The Observations (44 page)

“That I am your
mother
?” she says. “No, dear.”

“Or my—my sister?”

She scowled. “I haven’t told nobody nothing,” she says. “D’you think I am stupid?”

“Yes.”

She wasn’t stupid. She just had a bad streak in her. But I wanted to annoy her.

“For your information,” she says, putting on the voice she used when she wanted to sound more high class. “I am a widow. Mrs. Kirk. Mrs. Kirk has never heard of you. She is come to the country to take the air for a few weeks. She is looking about her. She may settle down here. She may not.”

“But not really,” I says, for her words had struck me cold with dread.

Bridget smiled slowly. “Mrs. Kirk doesn’t know yet,” she says in a sing-song voice. “She hasn’t made up her Kirky mind.”

She turned and took a stroll around the kitchen, looking at every item—the clock, the scales, the big tureen—as if weighing up its value. There was a bread-knife on the table. The impulse to grab it and plunge it into her back, right between the shoulder blades, was overpowering. My fingers reached out and closed around the handle. I snatched up the knife, then jerked open a drawer and threw it inside. After that, I slammed the drawer shut.

Bridget had come to a halt at the door that led to the rest of the house. She stared at it a moment, then looked at me a bit sentimental again.

“What did you tell them about yourself, dear?” she says, gently. “Did you not need a character to get your job?”

I shook my head. “They think I was a housekeeper before. I didnt need a character.” I paused, then I says, weakly, “I have liked it here, you know.”

My mother blinked and looked hurt. “So I see,” she says.

She took another stroll around the kitchen, I had the feeling she was working herself up to something. Then she approached me with something like concern on her face.

“Would you look at your hands?” she says.

She took hold of my fingers and rubbed them. I let her do it, and didn’t move away.

“You’ll end up like a washerwoman,” she says. “Look, I’ve money left from what Levy was giving me. I am not really going to stay here, don’t be daft. Sure why would I stay here? I’ve got myself a nice new place all set up back in Glasgow, in King Street. Remember King Street? Two lovely rooms I’ve took, all furnished so they are.”

“Good for you,” I says.

She put her head to one side and considered me, a bit wistful. “My wee girl, all grown up.” Then her eyes twinkled. “Jesus, you’ve got the curse now and everything, by God!”

I blushed hotly, wondering how she could know such a thing just by looking at me (for it was true). But then she says, “Or don’t tell me—you wash and hang out the rags for her upstairs?”

I shook my head in shame. To hide my face, I turned and began to poke the fire. My mother sighed. Out the corner of my eye, I seen her glance again at the clock.

“Grand rooms in King Street,” she says. “You’d like them, so you would.”

Fearful of where the conversation was heading, I began shovelling coal for all I was worth. “Does Joe like them?” I says.

She didn’t speak for a minute, because of the noise of the coal. Then when I put down the scuttle, she says, “That’s what I was going to tell you.”

I turned to face her.

She smiled at me, a bit shame-faced. “What I said before, dear. It wasn’t quite true. Well you see, what it is, Joe’s gone. He’s away to America. To New York. He went a few weeks ago.”

“America?!”

“I know!” she says, mistaking my surprise for concern. “Isn’t it awful? With there’s that terrible war on there and everything. He might get hurt.”

I was reasonably confident that the war was not actually taking place in New York and I said as much.

My mother looked puzzled. “Really?” she says. “I thought New York was in America.”

“It is.”

“Well then!” she says.

I might have found her amusing were I not related to her and were it not for a few other reasons. As it was, she always managed to get up my nose.

“What’s he doing in New York anyway?” I says.

Ah now, you see, he had to go at short notice. It was the polis were after him. All a mistake, of course. He didn’t do it. Anyway lucky he got a tip-off and they were too late. He’ll come back when it all dies down. But until then—I am—“

Of a sudden, and quite unexpectedly, her lip trembled and she began to weep. I felt an impulse to back away from her but that would have meant stepping into the fire, so I moved to one side. She pulled a snoot-cloot from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. I patted her on the shoulder, it was as much as I could bring myself to do. She wept on for a few minutes. Eventually, she sniffed a few times and dried her cheeks.

“Listen dear,” she says. “Would you ever think about coming home with me? The two of us together. Just like the grand old days.”

What grand old days she was on about, I haven’t a baldy. But at last, here was what she wanted. It wasn’t money she was after at all. It was me. She wanted
me
back. Without Joe, without somebody, she was nothing. She wanted company. Oh, she might well have some money left, but when it ran out she’d have me out on the streets faster than fart. I’d start taking a budge before I went, just to be able to face the night. And it would be a short slip from there back to other things, terrible things that I did not want even to consider.

I must have looked most awful troubled for at once she shrugged and started to make light of her suggestion. “It was only a thought, she says, unpinning her veil. ”For when you get tired of it here. Or if you get the chuck.“

Her tone was light—but had she meant to imply something by that last remark? I was only too aware of how my fate now lay in her hands. It would take just a few words in the right ear, I’d be exposed to master James as a fraud and then given the rogues march.

She was smiling at me, holding up her veil. “Are you coming for a drink or what?” she says.

I shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” she says. She let the veil fall. There was a moment when I thought she might try to hug me. But then she just reached out and squeezed my arm. “Well, the offer’s there,” she says.

Without hardly knowing how I did it, I managed to get her out the house. I watched her pick her way across the yard and even when she was swallowed by the night I still expected her to come rushing back out the darkness towards me. And so I quickly closed and bolted the door. Then I went back to sit on the floor by the fire with the lamp turned out this time so that nobody could watch me from outside, and there I sat, as dull and waxen and stupid as a stump of candle, almost too frightened to think.

All this while I had imagined myself safe. Even when I’d seen that notice in the paper, I thought she wouldn’t find me. But now I realised that no matter where I went, she would track me down. Joe wasn’t coming back and I think she knew it. She’d never let me be. It was only a matter of time before she got me fired. And then where would I go, with no character and no money? She’d only come after me again and even if I found another job, she’d spoil it for me by telling them what I was.

Of course, my missus didn’t care about all that. Dear lovely missus! She didn’t mind what I’d been. Poor missus, who had kept me on, even though she’d found out all about me! But master James was of a different kidney. He wouldn’t want tongues clacking, to harm his election prospects. The fact of the matter was, his wifes word counted for nothing. Even if she wasn’t
1/2
mad, it didn’t matter whether she wanted me or not.

She would have stood up for me though, I knew she would have.

That is, if she’d been in her right mind. But of course, she wasn’t in her right mind. And there was a strong chance she might never, ever recover.

And whose fault was that?

As I stared into the dying embers of the fire, I kept on seeing a vision, like a picture of the future. There was me, down the Gallowgate, laying drunk in the filthy gutter and some brute in dirty clothes and big boots stomping on me. And as he kicks me over onto my back, my face just visible behind the tangle of my hair, you can see that I am smiling. Smiling. Because I know that such treatment is no more than I deserve.

PART FIVE

20

I
Am Made Captive

A never went to bed at all that night, only sat by the kitchen hearth until the dawn broke, chill and grey and thick with fog. By that time, I had made up my mind what I was going to do. First I took paper and pen and wrote a note addressed to my mother at The Gushet. I tellt her that I had thought over her proposal and was agreeable to it, I would go back with her to Glasgow and take up our old life there. I said that before I left I had a few things to do, but asked her to meet me at 3 o’clock in the Railway Tavern, from which place we could easy buy tickets and take a late afternoon train.

After that, I wrote to master James. This letter was a flipsight more difficult. All through the darkest hours of the night I had agonised over whether to work a notice of a month, as I knew that was the done thing and I didn’t want to let him or missus down. But now that my mind was made up to go, I wanted to be away as soon as possible. Rushing towards my fate was how it felt, and the grubbier and more squalid it was and the quicker I embarked upon it, the better. Besides which my mother had the patience of a flea. If I waited a month she’d get restless. Better to go now than risk her blabbing her trap off all over the place. I felt pig-sick leaving master James in the lurch but I knew it would be for the best. He’d find a girl to replace me soon enough. And for dear sake whoever she was, she could not make a worse fist of it than I had.

The letter to master James ended up very stiff and formal.

Dear mister Reid, Forgive me but circumstances have arose and I have to leave Castle Haivers at once, there is something of my past has caught up with me and it is better that I go now before any damage is done to your name or to missus. I apologise for the inconvenience caused but have no choice. I have enjoyed working for missus I cannot tell you how much, it has been an honour and a pleasure to serve her.

I hope with all my heart she recovers from whatever it is that ails her.

Yours truly

Bessy Buckley

PS Please take good care of her make sure she has all she needs and is comfortable and you know fresh air can do her no harm.

Of course it was not my place to say such things, but it no longer mattered. I was hardly risking my job. And by the time he read it, I would be long gone.

The unveiling of the fountain was to take place that afternoon down at the Cross. Most of the farm servants would be there, and the doctor, the Reverend and probably
1/2
the flipping village besides. I knew from overhearing discussions of the plans that the ceremony was due to begin at one o’clock. After the speeches and all this the invited guests would head over to the dining room above the Swan Inn which master James had hired for the purpose. He had says I could go to the unveiling if I wanted, but I had declined. I knew there would be nobody near the house all afternoon and not another opportunity like it to say goodbye to missus. Of course, Curdle Features would be left behind and I’d need some ruse to get past her but I wasn’t too worried. If all else failed, I’d give her the truth. Surely even
she
could not refuse me a few minutes alone with my missus for a last farewell.

Ordinarily I would have sent Hector down the village with the note for my mother but I was avoiding him and so I loitered about the gate until the postman came by and got him to deliver it instead. The letter for master James I kept hid in the pocket of my apron, intending to leave it in the study for him to find upon his return that evening. As well as the usual chores, the morning was took up with running around like a lilty after the master—sewing a button onto his coat, locating a lost cufflink, smoothing once again a shirt that had somehow got creased on the hanger, sponging an egg-stain off his waistcoat. He himself was in a panic because the temperature had dropped overnight and the water that fed the fountain had froze. He spent
1/2
the morning at the Cross, trying to get the men to thaw the pipes. Then he had to race back and change his clothes before his guests arrived to meet him at the Swan. He charged about the place, up and down the stairs, from study to chamber and back again. The house was in a state of chassis. And then abruptly towards midday he was gone again, leaving behind a silence and stillness that would have been welcome, except it left me alone with my thoughts.

I scrubbed the kitchen, until every surface gleamed. Then I went upstairs and put all my things in a bundle. Except Noras frocks which I hung on the wall to leave behind, for they did not belong to me and I did not want to be accused of thieving. For going away (how strange to put it like that, as though it were to be a happy ending with a marriage, when really nothing could be further from the truth!), let me say then for
leaving,
I put on what I had been wearing when I arrived, the yellow satin with its lace and bows. That frock was once a favourite of mine but now it seemed gaudy and desperate uncomfortable. My old stays I shoved in the bundle, I hadn’t wore them for donkeys years at least not since soon after I had arrived. Perhaps I would grow used to them again when I was back in Glasgow, but for the moment I needed to breathe.

That left
The Observations.
I did not want to leave them behind in case master James destroyed them. Perhaps in the future missus would get well, and I could send them to her. But in the meantime I folded the ledger in old newspaper and stuffed it into my bundle along with my clothes. Then I cleaned my room from top to bottom. At least when I was gone they would not be able to say I was a slattern.

Last of all I went down and placed my letter to master James on his desk and at 1/2 past 12 exactly, I knocked at the door of missus room. Only four little raps of my knuckles on wood, that was all, yet how significant they seemed for I knew I should not be knocking on that door again, not ever. The key turned in the lock. Then the door swung open. There stood C. Features, slack-jawed and chewing, one hand in the pocket of her skirt while in the other she held an apple. As usual she kept her foot planted behind the door, as though I might push past her into the room. She said nothing at first. There was a look she was using on me of late, ever since she’d been put in charge of missus. It was calculated to express equal amounts of amusement and pity. She was using it on me now, the skyte, as she took in what I was wearing. She must have practised in the mirror, it was indeed most irritating.