The Rag Nymph

by Catherine Cookson

  'Don't; Papa's in.

  You'll get your own back: just wait.'

  The 'own back' took the form of locking Millie in her attic bedroom, which was reached by a ladder attached to the end of the landing. The hatch had two bolts on the outside. Why they had been placed there and not on the inside, no-one knew.

  The children had shot the bolts after Millie had retired to bed. But when, at half-past six the next morning, she found her way barred, she didn't, as they expected, bang on the trap door yelling her head off in frenzy; no, what she did was to return to her pallet on the floor, pull the clothes around her and lie there waiting. And she hadn't all that long to wait, for when Mr Quinton came downstairs for his seven o'clock breakfast and found a bare table, he hurried upstairs and informed his wife. Mrs Quinton's first remark was, 'Oh, she must have gone. And I thought she was different. I thought she would handle them. Or perhaps she has just slept in. Go and see, William.'

  When William climbed the ladder and found the bolts shot he pulled them back, pushed open the hatch and in the dim light of an almost guttering candle he saw the maid sitting fully dressed on the side of her pallet, her feet stretched out before her, and she was smiling at him. He smiled back as he said, 'The little devils!'

  What she said to him was, 'You won't have had any breakfast, sir, but I'll get it in a jiffy.'

  She prepared his breakfast the while he visited the two rooms in which five of his children slept, but in which three of them were now wide awake, waiting for the screams and the thumps that so far hadn't been heard. And after clipping his sons'

  ears and shaking his daughters, telling them they should know better, he awakened his six-year old son, Robert, and his four-year old daughter, Florrie, with hard smacks on their buttocks. Then pointing from Betty to Daisy, and then to Paddy, he said,

  'I warned you what would happen, didn't I, if we lost another maid? No more school; and you, Betty, would go up in the big house kitchen; you, too, Daisy. There's a young girl up there who has to scurry around with muck buckets most of the day.

  As for you, Paddy, it will be the stables. Now, I mean that.' He lifted his hand. 'I'm not just saying it this time. This girl is a good, intelligent girl. She'll likely be able to teach you as much as you would be able to learn at school, because she's been to school, too.

  So that's the last warning I'm going to give you. You understand?' And he now bawled at his son, 'Paddy!

  do you understand?'

  'Yes, Father, yes.'

  'Do you want to go into the stableyard?'

  'N... n... no, Father. I... I like engines. I mean, I can draw engines. You know I can.'

  'All right, all right. But there you have it, the three of you. As for you, Robert,' he looked at his younger son, 'you had better follow their lead or you will end up in a stableyard, too. There's as young as you had to muck out horses before today.' On this he turned

  abruptly and left them.

  His warning had stuck, but resentfully; at least, for the next few days and until Millie was able to break through it because she was a storyteller, and, moreover, because she could play with them.

  Probably, too, because she told Patrick she liked to hear him play his tin whistle, whereas, apparently, nobody else did. And she broke down the final barrier when, in a clearing in the woodland on an afternoon when the sun was shining and there wasn't a breath of wind, she danced for them, doing the Irish jig Ben had taught her and which he himself had learnt from Annie when he was a lad.

  Blessed with a quick ear, Patrick was soon able to play the tune that she hummed to him. And then she had them all attempting to jig, the while filling the wood with their laughter, so much so as to attract the attention of two young horsemen riding up the bridle path. Dismounting, they peered through the trees and in amazement watched the young Quintons' mob doing a weird dance round a girl they had never seen before. She had golden hair tied with a ribbon at the back, but the rest of it bounced from her shoulders with every step of the dance. They weren't to know it had escaped from its bun with the exertion...

  Millie came to know these young men; or rather, became aware of them as being the sons of Raymond Crane-Boulder, just as she was to come to know many of the people in The Grange through the gossip of Jane Fathers, she being the lowest in the servants' hierarchy at The Grange because she was merely the slopperout.

  This term was very appropriate, for Jane took over from the housemaids the chamber pots and china slop buckets and emptied them into iron buckets; then, with the help of Ken Atkins, the boot boy, she carried them all of a hundred yards to the end of the kitchen garden, where lay the cesspits.

  The beginning of the wood lying only a few yards distant from the cesspits, Jane would sometimes slip into the shelter of the trees and flop down and dream of the day when she might become a scullery maid if she kept on the right side of Mrs Potter, the cook, who would put a word in for her with Mrs Roper, the housekeeper.

  It was during one of these appropriated short siestas that she first saw Millie and found a recipient for her knowledge of the members of the household.

  There was the old master who owned two mills in the town, but who never visited them because he was fat and had gout and hardly ever left his room. It was Mr Raymond, his son, who saw to the businesses, and Jane assured Millie that she would recognise him right away if ever she came across him, because he was tall, thin, and handsome. But the mistress now, Jane pointed out: she was another kettle of fish, different altogether, because - and the information had been imparted in a whisper - she had a failing: she liked the bottle, and at times there would be the devil to pay going on upstairs. Flo Yarrow, she was the second housemaid, her and Jessie Kitson,

  she was the in-between one, they could tell some tales, and they did about the goings on upstairs: just like Ridley's pub on a Saturday night, they

  said it was sometimes. Then there were the two sons, Mr David, he was fifteen, and Mr Randolph, he was fourteen. They were real rips; they played tricks on the servants. Once they kicked a bucket of slops around her feet. Eeh! she had been in a mess, she said.

  Millie learned that some of the servants were all right, that they would speak to you, but not Mr Winters the valet, nor the lady's maid Miss McNeil.

  The butler neither; he was uppish. But Mr Boswell the first footman, he was all right; well, he would laugh at you at times; but not John Tester, the second one; he was as snotty as a polis. There were four maids attached to the kitchen and three others on the first floor; and there were four men in the yard, and four gardeners.

  At first Millie was confused with all their names, but through time, and at least twice a week listening to Jane's chatter, she felt she had come to know the members of the household and their particular jobs. But what she didn't know, because Jane herself didn't know, was the layout of the rooms in the house, for although the girl had been in service since she was eight and was now eleven, she had never got past the servants' hall, and certainly not past the green-baize door that led from the passage into the main hall, not even to receive her yearly pay of fifty-two shillings; for she received this, as the rest of the kitchen staff received theirs, from the butler, across a table in the servants' dining-room.

  But Jane had high hopes that this year would be different, for, later on, the mistress's brother, or her half-brother, she explained, was going to have his coming-of-age party, and it would be a big do.

  And there was a whisper that there would be a special party for the servants, too. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

  Millie felt sorry for Jane, and she told Aggie so on one of her half-days. 'She's from the workhouse,' she said, 'and so is the boot-boy, and they are treated as though they have the plague, by what I can gather.

  But she's so grateful for a kind word, and she keeps on about this party that's going to be held for the mistress's half-brother. But as far as I can gather, he won't be of age until next year. Sad, really. I'm so sorry for her.'

  She was sitti
ng on the couch by Aggie's side, and as she leant her head against the broad forearm, saying, 'She wasn't lucky like I was.' Aggie put her arm around her, and in an unusual show of her feelings said, 'And I was lucky in my turn to get you, my dear.' Then she pressed her away and, looking into her face, she asked quietly, 'D'you know what Ben's up to?'

  'No. What?'

  'That's what I'm askin' you, lass, 'cos he talks to you on the journey backwards and forwards. So, has he said anything?'

  'What about?'

  'Well, where he goes twice a week in that good suit of his. Now when he drops you off he doesn't wear it. He's decently put on, I'll grant you that; he always has been, even when he's goin' down

  to Annie's he's spruced himself up a bit, but this is something different. The night he puts on that suit he doesn't turn down the road that would lead to her place, but goes on towards the town.

  So where does he go? And he hasn't said anything to you?'

  'No, Mrs Aggie. No; but it must be somewhere special he goes to, if he puts on that suit.'

  'Well, that's what I think an' all, lass. I said to him, jokin', like, "Have you given your lifelong

  friend the push and taken up with a fancy piece? And you know what he said to me?'

  Millie shook her head.

  '"I shouldn't be a bit surprised." That's what he said: "I shouldn't be a bit surprised. Stranger things have happened." And then d'you know what he said? and he put one of those fancy voices on. "For the first time, Mrs Winkowski," he said,

  "you've

  given the right term to the association I have with Miss Annie Blackett." Eeh! I nearly threw the pan of stew over him, I did.'

  But Millie too was curious as to where Ben would go in his good suit twice a week, and on the journey back to the Quintons' she asked him bluntly, 'What are you doing, Ben, going into town twice a week

  in your new suit?'

  'Oh, she's been at you, has she? I've been waiting for it. Well, miss, if I told you, you'd know as much as me, wouldn't you? Then come Sunday you would tell her on the quiet.'

  'Oh no I wouldn't, not if you didn't want me to.

  You know that, Ben.'

  He glanced at her, then said quietly, 'Well, if I tell you, you'll laugh; at least you'll do that.'

  'I mightn't laugh unless it's funny. Is it something funny?'

  ' No; I don't think it's funny. It's what I've wanted to do for a long time but hadn't the nerve. But then, I got to thinkin': there's you, a bit of a lass, and your head's full of all kinds of things; and there's me, ten years older than you, a fully-fledged man, and I know practically nowt. Well, what I mean is, me mind's workin' all the time, but it's goin' round in circles, like, and the circles are not gettin' any wider, if you know what I mean. So, I thought: well, there's many a better man than me started to learn when he was well on in age. And so that's what I'm doing. I joined the night class.'

  'Oh Ben. Oh! I am glad. What made you think I would laugh at you? And as for me having more in my head than you have, that's silly. I've always found you wise.'

  The, wise?'

  'Oh yes. Yes, the things that you say in your summing up of things ... and people. But I'm so glad you're going to night classes. What are you learning?'

  'Well--' He flapped the reins, calling, 'Gee up!

  there, Laddie,' and he seemed to ponder a moment before he answered her question: 'It seemed daft, the first time I went, just listenin' to the fella readin' bits from this and that, then askin' what you thought about it. Well, I wasn't the only one there that couldn't tell him what they thought about the Poor Law unions before the Board of Guardians came into being'. I ask you. But as one bright spark said, the less he knew about the workhouses the happier he would be; he had just come to the class in order to help him get a better job to keep him out of the workhouse. We all laughed at that, and the teacher fella did, too. It sort of broke the ice. Mind, I nearly did say something when he got on about the Public Health Act that had come in in '48. Eeh! I wanted to say they must have overlooked the mile warren of Courts, where the rats have more space than those livin'

  there. But it all makes you think. Well, it's opened my eyes. But mind, I felt a bit rattled when he said there were good workin' class houses goin' up and people wouldn't go into them because they were used to herding together in lice-ridden hovels. One fella did stand up and go for him, but he told him to go to Boston Lane and there he would see what he had said was true. And you know, Millie, it was,

  'cos I went along there meself an' had a look. They were smallish houses, but neat like, brick built, yet half of them were empty. I wouldn't have believed it until I saw it.'

  'It all sounds interesting, Ben; makes me wish I was there with you.'

  'Oh, you are better off where you are, far better off lookin' after those rips of bairns, as Aggie's police friend calls them. And one of the lessons was about children, bairns, and the New Act of 1842. According to that, apparently, children shouldn't be sent to work until they are ten years old. But half the country were up in arms against it: farmers, even parents.

  I mean the young 'uns' parents, because they were breadwinners. Of course, they were cheap labour for the factories and the farmers. Well, I've always known that. But when you hear it read out to you, an' you hear of the laws that were passed against it and weren't carried out, it makes you think. So, there you are, Millie Forester, that's what I'm doin'

  in me good suit twice a week: learnin'. And reading more - when I get the chance.'

  'Oh, I am proud of you, Ben. I really am.' And when he muttered, 'You must be the only one then,'

  she shook his arm, saying, 'Don't be silly. I'm not.

  Mrs Aggie loves you.'

  She waited for the denial, but it wasn't forthcoming, not even the cocky one that would have come easily to him, 'Aye, I can't help it, she can't help it.' Instead, he just shouted to the horse, 'Gee up!

  there.'

  Thinking of Ben going to school, even if it was only a two-hour night class twice a week, set her mind working again on the thought that she, too, would like to go to school. Yet, she knew she couldn't have it all ways; and she loved working with the Quinton

  children, as she did helping Mrs Quinton. In fact, she did most of the cooking now, and she knew that they appreciated her and thought of her in a way as

  perhaps being different from a servant. Even so, on the three Sundays in the month when the children had their mid-day meal in the dining-room with their parents, she was never asked to sit down with them. And yet they made her feel as if she was one of the family, whereas Nellie Fuller, the coachman's daughter, who came for two hours every morning, was given no privileges at all. Mrs Quinton was kind to her in that she never shouted at her - but she was never offered a drink or a bun before she left, and her wage was always given directly to her father.

  She was another one Millie was sorry for, and she sometimes sneaked her a currant bun that she had kept over from her own middle morning break, and which Nellie always accepted and ate without saying a word.

  But it was one morning when she was escorting the children on their mile walk to the church school in the village that she got an idea, and that evening she put it to Mrs Quinton in a very diplomatic way.

  It was Mrs Quinton herself who gave her the opening, saying, 'I bless that school. They get on so well there, and your reading to them at night has helped considerably, Millie. You know, you yourself could be a teacher.'

  'Well, I have high hopes of being one, ma'am... '

  The idea had never entered her head. 'Before I came to look after the children I was going to return to school, and I would like to do that again.'

  Before she got any further, Rose Quinton cried,

  'Oh, no! Millie. No! You couldn't possibly leave the children, not now. And they love you, they really do, they really love you. You have been able to manage them like no other; in fact, they obey you more than they do me. Oh, Millie, Millie, you're not thinking of leaving us,
are you?'

  'Well, I really would like to go to school again, if it was only for half a day.'

  'Oh, Millie, Millie. I thought you would be settled here until the children grew up, I really did. You are such a help to me. And we do appreciate you, both Mr Quinton and I. He will be so disappointed.'

  'But I am not going right away.'

  'No; but you've got it in your mind, haven't you?'

  'Well, yes. Yes, I have, but.., but there is a way out if... if you really feel that the children would want me to stay.'

  'Yes? Yes? What is it; I mean, the way out?'

  'Well, if it were possible for me to attend school with the children two or three mornings a week just for half the day, I'd make that do for a time.'

  Rose Quinton seemed to think for a moment, and then she said brightly, 'Yes. Yes, indeed, Millie, that is an idea. I must speak to Mr Quinton, and he will talk to Mrs Wilkins. She is the teacher, you know, and I'm sure, in a way, you could likely be of help to her with the younger ones. Yes. Yes, I will speak to Mr Quinton as soon as he comes in. That is a

  way out. And the children would love it and they wouldn't take advantage of you. Well, you don't let them, do you?' She nodded knowingly at Millie before rising and leaving the kitchen, sighing deeply as if with relief.

  So Millie went to school again and life went on very smoothly, and such was the feeling of the family for her, she was given tea in the dining-room on her thirteenth birthday.

  And it could be said that life took on a rosy glow for Millie during the months ahead, until the celebrations at The Grange for the coming of age of the mistress's half-brother Bernard Thompson, and the staff party that followed it, changed things entirely.