The Observations (30 page)

Not once had missus shown any interest in getting
me
to walk for her, neither inside the house nor out of it. I was fit to be tied. Boys oh dear, was I raging! I grabbed
The Observations
and threw them on the floor. And there—beneath them in the drawer, atop all the maid Journals—I seen another book, this one bound with a length of pale red ribbon.

I reached in and pulled it out, it was nought but a cheap accompt book just like the one missus had give me. The ribbon around it fell away with one tug. I flicked open the cover. Inside, someone had wrote in copperplate letters the name “Nora Hughes‘. The pages were full of dated entries in the same hand. It was Noras journal. So here it was, the mysterious object. The words of the blessed Saint.

Of a sudden I realised what missus had been doing in the attic. She kept all her maids journals here in the drawer, probably including this one of Noras which she must have took upstairs with her in order to compare the handwriting with that in the skylight—only to find that the message on the glass had gone.

I turned the pages and read a few entries just to see what Nora wrote like. Her spelling was fair and by gob she knew where to put a punctuation mark (something I myself aspire to but even though I have improved since those days I am still not always quite sure where all the little goat droppings should go). Her letters were neat as a bees toe yet despite these merits in presentation I failed to see how what Nora had wrote was any better than my efforts. There was no spark to the content or anything of interest. Suffice to say for the most part she just noted down what she did about the place. Sometimes she wrote about the experiments, what she had to do, how many repetitions &c. And sometimes (no doubt on instruction from the missus) she would tell about her thoughts and what went through her mind. Each entry much the same as the last. The book was about
1/2
full. I read a dozen or so pages and then flicked to the end to see what her last entry said. I cannot remember the exact wording but write here an approximation.

Walked without stopping for my lady across country today, after work was done. Encountered no obstacles bar a few fences, which were climbed over. Easterly direction was kept, according to my lady’s instructions. It was a beautiful day and the walk gave me a chance to think. Find that I am very reflective just now, and was lost in daydreaming until a terrible sight became visible not far from the path—a magpie tearing apart a small animal or bird that was still alive. The dreadful ear-splitting shrieks and cries of this dying creature were most tormenting. Wanted to stop the brutal killing but dared not— and of course, had to keep walking without pause if to follow my lady’s instructions. Reasoned that—even if the magpie was chased away—the little animal was bound to die of its fatal injuries. Also knew that the courage to kill it is not in me. As result, never found out exactly what kind of creature it was— perhaps a mouse or newborn rabbit or fledgling bird of some sort. Eyes were averted and tears were shed until I heard my lady’s whistle, then dried my eyes and turned back to Castle Haivers—a slightly longer route was taken that meant the tragic scene of death could be avoided.

My lady says that in a day or two, with God’s grace and weather permitting, another walk to be undertaken, only this time I must keep heading north from the stile in our top field, a direction not taken before now. My lady has hinted that this time she might not whistle for me to return and that I am to keep walking until my conscience dictates me to stop. She did not explain but I believe she wants to know how far I will go to do her bidding. She should know by now that of course there is nothing I would not do for her and there is no distance I would not travel, even if the boots were walked off my feet.

Perhaps am in too sensitive a frame of mind these days but have decided that I hate magpies. They are the most horrible of birds, worse even than crows.

Here the last entry ended, a lot of balderdash about birds and wee beasties. But I was intrigued and irritated by the references to walking.
walked without stopping for my lady
and
“Another walk to be undertaken, only this time I must keep heading north‘
&c.

This walking caper. You would think it something special that only Certain people was good enough to do. My heart throbbed, it was a pang of jealousy. That missus was independent of me, that I did not have control over her thoughts and feelings, that she could actually another girl more than me, think her a better servant or entrust her with special experiments—all these were sources of great frustration. Most vexatious of all was that I could do nothing about it Christ the night I hated this Nora. And I hadn’t even met her! I was sick to the back teeth of her perfect flipping ways. What did she have that I did not to make missus so fond of her? After all, she was nothing but a pile of rotting bones.

I was about to close the notebook and shove it back in the drawer when I noticed some thin paper shreds caught in the stitching and— upon examining the crease of the spine more closely—I realised that several pages had been removed. Not ripped out, as that would have left frayed edges and those I would have noticed straight away. But cut very close to the binding, quite deliberately and with something very sharp.

Now given the dates and what was described in the rest of the book it seemed a fair bet that what was in the missing pages was an account of Noras last days at Castle Haivers, perhaps including this walk north that she’d mentioned in her last entry. But why would she have wrote things down and then cut them out? Had she decided to hide her doings from missus? Perhaps when she went on the walk she got in a fight. Or was she being diddled by a secret sweetheart? I tell you what, I was highly delighted to have discovered something that might blacken Noras character for once. Sicken her, the mimsey mouse. Well if she could do a walk for missus, then so could I, fine rightly. Not that I’d be able to
tell
Arabella about it because that would mean revealing that I’d been snooping about the place, in her drawers and all. But I was most curious to walk in the footsteps of
MY RIVAL!

I put wheels under myself to get through my chores and by 1/2 past 3 o’clock I was heading up the top field with a coat on my back and a hat on my head. The coat was one missus had give me, an old one or hers made of grey worsted. The hat I was none too happy about, I d found it in the cloakroom, it was an old-fangled poke bonnet that a granny might have wore, it kept my lugs warm—although a few months previous I would not have placed it on my head even had you paid me
one hundred
pounds.

At the highest point of the field was a wall with a slate stile set into it, this I climbed and then stood for a moment on the top step. Behind me in a hollow lay the woods and Castle Haivers. I was about to go on when I was startled by the faint but distinct slam of a door. The granny bonnet restricted my view and so I had to turn my whole entire head in the direction of the noise, which had come from somewhere to the left of the woods where the bothies lay. I was surprised to see how close I had passed to these for I could look down on them like they were a set of dolls houses. A wisp of smoke rose from one of the little chimneys. Then a movement caught my eye and I saw a miniature Hector scuttle away from the buildings towards the trees, perhaps he was headed for the house well he was too late the scut, there was nobody home, he should have been there in the morning to help with the flipping bags so he should. I considered whistling and giving him a wave but then remembered my daft bonnet and changed my mind, I’d never hear the end of it.

Stretched out before me was another field of grass, sloping downhill. Beyond this, the land levelled out though the distant horizon was invisible because of mist. I jumped down and carried on walking. Behind me, Castle Haivers disappeared below the brow of the hill. On I went, keeping to the hedgerows until I came to a narrow dirt road where the pasture seemed to end. Straight ahead lay an area of scrubland, blotted here and there with great heaps of coal. The track I’d been following continued across this expanse and so I pressed on, for I knew that if I kept heading away from the Great Road I would stay roughly northward bound.

This was now a bleak, scarred landscape that I walked through. Against the wintry sky a few bare trees showed black and scrawny, bent from the prevailing wind. To my mind they looked like giants lifting their arms and fleeing in shock from some great terror. Not a bird sang in that place and nothing of beauty grew, it was all rusty bracken, moss and weeds. The air grew colder as the light began to fade. Mist rolled along the ground like smoke and a scent of burning hung on the air. I gave up trying to keep my skirts clean for in places the path was only muck and glour. My face was numb with cold and my eyes watered.

But for flipsake. It was only walking!
Anybody
could walk. And I was fairly sure that I was doing it just as well as old Miss Perfect. And under worse circumstances what was more! For had she not been doing it in summer whereas now it was cold enough to freeze your fartle-berries. I found myself wondering whether she had indeed trod this same path or crossed this burn or stared at that tall works chimney visible to the north-east, the black smoke rising from it to mingle with the mist and clouds. What was on her mind as she trotted along with her neb stuck in the air? I doubt she would have liked getting her skirts dirty. Probably she was plotting how to worm herself further into Arabellas ear, the cleg. And she was that Holy it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d tripped along saying her prayers. As for whether something had happened on the walk that she might have wanted to keep secret, well as for that I was mystified for there was nought about here to speak of. Nowhere to get drunk or in a fight. And certainly this was no lovers lane, not at all the kind of place you would go to join giblets with somebody.

So lost was I in my own thoughts about Nora that I failed to notice the ground directly before me, which dipped away sharp of a sudden. I stepped into mid-air and lost my footing then tumbled down a slope. I only just managed to stop myself from slithering further by grabbing handfuls of coarse grass.

Stunned I was and lay there stock still for a moment to catch my breath. My ankle throbbed, but I was not hurt bad. In the process of saving myself, I had twisted round to face the way I’d come. My first thought was I had fell into some kind of sunk fence for at the moment of tripping I had glimpsed another grassy slope opposite and I’d heard tell of these hazards and the folk that stepped into them by accident to the great amusement of their companions. But then I turned my head and seen that I was wrong. For at the base of the hollow or cutting formed by the two slopes (and stretching out to either side where they disappeared eventually into the mist) were wooden sleepers and gleaming metal rails.

I was on the point of getting up when I became aware of a faint whispering close at hand. The air seemed to shimmer as the whisper increased to a roar and then all at once there was a shriek as a great black train hurtled out the mist and passed before me in a Pandemonium of fire and steam and smoke, with a wail and the clang of a bell and the many lit windows flashing by so near that Jesus Murphy you could have reached out and touched them.

I had to run most of the way back to beat the dark. All the way I was thinking about Nora and the railway line. Right enough I couldn’t help but wonder about Janet Murray and all those hints she’d dropped that night when I’d been at The Gushet, about missus being involved in Noras death. But I was trying not to jump to conclusions. Certainly it was not
impossible
that Nora had been hit by a train whilst out walking for missus. But surely it was unlikely.
The Observations
did go on about how loyal and obedient Nora was, all this. But I doubted that her obedience included stepping into the path of a moving train just because missus told her to keep walking without stopping, that was not so much dutiful as plain daft. Of course it might have been an accident, after all had I not near tripped onto the line myself. But she’d have had to fall down at the exact moment a train was passing. Either that or banged her head and been knocked out cold. Otherwise she could just have picked herself up and gone on her way.

Or had Janet been implying something worse? The most dreadful thing I could think of was that missus had followed Nora to this desolate place and then pushed her under a train. But that was just ridiculous. Missus held Nora in great esteem. (Why, I don’t know. But she did.) It just was not possible that she could have done her harm.

Besides which. Catch yourself on! I didn’t even know if this was the tight line. Sure were there not railway tracks all over the countryside that Nora might have stumbled onto by accident, all by herself. Matter °f fact master James had a map on the study wall upon which, if I recollected right, the position of all the local railways was indicated.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t too worried about missus being to blame, not a bit of it. But I just thought that I might take a look at that map, if only to prove Janet wrong.

When I got back the house was cold as the grave. I headed straight for the study where I lit several candles and their light cheered me a little. Then with lamp in hand I peered at the maps on the wall. Most were of the Empire but I soon found the one that depicted the local area. It was smaller than the rest and framed in dark varnished wood. I lifted it off the hook and set it on the desk amongst the candles. Then I leaned over it to take a look.

There was Snatter at the crossroads, a cluster of buildings straggling along either side of the Great Road. I found Castle Haivers nearby marked next a group of tiny fir trees. On the far side of the wood, the bothies were shown as four little squares. To the west, Flemyngs farm, the Thrash Burn itself and its tributaries spreading out across the map like thread veins. And there sure enough was a railway, a black and white line that curved across the country towards Bathgate. But a little further to the east another similar line swep up and entered the same town. And to the south and west there were yet more lines, thinner than these two, but with rails marked across them, I reckoned they must have been branch lines that served coalpits or works of some sort.