Ellie Pride (24 page)

A little nervously Ellie stared up at the stark façade of her new home. It was late in the afternoon and they had brought snow back with them from the Lake District. Small white flakes of it dusted Ellie’s shoulders as she shivered in the fading winter afternoon light.

Naturally, prior to her marriage she had never visited the mistress-less Charnock house, a large, well-proportioned villa with a big garden, set in a row of similar properties, and now she stared at it curiously.

Henry had come to stand at her side, whilst the hackney driver took their bags round to the servants’ entrance.

Henry had to bang on the front door, and Ellie’s eyes rounded in surprise when she saw the grubby, waiflike scullery maid who opened it. Surely her father-in-law employed a housekeeper.

A gust of cold air rattled through the dark hallway, making Ellie shiver and quickly close the
front door, whilst the maid stared open-mouthed at her. Gaslight flickered in the old-fashioned light fittings, revealing an unpolished floor and a shabby Turkish rug.

‘Thank you, Maisie,’ Ellie heard Henry saying. ‘Is my father –’

‘The master isn’t home yet, sir, and he said you was to go straight down to the office the minute you got back,’ the girl told him, bobbing him an uncoordinated curtsy before starting to back away.

Ellie couldn’t believe her eyes! It was four o’clock in the afternoon and they had been travelling all day. She was freezing cold and tired, and she had expected to be welcomed to her new home by a competent housekeeper, who would show her to her room and provide her with some much-needed afternoon tea, instead of which she was faced with a grubby untrained maid, who, she suspected, would not even be able to boil a kettle of water!

Turning to her husband, she began, ‘Henry –’

‘Maisie will show you to our room, Ellie,’ Henry told her, looking uncomfortable. ‘I had best obey my father, but I shouldn’t be too long.’

He was gone before Ellie could object, leaving her alone with the maid.

‘Will I show you to yer room then, miss?’ she asked.

‘Thank you, but I should like to speak with the housekeeper first,’ Ellie responded firmly.

‘The housekeeper?’ The girl’s eyes rounded. ‘There
bain’t no housekeeper here. There’s no one here but me and Cook.’

Ellie was too tired to query her statement and said wearily instead, ‘Very well, then I think you had better show me round the house, if you please.’

An hour later Ellie stood in the large but damp and grubby bedroom she had been told was to be hers and Henry’s, and wondered how on earth her husband and her father-in-law could bear to live in such a cold, uncared for and frankly dirty house.

When Ellie asked Maisie to bring up sticks and coal so that she could light the bedroom fire, the maid looked nervously at her and told her, ‘Begging your pardon, madam, but Mr Charnock, he don’t allow no fires in the bedrooms.’

No fires? Ellie was dumbstruck. The maid could not possibly be right!

‘Perhaps you will ask Cook to send me up something to eat then,’ she suggested, trying to remain calm.

Maisie looked terrified. ‘Cook’s asleep and I durstn’t wake ’er.’

Ellie took a deep breath. ‘Very well then, Maisie, I shall go down to the kitchen and see Cook myself,’ she said as pleasantly as she could.

Ellie discovered that Cook was indeed sound asleep – and in a drunken sleep too, she suspected.

The further discovery that the only food available for her supper was some cold meat and the
kind of bread her mother would have refused to give her children to feed to Avenham Park’s wildlife left her virtually speechless.

When Henry returned he found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen, whilst Maisie, whom Ellie had quickly realised was a little ‘simple’, stood by, open-mouthed, watching her, and the cook snored loudly in her chair.

‘Ellie –’ Henry protested, red-faced.

‘This kitchen is a health hazard, Henry,’ Ellie cut him off. ‘I must speak with your father. He –’

‘No, Ellie. I…it’s late and you should be in bed…and besides, my father is not in at present.’

As she followed him out of the kitchen, Ellie told him worriedly, ‘I am sure that your cook is drunk, Henry. She should be turned out immediately. I am surprised that your father doesn’t have a housekeeper, by the way. Oh, and Maisie said that your father would not allow me to have a fire in the bedroom. I am sure she must be mistaken.’

When Henry stopped walking and turned round to face her, Ellie almost bumped into him.

‘I realise that things here are not…what you are used to, Ellie,’ he told her unhappily. ‘But my father –’

‘I do understand, Henry,’ Ellie tried to reassure him. ‘The house has not had a mistress for a long time, I know. Even the sheets on the bed are damp,’ she told him, wrinkling her nose. ‘If your father will allow me I shall speak with the agency my aunt uses
first thing in the morning and ask them to find us a suitable housekeeper and a new cook.’

In the shadows of the stairway, Henry made an unhappy noise in his throat, but Ellie didn’t hear it, her mind busy with all that she would have to do.

Ellie was up early in the morning, leaving Henry asleep as she washed in the icy cold bathroom and in equally cold water.

Downstairs she found the cook coughing over a pan she was stirring on the stove.

‘Good morning, Mrs Reilly,’ Ellie offered.

When her greeting was ignored Ellie felt her face begin to burn. Maisie had appeared from outside the house and was standing, wide-eyed, watching.

‘Mrs Reilly, it be Mrs Charnock,’ she told the cook in a loud whisper.

‘Mr Charnock is master here and it’s him as I take me orders from,’ the cook announced without looking at either Ellie or Maisie.

Ellie knew that her mother would have dismissed the woman on the instant for such insolence, but of course she had no right to do any such thing.

‘There was no hot water this morning, Mrs Reilly, and –’

‘If it’s ’ot water you want then youse’ll have ter come down here and boil it yourself,’ came the uncompromising response.

‘Surely the furnace heats the water,’ Ellie demanded.

‘The master won’t have it lit, madam,’ Maisie hissed. ‘Uses too many coals.’

Ellie could not believe her ears.

A smell of burning porridge assaulted her nostrils and she screwed up her nose.

‘Tek the master up his jug o’ ’ot water, Maisie, and look sharp about it,’ Mrs Reilly commanded, still ignoring Ellie as she filled a ewer of water from the large kettle on the range and Maisie rushed to obey her.

The moment Maisie left the room, Mrs Reilly cursed her and said, ‘Not right in the head, she is…useless article!’

‘What time is breakfast served, Mrs Reilly?’ Ellie enquired coolly, ignoring her comment.

‘Breakfast?’ The cook turned round and gave Ellie a glare. ‘Hoity-toity, ain’t we, to say youse only a butcher’s daughter! The master has his tea and toast in his room, and as for anyone else, if they wants breakfast then they comes in here and gets it.’

Ellie was lost for words. What was Mr Charnock thinking of, employing such a person? And as for her comments about Ellie’s parentage…It was on the tip of Ellie’s tongue to tell her that she was very proud of her origins and her father but, reminding herself of her position, she bit back her answer. It would never do for the mistress of the house to lower herself to recognise the cook’s insult.

By the end of her first week in her new home, Ellie’s hands were red raw from scrubbing the kitchen from top to bottom with strong soap. And Mrs Reilly had handed in her notice. Maisie was incapable of taking any kind of instruction but, tender-heartedly, Ellie had refused to think of having her turned out, knowing that she would be unable to find another place. Instead she had acknowledged that she could only give her the simplest of familiar tasks to do.

By the end of the second week, Ellie had turned out every china and linen cupboard in the house, setting up a flurry of dust and startling disgruntled moths, which had caused both Ellie and Maisie to sneeze violently. The best of the linen Ellie had sent to the laundry, since she had no servants to help her with such a vast amount of washing, and the rest she had repaired, sitting up each night sewing until her eyes ached and then making bags to fill with lavender and rose petals to place in the freshly cleaned cupboards.

Although everyone else kept scrupulously to the unwritten rule that dictated no woman should receive or pay calls during the first month of her marriage, Ellie did have one unexpected, and unwelcome, visitor – Henry’s cousin’s wife, Elizabeth Fazackerly.

She arrived unannounced one afternoon whilst Ellie was busy upstairs going through the linen cupboards, causing Ellie to have to run down to the hall to find out what all the commotion she could hear was about.

‘Ellie, my dear,’ Elizabeth gushed, subjecting Ellie to an embrace she did not want. ‘I know you will not be receiving callers as yet, but I own I feel we are as close as though we were sisters. Speaking of which, how is your sister? A very spirited girl, is she not? Your aunt confided to me at the wedding that she finds her headstrong wilfulness hard to bear at times.’

Already stiffening in Elizabeth’s embrace, Ellie stiffened even more at hearing her sister so criticised, but Elizabeth, oblivious to her reaction, continued, ‘You must not hesitate to let me know should you need any help managing such a large house, Ellie.’

Her sharp-eyed look around the hall as she released Ellie and stepped without invitation into the drawing room rendered Ellie speechless with affront – although she had noticed the distinct note of envy in Elizabeth’s voice as she commented on the generous size of the large mansion.

‘I confess that my dear Uncle Jarvis has complimented me on many occasions for the manner in which I run my own home. He swears he feels more content there than anywhere else, but then I have always felt that a woman should put the comfort of her family before everything. I know that you are used to living a very gay life, Ellie, running around town with your cousin Cecily, and enjoying all manner of treats, but you are a married woman now, my dear, and I hope you will understand when I say that I feel it is my
duty to warn you that Uncle Jarvis has already commented to us about your lack of skill in dealing with the servants. Mrs Reilly has left, I understand. That is such a pity. She was devoted to Uncle Jarvis.’

Devoted to her father-in-law she might have been, Ellie decided, but she had certainly not been devoted to the execution of her duties, not if the state Ellie had found the kitchen in was anything to go by!

‘I have always prided myself on my choice of servants, Ellie,’ Elizabeth informed her. ‘Only the other evening, when Uncle Jarvis dined with us, he asked me to convey his compliments to my cook.’

There! The grate was finished. As Ellie stood back to check her handiwork, the drawing-room door opened and Henry came in.

‘Ellie, what on earth…?’ he began as he looked from his wife’s tired face to the immaculate fire grate. ‘You should not be doing this,’ he announced sternly. ‘Maisie –’

‘I could not trust her with the blacking, Henry. Poor girl, it is not her fault, but last time she got it everywhere, and it took me an age to get the carpet clean. I’m afraid that dinner will be late this evening.’

Ellie was having to do all the cooking herself as they had still not got a new cook, her
father-in-law having announced that he would deal with the matter of Mrs Reilly’s replacement himself.

Unusually, Ellie’s father-in-law joined them that evening for dinner.

Since Ellie could not trust Maisie to serve at table, she was obliged to serve the food herself as well as cook it.

‘Ellie, this is delicious,’ Henry praised her warmly as he started to drink his soup.

Ellie smiled, glad to see that her father-in-law was also emptying his bowl.

‘Henry, I should like to write to my aunts soon so that we can make arrangements for my sister and my brothers to come here to live with us –’ Ellie began.

‘What? What nonsense is this?’ Ellie’s father-in-law interrupted her harshly. ‘No one comes to live in this house without my permission, and as I recollect I have certainly not agreed that you may have the rest of your family here, missie! Nor do I intend to agree to it.’

Shocked, Ellie looked at Henry, expecting him to come to her rescue, but instead he kept his gaze firmly on his soup plate, patting his lips with his napkin.

Bravely, Ellie faced Henry’s father. ‘Father-in-law, Henry has already agreed that I might –’

‘Henry has agreed?’ he cut her off angrily. ‘Henry
has no right to agree to anything. I am master of this house, not my son! My God, isn’t having the two of you living off me enough? Do you really expect me to house and feed the whole of your family as well, miss?’

Ellie went scarlet and then white with embarrassment and shame. Her soup had gone cold but she could not have eaten it anyway.

Dismayed and upset, she pushed back her chair and got to her feet, hurrying from the room.

She was upstairs in their room when Henry came to her.

‘Ellie,’ he begged her miserably, ‘please try to understand.’

‘Why didn’t you say something to your father, Henry?’ Ellie demanded.

‘This is my father’s home,’ Henry told her, avoiding meeting her eyes.

‘So they can’t come then?’ she demanded.

‘It isn’t my fault, Ellie. I cannot do anything. Once my father has made up his mind about something, it is impossible to sway him. This matter of a grandchild…’ his voice trailed away uncomfortably.

Ellie was too upset to challenge him further.

‘I am so very sorry, but there is nothing I can do. You can see for yourself what my father is like. This is his home. I am dependent upon his goodwill for everything and I cannot –’

‘It’s all right, Henry,’ Ellie told him quietly. ‘You do not have to say any more.’

‘Ellie, please do not be cross with me,’ he pleaded.

The look in his eyes was that of a child rather than a man, Ellie recognised, as she was filled with a mixture of anger and pity.