The Mallen Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  When Dan turned her gently about and went to press her toward the door, saying, ‘Go up and have a word with her,’ she shook her head, for all the words that had to be said had been said, she could bear no more.

  Dan now asked quietly, ‘Won’t you come to the station with us?’

  Again she shook her head.

  ‘Leave her be. Leave her be, lad.’

  Dan turned and looked at his father, and Harry made a sharp motion with his head.

  When Mary’s loud sobbing came to them from the hall they went out, Dan holding the door open for Miss Brigmore, and they looked at Mary and Barbara enfolded in each other’s arms. They were both crying, but Barbara was making no sound.

  And now Dan, going forward, took hold of Mary’s arm and drew her away and toward the kitchen, and Harry followed them, and so for a moment Miss Brigmore and her beloved child were alone. Her beloved child who was now a married woman and was going out of her life never to return into it again.

  ‘Brigie. Oh! Brigie darling. I’m…I’m sorry for all I’ve done.’

  They were clasped tightly together. ‘I’ll…I’ll never forgive myself for all the trouble I’ve brought on you. Will…will you forgive me? Please, please, say you forgive me. And…and as Dan says, you must come to us. Brigie, Brigie, speak to me, say something.’

  They were standing, still joined but only by their hands now, but Miss Brigmore did not speak, she could not. Releasing her hands, she cupped the beloved face for the last time, then leaned forward and kissed Barbara, gently turned her about and pressed her toward the door before turning hastily back into the sitting room.

  When the men returned to the hall it was to find Barbara standing with her head bowed deeply on her chest, the sobs shaking her body.

  A few minutes later they were in a carriage. The coachmen had put the two valises on the rack; this was the only luggage they were taking with them. Barbara did not raise her head to give a last look toward the cottage, nor did Harry look out of the window; it was Dan who waved goodbye to the solitary figure of Mary standing at the gate.

  Mary stood and watched the carriage rumbling over the frozen road, she watched it until it disappeared around the bend, then she turned shivering and went up the path toward the front door, crying bitterly as she muttered, ‘Eeh! She’s gone. I can’t believe it. God Almighty! What’s to become of Miss?’

  It was as she closed the door that the strange sound came to her. Throwing off the coat she had put on against the cold, she hurried to the sitting room and when she thrust the door open she stopped for a moment and gazed down at the figure sitting on the floor in front of the couch, her body half over the seat and her face smothered in one of the cushions, while her two hands clutched and unclutched the upholstery as if she were kneading dough.

  ‘Oh! miss, miss.’ Mary threw herself down on the floor beside Miss Brigmore, and putting her arms about her she cried, ‘Don’t take on so. Don’t take on. Come on, sit up. I’ll get you a drink; come on, come on, lass.’ She so far forgot herself as not to apologise for the slip.

  It was some little while before she was able to persuade Miss Brigmore to get up from the floor, and when she had her settled on the couch and had drawn a shawl around her shoulders she said, ‘Now, now, just stay put for a minute, I’ll get you something hot. And I’ll lace it. That’s what you want down you, a good lacing.’

  The tears still flowed and, making no effort to dry them, Miss Brigmore sat and stared into the fire. After a while her eyes lifted upwards and came to rest on Thomas’ picture. Benign as always, he was smiling at her; the watch-chain across his portly figure gleamed and seemed to pick up a light in his eyes. It was as if he were saying, ‘Come on, come on, it isn’t the end of everything. You’re no worse off than when you started, in fact you’re better off, much better off than when you had me to look after, for have you not got a house that is yours, and three thousand pounds in the bank, and a friend like Harry Bensham?’

  A friend like Harry Bensham? Harry Bensham would soon follow his son and Barbara. Like them, he would disappear from her life, perhaps to reappear at intervals to give her his good wishes. She looked up into the eyes that seemed alive and for a flashing moment she thought, I wish I had never stepped into High Banks Hall, for then I would never have set eyes on you, and my life might have been my own, not given to this one or that, to be thrown back at me empty, holding nothing worth living for. But the softness in the eyes looking into hers melted the thought away, and the expression on the face appeared to take on a sadness now, and she heard Thomas’ voice riding the years, saying, ‘I’ve loved you like I’ve loved no-one else; be content with that.’

  But could one be content to live on a mere memory? Well, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? She’d have to gather her forces together and face what life offered to such as she; Miss Brigmore; always Miss Brigmore.

  Ten

  She had gone to bed and sleep had come to her through a mixture of exhaustion and whisky, for Mary had, last thing that evening, laced a cup of hot milk to the extent that it had become cool.

  It was nine o’clock the following morning when Mary came into the bedroom carrying a breakfast tray. After placing it on a side table she opened the curtains; then bending over the bed, she gently shook Miss Brigmore by the shoulder, saying, ‘Sit up, miss, and have this.’

  ‘What!’ Miss Brigmore turned onto her back, opened her eyes, and blinked. Then she glanced toward the window and murmured, ‘I’ve…I’ve overslept; what time is it?’

  ‘Going on half nine.’

  ‘Half-past nine!’ Miss Brigmore drew herself up against the pillows, buttoned the top button of her nightdress, smoothed down the coverlet, then said, ‘It’s…it’s still very cold.’

  ‘Aye, and likely to get colder; there’s been another three inches in the night an’ it’s still coming down. Here, put this round you.’ She brought a woollen shawl from the chair and placed it around Miss Brigmore’s shoulders; then putting the breakfast tray across her knees, she said, ‘Now get that down you, an’ no saying you don’t want it. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since yesterday and what I thought was, we’ve got to go on livin’.’

  Miss Brigmore looked up at Mary, and after a moment she said, ‘Yes, Mary, you’re quite right, we’ve got to go on living. But…but you must not make a practice of this; we won’t have any change in our daily arrangements, I shall take breakfast in the dining room at half-past eight each morning as usual. But…but I thank you.’

  Mary’s face crumpled. She turned quickly from the bed, saying, ‘Oh! miss,’ and as she went out of the door she repeated, ‘Oh! miss.’

  Miss Brigmore could not face the breakfast of bacon, fried bread, and white pudding, and so, after she had drunk two cups of tea, she carefully scraped the breakfast onto a napkin and put it in a drawer for disposal later. But first she made sure that the knife and fork showed signs of being used.

  Half an hour later, dressed and trim as usual, she carried the tray downstairs; and Mary, looking at it, smiled and said, ‘Well! That’s it now; that’s a good start. You can face any day if you’ve got somethin’ in your stomach. That’s what I say. Now the fire’s blazin’ and if you’re going to do the accounts, it being Friday, don’t sit in that office but bring the books into the sitting room and make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘Thank you, Mary.’

  As she turned to go out, Mary said, ‘You didn’t say what you wanted for dinner; I could make a meat pudding which would be warmer, or there’s the cold pie and odds and ends from yesterday.’

  ‘I think we’ll just have the odds and ends, Mary.’

  ‘Well, all right, please yourself, but the puddin’ would have been more warmin’ for you. Still, as I said, please yourself.’

  Miss Brigmore crossed the hall to the sitting room. The day had started normally, except for her having breakfast in bed, and from now on she must keep it normal, but she would, as Mary sensibly suggested, bring her books from
the office into the sitting room.

  When she had done this and had set up the table some distance from the fire, she picked up her pen; then her hand dropped onto the open page of the household ledger and her head fell forward. This was loneliness, and no amount of routine was going to ease it, for the routine affected only the surface. Inside was a waste, as wide and frozen as the fells outside, and like the snow falling thickly beyond the window, she saw the years falling into it, yet not filling it but eroding it until there was nothing but the shell of her left.

  As the tears welled up into her eyes she brought her head sharply up and her hand into a writing position, telling herself as she did so that she must practice what she had preached all these years, self-control, under all circumstances self-control. But her preaching hadn’t borne much fruit, had it? Little more than a week ago her beloved Barbara had thrown self-control to the winds and told her what she thought. She had stood just there. She looked toward the window, then closed her eyes, saying sharply to herself, ‘Enough, enough.’ Then she bent over the account book.

  2 lb sugarls.6d.

  1⁄4 lb best Indian tea2s.6d.

  1⁄4 lb ordinary tea ls.8d.

  1⁄4 lb China tea2s.9d.

  She paused. The China tea would be unnecessary in the future, it was Barbara who had liked China tea, and she herself sometimes offered the preference to visitors, but that would be unnecessary now. She scratched out the last item.

  1⁄4 lb lb cheese 8d.

  She went on adding items such as oatmeal, flour, yeast, and finally ended up with lamp oil, half a dozen tallow candles, and half a dozen wax candles. Accounting to one person less in the household, the accounts should be one third less, but they didn’t work out like that for the same amount of coal, wood, candles and oil were needed. Yet she could cut down on oil; Barbara had kept her lamp alight well into the night.

  The accounts finished, the bill for the groceries made out to give the carrier, when he could get through, she turned and looked toward the fire and asked herself what she should do now. Well, what did she do other mornings? She had for the past few months been attending Barbara’s personal wants; prior to that period she would, at this time, have been in the Hall most week days certainly; weekends she reserved for a little leisure for quiet reading and such, and she hadn’t the slightest desire to pick up a book.

  At eleven o’clock Mary bustled in with a bowl of soup, saying, ‘Ah, there now; I’m glad to see you sitting quiet for a minute.’

  ‘You…you haven’t put anything extra in the soup, Mary?’

  ‘No, no.’ Mary shook her head from side to side. ‘I wouldn’t think about lacin’ soup, now would I?’ She smiled, then went to the scuttle, and as she lifted it to throw more coals on the fire Miss Brigmore said, ‘It is quite all right, it is quite big enough for the time being. I’ll attend to it when it needs it.’

  Strange, she even thought so herself, that now when she had more money to spend on herself and the house than ever before, the frugal habits still held.

  ‘Well, don’t let it go too low.’

  On this admonition Mary went out, and she was left alone again. She looked at the soup. She had no appetite for it, but there was no way of getting rid of it unless she opened the window. And that was impossible. Slowly she sipped at it and she had drunk only about a quarter of it when she heard the dull thumping against the outer wall, then the banging on the front door. She put the bowl down as she heard Mary go to the door; then Harry Bensham’s voice came to her from the hall, saying, ‘No, I’m not stayin’, so I’ll keep me coat on.’

  When the sitting room door opened she rose slowly from the couch, and he came straight toward her, saying, ‘What a day! ’Tisn’t fit for a dog to be out. Come on, get your things on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cos you’re coming back with me, you’re not staying here on your own moping.’

  ‘I’m…I’m not moping, and I’m perfectly all right and…’

  ‘Now look, I’m frozen to the marrow, I’ve committed a sort of crime getting those beasts out of the stables, I don’t want to keep them standin’ out there until they freeze to death. And another thing’—he came close to her now and looked down into her face—‘I’m lonely. There’s times when I hate me own company, and it looks like I’ll not get to the station for some days; they only just made it yesterday, an’ by the skin of their teeth. By! That was a ride and a half. I don’t know how we got back, near on ten o’clock when we got in. So come on, do me a good turn, and come and have a bite with me. An’ bring Mary along. I’ll tell her.’

  Before she could say anything he had turned from her, opened the door, and called into the hall, ‘Mary! You, Mary!’

  When Mary appeared from the kitchen he said, ‘Get into your things, you’re coming back with us.’

  ‘Oh! Oh! Are we? Oh, that’s good, that’s good, Mr Bensham. I won’t be a tick.’

  He turned back into the room saying, ‘No trouble in that quarter.’ He was standing near her again. ‘Come on,’ he said gently, ‘do this for me.’

  He watched her head droop to the side, he watched her bite on her lip, then he watched her move slowly past him with lowered gaze and go out of the room.

  Turning to the fire, he patted his coat tails to let the blaze warm his buttocks while he said to himself, ‘Aye! Aye! Well now, here we go!’

  It was almost an hour later when the carriage stopped within a hundred yards of the Hall gates and Harry, opening the window and letting in a fierce icy blast, cried, ‘What’s it now?’

  ‘It’s the incline, sir, they can’t make it, the wheels are skidding all the time.’

  ‘Blast! Do you want help to push?’

  ‘I…I doubt it would be very little use, sir, just the three of us, it’ll need half a dozen or more. The back wheel looked as if it’s gone into a rut.’

  ‘Well’—Harry turned to Miss Brigmore—‘are you up to shanking it? Once we’re off the road the drive isn’t too bad, they cleared it yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course; we’ll walk.’

  Miss Brigmore had said they would walk, but even walking in the deep cart ruts, which had almost been filled again with the overnight snow, she found it impossible without the support of Harry’s arm, and he, walking in the deeper snow in the middle of the ruts, lurched and slithered and several times fell against her, almost overbalancing them both. Mary, coming behind, was assisted by the second coachman.

  When at last they reached the drive where there was but three or four inches of snow Harry did not relinquish his hold on Miss Brigmore, but linked his arm on hers until they entered the vestibule, and there, pressing her forward into the hall, and Mary too, he cried, ‘Now off with those wet boots and stockings the pair of you, and put your feet in hot water. I’ll see it’s upstairs afore you are. Brooks, see to that, will you? Get some cans of hot water up to Miss Brigmore’s room. An’ sharp now!’

  Then in answer to a question that Brooks put to him he shouted back across the hall, ‘No, no! Not for me; the snow hasn’t been made that’ll get through these boots.’

  He mounted the stairs behind Miss Brigmore and Mary and as they were about to disappear toward the gallery he called, ‘As soon as you’re ready, there’ll be something hot downstairs. Don’t make it too long.’

  When Miss Brigmore reached the sitting room in the nursery wings she was gasping. She thought the walk through the snow had taken it out of her; she must be overtired for in the ordinary way it would have had no effect on her, she would have enjoyed it.

  She refused Mary’s aid in helping her off with her outer clothes, saying, ‘Get your own things off, your feet look sodden.’

  Mary was two years younger than herself but she always treated her as if she were so much older.

  When the first and second housemaids entered the room, both carrying large copper cans of hot water, she thanked them, and to Jenny Dring’s remark, ‘What a day for you to come out, miss!’ she answere
d, ‘Yes, it is rather wild.’

  ‘Some bet the coach wouldn’t get to the cottage when the master left, never mind him getting you back here.’ Jenny poured the water into the china dish. ‘But they lost their bets as I knew they would; when the master makes up his mind to do a thing he does it, I said. Like Mr Dan, they’re both the same…’

  ‘Thank you, Jenny; we can manage.’

  They had bet that the carriage wouldn’t get to the cottage, and the master wouldn’t get her back here. There was nothing servants didn’t know, the slightest nuance in the temper of the house was registered by them. No doubt they knew much more of what was in Harry Bensham’s mind than she did with regards to what he intended to do with the Hall, yet she was certain in her own mind that he’d already decided to leave it, and his action today in bringing them from the cottage, considerate as it might appear, proved to her that he could not possibly tolerate living here alone. A man such as he, who had been used to noise and bustle all his life, would find living alone intolerable; and so, as she saw it, he would retire to Manchester and the company of Mrs Talbot, who undoubtedly would suit his requirements in many ways. She had promised Matilda that she would do her best in an advisory capacity to prevent such a liaison, but what could she do? And with a man like Mr Bensham! For she agreed with Jenny, if he made up his mind to do something the devil in…Really! Really! Mary’s sayings infiltrated one’s mind, especially when one was low and off one’s guard.

  ‘Thank you, Mary; I can see to my own feet, you see to yours. But if you wouldn’t mind handing me my house shoes from the cupboard and a pair of grey stockings from the second shelf, I’d be obliged. It’s as well I didn’t take them away before.’

  Ten minutes later Miss Brigmore, looking entirely herself except that there was no colour in her cheeks, stroked her hair from its centre parting and with both hands tucked a wayward tendril that was always escaping from a point near her temple to its place behind her ear; then turning to Mary, she said, ‘When you’re ready come down to Mrs Kenley’s room, I will see her and arrange that you spend the day with her. You are not to stay up here alone.’