The Observations

The Observations

Jane Harris

My missus she often said to me, “Now then Bessy, don’t be calling me missus.” She said this especially when the minister was coming for his tea. My missus wanted me to call her “marm‘ but I always forgot. At first I forgot by accident and then I forgot on purpose just to see the look on her face.

My missus was always after me for to write things down in a little book. She give me the book and pen and ink the day I arrived. “Now then Bessy,” says she, “I want you to write down your daily doings in this little book and I’ll take a look at it from time to time.” This was after she found out I could read and write. When she found that out her face lit up like she’d lost a penny and found sixpence. “Oh!” says she, “and who taught you?” And I told her it was my poor dead mother, which was a lie for my mother was alive and most likely blind drunk down the Gallowgate as usual and even if she was sober she could barely have wrote her own name on a magistrates summons. But my mother never was sober if she was awake. And when she was asleep, she was unconscious.

But wait on. I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin nearer the beginning.

PART ONE

1

I Find a New Place

I had reason to leave Glasgow, this would have been about three four years ago, and I had been on the Great Road about five hours when I seen a track to the left and a sign that said “Castle Haivers‘. Now there’s a coincidence I thought to myself, because here was I on my way across Scratchland to have a look at the Edinburgh castle and perhaps get a job there and who knows marry a young nobleman or prince. I was only 15 with a head full of sugar and I had a notion to work in a grand establishment.

Not only that but this lad from the Highlands had fell into step with me the past hour, he would have been about my age and he had been to get a tooth pulled. He kept dragging his lip down to show me the hole. I was sick of this boy and his grin and his questions, fair are you going? fair do you live? fwot is your name? fwould you like to lie down with me?—all this. I had told him a whole clatter of lies hoping he would go away but he was stuck to me like horse dung on a road sweepers shoe. If I slowed down he slowed down, if I sped up he sped up, if I stopped to fix my shawl or shift my bundle, what did he do but stand with his hands in his pockets to watch. Once or twice he got a jack on him would have put your eye out, you could see it poking behind the trousers, and the feet on him were filthy.

I have to admit there was one added factor in my desire to leave the Great Road and that was the pair of polis that was coming towards us on horseback. Big buckers by the look of them. I had spotted them in the distance five minutes back, their top hats and big buttons, and ever since I had been looking for a way off the road, one that didn’t involve me running across a field and getting mucked up to the oxters.

So I stopped walking and turned to the Jocky. “This is where I go off,” I says, pointing at the sign to the castle.

“I fwhill be coming with you,” he says. “Hand you can be making me dinner. Hand hafterwards fwhee can be making a baby”

“What a good idea,” says I and when he stepped forward as if to kiss me I grabbed his danglers and give them a twist. “Make your own babies,” I says. “Now away and flip yourself.”

Off I went up the lane and when he followed me I gave him a shove and a few more flip offs and stamped on his bare foot and that was the last I seen of him, for a while anyway.

The lane to the castle wound up a slope between two beech hedges. It was September but uncommon warm and lucky for me as I had no coat. After I had been walking about a minute there was the faint thud of hoofs on dirt and I turned to look back at the Great Road. The two grunts trotted past on their way towards Glasgow. Did they even turn their heads, did they buckie. Hurrah, says I to myself and good flipping riddance. What I always say is if you can avoid the scrutiny of the law then why not.

With them out the way I thought I would have a quick skelly at the castle then find somewhere to sleep before it got dark. I had only
6
Parma violets and two shillings to my name and Gob only knew when I would get more, so I could ill afford a room. But I was hoping for a barn or a bothy where I could lay my head a few hours then press on to Edinburgh once it got light.

I had gone no more than two steps when what did I see but a red-haired country girl about my age come skittering round the corner. She wore a dark stuff frock and plaid shawl and she was dragging a box along the ground by means of a leather strap. Even though she was in a queer hurry, she was laughing away to herself like a woman possessed. The most notable thing about her was her skin, very rough and red it was like she had had a go at her phiz with a nutmeg grater. I stepped out her road and gave her good afternoon as she passed. But she just cackled in my face and carried on stumbling towards the Great Road, dragging her box behind her, there was not much would surprise me then nor now, but all the same you expect more manners from country folk.

The lane in front of me dipped right then left through fields, climbed again and after about ten minutes walking it passed the gate of a big mansion house in amongst a scutter of trees. I could see no castle but there was a woman running about the gravel drive and lawn. This way and that she went, waggling her hands in the air and every so often clapping. At first I thought she was gobaloon but then I looked over the wall and seen she was only chasing a pig. It looked like tremendous fun.

“Wait on, missus,” I says, “I’ll give you a hand.”

Did you ever try to catch a pig? It’s not as easy as you think. That bucker had us running in circles. He shot round the back of the house to the yard and we followed. I nearly got him the once but he was a slippery old wretch he squirmed out my grasp like he was buttered. I would have dove after him but I did not want to ruin my good frock. Your woman kept shouting instructions to me, “Quickly!” she goes and “Watch out!” She was English, I realised. I had met English people before but never an English woman. At last the two of us cornered the pig by the hen run. We chased him along a fence then shooed him back into the sty and your woman slammed the gate shut.

I watched her as she stood there panting a moment or two. She would have been about 27 then. Her back was slender though it looked as though she didn’t wear stays. And the colour was high in her cheeks with all the running but you could see by her forehead that her skin was pale as cream, there was not a freckle on her, she was alabaster. The frock she wore was silk, a watery shade, more blue than green, she struck me as being shockingly well dressed for running about after pigs.

In due course she got her breath back. “Treacherous trollop,” she says through her teeth. For a minute I thought she was talking about the pig until she added, “If I ever see her again, I’ll take her and I’ll—” She clenched her fists but did not finish the sentence.

The red-haired girl dragged her box through my minds eye. “Did somebody do you wrong, missus?” I says.

Your woman looked at me startled, I think she had forgot I was there. “No,” she says. “The gate of the sty was left open. Probably an accident.” Then she frowned at me and says, “What are you exactly?”

This threw me into confusion. “What am I?” I says. “Well, I was a— I suppose you could say I was a housekeeper for a—”

“No, no,” she says. “What I mean is are you a Highlander?”

“Indeed not,” I says most indignant. “I’ve never been near the Highlands.” She was still looking at me so I says, “I was born Irish. But I’m more of the Scottish persuasion now.”

She seemed pleased enough about that. “Irish,” she says. While we was chasing the pig two or three strands of her hair had fell down and now she gazed at me very thoughtful as she pinned them back up. You could have floated in her eyes they was that wide, and pale green like the sea over sand. At length she says, “A housekeeper?”

“Yes, missus. For a Mr. Levy of Hyndland, near Glasgow”

“I don’t think I ever saw a housekeeper in such bright clothes,” she says. Her mouth gave a twitch, like she might laugh, perhaps the sight of my frock cheered her up. It was a beauty, right enough, bright yellow with little blue buttons and white satin bows at the front, admittedly it was not as clean as when I had set out that morning. There was a smudge at the hem and the lace was ripped this was because the Highland boy had at one stage got me pinned to the ground, I had to near enough wrench his ear off before he let me up.

“I am between places,” I says. “My Mr. Levy he died on me and I am just now on my way to Edinburgh to find another situation.”

“I see,” says your woman. She folded her arms and took a turn around me, studying me from a few different angles. When she came back to face me, she looked doubtful. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any outdoors work?” she says.

“Well, as a matter of fact I have,” I says, and without a word of a lie too, for a good deal of my work was outdoors before I was taken in by my Mr. Levy.

Your woman nodded. “What about cows?” she says.

“What about them?”

“Can you milk a cow?”

“Oh certainly,” I says without hesitation. “A cow, yes, I can milk a cow, that’s no problem at all, I was born milking cows.”

“Good.” She indicated some buildings in the distance. “We keep a farm over there, the Mains. You can have something to eat and drink and then let’s see you milk a cow.”

“Ah well,” says I quick, “it’s a while since I done it now.”

But I don’t think she heard me because she didn’t reply, just led me across the yard to the pump and give me a tin cup that was hanging on a nail. “Help yourself,” she says.

I drank two cupfuls. All the while she was watching me with those eyes. I says, “I might be a bit out of practice with the cows now. I may have lost the knack, I don’t know.”

“Are you hungry?” she says.

Gob was I and I tellt her as much. She pointed to a door in the house. “There’s bread in there on the table,” she says. “Take a slice.”

“That’s very kind of you, missus,” I says and did as I was bid.

The kitchen was a fair size but Jesus Murphy was it a shambles. A pail of milk had been overturned and there was lines of oats scattered on the floor and a smashed teapot laying against the skirting board. When I stepped in, a black cat was lapping at the spilled milk but as soon as it seen me it ran out another door with a yowl. I peered about me. The fire was out but there was a terrible scorched smell in the air. At first I wondered was it the runaway pig had made the mess. But when I looked more closely I seen that the oats had been scattered deliberately, in actual fact the lines of them formed four letters of the alphabet to spell a vulgar expression for a ladys private parts, I will not write it here but I thought to myself it would have to have been the very clever pig done that.

There was no sign of any cook or maid, so I cut myself a slice of oat bread from the loaf on the table and ate it and then I cut another one and I started to eat that and while I was eating I cut a 3rd slice and tucked it down my frock between my two titties. The bread lacked salt but I would have ate the snibs off the windows I was that hungry. As I threw the bread into me, I was wondering how difficult can it be to milk a cow. You grab the dangler bits and pull, for dear sake I had seen it done manys a time as I swanned about on market day only not close at hand. I was a city girl, milk came in a pail and went in your tea, I did not even like milk and now because of my own stupid pride I would have to squeeze it out a cow.

I cut another slice of bread and stashed that in my frock just in case then I went back outside, your woman was where I left her by the pump.

“There you are,” she says. “I thought you were lost.”

“Oh, no missus, only it was such marvellous bread I didn’t want to rush the slice.”

She didn’t say anything about that, she just sniffed and turned on her heel. I hared after her. “That’s a tremendous place you have here,” I called out. “By Jove it is.” But my words fell on deaf ears she did not even turn her head, I had no choice but to follow.

We walked away from the mansion house, up a back lane that led to the farm buildings and from there across a yard and into a big shed. The place was heaving with cows there was about twenty of them which is a lot of cows when you think about it and even when you don’t. The stench in there would have knocked you down. There was two milkmaids stood talking up the far end, sisters by the looks of them, all dressed up in the cornthrasher duds they were, the boots and striped aprons. I near enough laughed out loud. To my mind they looked a right pair of bogtrotters but then I was only young and thought that anything in the country was to be looked down upon and mocked. Your woman went and spoke to them and then the two maids turned and stared down the length of the byre at me, their caps was comical but you would not have said their expressions was friendly. I gave them a smile and a wave, neither one of them waved back. The sour phiz on the pair of them, it is an unexplained miracle how the milk did not turn on a daily basis.