The Moth, page 11
‘Well, if that’s the case, there’s nothing can be done about it.’ Mary Taggart too got up from the table. ‘It’s a closed chapter, except for her. She’s got to live in that house and bring up the child there. God help them both, that’s what I say. And she was young and gullible. Poor lass.’
Looking at Mrs Taggart, Robert said, ‘You’re not blaming me for not taking her on, are you, Mary?’
‘Oh, no, no, lad, no. I wasn’t meaning that. Only you can’t help feeling sorry for the lass, bringing a bastard into the world. They’re not very welcome you know, bastards. And having to live with a man like that as its grandfather. Whether it’s male or female it’ll be reminded of its state from the day it leaves the breast I should imagine.’
A few minutes later they parted for the night, and as Robert went to his room he couldn’t help but still think that there was a slight note of condemnation of him in Mrs Taggart’s attitude. She was a woman, and of course looking at it from a woman’s point of view, she might be thinking that he could have stood by Carrie.
But no, he could never have stood by Carrie. Nor could he have stood by Nancy Parkin or Polly Hinton in a similar predicament. He could never see himself getting tied to someone he didn’t really care for, like loving. Yet he knew that he might never experience love, because to him this must be a feeling which would, in a way, obliterate himself. His feelings had so far not centred round whom he wanted, and whether or not he could put up with her every day. Could he look forward to working for her for the rest of his life? Would he want to die if he lost her? No. As yet he had never felt anything like that, and he doubted if he ever would. But what did it matter? What he needed now was a job, because the bit of money he had saved wouldn’t last forever, in fact it wouldn’t take him further than the next three weeks.
This thought was with him as he got into bed. It was still with him as he lay wide awake at two o’clock in the morning. He did not go to sleep until he had made up his mind that on the morrow he would go to Foreshaw Park.
PART THREE
SERVICE
One
The drive was long and winding, becoming more unkempt the nearer it approached the house. He had come in by way of the North Lodge. There was no lodgekeeper, and it looked as if the lodge had not been occupied for years.
The gates had been closed but not locked. This had surprised him, until he had tried to lift the latch and found it firmly embedded in the slot. The young lass would have had a job to lift it on her own so that was likely why they hadn’t bothered to lock it.
It was evident that this was the way used by the household, for there were deep wheel tracks, and also the imprints of horses’ hoofs all over it.
When the drive turned abruptly and divided into two he was confronted by a large stable yard to the left and the house to the right.
He thought the house big but unimpressive: he had seen much finer places round about. He walked steadily into the stable yard where he stood looking about him for a moment. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, nor yet the sound of any animal. Didn’t they keep dogs?
When a cat strolled over to him and rubbed itself against his trouser leg, he put his hand down and stroked it, saying quietly, ‘Hallo, miss. Anybody about?’
As if in answer, a young woman appeared from an alleyway. She was plump of body and face and her starched cap sat crookedly on her black untidy hair. It was she who spoke first. Advancing towards him, she said, ‘Yes, an’ are you after somethin’?’
‘I . . . I’ve come after the job. I understand there is a vacancy.’
‘Oh aye, aye.’ Her words seemed laughter-filled: her face too expressed laughter and he noted that her body shook slightly as she talked, as the body is apt to do when hearing a joke. ‘Oh’ – she went on – ‘it’ll be me Uncle Dave you’re wantin’, an’ then the master. Come away in.’
He followed her across the yard then through a door and into a small boot room that led into a kitchen, telling himself that it was a good start anyway. And the girl was cheerful, and that made up for her being as plain as a pikestaff. In fact, in a way, he could say she was an ugly young woman, God help her. He laughed inwardly, for his thought sounded almost as Irish as she did. Her voice was raised now, saying, ‘Here’s a fellow after the job. Where’s Uncle Dave?’
Peggy Waters took her hands out of a bowl of flour, clapped them twice together before drying them on a piece of coarse towelling that lay on the table, then looking at Robert, she said, ‘You’ve come after the job?’
‘Yes, missis.’ He had thought it best to add the missis, she seemed to be the cook.
‘Come and sit yourself down.’ She pointed to the wooden settle that was set at right angles to the fireplace. ‘And you, Betty’ – she turned to the girl who was at the sink washing pans but whose attention had become diverted from her work – ‘go on outside and tell Mr Bloom he’s wanted for a minute. And you Maggie, go and see Ruthie, she’ll be in the dining room. Tell her to go upstairs and see if her father is finished with the master, not to go into the room though, but to just wait. And when he comes out, tell him he’s wanted down here; there’s a man come after the job.’
Left alone now with this elderly woman, Robert looked at her. She didn’t look his idea of a cook, he imagined cooks having a nature corresponding to their well-fed physical condition. But this woman had a sad expression. Perhaps he had come on a bad day for her: everybody had their good days and bad days.
She made no conversation, so he sat looking around the kitchen. It was long and high and definitely a working room. The upper part of one wall was taken up entirely with racks stacked with crockery, the bottom part acting as a sideboard with cupboards below. There was an iron oven at each side of the fire grate, and a scrubbed table took up the centre of the room. The floor was made up of large slabs of stone. The only signs of comfort were a rocking chair and an old horsehair chair placed at the opposite side of the fireplace from the settle. There were a dozen or more copper pans hanging on nails above the mantelpiece. Some were burnished, but those nearer the ceiling hadn’t apparently been used for some time for they were dull and dust covered.
When both the door by which he had entered and the green-baized one at the far end of the kitchen opened simultaneously he looked first one way and then the other. The girl who had been addressed as Betty came running into the room, saying, ‘I told Mr Bloom; he says he’ll he here directly.’
Through the other door there had come the Irish girl and a woman much older than her, a settled woman in her late thirties, and she too, he told himself, wasn’t much to look at. But she had a kindly expression.
The one called Maggie and the one called Ruthie now stood at the end of the table and looked at him while Ruthie said, ‘I told Dad. He’ll be here in a minute, but he said he’d let the master know first.’
‘What’s your name?’ It was the woman he thought of as the cook who had turned to him and asked the question, and he said, ‘Robert Bradley, missis.’
‘Bradley?’ she repeated, screwing up her eyes. ‘You from these parts?’
‘Well, no. I only came here last year. I . . . I used to work in the carpenter’s shop in the hamlet.’
‘Which hamlet?’
‘The one near Lamesley.’
‘Then you’re John Bradley’s nephew, I take it?’
‘Yes, that’s who I am, missis.’
‘Oh.’
The woman now turned and glanced at the other two standing at the end of the table. She took no notice of the young girl who was back at the sink but who had her head turned towards him.
When the woman looked at him again, her voice was stiff as she said, ‘You’re not there any longer I understand?’
‘You understand right, missis.’ His voice was as stiff as hers now. ‘I’m at present staying at The Bull.’ He had risen to his feet.
‘’Tis true that he tried to murder you, your uncle?’
‘Be quiet, Maggie.’ The woman turned on her.
‘Well I was only saying, Aunty. Things get about. You can’t keep anythin’ like that quiet, can you? Can you now, I mean?’
She had addressed Robert and he, in answering her, said, ‘No, no, you can’t. You’re right there. Especially in a gossipy little village.’
‘Oh, I don’t know so much. They can do their share in the towns: clackety-clack, and . . . ’
‘Maggie! I’ve told you. Now get about your business.’
As Maggie turned to get about her business, Dave Waters entered the kitchen and it was evident that he recognised Robert immediately for, standing in front of him, he stared at him for some minutes before saying, ‘You? And you’ve come after the job?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Do you know what it entails?’
‘I’ve been given a good idea.’
‘Hearsay?’
‘Yes, that’s all I’ve had to go on.’
‘Well, you’ll have to see the master. It’s up to him.’ But the tone implied to Robert that if it had been left to this man he’d be out of the gates quicker than he came in; and as he went on listening to him explaining what the job entailed, he thought, he’s doing his best already. Apparently he would have to do gardening, help with the horses, muck out, do hedging, do drystone-walling, besides carrying out whatever jobs were necessary in the house.
Robert stopped him at this point, saying, ‘If you’re intending to frighten me off, mister, you’re wasting your time. I could take all that in me stride. Except the garden, but I’m quick at picking things up. And would you like to tell me now what wage I’m to get for my Herculean tasks?’ He had the pleasure of noting that the man was slightly taken aback by his use of the word Herculean, and also that it didn’t do anything to help his case, for the man now snapped, ‘The wage is ten shillings a week, your food and your lodgings. That’s if you suit and that’s got to be seen.’
He almost laughed in the man’s face. Ten shillings a week! For years now on good weeks he had picked up two pounds or more, and here he was being offered ten shillings. He had heard they paid poorly, but this was an insult. He was twenty-five years old, it was nineteen hundred and thirteen, not a century earlier. He was about to say, to hell with you and your job, and then to stalk out, when once again the green-baized door opened and there came into the room a young woman. She was dressed in grey. Her dress was made of some kind of soft material and trimmed with white on the collar and cuffs. Her hair was a dark chestnut, dressed in rolls on the back of her head. Her eyes were large and seemed to pick up the colour of the dress. She was slightly above middle height. Her step had been quick when she entered the room but now it slowed as she neared the table, and her glance ranged between him and the old fellow standing opposite him. Then she too came to a stop at the end of the table next to where the one called Ruthie was still standing, and she stared at him and her head came slightly forward and her lashes blinked a number of times and the expression on her face told him she was trying to recall something. And then she was prompted by the man who said, ‘This fellow’s after the job, Miss Agnes. He’s . . . he’s the one you may remember who trespassed that night.’
Agnes’ lips fell apart. She stopped blinking and, her eyes wide, she continued to stare at the man. Yes, yes, she remembered. She recalled his face as she’d seen it that night, ablaze with temper. She also recalled that Millie had talked of him for days afterwards. And here he was, wanting to come into their employ. It wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do. But only that morning she had said to her father, ‘We must have more help; we just can’t go on like this. And Hubbard will be the next one to go if he doesn’t have more assistance. There’s too much expected of them.’
The man was looking at her, right at her, boldly. He wasn’t like any of the others who had come and gone within the last year. She found herself addressing him. ‘My father will see you; he’s in the study,’ she said. ‘Dave will show you the way.’
After Dave had reluctantly, it would seem, preceded the visitor up the kitchen and out through the door, Peggy Waters put her hands back into the flour and as she began rubbing it between her fingers she said, ‘He’s not the type that’ll last long here. Bit of an upstart, I would say. Trying to ape his betters in the way he talks. And look at his clothes. You know who he is?’
‘Yes. He’s the man that Millie was talking to that night she went down to the water.’
‘Oh, besides that. He’s old John Bradley’s nephew. You wouldn’t know, but old Bradley is a carpenter down in the hamlet just a little way from Lamesley. And if the tales are true, there’s been near murder done just lately down there. He’s got a daughter, and she’s got her belly full, and apparently he was named, that one.’ She inclined her head towards the far door. ‘But he denied it and the father knifed him. You can see the scar running from his eye up into his hair. Did you notice it?’
‘No. Is he still living there?’
‘No, from what he says he’s staying at The Bull, and to my mind he’s not the type you should have here.’
‘Well, his morals won’t have anything to do with us, it’s a worker we want.’
‘Oh.’ Peggy Waters again dusted the flour from her hands and, casting her eyes back towards the sink where Betty Trollop was now busily scrubbing the pans, she said, ‘One never knows, you can’t be sure of anything with men like that.’ Her voice was now merely a whisper and she added, ‘And then, if I remember rightly, Miss Millie took to him an’ all, didn’t she? Yapped on about him all the time. Anyway, if the master knows what he’s been up to in the hamlet there won’t be much chance for him.’
It was on this that Agnes turned away. The man’s morals shouldn’t affect her father very much, as his own certainly couldn’t bear scrutiny. But she would rather know that he was indulging in immorality in Newcastle than sitting drinking himself blind as he was doing most nights now . . .
Robert stood in front of the desk behind which sat Reginald Thorman, and as he listened to the man talking he felt inclined to burst out laughing. If he were being interviewed for the post of High Commissioner somewhere or other abroad he couldn’t have been interrogated more. Yet another part of him wasn’t laughing at all. The man was a phoney and he’d seen enough of the result of heavy drinking to know that this gentleman was a soaker. He gave himself away in his voice as there was a permanent tremor in it.
‘Have you any uniform?’
Had he any uniform! ‘No, sir. I have never been in service before.’
‘Oh, well, then you’ll have a lot to learn. We live a different life you know, we people in the country, to those in the town. What did you say? Oh yes, yes. You did carpentry. Well, well, there’s plenty of odd jobs around here that need a carpenter. You could see to them in your spare time. You say you haven’t any uniform?’
Robert did not answer, but stood looking down on the man who, if he had been thinking clearly, would have recognised the disdain in the look.
It was true, Robert thought, what that fellow had said in Newcastle. He had met up with him in a bookshop. He was a pitman, and they were both looking at the same shelf and got to talking. Afterwards they’d had a drink together and talked books. The fellow had said that education had nothing to do with intelligence and that half the so-called educated were numskulls. The man said he was a hewer in Boldon Colliery pit, and he remembered he had been amazed to hear this for the fellow had been real learned and had read God knows what books he himself had never heard of. His name was Lawson, Jack Lawson. They had promised to meet again sometime, but as yet nothing had come of it. By! That fellow would have left this one flat with his knowledge.
How was it that men like this happened to get big houses and rule other people? Here he was, servants to wait on him, not many by the look of things, but still expecting to be adhered to, playing Lord of the Manor to the very end. Aye, to the very end, because there was always somebody to come along and give the likes of him a helping hand, to see he didn’t sink below his class.
‘Waters has explained things to you, has he?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘I said, yes.’
‘You’ve forgotten something, man.’
God, why was he standing here taking this? The other one hadn’t stayed long so he’d heard, but he himself would be gone afore he started. Yet he heard himself saying, ‘Sir.’
‘That’s better. As I said, we live a different life in the country. People know their place. I suppose it was different in a shipyard. Well now, you will start as from tomorrow and we will see how you shape. Give you a trial, eh, say a month. That’s all.’
Robert turned away without a word, but when he was about to open the door he saw that the man was standing behind the desk now, the colour of his face an almost scarlet hue, and looking as if he was on the point of making a protest. Hoping that he was, Robert paused for a second, but his new master resumed his seat.
He went out and down the passageway towards the hall. Within the archway he stopped and looked about him and the breath he drew in sprang his top waistcoat button. He felt it going and he picked it off the thread and put it in his pocket.
He was about to walk on when there came a cry from the stairway to the left of him, and, looking up, he saw the girl; in fact he saw the two of them, the sister also, and the sister was restraining the girl, holding her by the arms. But the girl called to him in a high excited voice: ‘Hello. Oh, I’m glad you’ve come back.’
