Longbourn (2 page)

Sarah huffed a sigh, and plucked at the seam under her arm; she had already sweated through her dress, which she hated. It was a poplin described by Mrs. Hill as
Eau de Nil
, though Sarah always thought of it as
Eau de Bile
; the unpleasant colour itself did not matter, since there was no one to see her in it, but the cut really did. It had been made for Mary, and was meant for pastry-soft arms, for needlework, for the pianoforte. It did not allow for the flex and shift of proper muscle, and Sarah only wore it now because her other dress, a mousy linsey-woolsey, had been sponged and dabbed and was patchy wet, and hanging on the line to air the piggy stink out of it.

“Dump them shifts in next,” she said. “You stir for a bit, and I’ll scrub.”

Save your poor little hands, Sarah thought, though her own were already raw. She stepped back from the copper to the duckboards by the sinks, stood aside to let Polly pass. Then she scooped a neck-cloth out from the starch with the laundry tongs, and watched its jellied drip back into the bowl.

Polly, thumping the stick around in the copper, plucked at her lower lip with blunt fingernails. She was still sore-eyed and smarting from the telling-off she had had from Mrs. Hill, about the state of the yard. In the morning she had the fires to do, and then the water to take up, and then the Sunday dinner was under way; and then they had ate, and then it had got dark, and who can go shovelling up hog-doings by starlight? And hadn’t she had the pans to scour then anyway? Her fingertips were worn quite away with all the sand. And, come to think of it, wasn’t the fault in the person who had let the sty’s gate-latch get slack, so that a good snouty nudge was all it took to open it? Shouldn’t they be blaming not poor put-upon Polly for Sarah’s fall and wasted
work—she glanced around and dropped her voice so that the old man would not actually hear her—but Mr. Hill himself, who was in charge of the hogs’ upkeep? Shouldn’t
he
be obliged to clean up after them? What use was the old tatterdemalion anyway? Where was he when he was needed? They could really do with another pair of hands, weren’t they always saying so?

Sarah nodded along, and made sympathetic noises, though she had stopped listening quite some time ago.

By the time the hall clock had hitched itself round to the strike of four, Mr. and Mrs. Hill were serving a washday cold collation—the remnants of the Sunday roast—to the family in the dining room, and the two housemaids were in the paddock, hanging out the washing, the damp cloth steaming in the cool afternoon. One of Sarah’s chilblains had cracked with the work, and was weeping; she raised it to her mouth and sucked the blood away, so that it would not stain the linen. For a moment she stood absorbed in the various sensations of hot tongue on cold skin, stinging chilblain, salt blood, warm lips; so she was not really looking, and she could have been mistaken, but she thought she saw movement on the lane that ran across the hillside opposite; the lane that linked the old high drovers’ road to London with the village of Longbourn and, beyond that, the new Meryton turnpike.

“Look, Polly—d’you see?”

Polly took a peg out from between her teeth, pinned up the shirt she was holding to the line, then turned and looked.

The lane ran between two ancient hedges; the flocks and herds came that way on their long journey from the north. You’d hear the beasts before you saw them, a low burr of sound from cows still in the distance, the geese a bad-tempered honking, the yearlings calling for mothers left behind. And when they passed the house, it was like snow, transforming; and there were men from the deep country with their strange voices, who were gone before you knew they were really there.

“I don’t see no one, Sarah.”

“No, but, look—”

The only movement now was of the birds, hopping along through the hedgerow, picking at berries. Polly turned away, scuffed her toe in
the dry ground, turfing up a stone; Sarah stood and stared a moment longer. The hedge was thick with old tea-coloured beech leaves, the holly looked almost black in the low sun, and the bones of the hazel were bare in stretches where it had been most recently laid.

“Nothing.”

“But there was someone.”

“Well, there isn’t now.”

Polly picked up the stone and lobbed it, as if to prove a point. It fell far short of the lane, but seemed somehow to decide the matter.

“Oh well.”

One peg in her hand, a second between her teeth, Sarah pinned out another shift, still gazing off in that direction; maybe it had been a trick of the light, of the rising steam in low autumn sun, maybe Polly was right, after all—then she stopped, shielded her eyes—and there it was again, further down the lane now, passing behind a stretch of bare laid hedge. There
he
was. Because it was a man, she was sure of it: a glimpse of grey and black, a long loping gait; a man used to distances. She fumbled the peg out of her mouth, gestured, hand flapping.

“There, Polly, do you see now? Scotchman, it’s got to be.”

Polly tutted, rolled her eyes, but turned again to stare.

And he was gone, behind a stretch of knotted blackthorn. But there was something else now; Sarah could almost hear it: a flicker of sound, as though he—the scotchman that he must be, with his tallystick scotched with his accounts, and a knapsack full of silliness and gewgaws—was whistling to himself. It was faint, and it was strange; it seemed to come from half a world away.

“D’you hear that, Pol?” Sarah held up a reddened hand for quiet.

Polly swung round and glared at her. “Don’t call me Pol, you know I don’t like it.”

“Shhh!”

Polly stamped. “It’s only ’cos of Miss Mary that I have to be called Polly even at all.”

“Please, Polly!”

“It’s only ’cos she’s the Miss and I imnt, that she got to be called Mary, and I had to be changed to Polly, even though my christened name is Mary too.”

Sarah clicked her tongue and waved for her to shush, still peering
out towards the lane. Polly’s outbursts were all too familiar, but this was new: a man who walked the roads with a pack on his back and a tune on his lips. When the ladies were done with his wares, he’d come down to the kitchen to sell off his cheaper bits and pieces. Oh, if only she had something nicer to wear! There was no point wishing for her linsey-woolsey, since it was just as ugly as her
Eau de Bile
. But: chapbooks and ballads, or ribbons and buttons, and tin-plated bracelets that would stain your arm green in a fortnight—oh, what happiness a scotchman represented, in this out-of-the-way, quiet, entirely changeless place!

The lane disappeared behind the house, and there could be no further sight or sound of anyone passing by, so she finished pegging out the shift, snapped out the next and pegged it too, clumsy with haste.

“Come on, Polly, pull your weight there, would you?”

But Polly flounced away across the paddock, to lean on the wall and talk to the horses that grazed at liberty in the next field. Sarah saw her rummaging in her apron pocket and handing over windfalls; she stroked their noses for a while, while Sarah continued with their work. Then Polly hitched herself up onto the wall and sat there, kicking her heels, head bowed, squinting in the low sun. Half the time, Sarah thought, it is like she has fairies whispering in her ear.

And out of tenderness for Polly—for a washday is a fatiguing thing indeed, while you are still growing, and while you are not yet yourself quite reconciled to your labours—Sarah finished off the work alone, and let Polly wander off unreprimanded, to go about whatever business she might have, of dropping twigs into the stream, or collecting beechnuts.

When Sarah carried the last empty linen basket up from the paddock, it was getting dark, and the yard had still not been cleaned. She slopped it down with grey laundry-water from the tubs, and let the lye-soap do its work on the flagstones.

Mrs. Hill was burdened with a washday temper; she had been alone at the mercy of the bells all day: the Bennets made few concessions to her lack of assistance while the housemaids were occupied with the linen.

When Sarah came through from clearing the scullery, hands smarting, back aching, arms stiff with overwork, Mrs. Hill was laying the
table for the servants’ dinner. She slapped a plate of cold souse down and glared at Sarah, as if to say,
Abandon me, and this is what you can expect. You only have yourself to blame
. The pickled brawn was greyish pink, jellied, a convenience when cooking was not to be contemplated; Sarah regarded it with loathing.

Mr. Hill sidled in. Beyond him, in the yard, Sarah caught a glimpse of one of the labourers from the next farm along, who tucked in his neckerchief and raised a hand in farewell. Mr. Hill just nodded to him, and shut the door. He wiped his hands on his trousers, tongue exploring a troubling tooth. He sat down. The souse wobbled on the table as Mrs. Hill cut the bread.

Sarah slipped into the pantry, where she gathered up the mustard pot and the stone jar of pickled walnuts, and the black butter and the horseradish, and brought this armful of condiments back to the kitchen table with her, setting them down beside the salt and butter. The feeling was returning to her hands now and her chilblains were a torment; she rubbed at them, the flank of one hand chafing against the other. Mrs. Hill frowned at her and shook her head. Sarah sat on her hands, which was some relief: Mrs. Hill was right, scratching would only make them worse, but it was an agony not to scratch.

Polly ambled in from the yard with a cloud of fresh air, rosy cheeks and an innocent look, as though she had been working as hard as anybody could be reasonably expected to work: she sat at the table and picked up her knife and spoon, and then put them down again when Mr. Hill dipped his grizzled face towards his linked fists. Sarah and Mrs. Hill joined their hands together too, and muttered along with him as he said Grace. When he was done there was a clattering and scrabbling of cutlery. The souse shivered under Mrs. Hill’s knife.

“Is he upstairs then, missus?” Sarah asked.

Mrs. Hill did not even look up. “Hm?”

“The scotchman. Is he still upstairs with the ladies? I thought he’d be done up there by now.”

Mrs. Hill frowned impatiently, slapped a lump of the jelly onto her husband’s plate, another onto Sarah’s. “What?”

“She thinks she saw a scotchman,” Polly said.

“I
did
see a scotchman.”

“You didn’t. You just wish you did.”

Mr. Hill looked up from his plate; pale eyes flicked from one girl
to the other. Silenced, Sarah poked at the pickled brawn; Polly, feeling this to be a victory, shovelled hers up into a grin. Mr. Hill returned his baleful gaze to his plate.

“There’s no one called at the house at all,” Mrs. Hill said. “Not since Mrs. Long this morning.”

“I thought I saw a man. I thought I saw him coming down the lane.”

“Must have been one of the farmhands.”

Mr. Hill scraped the jelly up to his mouth, his jaw swinging back and forth like a cow’s, to make best use of his few teeth. Sarah tried not to notice him; it was a trick to be performed at every meal time: the not-noticing of Mr. Hill. No, she wanted to say; it was not one of the farmhands, it could not have been. She had
seen
him.
And
she had heard him, whistling that faint, uncatchable tune. The idea that it could have been one of those rawboned lumpen boys, or one of the shambling old men you’d come upon sitting on stiles, gumming their pipes—she was just not having it.

But she knew better than to protest, in the face of Mr. Hill’s silence, Mrs. Hill’s brittle temper, and Polly’s general contrariness. Mrs. Hill, though, seeing her disappointment, softened; she reached over and tucked a loose strand of Sarah’s hair back inside her cap.

“Eat your dinner up, love.”

Sarah’s smile was small and quickly gone. She cut off a piece of souse, smeared it with mustard, and then horseradish, then blobbed it with black butter, spiked a slice of pickled walnut, and placed the lot cautiously between her lips. She chewed. The stuff was hammy, jellied, with melting bits of brain and stringy shreds of cheeks and scraps of unexpected crunch. She swallowed, and took a swift gulp of her small beer. The one good thing about today was that it would soon be over.

After dinner, she and Polly and Mrs. Hill sat, silent with fatigue, and passed the pot of goose-grease between them. Sarah dug out a whitish lump and softened it between her fingertips. She eased the grease into her raw hands, then flexed and curled her fingers. Though still sore, the skin was made supple again, and did not split.

Mr. Hill, out of kindness to the women, washed up the dinner things ineffectually in the scullery; they could hear the slapping water, the scraping and clattering. Mrs. Hill winced for the china.

Later, Mr. B. would ring the library bell for a slice of cake to go with his Madeira wine, making Mr. Hill start bad-temperedly awake and
shamble off to give it to him. An hour or so after that, Mrs. Hill would fetch away his crumby plate and smeared glass, and Sarah would gather the ladies’ supper things from the parlour and carry them down on a chinking tray, and that would be that. On washday, the supper dishes could wait for tomorrow’s water. On a washday, too, Sarah did not have the attention necessary to read whatever book she had borrowed last from Mr. B. Instead she had a lend of his old
Courier
, and read out loud, for Mrs. Hill’s benefit, the news from three days ago, soft with folding and refolding, the ink smudging on her goose-greased hands. She read softly—so as not to disturb the sleeping child or the drowsy old man—the account of new hopes for a swift victory in Spain, and how Buonaparte had now been put on the back foot, and would soon be on the hop, the notion of which made her think of the war as a dance, and generals joining hands and spinning. And then there was a noise.

Sarah let the paper hang from her hand. “Did you hear that?”

“Eh?” asked Mrs. Hill, blinking up from the edge of sleep. “What?”

“I don’t know, a noise outside. Something.”