The Servant Girl

by Maggie Hope

  ‘You’re a lucky little girl, do you know that?’

  ‘Oh, I am, I am, I know I am, Mr Jordan.’

  Hetty watched the two of them together, smiling. It was funny but no one knew what Mr Jordan’s Christian name was even after all these years. Even she didn’t know. He signed documents with an initial E, but what it stood for was a mystery. Now she couldn’t imagine his being called anything other than Mr Jordan.

  ‘Come on, Penny, we’ll go for a walk along the sands. Maybe we’ll get as far as Marske this time and have a lemonade in the cafe and catch the bus back, would you like that?’ Sylvia pushed back her chair and held out a hand to Penny.

  She was only too eager. After they had gone Hetty poured a fresh cup of tea for Mr Jordan and they went to sit in the comfortable armchairs to either side of the fireplace. The fireplace was of Frosterley marble, the black lightened by the myriad small white fossilised sea creatures in it. Every time Hetty looked at it she marvelled that the sea must once have covered Frosterley, now high up in Weardale, miles from the coast. Inset there were pretty tiles decorated with marine life, and the chairs were covered in blue and white cretonne which matched the summer curtains. Every time Hetty came home to this room it lightened her mood, it was so bright and cheerful.

  They discussed the acquisition of the hotel in Whitby, Hetty going over the business details for him meticulously, though he always left such things to her, apart from the restaurant.

  ‘You have a good head for business, Hetty, much better than mine,’ he always said.

  When they had finished, she leaned back in her chair and regarded him. ‘Have you thought of taking on another chef, Mr Jordan? You know we discussed it last week.’

  His smile faded. ‘I don’t see the need. So long as I have enough assistance in the kitchens, well, I’m still capable—’

  ‘Oh yes, I know, and of course the reputation Pearson’s has is built on your skills, there’s no one to touch you, not in this area anyway.’

  ‘Not in Whitby or Scarborough neither,’ he said, not boastfully, just stating a fact.

  Hetty nodded her agreement. ‘I get worried, though, in case you do too much. The restaurant here and supervising the kitchens at Pearson’s Marine – it’s a lot of work and we can afford for you to take it easier now.’

  ‘A lot of work for an old man, you mean? Well, I don’t feel like an old man. In fact, I think I’m fitter than I’ve been for years.’

  Hetty admitted defeat. Maybe he was right to go on. Some people lived for their work and Mr Jordan was one of them. ‘I think you are,’ she assured him. She almost said more but decided to drop the subject. After all, if he wanted to go on, why shouldn’t he?

  He finished his tea and got to his feet, tall and upright with that spark of vitality so often absent in old men. For goodness’ sake, she said to herself, you’re worrying about nothing. After he had gone back to his flat at the top of Pearson’s Marine for a break until it was time to return for the lunchtime rush, she put it out of her mind.

  Going back to the table, she picked up the letter from Mam. It was so brief, she thought. The handwriting which she had learned at the British School was a copperplate, strong and perfectly formed, Mam had told Hetty once how she and her sisters had wept over the learning of it, the knuckle-rapping with a ruler they had had to endure until it was right. Not that they had learned anything else much at the school, apart from simple arithmetic and reading and how great was the British Empire with most of the globe shaded pink.

  Not a shadow of emotion had been allowed to come through in the letter. Even the beginning, when Mam wrote ‘I was so pleased—’, even that meant nothing to her for Mam would never say that normally, not to family, only to strangers. She was a stranger now, Hetty told herself, and it was her own fault, most of it.

  Steve came and cleared away the tray and she settled back into her chair, relaxing for a brief period for she had had a busy day yesterday and an early start this morning. She had come a long way since she had found the coins in the back of the cave. Her cave, as she thought of it now. She thanked God for them and the unknown smuggler who had dropped them so long ago. She had sold them to dealers in Harrogate and Leeds; £800 they had brought her altogether, and for a while she had regretted the fact that she had taken Mr Jordan as a partner. But now she knew it was one of the best things she had ever done. They were firm friends and trusted each other completely, and there was no doubt that he adored Penny as she adored him.

  Sometimes, not often now, she went back to her bay and always looked about for anything else the smugglers might have dropped, laughing at herself for doing it when she found nothing. But never again had she gone up the secret passage to the house. She shivered now as she remembered that last time, with all the pain and the stitch in her side and the fear that the baby could come there, in the dusty passage, that or she would fall and die and no one would ever find her body.

  The clock struck eleven and Hetty started out of her chair. She must have dozed off and she had an appointment with her bank manager at half-past the hour. Still, that was one thing about Saltburn, everything was close by, even the bank. As she showered and changed quickly into a pale lemon suit with the new squared shoulders and neatly fitting waist, her mind wasn’t on the coming interview at the bank, where nowadays she was always greeted deferentially, but on that other interview tomorrow, with her family in Morton Main.

  Chapter 30

  Richard Fortune stood at the rail of the great liner, staring ahead as though he could already see the docks at Southampton though in fact they were still more than twenty-four hours away from England. It was five years since he had been back, five years which had been spent in the diplomatic service in Nairobi. He had preferred it that way, spending his annual leave in Egypt or once in Mexico, for his greatest interest was archaeology.

  This year he had made tentative plans to visit Greece, strangely the one place in Europe he had not seen. He supposed in the back of his mind he had been saving it, something to look forward to. This year was the year he had been going to Greece, he had booked into a hotel within sight of the Acropolis. Until he got the cablegram from his mother.

  Richard stood straighter, stretched his back and resumed his stroll around the deck, enjoying the breeze against his face, colder now that they travelled further north. His mother was better now, much better than she had been five years ago. She must be to have sent a cable. It was his father who was ill. Richard found it hard to grasp that. Havelock Fortune, strong in mind and body, the man who despised illness. And he had been stricken with a heart attack and left an invalid. So now Richard was on his way home.

  Thoughts of home had brought back memories, memories he didn’t wish to think about. His brother Matthew and his pointless death. His brother Matthew and Hetty Pearson, the memory of that night when he and his father had seen them at the top of the stairs, locked in each other’s arms. The shock, the emotion which had risen within him and which he now recognised as jealousy. And the other one, the scene in that lonely house at the top of the cliff, so aptly named Cliff House.

  Hetty had looked so beautiful in her pregnancy, so vulnerable too. He had wanted to put his arms around her and take her away, anywhere he could cherish her and her baby and let his father do what he would about it. He had been on the point of suggesting it when Jeremy Painter had come and saved him from his own folly.

  ‘The strumpet will always find someone fool enough to keep her, mark my words, Matthew is hardly cold in his grave and there she is, making eyes at that Painter fellow,’ his father had said to him and he hadn’t believed it until then. What a fool he had been!

  In one of his rare letters, Havelock had told him something of Hetty’s rise in the world: ‘… running a string of hotels now, would you believe,’ Havelock had written. ‘I reckon she got her start from Painter; even if she didn’t steal something from Cliff House she must have milked the fellow for all she could get.’

  Richard
walked on restlessly. No, he thought. No, surely not, none of this squared with the Hetty he had known, the timid little girl who had come to Fortune Hall, her dark eyes large in her white face, her skinny little figure and mop of black curls which refused to stay under her housemaid’s cap.

  The light was fading now. Shaking his head he made his way back to his cabin to bathe and change for dinner. Tomorrow evening they would dock, he would take the overnight train north.

  ‘How far is it now?’ demanded Penny as Hetty stopped the car at the junction with the Great North road at Rushyford and waited while a lorry lumbered past going south and a couple of cars and a van went on their way north to Durham.

  ‘This is a bad time to talk to me,’ said Hetty, ‘just when I’m busy.’ She found a longish gap in the traffic and crossed over into the village, driving past the Eden Arms and out on to the relatively quieter road to Bishop Auckland. ‘Now, what did you say?’

  ‘How far is it, I said, Mam, how far is it to Grandma’s house?’

  ‘Not far now, about six miles,’ Hetty said absently. She had opened the window and the air was rushing in. She drove past the entrance to Windlestone Hall, then had to wait a while as a herd of cows made their slow progress across the road to an open field gate, seeming to know exactly where they were going without any help from the farmer who waved his stick nevertheless and called, ‘Cush! Cush!’

  ‘What does cush mean, Mam?’ demanded Penny. But the next minute she was asking about the marsh marigolds which lifted their brilliant cups to the morning sun in the water meadow further along.

  ‘I used to pick them when I was a girl,’ said Hetty and smiled, a happy reminiscent sort of smile.

  ‘Can we pick them now, can we, Mam?’

  So they stopped the car and picked a handful of the flowers.

  ‘We can give them to Grandma, can’t we, Mam?’ said Penny and Hetty remembered the Mothering Sundays when she and Frank would get up early and pick flowers to take to their mam, it felt like a lifetime ago. They got back into the car, Penny clutching the bunch of flowers, and went on their way. As they turned off on to the lane which led to Morton, Penny grew quieter. She stared out of the window at the enormous slagheap, the towering winding wheel of the pit. They had gone through the pretty old village of Morton but now were in the colliery village of Morton Main and Penny stared solemnly at the colliery rows, the chapel on the end of Chapel Row, listened hard to the sound of children singing which was coming from the chapel.

  Hetty stopped the car at the end of Office Street. In fact, the narrow back lane would have been completely blocked off if she had taken the car to her mother’s gate and there was no road to the front of the cottages, only narrow gardens.

  ‘This is it, Penny.’ She looked at her daughter and smiled at her disbelieving expression. ‘It is, really,’ she added. ‘Come on, they will be waiting for us.’ At that moment Hetty was glad that she had her daughter with her, almost as an ally. The gate was closed, there was no one about the back street, everything looked smaller and meaner than she remembered. Well, at least there was no smell from the coke works, it being Sunday, she thought. Penny took hold of her hand and held on tightly. She might have been in the African bush, the place was so strange to her, thought Hetty.

  ‘Now then, lass, you’ve come home.’

  Hetty whirled round and there was Da, standing by the now open gate. He looked older, dressed in his Sunday suit with a neat blue tie, as though expecting company. I’m not company, she wanted to cry to him, I’m Hetty, I’m family! But she didn’t. She stepped forward and kissed his cheek and he made an automatic move to put his arms around her then stopped.

  ‘Yes, Da, I’ve come home,’ she said. And then, ‘Penny, this is your grandda,’ to the little girl who was now clinging to her leg. And Da sank down on to his hunkers, in the position which Hetty remembered so well for it was the one in which he was the most comfortable, the one in which he had swung a pick for years in the narrow coal seams. His eyes were now on a level with Penny’s and he reached out a hand to her while his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  ‘Well, now, Penny, is it?’ he asked. ‘You’re a grand lass, aren’t you? Will we go in the house now and meet your grandma? Then I’ll take you to see the pigeons. You like pigeons, do you?’

  Penny loosed her hold on Hetty’s leg and put her hand in his. ‘I don’t like to eat them,’ she said. ‘Mr Jordan cooks them in white wine sometimes but I like to see them flying about in the air the best.’

  ‘Oh aye, I do an’ all,’ said Thomas. ‘My pigeons are champion flyers. We don’t like to eat them neither. Besides, some of them have babies. Do you like to see baby pigeons?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Penny sighed with relief and trotted by his side up the yard and into the kitchen with Hetty trailing behind.

  The kitchen smelled of the roast beef cooking in the oven just as it always did on Sundays when there was enough money coming into the house to buy beef. Maggie stood by the kitchen table, beating Yorkshire pudding mix in a bowl with a large metal spoon. She paused and looked at her daughter, unsmiling, the spoon held up in the air.

  ‘Hello, Mam,’ said Hetty. The clock on the wall ticked loudly; on the bar an iron pan settled on to the fire with a slight hiss of spilled water. Penny stood still, her hand in her grandfather’s, and looked anxiously from her mother to the grey-haired woman mixing something with a metal spoon when Mr Jordan said you should always use a wooden one. ‘Are you my mam’s mam?’ she asked.

  Thank the Lord for Penny, thought Hetty afterwards as they all sat round the table eating great chunks of Yorkshire pudding with onion gravy and then followed it with roast beef and mushy peas with potatoes and turnip creamed together. There was even a sweet rice pudding with a brown coating of nutmeg and cinnamon so Hetty knew there must be good money coming in, Da and Frank in work.

  There were other signs too. New lace at the windows, shiny linoleum covering the stone floor. But still the proddy mats that Mam made in the evenings. Hetty and Frank used to amuse themselves picking out from which discarded garment each patch of colour came. She looked at the one by the hearth now, sad that she recognised none of it.

  Penny sat next to Da, her eyes bright as she chattered away to him, eating her rice pudding without a single moan, though usually she would reject it with a grimace. Both Thomas and Maggie watched her with fond expressions and Hetty felt a twinge of remorse that she had not brought her here sooner. They had a right to know their grandchild, even if they were at odds with her mother.

  And they were at odds with Hetty. When she had kissed Mam there had been a coolness about her, a coolness which Hetty had known on most occasions they had met since Cissy died. But how could she blame her mother? She could hardly bear to think of the time she had disappeared without a word, gone off with Matthew straight from Bishop Auckland to Cleveland without even letting her parents know. The remembrance of that time was hazy to her, she didn’t know how it had happened at all, but surely she should have been able to stop it happening?

  ‘Where’s Frank?’ Hetty broke into Penny’s account of school and how much she liked it except for that Gladys Poole who was mean and Mam said she should just try to keep out of her way. Thomas and Maggie were listening, making suitable noises of sympathy where appropriate, all their attention on the child. They had said very little to Hetty so she had been quiet too but she had been wondering about Frank.

  Mam looked at her, a different way altogether from the way she had been looking at Penny. ‘Frank? Why, where would he be? He’s down at the club like he is every Sunday from twelve o’clock. Didn’t you see me put his dinner in the oven to keep warm?’

  ‘He’ll be back about half-past two,’ put in Da.

  ‘He’s not courting, then? I thought he might be.’

  Mam laughed shortly. ‘Not our Frank. No, I reckon he’s too comfortable here with us. No, I cannot see our Frank getting wed.’

  After dinner, Thomas took Penny off to see
the pigeons and Hetty helped her mother clear away and wash up. There was no sink, the washing-up was still done in an enamel dish on the kitchen table, and the dishes piled on a tin tray. They worked quietly, saying nothing until the dish was emptied in the drain in the yard and the table dried and covered with a red chenille cloth. Hetty kept stealing a glance at her mother’s composed face until in the end she felt she had to say something about what was on both their minds.

  ‘Mam, I’m sorry I didn’t bring Penny to see you sooner.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Maggie, nodding her head.

  ‘I wasn’t sure whether we would be welcome,’ Hetty tried again.

  Maggie’s head shot up. ‘Me own grandbairn not welcome? Whatever gave you that idea?’ Hetty could have said that she herself hadn’t felt welcome and she was Maggie’s daughter but she didn’t.

  ‘Well, you sent back my Christmas present.’

  Maggie took the dish cloth over to the fireplace and flung it over the brass line which hung above. For a minute she held on to the line and stared down into the fire then she turned back to Hetty.

  ‘Your da was working, Frank an’ all. Besides, we didn’t want the money you got from your fancy man.’

  Hetty gasped. ‘I didn’t! Mam, I didn’t! I worked for it, every penny, I did. I got nothing from Matthew when he died, nothing at all. Everything I’ve got now, I have worked for.’ She was desperately trying to hang on to her self-control, trying to keep her voice normal but it was hard.

  ‘Not him, not that Matthew Fortune, I never meant him though he was bad enough. That other one, the one you took up with when he was barely cold in his grave.’ Maggie sat down suddenly in the rocker by the fire, rocking herself back and forth convulsively, taking a hanky out of the pocket of her pinny and blowing into it furiously.

  Hetty stared at her and she too sat down, in the opposite chair. The emotion between them was tangible, heavy, fraught.

  ‘I didn’t, Mam, honest, I didn’t,’ she said, and something in her voice made her mother search her face doubtfully. But then she shrugged and shook her head.