Between Friends (27 page)

‘But you’re still doing all the odd jobs nobody else wants, just like me,’ Meg wailed, ‘and where’s that going to lead you?’

‘Does it have to lead anywhere?’ Tom asked mildly enough but Meg only pulled a face as though in despair at his lack of ambition. She didn’t like it at Silverdale, she said, just as often as Tom voiced his delight in it, but Mrs Whitley was settled at last, her cough
was
better and she was in seventh heaven in her small cottage, her only sadness the fate of poor Emm.

‘She’d have loved this,’ she remarked every time Meg had half an hour to call on her which was not as often as the old lady would have liked. But Meg was done no favours under Mrs Stewart’s charge even if she was considered, like Martin, to be something of a favourite of the old gentleman. All through that spring and summer she worked hard from six-thirty in the morning when she brushed up the kitchen range, lit the fire and cleared away the ashes before she was allowed to put on the kettle for that first cup of welcome tea, until after the family had dined at eight in the evening when she was then free until bedtime. She scrubbed floors and scoured tables and cleaned pots and pans and endless dishes and cutlery and windows. She helped anyone who needed a hand, taking orders from those she considered beneath her in the hierarchy of the servants’ hall, maid of all work with no particular duties but to be where she was most needed in the kitchen. The house above stairs was an enigma to her. She rarely saw Tom, for Mrs Stewart allowed no fraternising between her girls and the men outside, and it was only when they could slip away at the same time to Mrs Whitley’s cottage they managed to meet.

Martin might have been a member of the family, or some privileged friend of Mr Hemingway for all they saw of
him
, away most of the time, or so it seemed, on inexplicable journeys concerned with the world of motoring, and when he did return he and the old gentleman spent all their time shut up in the vast garages and workshops Mr Hemingway had devised from the stables. Tinkering, he said vaguely when he was asked, and sharp with her when she was persistent, telling her it was part of his job and to get on with
hers!
She complained bitterly to Tom whenever she got the chance.

‘I’m just a skivvy, Tom, at everyone’s beck and call and neither you nor Martin seem to care! Even the damn scullery maid orders me about. I’ve no-one to talk to now, with you outside, Martin off God knows where all the time and Mrs Whitley out here.’

She badly missed the family atmosphere which had prevailed in Great George Square, the sense of belonging to one close unit, each part of that unit helping another and the impersonal regimentation of the Silverdale kitchens irked her. She missed the freedom she now realised she had been allowed, when Mr Lloyd
had
been in charge of them, the camaraderie of Tom and Martin and she resented the loss of the feeling of self-worth Mrs Whitley had unconsciously given her. She had been an important member in the running of the emigrant house, even at fifteen. She had made decisions, particularly when Mrs Whitley had been poorly. She had done most of the cooking, trying her hand at and being amazingly successful with Cook’s quite epicurean dishes and now she had been demoted to being
less
than the scullery maid!

They were sitting round the plain deal table which had come from the Silverdale attics along with all the other bits and pieces which furnished Mrs Whitley’s new home. A cheerful fire blazed in the grate of the tiny kitchen-cum-parlour (despite the warmth of the day for Cook delighted in her freedom to use as much coal as she cared to) and on it was one of her lamb stews and a kettle whispering steam, and in the small oven beside it was bread baking and an apple turnover and all for her three, whichever one of them could get over to see her. She missed them sorely, she said, and Emm too, tears coming to her eyes, but there, she was lucky to have this little place and Mr and Mrs Hemingway were saints, saints, that’s all she could call them! She had a cosy kitchen all of her own, a snug bedroom above it with mullioned windows looking out on a bit of garden and them lovely trees but she did wish … Here she would sigh, content enough, well fed, warm and cared for but it would have been perfect if only Emm …!

‘I’m worth more than this, Cook, and you know it.’ Meg turned passionately to Mrs Whitley who nodded in agreement, her sad reflection on the death of poor Emm pushed to the back of her mind for the moment.

‘D’you know what she had me doing this morning, do you?’ Meg’s face was crimson in her indignation.

‘No lass, what?’

‘Scrubbing out the dairy if you please whilst that fat lump they call the dairy maid scoured the milk pails!
Me
, scrubbing dairy floors when I could cook a meal for a hundred people
and
better than that there Mrs Glynn! D’you know what she does, Mrs Whitley? She tastes the soup with a spoon then puts the spoon back in the pan! Can you imagine it and when she does braised leg of mutton she doesn’t put any parsley in it like we do and she doesn’t use the juices to glaze it neither! She throws them away! You never saw such waste in your life and when I asked her if I
could
just show her what we do, she told me to mind my own business and get back to the mop-bucket!’

Privately Mrs Whitley sympathised with the cook in the Silver-dale kitchens for she herself would have said the same to any maid who had tried to tell
her
what to do in her own kitchen, but she said nothing for she knew Meg was fretting badly in those first months for the old happy days, for Tom and Martin, and for herself and Emm. She’d settle soon. She’d have to, but best not agitate her further by telling her she
was
in the wrong.

‘She’s reckoned to be the best cook in these parts,’ Meg continued, ‘or so she’d have you believe but she’s not a patch on you, nor me either for that matter,’ with the supreme confidence of youth! ‘And that Mrs Stewart! I was only crossing the yard to see if I could catch Tom to tell him I was coming up here this afternoon or to ask one of the stable lads to give him a message when she screams from the kitchen door …’

‘Oh give over, our Meg! She wasn’t screaming. She only called your name and asked you …’

Meg turned sharply to Tom who was just about to take a bite from a thick wedge of the hot apple turnover, and her eyes narrowed ominously. Her expression was truculent for she was in the mood for an argument with him, with
anybody
. What she needed was to pour out her grievances, her sad remembrance of the past, of Emm, of her own inability to settle in this strange place, her unrest and dissatisfaction with the work she was doing. What did she want to do, she wondered? She did not really know, but Tom’s interference in her need to exorcise it in Mrs Whitley’s sympathetic ear and his defence of the despised housekeeper made her even more wild.

‘She screamed, Tom Fraser, she said coldly, ‘and asked what I thought I was doing giggling in the yard with a stable lad!
Me
, giggling with a stable lad indeed when all I was doing was asking him where you were and the poor beggar got what for from Andrew just for stopping when I called him …’

‘Well you know the rules, Meggie. We’re not allowed to hobnob with the maids during working hours …’

‘Bloody hell, there’s a difference …’

‘Megan! Your language if you please.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Whitley, but there’s a difference between passing on a simple message and “hob-nobbing” as Tom calls it. Are we to walk about with our mouths shut all the time?’

‘You can talk to each other, just like we can.’

Meg, unused to the company of other girls, as young and younger than herself and unable to understand the need in a big household for the keeping of strict discipline, snorted derisively. She had held, in her own opinion a position of some authority and trust at Great George Square and could see no necessity for the strict watch kept on the maids and menservants at Silverdale. Besides which she was accustomed to the far more interesting conversation of young men like Tom and Martin and the adult guidance and affection of Mrs Whitley. Even Emm had been better than this lot! At least she had
listened
which was more than could be said for her present working companions. Giggle and whisper was all they seemed to do in her scornful view and though she liked a good laugh herself there was no-one with the same sense of fun she had shared with Tom and Martin and not one of them could have done what
she
had done at the emigrant house!

‘You’ll soon get used to it, Meggie, you see. We’ve been lucky falling on our feet like this.’ Mrs Whitley’s voice was soothing. She worried about these two at times for she knew they still grieved badly for Emm and it was hard to convince Tom that the fire had
not
been his fault. She had watched Meg, and Martin, try to persuade him that it had been an accident. No-one would ever know how it really started. Emm, distracted by God alone knew what, must have gone into one of the bedrooms, still carrying the fatal shovel of coals for her charred body had been found next to a bedroom window on the first floor, just above the stairs, the stairs beneath which the lamp oil had been put, and forgotten! Tom had been distraught but Meg, herself carrying a burden of guilt at having been the one to suggest that Emm should carry the coals, something they had often done in the past, had shared his sorrow with him, and their young minds had finally been able to accept it.

She put out a hand to Meg but the girl stood up abruptly, moving away to look out of the small window. The trees were beginning to show a haze of gold and bronze and copper and at the foot of each trunk wild fuschia grew profusely, their bright red bells delicately nodding in the sun and the slight breeze which moved them. Across the drive and near the entrance gates to the estate the lodge-keeper’s wife came from her small house, a child clinging to her skirts and she turned to lift him into her arms, giving him a resounding kiss before sending him into the garden
at
the back. An untidy terrier amiably allowed himself to be dragged with the child and Meg could see the two of them rolling happily together in the carpet of harebells which covered it.

‘Have a bit of turnover, lovey, before Tom eats it up. See, I walked down to the home farm this morning and begged a bit of cream from the farmer’s wife. Well, I made her a fruit cake, she says she’s no good with anything fancy and her Jack does love fruit cake so it was a fair exchange. Will I pour a bit on for you?’

Meg turned and looked at the kindly old woman who was doing her best to console her. Mrs Whitley’s face had filled out in the seven or eight months they had been here and was rosy now in her improved health. Her cough had gone and she had put on weight. It seemed she was not averse to a ‘walk’ to the farm and had apparently become friendly with those about her and her days were pleasantly filled, calm, untroubled as was her due. It was time she retired. Mr Lloyd, poor chap, had said so – not to Mrs Whitley, mind – a dozen times and now her last days would be comfortable. She, Meg had no right to be snivelling like some spoiled child when Mrs Whitley, Martin,
and
Tom had fallen so happily into the order of their new lives and if she could just be given some
specific
job to do, like the housemaids for instance, or a parlourmaid, with a decent uniform to wear instead of the skivvy’s outfit she was forced into she might settle to it. If she could take some pride in
her own
job with a
proper
place in the household instead of being at everyone’s beck and call she’d feel better, she was sure. It was not that she was afraid of hard work. God, nobody had worked harder from the age of six or seven than she had, and she took great pride in her own conscientious industry but it was galling to have to watch servants doing work she could do far better and in half the time.

‘Don’t fret, lass.’ Mrs Whitley’s face was anxious for she hated to see one of her three down in the dumps. ‘Give it a bit longer and you’ll settle in. You know there’s only one way to get on in a big house like this and that’s to do your work, willingly, and keep on the right side of those above you. You’ll make your mark, lass, and be out of that kitchen before you realise it! I know what I’m talking about, Meg. I worked just like you, running here and there after everyone …’

‘But I can do so much
more
than skivvying, Mrs Whitley.’ Meg’s face was mutinous.

‘I know that, but you’ll get nowhere if you’re … sullen.’

‘
Sullen!
I’m not sullen!’

‘You want to look in the mirror, our Meg.’ Tom stood up and reached for his cap. ‘You’ve got a face on you like the back of a tramp steamer.’ He was impatient to be off to the more important concerns of the stable where one of Mr Robert’s beautiful mares was about to foal, an event he had never yet witnessed and which he had been told was little short of a miracle and not to be missed. He grew tired of Meg’s discontent at times and could hardly understand it in view of the wonder of their new lives. Why, he couldn’t have found a better place for himself if he had been given the choice, and he had never been happier and he knew Martin felt the same. Now if Meg would just knuckle down to a bit of discipline and watch her tongue she would soon be in the good graces of both Mrs Stewart, who was not a bad old stick,
and
Mrs Glynn who was old, nearly as old as Mrs Whitley and ready for retirement! Get on their good side and their Meg could be in line to take her place.

‘I have not, have I, Mrs Whitley?’ Meg was incensed.

‘You don’t look contented, Meg and that’s a fact and if you get on the wrong side of that Mrs Stewart you’ll spend the rest of your days on your knees in the scullery. Smile lovey! You’ve got a lovely smile and say “Yes please” and “No, thank you” and bob a curtsey and before long you’ll be made up to parlour maid …’