The Rag Nymph (aka The Forester Girl)

by Catherine Cookson

  She raised her head again and said quietly, ‘Oh, you’ve got no idea how wonderful it is to be home. But do you think, Mrs Aggie, I could go and lie down for a time?’

  ‘Lie down, me dear? You’re goin’ to bed and you’re goin’ to stay there for the next few days, as that doctor said. And what’s more, I’ll have old Partridge come and see you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t need a doctor, Mrs Aggie.’

  ‘Leave it to me, girl, to know what you need. Anyway, old Partridge has been wantin’ to get his foot in this door again for years. The last bill I paid him was sixteen years ago when me father died. Two shillings a visit he charged. Daylight robbery. And I told him that.’ She smiled softly and, holding her hands out to Millie, she drew her gently up from the couch, saying, ‘Come away. Come away.’

  It was the same evening. The yard gates were closed. They’d had their evening meal. Millie was asleep upstairs and Aggie and Ben sat facing each other, Ben with a mug of beer to his side on the settle and Aggie with a glass of gin resting on a shelf to her hand. They had been sitting in silence for some time.

  When Aggie spoke her voice was quiet. ‘I know what you’re thinkin’,’ she said. ‘It’s such as my own thoughts. We did what we thought was best: we sent her away to save her being picked up and from the outcome of what that would mean; yet she walks straight into it; and all arranged by that bitch of a woman. Have you thought what would have happened to her if the men of the house hadn’t come in at that moment?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve thought what would have happened to her. And aye, me thoughts have just been similar to your own. Well, here she is and here she stays. And she won’t get out of me sight if I can help it.’

  ‘Huh! And how long d’you think you can keep your eyes on her? She’s growing fast. The solution for her is to be married, that’s the only safeguard…’

  She hadn’t finished the last word before he sprang to his feet, crying, ‘Married? She’s only thirteen, woman!’

  She stared at him for a moment and, her voice deceptively quiet now, she said, ‘She’s near fourteen and she’s an old fourteen.’

  ‘Aye, all right, she’s near fourteen, but you’re marryin’ her off.’

  ‘I’m not marryin’ her off now, but in two years time she’ll be ready for it, aye, if not before.’

  ‘What’s come over you, woman? You want rid of her?’

  Aggie now heaved herself up and on to the edge of the sofa, and her words were ground out: ‘Yes, I want rid of her because she’s brought into me life the only happiness that I’ve ever had. Of course I want rid of her: I want rid of her because I love her; I want rid of her because I won’t know a minute’s peace until I see her safely married. Yes, I want rid of her.’

  Ben was standing, his feet apart, his arms away from his side, his stance giving the suggestion that he was about to spring; but bending his thick body forward, he said, ‘And where do you propose to find her a husband? Someone from The Courts? Or are you thinkin’ someone from that big house will come riding down and offer to take her off your hands? Say, this Mr Thompson who carried her from the house? You were asking her about him, weren’t you? Well, which is it to be?’

  Aggie wriggled herself back on to the couch, and in a subdued tone now, she said, ‘I wasn’t thinkin’ of anyone from The Courts or a big house, but somebody in between, like one of those teachers you learn from at night.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, you’ve had your spies out, have you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t had me spies out. I don’t have to; in my business I just keep me ears open, and I hear everything. Rosie Dillon, she’s an old customer, her brother apparently is caretaker for that, what do they call it, national school, and for the rooms that are used at night. She said,

  “I hear your Ben’s goin’ to school again.” You would have told me sometime, I know. Anyway I have it in me mind that one thing she’ll be wantin’ is to take some kind of learnin’ again and that it would be safe for her to go to the night class along of you. And you never know who she might meet there, not among the learners, oh no, but one of the teachers, perhaps. And, you know, with her head on her shoulders she could become a teacher herself.’

  ‘It hasn’t taken you long to get it all worked out.’

  ‘Well, there’s a sayin’ about desperate needs need desperate measures. And—’ She paused, reached out, lifted up her glass, took a sip of the gin, then placed the glass back on the shelf before ending, ‘I want to see her settled before I take me last journey, because where would she be then? Any day now I’m likely to hear you’re goin’ to go off and marry your Annie.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard what I said right enough. And I’ll add this: it’s not before time, the years you’ve been hangin’ on.’

  Walking over to the couch and bending over her, Ben said with emphasis but quietly, ‘Get this into your head, Aggie. I’m not gonna marry Annie, sooner or later. She knows that. Right from the beginning she’s known that. I can’t get it into your head that she’s a friend. She’s good company, she’s good chat. She took notice of me when nobody else did…I mean, as a lass might. How old was I when I first came to your dad? Eight? And she was then sixteen. She seemed grown up to me, but she was kind and she was lonely and lost, like I was. Behind all me chatter there wasn’t anybody more lonely an’ lost than me. I’d known her for more than a year before I came into the yard here, and what you don’t know and what I’ve never said is that she gave me shelter many a night when I would have frozen to death otherwise. She had only one room. Her mother was in bed in the corner, had been for years, her body like a balloon. She lay there all day by herself while Annie was at the mill. Each night Annie would dose her with laudanum to keep the pain down, and when she went to sleep she’d let me in and I’d lie on the mat in front of the banked-down fire till early next mornin’. For two winters she did that. An’ then her mother died and she let me carry on, sleeping there on the mat, until your dad offered me the room above the stable. And for the first time in me life I had a place of me own.’

  When Aggie’s head began to wag and she was about to speak, he held up his hand to silence her, and went on, ‘Now that I’ve started I’ll give you the whole story. There were times when, lonely, we comforted each other. And I was still a lad, mind; but I told her that I’d never marry anybody and she understood that. She’s still nothin’ to look at, just skin and bone, mostly; but I had noticed over the last few years that she had started to titivate herself up a bit, and then when she got the chance of moving from The Courts to one of the New Buildings, she took it. It was then I found out the reason. A man she’s worked alongside for years in the mill, he’s a widower and much older, but he must think something of her for he comes a-courtin’, you might say. And I’m happy for her.’

  ‘My, my, my! But tell me, if that’s the case, why you still go along there.’

  ‘For the simple reason, Aggie, as I’ve tried to pump into you before, we’re friends. We can play cards, we can chatter, we can discuss the gossip of the day. And she’s got a lot to gossip about because, as you know, her cousin’s the best-known whore on the street. And sometimes she pays a call on her and we have a laugh at her tales.’ He paused. ‘Not always, though, because there’s some things that happen down on the street that turns even Nancy Pratt’s stomach. And, I can tell you, that takes some doing. So there you have it, Aggie, and you’ve no need to pry any more. But to go back to your…what the teacher would call demise, and what would happen to Millie should that come about. There’ll always be me here until my demise, which, not knowin’ the Lord’s intention, could be, I must admit, any time; but given a fair deal I’ll have a few years ahead of me yet, being but twenty-three.’

  Once more Aggie pulled herself to the edge of the couch and, thrusting her face close to his, she almost spat her next words at him: ‘And you expect her to grow up an’ to go on livin’ here under your…what? Your guardianship? A girl like her, growin’ into a woman tha
t’ll bring men round her like flies? Oh, be your age, Ben Smith. And let me tell you somethin’.’ She now thrust her doubled fist into her chest. ‘I’m willin’ to let her go, and by God, I’m goin’ to see that you do the same, because, where she’s concerned, your head’s not recognising your short legs. I know what’s in the back of your mind. I know what all this education business is for. I know what the new overcoat and the high hat is for. Well, all the high hats in the world won’t put inches on you, nor smart overcoats see you any other than you are. So, get that into your head, Mr Ben Smith.’

  He couldn’t speak for a moment; his Adam’s apple was jerking up and down in his throat; when he did, his voice was quiet: ‘Aggie,’ he said, ‘I’ll never be out of your debt, for I know I owe you what I am today, and never for one minute in all the years I’ve known you have I ever wished you any harm. Just the opposite. Oh, just the opposite. But in this minute I could take me fist and land it between your eyes, not because you’ve tried to read me mind with regard to Millie, but because you’ve made me feel less than a man.’

  They stared at each other as they had never done in all their acquaintance; then he turned and went from her.

  PART THREE

  The Cook

  One

  From the day Mr Quinton had returned her home and she had entered the kitchen, Millie knew that, although she never wanted to be separated from these two people again, her outlook was changed with regard to her surroundings.

  As the days passed and she filled her time with cooking and cleaning, she knew there was a want in her. Even though she now accompanied Ben to his class on three evenings a week, there was always the nagging question: what was really to become of her? How could she earn a living? At first, she had thought it could be through cooking, only to reject this immediately. Her experience at The Grange had left her with no desire, and a real fear, of ever finding herself in service again.

  Yet, she was faced with the fact that cooking was the only thing at which she was any good. When she had put this to Aggie, Aggie had added, ‘And talking. Why don’t you think of learning to teach children, like?’ To which her answer had been, ‘You have to have a special education.’ Yet at times, she felt she knew more than Mrs Sponge, who took one of the classes, but then not anything near what her husband, Mr Sponge, knew. He was a clever man, Mr Sponge, not only with dates and history but about things that went on in the mind. It was he who had said there was a solution to every problem; you only had to sit down and spread your problem out before you, as it were, like cards on a table, then look to see if there was an outlet through any part of the pack that would present a solution to your problem.

  Well, she had thought about it, and she had spread her cards on the table, and most of them pointed out to her that she could make good meat pies, scones and currant buns. She could also make a very good nourishing stew. Another card pointed out to her that she had a craft at her hands that would enable anyone to start a cook shop. But at the idea of a shop she turned the card face down, as it were. Almost immediately another card pointed out that she already lived in a shop. That yard outside was a shop; well, a kind of one dealing with the residue of many trades.

  And the card seemed to jump from the table and confront her with a picture of an absolutely clean yard and, at the open gates, a long wooden bench on which were arrayed her pies, scones and currant buns. And at the end of the bench, a big kale pot full of hot stew, with herself standing at the other side of the table, dealing with customers.

  But what about customers? Why, the mill workers! Most of those who worked at Freeman’s passed the gates to reach their particular Court. At six o’clock every night there was a stream of them. And then, too, during the day, all types of people were passing up and down the road; although she had to admit they were mostly the ragged, filthy children and those adults emitting the stench of gin and filth that made the smell rising from the yard seem like that from a herb garden.

  But it was an idea, and who knew, it might in the end lead to something. Although she never wanted to leave either Aggie or Ben, she knew that Aggie, at least, would die sometime, and Ben would likely marry Annie; and although she liked Annie as…a nice little creature, she could not imagine Ben living with her. But then, on further thought, she could not imagine Ben marrying her. What would they talk about? Annie had no conversation. She had noted she could listen, but she didn’t talk or discuss anything…well, not when she was present anyway.

  It was one evening when they were sitting round the kitchen table and enjoying Millie’s new dish, a rabbit pie, not stewed in the old way, with potatoes round it, but baked in the oven in a thick gravy, dotted with sliced apple and covered with a pie-crust. She had seen the recipe in the Sunday magazine. It was a nice paper and had lively stories in it, more so than The Band Of Hope and The Good Words Magazine, both of which Mrs Sponge kindly passed on to her every week.

  The pie had caused much pleasant comment. It was after the dishes had been cleared away, and they were sitting round the fire that she dropped her bombshell. And a bombshell it was.

  When Aggie got over her surprise, the first words she said were, ‘Are you thinkin’ of pushin’ me out?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mrs Aggie. But, you know, you say yourself you’re tired of doing the rounds, and Laddie is twice as old as you thought he was when you bought him.’

  Then she had asked Ben: ‘Well, what do you think? Don’t just sit there staring; tell me what you think.’

  ‘I think it’s a fine idea. You’re a cook. No matter what else you’ll be in your life, you’ll always be a cook. And aye, I can see the yard bein’ cleaned up, and a bench at the front gate. But, I’ll say, like Aggie, what’s goin’ to happen to me? Where do I come in this? Are you willing to pay me eight shillings a week?’

  ‘I won’t pay you anything; it will be Mrs Aggie who will pay you.’ She inclined her head towards Aggie. ‘And likely twice as much because, you know that shop we pass on the way to the school, well, the pies in there are tuppence ha’penny each.’

  ‘Aye well, be that as it may. But again I ask you, what’s to become of me in this new business venture? What am I to do?’

  ‘Well, you don’t think I can do it all on my own, do you? It’ll take me all my time cooking with Mrs Aggie here, and somebody will have to look after—’ she laughed now as she said, ‘the shop.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t see meself servin’ in a shop. Never!’ He wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Well, all right then, I would do the cooking at night; well, in the evening, and I would stand at the table the next day.’

  Aggie and Ben looked across at her now, and Aggie said to him, ‘She’s got it all worked out. My God! I can’t believe it. This place has been a taggerine yard for as long as I can remember, but now she proposes to make it dainty with pies and buns, and such like. But would you tell me, miss’—she had turned now to Millie—‘how many pies et cetera, et cetera, do you think you can cook in that at once?’ She was now thumbing towards the round oven.

  ‘Twenty-one, twelve on the top shelf and nine on the bottom. And if the meat’s cooked beforehand they’ll take only about half an hour. And at the least I could do four lots in the evening. Of course I’d want someone to stoke up the fire and someone to go for the stores’—she glanced from one to the other now—‘because I’d need a lot of fat, and flour, and meat, and currants, and things like that. And I had thought of peas. There’s a place in the market that sells mashed peas. You pointed it out to me once.’

  There was a rumbling sound from Ben; then he was doubled forward on the settle, his laughter filling the room. And Aggie, looking at him, endeavoured to keep her face straight, too, as she said, ‘He’s findin’ it funny.’ And Millie, gazing at the old woman, asked quietly, ‘Aren’t you?’

  For answer Aggie said softly, ‘Aw, love; I can’t see it happenin’. It would take an earthquake to move that lot in the yard. And then, look at the weather. How about that? You couldn’t have
a table out there in the wind or rain.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought about that. It could come under the arch, or the barn could be cleared. Quite easily the barn could be cleared.’

  Aggie said nothing to this, but she looked to where Ben was lying back against the settle, his hand now held tightly against his side. His face was wet with his laughing until Aggie, looking at Millie, said, ‘Lass, have you ever thought that you won’t be in this place for ever. Sixteen, comin’ up. And who knows—you could be married.’

  They both gave a start as Ben sprang to his feet, all laughter and fun now gone from his face as he cried, ‘Don’t start putting things into her head. You would damn well think, the way you talk, that sixteen was the limit for any lass marrying. She’ll marry when she’s ready, and she’ll know when she’s ready. And who she wants to marry an’ all. So you get that into your head, woman.’ And on that, he turned about and marched from the room, leaving Millie greatly perturbed; but not so Aggie.

  ‘Gets worked up, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘But you know, me dear, what I say is true. Come sixteen, if not afore, that’s the way your thoughts’ll be goin’. By the way, how long is it since that Mr Thompson called?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Yes; yes, it’ll be that. And I thought you would remember. That was the third time he’s looked in, wasn’t it?’

  Millie was on her feet looking down into the wide, sagging face, and her voice was just above a whisper as she said, ‘No, Mrs Aggie. No, never; he’s…he’s just a kind man. He’s a gentleman and, what’s more, don’t you remember who he’s related to? That…that awful woman.’

  ‘She’s just a half-sister, so you said.’