The Tulip Girl (5 page)

Frank led the way towards the lean-to barn at the side of the house. From his trouser pocket he pulled out a bunch of keys on the end of a long chain attached to his braces and inserted a key
into the Yale lock.

‘You stand there,’ he said firmly. ‘Both of you.’

As he stepped into the dark interior and switched on a light, Maddie and Nick leant against the door jambs, peering inside.

‘This is a Lister engine,’ Frank explained. ‘It drives this generator that’s linked to these batteries.’

The engine and the generator were set on a concrete plinth in the centre of the barn, but close by, set against one wall, was a wooden rack holding three rows of glass containers with lead
plates suspended in each one and with cables running between them.

‘These are full of sulphuric acid,’ Frank warned. ‘And the current is what they call direct current. Very dangerous.’ His face was serious. ‘It might kill a person
if they touched the bare wires and the acid would burn if you got any on you. So promise me, lass, you won’t ever come in here on your own. You’ll hear us start up the generator about
once a week to charge up the batteries, but as long as you do as I say, there’s nothing to worry about. And this . . .’ He was pointing to one side of the rack of batteries now.
‘Is the control panel.’

It seemed to Maddie to be a confusing array of dials and switches. ‘What’s it all do, Mr Frank?’ she asked, mystified, yet intrigued.

‘It generates the electricity that feeds the house and all the lighting.’

He switched off the light and stepped out of the barn, closing the door carefully behind him and checking that it was locked. ‘See these?’ He pointed to cables running above them
from the corner of the barn across the yard to the hen-house and the buildings around the crewyard. ‘They’re connected to lights in all the buildings.’

‘It’s very clever,’ Maddie said with genuine admiration.

‘Well, we’re too far out for mains electricity. A lot of farms out in the countryside have their own system. It’s not so unusual.’ Frank smiled down at her, touched by
her ingenuous praise. ‘Now, let’s show you the front garden and then, except for the rest of the fields, you’ve about seen it all. I’m sure Mrs Trowbridge will have our
breakfast waiting. I bet you’re hungry, lass, aren’t you?’

It took a week for Maddie to learn how to milk properly and, even then, she was much slower than the experienced Michael and even the younger Nick. Between milking, she was
expected to help in the dairy, churning the butter, and in the house helping Harriet, who was, Maddie had now learned, the housekeeper. She and her son were treated like members of Frank’s
own family and Maddie’s mistake had been a natural one to make. To outsiders, Harriet had all the appearance of being the farmer’s wife. Only those within the walls of the farmhouse
knew that Frank Brackenbury and Harriet Trowbridge went to their own bedrooms each night and, as far as the young girl was aware, stayed there.

Michael, Maddie learned, was in charge of the milk round. After milking each morning he would set off with the horse and cart and with three or four milk churns on the back.

‘You’ll have to come with me one day, young’un,’ he told Maddie. ‘I could do with some help some mornings. All this traipsing up and down folks’ paths to
fetch their milkcans and then all the way back to the door to deliver it.’ He sniffed. ‘Time was when they’d come out to the cart and fetch it themselves. Folks is getting lazier
I reckon.’ He winked at her. ‘I blame the War.’

Maddie laughed. ‘I’ve heard that before. Mrs Potter was always saying it.’

‘Who’s Mrs Potter?’

‘The matron at the Home.’

The young man’s face sobered and there was pity in his dark brown eyes. ‘Were you happy there?’

Maddie shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Dunno,’ and added wisely, ‘it was all I’d ever known really . . .’ She paused, omitting to tell him of her brief times of trial
in foster homes. ‘I’ve never known anything different.’

‘Are you happy here?’

Her smile broadened in genuine pleasure so that he smiled too. ‘Oh yes.’

‘So you don’t miss your old home, then?’

Now a tiny cloud shadowed her face. ‘There’s only one person I miss. My friend, Jenny.’

‘Who’s Jenny?’

Maddie told him. ‘I promised to write, but – but I haven’t had the chance.’ She hesitated, not wanting to sound ungrateful.

He grinned. ‘We’ve kept you too busy, you mean?’

‘It’s not that. It’s . . .’ She stopped.

‘Go on,’ he prompted.

‘I – I haven’t any writing paper and envelopes or – or a stamp,’ she blurted out.

‘Ah,’ was all he said as he turned away, but the following day, when Michael returned from his milk round he handed her a brown paper bag.

‘There,’ he said, smiling down at her, his brown eyes teasing, ‘now you’ve no excuse not to write to your little friend.’

Opening the bag, Maddie found a pad of writing paper, a packet of matching envelopes, six postage stamps and even a fountain pen and a bottle of blue ink.

‘Oh thank you, thank you,’ she said gazing up at him, her eyes filling with tears.

Maddie March had never known such kindness.

As the young man nodded, winked and then turned to stride away across the yard, Maddie watched him go, adoration in her blue eyes.

‘I meant you to buy new clothes for the girl, Harriet. Not someone else’s cast-offs from Mother Topham’s market stall. She’ll look like a
ragamuffin.’

‘That’s just what she is.’ Harriet’s voice was shrill. ‘A wilful little ragamuffin bastard that nobody wants.’

‘Harriet!’ Frank was shocked. ‘I never thought to hear such words pass your lips.’ Now there was sarcasm in his tone. ‘And you, a good Christian woman. Besides, how
can you say that about her? She’s only been here five minutes and I certainly haven’t seen any sign of wilfulness. Have you?’

‘You didn’t see that matron at the orphanage, Frank Brackenbury. Couldn’t wait to get rid of Miss Madeleine March. Why, she even helped load the girl’s box on to the cart
herself. Oh, I could tell all right. I dare bet you – and as you’ve just pointed out I’m a good Christian woman who doesn’t believe in gambling and the like – but I
dare bet you a week of my wages that girl has been in and out of that orphanage to different folks and been sent back a dozen times. Well, I’ll tell you summat, Frank. She’d better mind
her P’s and Q’s with me, else I’ll be sending her back an’ all.’

Maddie hadn’t meant to overhear the quarrel. She had come into the wash-house by the back door and was removing her boots when she heard the raised voices from beyond the kitchen door. Now
she stood immobile, not knowing what to do. She certainly didn’t want to go into the kitchen and if she went outside again, they might hear the door open and close this time and know that she
had been eavesdropping.

‘I never liked the idea of having a girl here, anyway. It’s not right with two young lads in the household. Who knows what might happen. I can’t keep me eye on the little madam
all day.’

Maddie frowned. Why, then, if she didn’t want her here, had Mrs Trowbridge been the one to come to the Home to pick her?

‘I just thought a girl would be more use to you, Harriet,’ Frank was saying, ‘in the Dairy and helping with the housework. You seemed quite keen on the idea when I first
suggested it and it was you proposed approaching the Orphanage, if I remember. I thought you wanted to give some poor lass a proper home.’

‘Huh! That wasn’t me reason.’

‘Then what was?’

‘Oh I – er – well . . .’ For a moment, even to Maddie listening beyond the door, the woman seemed flustered. ‘I thought she’d be less trouble if there are no
parents to come banging on the door making sure we’re not working her too many hours or making her do work that’s too heavy for a girl.’

Maddie heard Frank’s gasp. ‘I’d never do that anyway, Harriet. You know that.’

‘Mebbe so,’ the woman said tartly as if she did not agree. ‘But we’ll have no trouble from Mrs Potter, I can tell you that. Pleased to be rid of the little baggage, she
was.’

‘I don’t know what you’ve got against the little lass. She’s a bit slow with the milking, I’ll grant you, but she’s careful and gentle with the
cows.’

‘She’s a wilful little tyke. Mebbe you don’t see it, Mr Frank, but I tell you she’ll likely bring trouble on this house ’afore she’s done.’ She paused
and then added ominously, ‘There’s bad blood in her veins, you mark my words.’

‘I’m sure Maddie is quite safe in my household.’ There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘my’, but Harriet did not agree.

‘Well, I can vouch for my Nicholas, but I can’t say the same about your lad. He’s a one for the girls if the village gossip is to be believed. And if she leads him on . .
.’

‘He’s just a normal seventeen-year-old.’

‘Are you implying that my son isn’t?’

Frank’s voice was heavy now, tired of the argument. ‘No, no, of course I’m not. He’s only fifteen. Plenty of time for him to . . .’

‘I wouldn’t mind him meeting a nice girl. Of course I wouldn’t.’ Her tone implied the opposite. ‘But he’ll not be mixing with the village girls, I can tell
you that. Oh no. If I let him even think of getting married some day, she’d have to be from a decent family. A girl who knows just who her parents are.’

‘I think you might find, Harriet, that you have no say in the matter.’

‘Oho, won’t I, indeed?’

‘The Victorian age has gone, my dear. And young men not much older than our sons have just been through another dreadful war. Do you really think they are going to allow their parents to
dictate to them how they should run their lives? We haven’t made a very good job of this century so far, now have we? We’re not even halfway through it and yet we have allowed the
flower of our youth to be decimated by two disastrous World Wars. No, Harriet, we owe it to those that are left to allow them to forge their own future out of the ruins we have left them. I
don’t envy them their task.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Frank,’ Harriet said impatiently. ‘You talk as if the War were our fault.’

‘Well, wasn’t it?’

‘Of course it wasn’t. It was the Government’s. Besides, what did you expect them to do? Let that Hitler walk all over us?’

‘It was our generation’s fault, Harriet. That’s what I meant.’

‘Oh, you’re getting too deep for me and changing the subject. We were talking about that little madam and the trouble she could cause living here. I still don’t know why you
wanted a girl here in the first place. But, that said, she’s not worth spending a lot on. She might not be here long.’

The argument had come full circle and when there was no reply from Frank now, Maddie was terrified that the door would open and she would be discovered.

Suddenly, she had an idea.

She crept forward and opened the back door. Then she slammed it as if she had just come in. Then, humming the tune of her favourite hymn, ‘Rock of Ages’, she stamped her feet on the
mat and clomped across the floor towards the coat pegs. She heard the kitchen door open behind her and plastered a smile on her face in readiness.

The smile became genuine when she saw who it was.

‘We’ve finished the milking, Mr Frank. I reckon I’m getting the hang of it now.’ She giggled at her own pun. ‘Michael’s gone on the milk round and Nick and
Ben are taking the cows back to the meadow.’

‘Good lass,’ the man said kindly though Maddie, knowing what had just taken place, could still see the anger in his eyes even though he was trying to hide it behind a smile.
‘Come and get your breakfast and then I’ll show you what I want you to do in the Dairy. It’s time you started learning that side of things now.’

Divested of her outdoor clothing, Maddie stepped into the kitchen to see the housekeeper standing at the stove vigorously stirring a pan of porridge, her back rigid with righteous
indignation.

Maddie had never witnessed a row like that before. Not between two adults, who, though employer and housekeeper, seemed to be on almost an equal footing. She had seen the staff at the orphanage
in trouble with Mrs Potter, but they, like the children in her charge, had been obliged to just stand there and take it. She had even, once or twice, heard the younger members of staff threatened
with the dreaded cupboard under the stairs, the ‘prison’ as the children called it, where Matron locked them in the spider-ridden dark for the slightest wrong-doing.

But Harriet Trowbridge, it seemed, did not have to stand there and take it, not even from her employer, and whilst the quarrel had ceased now, Maddie knew instinctively that the animosity
between the farmer and his housekeeper was far from over.

And she was the cause of it.

‘I’ve got another little present for you, young ’un.’

‘For me?’ Maddie’s blue eyes widened in genuine surprise and delight.

‘Er – yes.’ Michael seemed doubtful now and strangely unwilling to hand over the small package. ‘I hope you won’t take this the wrong way?’

‘Why should I?’

‘Well . . .’ He paused and she saw that he was glancing at her hair. Self-consciously, she touched it.

‘I thought . . .’ he went on haltingly. ‘I mean, you don’t seem to have any proper shampoo. You use soap to wash your hair, don’t you?’

Maddie nodded.

‘Well, see – proper shampoo would make your hair shine. You’ve got pretty hair. At least . . .’ He faltered again and his voice fell away.

Maddie smiled at him warmly. ‘Thanks,’ she said, reaching out for the brown paper package. ‘I’ll try it on Friday night when I’m allowed to use the
bathroom.’

He grinned back. ‘And you’re not offended?’

‘’Course not.’

The first time Maddie used the shampoo, she used far too much and lather spilled out over the washbasin and onto the linoleum. But after she had rinsed and rinsed the soapiness
away her hair squeaked with cleanliness.

As she stood up and towelled her hair vigorously, she jumped as Harriet spoke from the opening on to the landing. ‘You’re running far too much water, girl. And just look at that mess
on the floor.’