the bread fresh and crusty. For a minute or two she could think of nothing else but her sandwich.

  ‘You like your meat, then,’ observed one of the farm hands, Sam it was, the younger one. ‘Did your mother not tell you not to bolt your food?’ Hetty put the sandwich down on her plate, her face bright red. She looked across the table at him, ready to retort. By, she’d had enough of humiliation for one day, she thought. But Mr Jones beat her to it.

  ‘You mind your own business, young Sam,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve not noticed you be backward in coming forwards when it comes to eating. Get on with your own meal, there’s plenty to do outside afore you go home tonight.’

  ‘Aw, I didn’t mean owt, I was only funning,’ protested Sam. ‘An’ you know it’s my turn to get off early. I’m going to the pictures in Hutton, they’re coming to the church hall tonight. A cowboy it is.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Jones,’ Mrs Peel said sweetly, ‘I’m sure the lad meant nothing. Let’s not have any bad feeling at the table. If there’s anything I dislike it’s words said at the table.’

  ‘You’re a good woman, Mrs Peel,’ said the herdsman. ‘But we have to keep the young ones in order, haven’t
we? An’ happen the lass didn’t have much dinner.’

  Hetty stared at her plate, her hunger gone.

  ‘Finish that sandwich and drink up your tea, Hetty,’ ordered Mrs Peel. ‘Don’t forget that floor will be ready to polish now it’s dry and I’ll need you later on to help with the family dinner.’

  The sandwich tasted like sawdust to Hetty but she ate her way steadily through it and drank the strong sweet tea. By this time the men were finished their meal and Mr Jones had taken a pipe out of his pocket and was looking at Mrs Peel enquiringly.

  ‘Do smoke if you wish, Mr Jones,’ that lady said.

  ‘Please may I leave the table? I’ve had sufficient, thank you,’ said Hetty, and Bob and Sam exploded into laughter. Now what had she done? Wasn’t she just following the lessons in manners she had been taught at school?

  ‘Go and get on with your work,’ Mrs Peel said, frowning at her while Mr Jones half rose in his chair and gave the lads a glare which quelled them in an instant.

  Polishing the linoleum in the hall, rubbing at it until her arm ached and the smell of lavender polish hung heavy in the air, Hetty willed herself not to cry. By, she thought, it had been a long day and not at all as she had thought it would be. She was so confused and her head ached with tiredness. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Because if it wasn’t she didn’t know what she would do. Run away? But where would she run to? And anyroad, Mam needed her to send some of her pay home, things were so hard for them there.

  Desperately trying to lighten her mood, Hetty began to think of Saltburn. How lovely it had looked earlier in the day when she had taken half an hour between trains and hurried along the cliff top to gaze out to sea, with the sands stretching along to Marske on one side and Huntcliff soaring on the other. She remembered coming on the chapel trip to Saltburn-by-the-Sea when she was little. By, it was nice. The houses were all grand with bay windows and lace curtains and they swept down to the top of the cliff in terraces all named after jewels. When she had made her fortune she would go to live in the jewel streets, oh yes, she would. One way or another she was going to do that.

  At nine o’clock Ethel came back from her afternoon off and Hetty’s heart lifted as soon as she saw her. She was older than Hetty, about nineteen, and as round as a barrel with red cheeks and mousy brown hair and the brightest pair of sparkling hazel eyes which twinkled merrily as she looked Hetty up and down.

  ‘So you’re the new lass, are you?’ she said. Hetty waited for a comment on her skinniness but Ethel said nothing. Or at least she did, but it was a nice comment. ‘I wouldn’t mind being thin like you,’ she said. ‘I bet you could be a model like those on the front of Woman’s Weekly when you get a bit older. Or even a film star with those big dark eyes and wavy hair.’ She held up a strand of her own mousy locks ruefully. ‘Do you think I’d look better if I bleached mine? It’s neither one thing nor the other as it is.’

  Hetty was shocked at the idea. Only fast girls bleached their hair, or at least that’s what Mam said. Nobody in Morton Main did anyway. Luckily, she didn’t have to give an answer for Mrs Peel had just come into the kitchen from the front of the house and heard the question.

  ‘I see you two have met,’ she said. ‘But mind you, Ethel Weldon, if you bleach your hair you’ll be out of here like a shot, make no mistake about that. And don’t be putting ideas into Hetty’s head, neither, she’s only fourteen, you should be setting her an example. Now where have you been? You’re half an hour late already. I’ve had to serve in the dining room for you.’

  Ethel pulled a face at Hetty behind Mrs Peel’s back. ‘Sorry, Mrs Peel. But it’s a long walk up from the village, you know.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed it getting any longer than it always is,’ retorted the housekeeper. ‘Come on now, I want to get finished in time tonight.’

  There was no doubt that Ethel was a good worker, thought Hetty. Once she had an apron tied round her middle she set to with a will and soon all the dishes from the family’s meal were carried through from the dining room and between the two of them they were washed and dried and put away in the wall cupboards. After steaming mugs of cocoa the two girls were dispatched to bed.

  The day had gone on forever, thought Hetty wearily as she trudged after Ethel up the last few stairs. There was electricity in the main part of the house but not in the attic and both the girls carried candlesticks in their hands. The flames cast eerie shadows on the walls of the dingy top landing. Hetty was glad that she had Ethel with her, her imagination had been vivid enough in the daylight. Now she stared straight ahead at Ethel’s back, determined not to look into the shadows. ‘For fear of something ’orrible,’ her brother Frank would have said – but then, he’d always made fun of her being scared of the dark.

  Inside the bedroom, with the door shut and the curtains drawn against the great black emptiness of the moor, it was cosy enough. When the girls had undressed and washed in the tepid water from the jug they jumped into bed and blew out the candles. Hetty lay on her back covered only by the sheet for it was a warm September night and the heat had risen through the house until it was trapped under the eaves.

  ‘It’s a warm room, anyroad,’ she remarked, and Ethel laughed.

  ‘Oh, aye, mebbe it is now, but wait until the winter sets in proper – you’ll change your mind then all right. An’ be glad of a hot-water bottle, I reckon. I’m glad you’ve come, though, Hetty. You’ll see, we’ll get on like a house afire. I’m fed up having all the work to do mesel’ since Jenny left.’

  ‘Why did she leave? Was she getting married?’

  ‘No, not her, though I daresay she wished she had been. No, she left in a hurry with a bun in the oven.’

  Hetty sat up in bed, shocked to the core. ‘A baby, do you mean? And she wasn’t getting married?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say who the feller were, though I have me suspicions. She was no blooming good at housework anyway. Forget about Jenny, don’t waste any sympathy on her. You’ll have enough to think about, wi’ your looks.’

  Hetty lay quiet, wondering what she meant for a few minutes. Her back and limbs were aching with tiredness but her mind was buzzing so that she felt she would never drop off to sleep. Then what would she do at five-thirty in the morning when she had to get up to light the kitchen fire? Maybe if she had one or two questions answered …

  ‘I met Master Richard today, he seems nice. But the other one, Matt, who is he exactly?’

  ‘Be careful not to get in that one’s way, Hetty,’ answered Ethel. ‘He’s got a nasty tongue all right. Thank goodness he’s away at the university most of the time. Master Richard’s a nice enough lad, though. He goes to school at Barnard Castle during the week but comes home at weekends. It’s a pity Master Matthew is the eldest, that’s what I think. He treats us like dirt.’

  ‘I know. I got lost on my way downstairs and ended up at the front of the house and he said I must be a thief. He … he said I was a bundle of rags.’

  ‘Take no notice. Like I said, he’s just got a nasty tongue. Thinks too much of himself, he does. What are they anyway? Nowt but jumped-up hill farmers. Because the master made some money with the minerals on his land, they think they’re gentry. But you can see for yourself, the master still farms, it’s in his blood.’

  ‘I’ve never met him.’

  ‘You will soon enough. He’s all right and the mistress too – though you don’t see much of her. Mrs Peel runs the house as you might have noticed. A bit strange is the missus.’

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘Aye. Well, you’ll see for yourself as I said.’ Ethel yawned hugely. ‘I’m tired. I’ve been walking out with my boyfriend. I’ve got a lad, you know.’ She said it as though Hetty would not believe her but Hetty did. Ethel was a nice girl, anyone could see that.

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s a lovely lad and he likes girls with a bit of flesh on them. Something to take hold of, he says. He works at the Moorcock in the village. The heavy work and th
at. But he’s got ambition. One day he’ll have his own pub, he reckons.’

  Ethel fell silent and Hetty turned over on to her side and closed her eyes. It would be a full day tomorrow. Goodnight, Mam, she whispered. Goodnight, Dad. God bless all the family. Give Cissy a kiss for me. And the others an’ all, but especially Cissy. For a minute her heart ached to see her little sister and then she was asleep.

  Chapter 3

  The days at Fortune Hall began to settle into a routine for Hetty. She and Ethel were up while it was still dark, and while Hetty saw to the fire in the kitchen, Ethel lit the one in the dining room so that the room was nicely warmed up before the master came down to breakfast at seven-thirty, for autumn on the moor could be cold. The boys, when they were at home, didn’t rise for another hour and Mrs Fortune never came downstairs at all in the mornings. Instead, Mrs Peel prepared a tray of buttered toast with the crusts cut off – a scandalous waste of food Hetty thought when she first saw it, but then she supposed the bits went to the hens so it wasn’t so bad. There was a dish of fine blackcurrant jelly on the tray and a silver coffee pot and dainty cup and saucer and plate. Though how anyone could drink coffee instead of tea at that time of the morning, Hetty couldn’t imagine. Not that the mistress drank much, mostly the tray came down untouched, showing little regard for the careful preparation Mrs Peel had put into it.

  The master sent for Hetty that very first morning, even before he had his usual interview with Mr Jones. A good job, she thought, that Mrs Peel had got her her uniform from the dressmaker in the village the night before. Somehow she hadn’t felt the same about her dress with the blue flowers since Master Matthew had been nasty about it.

  So she stood before the master’s desk in the black dress, and black cotton stockings, which she hated with a fervour she had never felt for any other items of clothing in her life. The pinafore she wore was a bit on the big side and the cap came over her ears but Mrs Peel said she would grow into them. Mr Fortune was writing in a big book and Hetty stood quietly watching him. She soon forgot about what she was wearing for she was so interested in him and the way he wrote, with great flourishes and much underlining which her teacher had told her was a bad thing and not the right way to emphasise anything. His fingers were strong and brown with fine hairs on the back and he was tall and broad and older than her own father, maybe as old as the mine manager at Morton though he was better dressed, she could tell that. His leather riding boots, which were stretched out and crossed one over the other, were easily as fine as those of Master Richard and polished so brightly they reflected the light from the windows. She could see them plainly for they came almost all the way through the kneehole of the desk. There was a smell about the place just like that in the mine manager’s house and it was a moment before Hetty identified it as bay rum, or at least that was what Dad had told her it was. She wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t very nice.