The Rag Nymph (aka The Forester Girl)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Don’t you know anybody else you can go to? Haven’t you any relations?’

  ‘No.’ The head was shaking again.

  ‘Nobody?’

  Aggie watched the child thinking, and then she said, ‘Well, there are the uncles.’

  ‘Uncles? You’ve got uncles?’

  ‘I called them uncle. They came to the house two or three times, but…but that was last week. I don’t know where they live.’

  ‘Jesus in heaven!’ Abruptly Aggie picked up the handles of the handcart, then almost growling ‘Come on!’ she pushed it along the road, the child trotting beside her now.

  It was a good ten minutes later when they seemed to come to the last of The Courts, for the houses dropped down to two-storey, then one-storey; and then they were confronted by an iron open-work gate set in a brick wall all of seven feet high. Aggie did not rest the handcart and open the gate but, giving it a hard thrust, she pushed it against the ironwork and the gate swung open and into a large yard all of forty feet square, the further half of which was surprisingly paved with flags. And where the flags ended there rose three large stone arches, forming a sort of veranda to the front of a house, a real house with six windows visible, three above the flat roof of the stone veranda and three above that again.

  As they entered the yard a figure rose from the side of a pile of tins lying on the unpaved part of the ground, in his hand what looked like a piece of iron guttering. This he threw with a flicking movement on to a pile of scrap iron before making his way towards them, kicking out of his path and onto yet another pile the remnants of what had been a pair of trousers.

  His eyes were fast on the child and hers wide on him and his odd shape as he said, ‘What’s this then? What’s this?’

  ‘Wait and you’ll find out.’ Aggie answered sharply. ‘Get this lot sorted.’ She thumbed towards the rags on the cart.

  ‘Aye, I will. Will I sort her out an’ all?’

  ‘There’ll be somebody else sorted out if you’re not careful…Sold anything?’

  ‘Aye, three bob’s-worth out of the basket. And Arthur Keeley popped in. He’ll take the scrap tomorrow, but I think he wanted to have a word with you. His wife’s scarpered. D’you know where she is?’

  ‘No. D’you?’ She had turned and was holding her hand out towards the child.

  ‘The kettle’s boilin’.’

  ‘I’d have somethin’ to say if it wasn’t.’

  The child followed Aggie through the middle arch and towards a heavy, paintless oak door, then into a room dimly lit by a window that looked onto the covered way. The room was filled with an assortment of clothes, some in wash-baskets, some hanging over clothes lines, others attached to nails driven into a wooden frame fixed to the walls like a chair-back panel. The smell wasn’t as strong as that which permeated the yard, but nevertheless it was heavy with the odour of ageless sweat.

  Now they were going through another door and into a different kind of room, and this room caused the child to stop and slowly look about her. A fire was burning in a black grate which had an oven to the side of it; a large black kettle was sizzling on the hob. And at the foot of the iron structure was a high steel fender, suggesting from its dull surface that it had never seen emery paper since the day it left the foundry.

  Set at right angles to one side of the fireplace was a two-seat wooden settle, and at the other side a much larger leather couch. In the middle of the room was a round table covered with oilcloth, and four high-backed carved chairs set around it. Along one wall stood a plain sideboard. It was black, as if once it had been varnished, and this gave it a sheen of its own.

  The room was evidently a kitchen, but holding dining and sitting room furniture. Along each side of the long window hung a heavy brocade curtain, the colour having long since disappeared, but which still retained an air of quality. The curtains were not drawn half across the window and so closing out the light as most curtains were wont to be, but were wide apart showing, of all things, a piece of grassland parched by the sun but, nevertheless, still giving evidence that it was grass by the strip in the shadow of the house.

  The child stared towards it as if in recognition of something held in memory; then she turned and looked at the old woman, who was sitting on the couch unlacing her boots, and she said, ‘You have a garden.’

  ‘Huh!’ Aggie turned and looked towards the window and she repeated, ‘Garden? A piece of grass. But I’ve seen the time it was. Oh aye, I’ve seen the time it was. Take your hat and coat off. Are you hungry?’

  The child considered for a moment, then said, ‘No. No, thank you. But…but I’d like a drink, please.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have that in a minute once I’ve eased me feet an’ got some of these togs off.’

  The child watched her now stand up in her stockinged feet on what had once been a fine Persian rug but was now worn in parts to its back, and unpin her hat. After her coat was thrown down on to the couch, to be followed by the long mud-fringed skirt and tattered voluminous blouse, there appeared before the child a fat woman, a very fat woman, in what seemed to be a clean blue-striped blouse and a long grey skirt with a fringe.

  ‘Ah! that’s better. One of these days I’ll go out like this and scare the whole population, ’cos they’ll think I’m in me bare pelt.’ She now turned and, gathering up the coat, the blouse and the skirt, and the black hat, she threw them behind the couch, saying, ‘See you tomorrow, my dears,’ then looking at the child, she said, ‘Well now, you’re dry, you said,’ and, taking her hand, led her across the room and into the original large, stone-floored kitchen, and from there into an equally large pantry. Here, taking a milk measure from a marble slab, she bent over a big brown earthenware jar, took off the wooden lid, dipped in the measure and scooped up some clean water, which she handed to the child, saying, ‘Drink that.’

  The handle of the can pushed up by her right ear, the child drank, and then, her mouth dripping, she smiled at Aggie, saying, ‘It’s lovely, cold.’

  ‘Aye, and it’s clean. You can bet on that, it’s clean; the well sees to that.’ After taking the measure from the child, Aggie refilled it and then she herself drained it, after which she put the lid on the brown jar and hung the can on a nail. Then, from a shelf in the pantry, she took down a large covered dish, sniffed at the contents and, smiling now on the child, said, ‘Nothing much goes rotten in here. Good as an icebox, this.’ Then taking a smaller dish from the shelf she turned to the child, saying, ‘You carry that in; ’tis butter. Now all we want is some bread and some onions an’ we’re set. Go on,’ saying which, she lifted her knee and pressed the child gently forward.

  And so they returned to the kitchen again; and after the meal was put on the table Aggie went through the other room and from the door yelled, ‘Ben!’ just the once before returning to the kitchen.

  As she sat down at the table she said to the child, ‘Sit up now.’

  When the boy, as she had thought of the youth but who was actually seventeen, came into the room he needed no urging to sit at the table; then grinning at the child, he said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Millie. What’s yours?’

  The question was innocent but it brought a great guffaw from the youth and he answered, ‘Ben Smith, Jones or Robinson.’ Then turning quickly to Aggie, he added, ‘Long time since I said that, isn’t it?’

  ‘You should know.’

  ‘And you an’ all.’ He nodded at her. ‘It was to your dad in the yard out there.’ He thumbed behind his shoulder. ‘Seven, comin’ eight I was; just like yesterday. I’d heard that Billy Steele had died that mornin’ from the fever and there I was after his job. “What’s your name?” your da said. “Ben,” I said. “Ben what?” he said. “Well, take your choice,” I said: “Smith, Jones or Robinson.” And he cuffed me ear, an’ not gently at that. But he took me on. Aye.’ He looked down now on to the plate on which lay a pig’s foot and two pieces of streaky pork; and picking up the pig’s foot in his two hands, h
e gnawed at it for a moment before looking at the child again and asking her, ‘Well, what’s your other name?’

  ‘Your hands are very dirty.’

  There was the sound of a smothered chuckle from Aggie. And now the child watched Ben slowly lay down the half-eaten trotter and hold up both hands before his large face. Looking first at one, then at the other, he said, ‘Aye, you’re right, they are dirty. But a speck of dirt never hurt anybody, as far as I’ve learnt. And if you’re goin’ to stay here you’ll get your hands dirty an’ all before long.’

  There was a slight clatter as Aggie dropped her trotter onto the plate, demanding, ‘Who says she’s goin’ to stay here? She’ll be home tomorrow; her mother’ll be out.’

  ‘Out of where?’

  Aggie drew in a long breath and glanced at the child before answering Ben. ‘Out of where she’ll be spendin’ the night,’ she said. ‘Now, no more questions. And your hands are dirty, mucky’s the word I’d say.’

  ‘What about your own?’

  ‘I can have dirty hands if I like. You’re here to take orders, an’ don’t forget it. You’re gettin’ too big for your boots.’

  ‘No! Am I? Well, that’s good to hear after ten years, Aggie. Well, now that I’m too big for me boots, d’you think me legs’ll sprout?’

  Aggie turned her head slightly away, took up the knife that was lying to the side of her plate, cut a piece of meat in two, then picked it up with her fingers and ate it; then she turned to the child and said, ‘What’s your second name?’

  ‘Forester. It’s spelt, F-o-r-e-s-t-e-r.’

  ‘My, my! We’ve got a learned one here.’ Ben was nodding his head towards Aggie now. ‘And by the look of her she hasn’t seen six yet.’

  ‘I’m seven.’

  They both stared at the child.

  ‘Seven, are you, me love? Well, as he says, you don’t look it.’

  ‘Can I have a fork, please?’

  Aggie again looked to the side as if to help check the escape of some quick retort from her lips. Then, without looking at Ben, she said, ‘Get her a fork out of the top drawer.’

  When Ben came back to the table he placed the fork with great ceremony to the side of Millie’s plate, saying, ‘There you are, madam. Is there hanything helse you would desire?’ He was bowing over her, and he was nonplussed when, smiling up into his face, she said, ‘You are teasing me now, aren’t you? But I always have a fork, a knife and fork; it’s…it’s bad manners to eat with your fingers.’ Then looking quickly from one to the other, she added, ‘At least for…for children.’

  Ben now straightened his back and returned to his seat and, looking at Aggie, said, ‘Besides which, there is what is called a diplomat in our midst, Mrs Winkowski.’

  When Aggie sat back in her chair and her great fat body began to wobble, slowly from her open mouth there issued deep bellows of laughter. Ben, too, joined in, and Millie, looking from one to the other, smiled widely at them.

  Of a sudden Aggie rose from the table and left the room, and the smile slid slowly from Millie’s face and she looked at the funny young man, as she thought of him, and said, ‘Is she vexed?’

  ‘No. No, she’s not vexed. But you’ve done something tonight, you know. It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh in years…years and years. Chuckle, aye, smile now’n again, but never laugh like that…Have you got a dad?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, not now. I had.’

  ‘Is he’—he paused—‘is he dead, then?’

  ‘I…I think so. Mama said he was dead.’

  ‘You don’t seem sure. Is he dead or is he not?’

  ‘He…he went away.’

  ‘Just recently…like?’

  She paused before answering him, her eyes blinking as if she were thinking; and then she said, ‘It was last year…or sometime longer, when…when we lived in Durham.’

  ‘Oh! You lived in Durham, did you? All the way up there? Durham’s near Scotland, isn’t it?’

  She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Not really. It’s…it’s near Newcastle. That’s the city.’

  ‘Oh aye, Newcastle. And your dad…did he work in Durham?’

  ‘Yes; sometimes I think, and Newcastle.’

  ‘What was he?’

  ‘Oh, he was a tall man.’ Then she shook her head and laughed. ‘I thought you meant what was Dada like. I…I don’t rightly know but only that he worked in a shop, a big shop, and he always wore a nice suit. It was black and he had a big shiny hat. And sometimes—’ She looked away from Ben towards the corner of the room where a picture was hanging at a slight angle, and her head moved to one side as if to see it better. Then looking at him again she said, ‘He sometimes had a walking stick, and…and on that day he bought me a parasol.’ Again her eyes were blinking as if her memory were groping to recall the special occasion when her father had a walking stick and she had a parasol.

  ‘How long have you been down here in Manchester?’

  Neither of them now took notice of Aggie’s returning to the room and seating herself down on the leather couch. And when Millie answered him, ‘It…it was before Easter, in March. Yes, in March,’ she was nodding her head.

  Ben now sat back in his chair, then glanced towards Aggie. Following this, he took the last piece of pork from his plate, chewed on it, then swallowed it before asking the next question. ‘Does your mother go to work?’ he said.

  ‘Well, she went to the factory to make buttons, but they didn’t give her enough money. Then she hired a machine to do shirts, but they wanted too many shirts done. I liked the hat room.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘It was right upstairs above the shop and all the women were nice. And there were lots of pretty colours, but—’ She now looked down towards her hands, her fingers flicking against each other, and after a moment she said, ‘I fidgeted. It was a long time to stay quiet all day until eight o’clock at night. And one day at dinner time I tripped and spilt a can on the table. It…it was full of beer and it flowed over the ribbons and spoilt a hat and the mistress of the room was very angry and told Mama I hadn’t to be brought back again, so Mama left.’

  Aggie, sitting looking into the fire, nodded as she thought: And aye, Mama took the only step left to her, and look where it’s got her.

  She now turned towards the table when Ben said, ‘You finished?’ and the child replied, ‘Yes, thank you. Can I help to wash up?’

  ‘Who said I was goin’ to wash up? We just blow on the plates here.’

  Millie smiled widely at him now, and once again she said, ‘You are teasing me.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about teasing, young lady. Well, take your plate into the kitchen and put it into the sink. And oh, don’t forget…your fork, and your knife an’ all.’

  As she went out of the room carrying her plate and the cutlery, he stepped towards Aggie, saying softly, ‘What d’you make of her? She’s canny, isn’t she? And did you ever see such a bonny piece? She must have been decently brought up.’

  ‘Aye, maybe. But I can’t see her with a very decent future with the mother she’s got.’

  ‘Bad type, was she?’

  ‘No; no, a young lass really, very like her.’ She nodded towards the far door. ‘But by the sound of what she has just said her mother wasn’t cut out for work, not the kind you’ll find in this quarter, except her last job. And then she’s made a hash of that an’ all. They must have been on to her or somebody’s given her away, one or t’other, ’cos it must have been a set-up cop. I’d passed that fella on the road an’ when I looked back she was talking to him; then when I turned the cart into the alley the next minute, she was flying past, almost throwing the child at me. Well, not at me, she yelled at her to go home. But as the bairn said, she hadn’t a key, it was on her mother. So there you have it, that’s how it happened. And from what she’s been prattling on about she’s had a number of uncles.’

  ‘It sounds as if the old man scarpered. She doesn’t seem to know if he is dead or not. She said h
e wore a black suit and worked in a shop.’

  ‘Oh aye. Sounds like a shopwalker.’

  ‘Could be. Shush! Here she is.’

  ‘I couldn’t find any water but I’ve rubbed my plate with a cloth, and my knife and fork.’

  ‘Well, that’s a clever lass for you.’ Ben was laughing down at her again. ‘D’you want the job as in-between maid, one pound one an’ wompence a week?’

  ‘That’s what my mama was; she was a maid to a lady.’ She now turned quickly towards Aggie, adding, ‘She will come for me in the morning, won’t she? She…won’t go away, will she? I mean…not like—’ she now lowered her head. ‘I want her. I want my mama. She always put me to bed…and read me a story.’

  They both remained silent, looking at her; then Aggie said, ‘She’ll come for you in the mornin’. Would you like to go to bed now? There’s…there’s a nice bed upstairs. Well, it’s a big one with a feather tick. It’s a snuggler.’ She smiled.

  ‘I’m…I’m afraid to be in the dark.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be dark for a long time yet. By that time I’ll be upstairs.’

  ‘Will…will you be sleeping with me?’

  ‘Well!’ Aggie glanced at Ben; then her head drooped and wobbled from one side to the other before she said, ‘Well, if you don’t mind, miss.’

  ‘Oh no. I…I think I would like you to.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  They now looked towards the door through which the young fellow was making a hurried exit and, somewhat impatiently, Aggie said, ‘Come along with you, come along,’ and led the way through yet another door and into a passageway, and so into a square hall from which a stairway rose.

  The stairs were bare, and before mounting them Millie looked down at Aggie’s stockinged feet and said, ‘Aren’t you afraid of getting splinters?’