by Irene Carr
Daniel nodded and Agatha smiled in triumph at Ronnie and the others then followed Chrissie.
She thrust open the door of the little room over the stairs and walked in without knocking. Chrissie lay face down on the narrow bed, weeping. Agatha glared down at her and ordered, ‘You can stop that. It won’t work with me. I told you I know you and where you came from. I wasn’t going to come out with this in front of the men but I’ll tell you now. I tended your mother when you were born. She cursed your father because he’d got her into trouble and ditched her! He was a shipbuilder’s son, with his pockets full o’ money and grabbing owt he wanted. You’re a rich man’s bastard! You’ve got bad blood in you! So don’t think you’re the same as me, or the rest of us here.’
Chrissie was now staring up at her with a mixture of horror and stunned disbelief. Agatha told her, ‘Get your face washed and tidy yourself up.’ She looked down her nose at the cramped little room and added, ‘Then tidy up this place as well. After that you can clean that passage and this time do it out right.’
She stalked out and Chrissie was left alone. She wiped her eyes and tried to bring her thoughts into order. A rich man’s bastard? Her father was Harry Carter and he was not a rich man nor was she a bastard. So the charge was a lie. Wasn’t it? But Agatha had been very sure.
She splashed water on her face from the bowl on the dresser, dried it and started to straighten the room, so far as it was needed. The bed was rumpled where she had fallen on it; the thin piece of carpet alongside had been kicked up by Agatha when she burst in; the curtain behind which hung Chrissie’s clothes was open by a few inches. As she twitched these into place she saw her box set behind the curtain and against the wall. Memory stirred. She drew back the curtain again and lifted the lid of the box, delved down into it and found the envelope tucked away beneath her clothes on the bottom of the box. It was still where Bessie Milburn had put it seven years ago.
On the face of the envelope was written, in Bessie’s laboured hand, ‘Chrissie’s birth certificate’. When Bessie had put it away she had said, ‘You can look at that when you’re older.’ Chrissie felt older now.
She opened the envelope and spread out the thick sheet of paper inside. The certificate was for a child named Chrissie Tate. The mother’s name was given as Martha Tate. The date of birth was the same as her own: 13th January, 1894. The space for the name of the father was blank. And pencilled in next to ‘Martha Tate’, in that same big, round hand of Bessie Milburn, was: ‘Her stage name is Vesta Nightingale’.
Chrissie stared at the paper for a long time, at first unable to believe the evidence of her eyes, then slowly accepting it. She finally put the certificate carefully back in its envelope, laid it on the bottom of the box again and covered it with her clothes. As she shut the lid it was like closing a door on part of her life. Then Agatha called shrilly from the passage, ‘Chrissie! Where are you? What are you doing?’
Chrissie answered, ‘I’m coming.’
She cleaned the passage, this time to Agatha’s satisfaction. Agatha was now dressed for the street and told Chrissie, ‘The washing up still needs doing and after that you can bake some fresh bread for the tea then make a start on the ironing. I’ll finish it when I come in. I have to go out for a bit.’ She jerked her head towards Daniel sitting dozing by the fire and said contemptuously, ‘And keep an eye on him. Watch he doesn’t fall out of that chair.’
Chrissie listened dully but now asked, ‘You knew my mother, then?’
‘I looked after her.’
‘Where is she? Is she – dead?’ Because that would be an acceptable explanation.
‘Ha!’ Agatha gave a bark of derisive laughter. ‘She’s alive and kicking, living down in London.’ Then she warned, little eyes narrowing, ‘But don’t you get the idea you can go to her.’ She pulled on her gloves and started down the passage to the front door.
Chrissie followed and asked, ‘Why not?’
Agatha glanced over her shoulder without stopping and said, ‘Because she didn’t want you then and she won’t want to be bothered with you now. That’s why she gave you away to the Carters in the first place!’ Then she had gone and left Chrissie standing in the doorway.
The bread she baked was lumpy and she scorched some of the ironing. The words ran around in her head like the mice that ran around the kitchen when the lights went out at night: ‘You’re a rich man’s bastard. She didn’t want you – gave you away.’
Agatha returned and cursed her, berated her when she dropped a plate as she laid the table for tea when the men were coming in from work. And rasped at her: ‘There’s no good comes of two women in a kitchen. It’s time you earned your keep, my lass.’
Ronnie demanded, ‘What do you mean by that?’
Agatha’s eyes slid towards him. ‘I mean it’s time she had a situation, a place.’
Ronnie warned, ‘If she goes, I go.’
Agatha dismissed that: ‘Don’t be daft!’
‘I mean it!’
He got that thin-lipped smile in reply, and: ‘Well, you’ve been planning to go and talking about it for months, haven’t you? So what’s the difference?’
Ronnie glared at her, baffled, and could only mutter again, ‘I mean it. I’ll be off!’
Agatha only smiled and left the threat to simmer like a pot on the hob.
It came to the boil the next day after the midday meal. Chrissie had spent a restless night, wondering what lay ahead for her. She dragged through the morning and Agatha left her alone. She gave Chrissie work to keep her busy all the time, though otherwise was unwontedly silent. But when the men had gone back to work for the afternoon, and Chrissie had just finished washing up, Agatha told her abruptly, ‘I’ve found you a place. Pack your box and dress in your best. You’ll need to make a good impression to start with. Afterwards you’ll need to keep it up if you want a roof over your head.’
Chrissie obeyed like an automaton. Now the blow had fallen she was calm, or at any rate kept her face impassive. In the night she had wondered if she could call on Ronnie and the boys to take her side? But if they did and Agatha did not back down, then they would have to leave. Where would they go? Chrissie had promised the dying Bessie that she would look after the boys – and their father. She would not have wanted them scattered all over the town. This was their home. Chrissie had been only a sort of guest.
So she put on her one good dress and the rest of her clothes she packed in her box. As she finished she heard the clatter of the horse’s hooves and the rattle of the wheels as the cab summoned by Agatha drew up at the door. Chrissie looked once around the little room that was now bare. Her few possessions had gone from the dresser and behind the curtain. That was now drawn back to show the paper peeling from the wall where there was a patch of dampness. Then she dragged her box down the stairs and along the passage.
The cabman was bulky in an old overcoat that smelt of tobacco and horses. His breath reeked of rum when he said hoarsely, ‘All reet, lass.’ He lifted the box with easy strength and threw it into the cab. Agatha and Chrissie followed it, picking their way through the muddy slush left from the snow that had fallen in the night. They sat opposite each other and Chrissie stared out of the window. As the cabman cracked his whip and the cab surged forward she saw the two neighbours at their front doors, Mrs Davis drying her hands on a scrap of towel, Mrs Johnson with a brush, sweeping off the whitened stone step. They peered at the girl behind the window of the cab and she forced a smile, lifted a hand to wave.
Agatha dismissed them: ‘Couple of gossips. I have nowt to do with them. And you won’t, either, from now on.’
They threaded the narrow, terraced streets until they came to the High Street where the windows of the big shops were crammed with Christmas decorations. They passed through the centre of the town and went on further still to Ashbrooke, when the clatter and rattle of the cab sounded loud in the quiet of wide roads lined with trees. It finally turned into a short drive leading to a tall, narrow house.
It was ivy-clad, sinister and forbidding in the dusk, to Chrissie’s eyes. This house was nowhere near as big as that of the Ballantynes’ that Chrissie remembered. But it still had a big room either side of the front door and several rooms on the two floors above. The front door, like that of the Ballantyne house, had a big stained-glass panel and stood at the top of a flight of stone steps. But the cab wheeled past these and on to halt at another door at the rear of the house.
The cabman got down, hauled out the box and dumped it by the door. Agatha paid him, counting out the exact fare penny by penny and grumbling, ‘That’s a lot for a few minutes’ work.’
The cabman took the money without thanks, spat on the coins and shoved them in his pocket. He glanced at Chrissie and said, ‘If you’re getting away from her you’re lucky. All the best to you, lass.’ Then he climbed back on to his seat, turned his cab around and cracked his whip to send it back down the drive at a trot.
Agatha muttered under her breath then tapped at the door. It was opened by a pink-cheeked and big-bosomed young woman with a wide smile. She wore a maid’s white cap and apron over a dark blue dress. She looked past Agatha to Chrissie then swung the door wide for them, calling in a soft Irish brogue, ‘It’s the new girl, so it is, Mrs Garrity!’
Agatha led the way in and Chrissie followed. Mrs Garrity turned out to be the cook, dumpy, wheezing and waddling. She greeted them: ‘Come in, me dears. Find yourselves somewhere to sit. Ruby will tell her you’re here.’
‘Her’ turned out to be the mistress. Ruby hurried away, spurred on by this minor excitement in the dull domestic round, and returned soon to announce, ‘She can see you now.’
As Ruby led them through to the front of the house, Agatha primed Chrissie in a hoarse whisper, ‘It’s Mrs Forthrop. You call her ma’am. Only speak when you’re spoken to. And remember there’s no going back. You sleep here or in the workhouse!’
Mrs Sylvia Forthrop lay pale and limp on a settee, propped up by cushions and reading a novel. She set the book aside when the three of them entered after Ruby’s knock, looked Chrissie up and down languidly and said, ‘I understand you’ve not been in service before but you’re hard working and good at household duties. Is that correct?’ She paused expectantly.
Chrissie was caught off-balance. Who had told Mrs Forthrop . . .? Then she realised that Agatha must have painted her in those glowing colours, and she had done it to get this place for Chrissie – to get her out of the way. She became aware that Mrs Forthrop was still waiting for an answer and that Agatha was glaring murderously. She stammered, ‘I think – yes – Mrs Forth—Ma’am.’
‘Um!’ Sylvia Forthrop nibbled her lower lip indecisively for a moment then gave up and took the easy way out: ‘Oh, well. You may as well start. You will be Under Housemaid. Ruby will tell you your duties. Your wages will be a pound a month – and your keep of course.’ She waited again.
Chrissie heard Agatha take a deep breath, from the corner of her eye saw Agatha’s tight-lipped glare and Ruby’s curious gaze. She realised they were all waiting for her and answered, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Then that will be all for now.’ Sylvia Forthrop picked up the novel again. Ruby bobbed in a curtsy, Chrissie followed suit awkwardly and Agatha ducked her head.
Ruby led the way back through the house to the kitchen. Agatha did not halt there but bade Mrs Garrity goodnight. She went on, out of the back door and down the drive, without a word of farewell to Chrissie.
Ruby helped her carry her box up the narrow servants’ stairs at the back of the house to her room under the roof. There was an iron bedstead with a lumpy mattress, a strip of thin carpet on the floorboards by the bed, and a small chest of drawers with a china bowl and jug of water on top of it. A curtain hid an alcove where she could hang her two dresses. A dormer window poked out of the tilt of the roof and through it she could see the cranes standing over the yards on the river, the smoke in a pall above them. Her breath smoked on the air.
It was like the room she had lived in for seven years and just left, though a little bigger. But there the bed was comfortable and the room had been part of a home. This was a cell.
Ruby shivered and rubbed her plump arms. She grinned at Chrissie then pulled a face. ‘It’s a bit chilly now, in the winter. All of us staff sleep up here, except for Joe Unwin. He’s the feller that drives the motor car. He lives at home and comes in every day.’ She jerked her head at the door behind her. ‘I’m across the landing. Mrs Garrity is on your side but there’s a little room between you that’s full of trunks and boxes. So we’re each one of us on our own. Thanks be to God, because the ould girl snores like bejazus! Now, can you find your way back to the kitchen?’ And when she saw Chrissie nod: ‘Then put your things away and come down. We’ll be after having a cup of tea about now and when we’ve got that down us I’ll show you around.’
Chrissie had few things to unpack. That done, she changed out of her best dress into the only other one that she had, put on a clean white apron and she was ready for work. She negotiated the dark, winding back stairs to the kitchen and perched nervously on a chair at the big table. The cup of tea was strong and sweet. She drank it and listened to Mrs Garrity’s wheezing complaint about her ‘bronical tubes’. When the cook paused for breath Chrissie fended off, or answered circumspectly, the questions the garrulous Ruby threw at her about her previous life.
Finally: ‘Sure, and we’ll get on with it now,’ said Ruby, rising from the table. She took Chrissie on a tour of the house, starting by leading her from the kitchen to the front. Ruby was a tall, good-looking girl of twenty-two while Chrissie was a small fourteen-year-old and trotted alongside, looking up to her.
‘This is the drawing-room – the mistress is in there now and you’ve seen what it’s like in there – behind it is the dining-room. Just across the passage at the front is the morning-room – we serves breakfast in there – and behind it is the master’s study. Forthrop is a solicitor and he does a lot of work in there when he comes home from the office.’ She giggled then, for no reason that Chrissie could see, but straightened her face and went on, ‘We starts at five. You’ll light the kitchen fire and clean out all the grates down here while I dust and polish . . .’
And on the upper floor: ‘That’s the mistress’s bedroom and dressing-room on that side of the landing, the master’s room’s over here.’
Chrissie, coming from a background where it was usual for a married couple to share a bed, for warmth and economy if no other reason, blinked at her. ‘They have their own rooms?’
‘They never sleep together.’ Ruby shook her head emphatically. ‘And I should know because I make the beds. And besides—’ She stopped then, with another giggle. ‘Never you mind.’
The tour took a crowded half-hour and Chrissie tried to memorise all the instructions she was given, was certain she had forgotten a lot of them, but Ruby reassured her, ‘I’ll be close by, wherever you are, for the first few days.’
She took Chrissie back to the kitchen. There Mrs Garrity gave her the job of preparing the vegetables for dinner. Ruby served the meal to the Forthrops in the dining-room but told Chrissie, ‘You can help serve the breakfast tomorrow to get the hang of it.’ Later, after a supper made from that part of the dishes brought back from the dining-room, Chrissie helped Ruby wash up all the plates, pots and pans.
The other two settled down for a quiet hour before the kitchen stove but Chrissie asked, ‘Could I go to bed now?’
Ruby, shoes kicked off and black-stockinged feet lifted up on to a box, wiggled her toes in the heat from the range and grinned at her. ‘Tired, are you? You’ll have to stick it better than that! But I suppose the newness of it all has wore you out. Get away to your bed, then. But mind, I want you up as soon as I knock you in the morning.’
Chrissie answered meekly, ‘I’ll be up. Thanks for showing me around.’ She could not explain that her weariness came from nervous exhaustion, accrued over the past weeks.
Upstairs she undressed quickly, shivering, and put on her nightdress. There was a lock on the door but no key. She learnt later that that was the case with all the servants’ rooms. She turned out the gas, climbed into bed and curled up small to try to get warm. The house was silent except for a house’s night sounds, the sigh of a draught through an ill-fitting window, the creak of a timber contracting as the night temperature fell.
She had drawn back the curtains and could see a square of sky through the window, skeins of cloud streaming on the wind with distant, cold stars beyond. She knew Ruby and Mrs Garrity were sleeping on this same floor but she felt very lonely. She did not cry herself to sleep, but only because weariness of body and spirit combined to club her into exhausted unconsciousness first.
But the next morning she was ready to try again.
Chapter 10
December 1908
Chrissie woke to Ruby’s knocking at her door in the cold half-light before the dawn. For a second or two she stared up at the strange ceiling, around at the contents of the attic room, memory coming swiftly. She rose, washed and dressed quickly, eager. In the chill of last night, and maybe while she slept, she had put away the mother who had abandoned her. She had put her away as she had the certificate at the bottom of her box. Now she was and would be, as she had always been, Chrissie Carter, daughter of Mary.
When the sun came up she had lit the kitchen fire, cleaned out the other grates and was cleaning the front steps with scrubbing brush, cloth and whitening stone. That done she polished the big brass handle, letterbox and knocker until they glittered. Then she carried the big bucket, leaning over to one side to counteract its weight, back to the kitchen. On the way she met Ruby, emerging from the morning-room, dust pan and brush in hand.
Chrissie said softly, all the work having to be done quietly because the master and mistress were asleep, ‘I’ve finished outside.’
