“No, that will do, Bessy,” he says. “You may get on with your own work. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He narrowed his eyes and gave me a canny look.
“I suspect that there is a young man behind all these melancholy sighs and faces,” he says. “But remember, Bessy, these things are never as bad as they seem. I guarantee you that you will wake up one morning and think to yourself—how foolish I have been.”
“Indeed sir,” I says. “You seem to know me better than I know myself.”
And I left the room quickly, biting my tongue in case I said anything worse.
Earlier, I had closed the kitchen door behind me but now it lay open and despite myself I felt my heart soar. I slowed my pace and sauntered into the room, glancing from side to side in a relaxed and natural fashion, ready to sham surprise at seeing missus there. Perhaps I might persuade her into conversation. She might even sit with me while I made the dinner. I could write something quick in my little book to show her. But the kitchen was empty. Instead, awaiting me on the table was a note. Although it bore no signature, the handwriting was unmistakable.
Dear Bessy, Dinner for two to be served in dining room at six o’clock please. Soup, then mutton (follow Actons recipe
—
DO NOT make it up). Serve with potatoes. No dessert. Please lay up plates in kitchen and bring them upstairs. Once plates are on table, leave room and do not return until rung for. Thank you. Please excuse note but I have headache and must lie down.
So this was what we were reduced to, communicating in writing (I did not believe her about the flipping headache). I crumpled up the note and threw it into the swill bucket in a temper and must add that my mood was not improved by later having to fish it out because I had forgot at what o’clock she wanted the dinner to be served.
That evening, as requested, I took them their meal in the dining room. This was to be the first time I had ever waited on missus and her husband together and it should at least have been an occasion for curiosity. But the novelty of the arrangement was lost on me, as throughout proceedings I felt as drear and brown and lumpish as the gravy on their meat (I
had
followed the recipe but unfortunately it had not turned out quite as expected). Master James nodded at me as I set down his plates but for her part the missus did not look at me once, indeed she seemed at pains to avoid my eye. Any time I was in the room she strained to keep the conversation going with her husband, firing questions at him one after the other as you might bat at a ball to keep it in the air and it seemed to me that this was mainly in order to prevent me from making any remarks of my own (as if I would!).
Nobody rang for me again that night and I went to bed at 10 o’clock, weary and dispirited. The following day I awoke better rested and with a sliver of hope in my breast but this was dashed when missus told me that she and her husband were going out for the day and when later, upon their return, she claimed to be too tired for a punctuation lesson. She was all smiles and politeness and calling you “dear‘ but I knew fine well she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
All that week it felt to me like the two of us sashayed around each other, the rules of the dance was never to be in the same place at the same time, for if ever I waltzed into a room it would only be a matter of moments before missus went reeling out of it.
The masters presence in our midst also gave life at Castle Haivers a new character. His routine did not vary much. Off he’d go to meet his foreman in the morning and that would be the last you seen of him and his louse ladders until late afternoon. About 4 o’clock, if he’d got hold of a newspaper from Glasgow or Edinburgh I had to read him the notices, after which he would attend to his paperwork.
He was a busy man right enough for as well as the estate to run and his business interests in Glasgow, it seemed that master James had political ambitions which is one reason why he had been in London. Mr. Weir-Paterson, the local Member of Parliament, was known to be not only of advanced age but in poor health and fond of a glass of port to boot. And although it was never spoke aloud, it was commonly thought that his constituency might become available at any time. James Reid had his eye on that seat, his step was quick, his buttocks limber, given
1/2
a chance and the indulgence of the public his arse would be in it before you could say “Gout‘. Even though Weir-Paterson was not yet dead, master James electioneering had already begun in earnest, with good works and society. His good work was a plan to install a public fountain in Snatter, fed from a new source (since the water supply thereabouts was of notorious poor quality). As for society he was always out to dine with this one and that one in the neighbourhood, only them that had the vote, of course. Sometimes missus went with him on these visits and sometimes he took his friend McGregor-Robertson. If the master dined at home, missus ate with him but if he went out and left her behind she avoided me by keeping to her room.
I don’t know much about politics. But I do know one thing.
No I don’t. I knew one thing a minute ago but now I forget what it was. I’ll tell you this instead. I watched them. When the two of them were together and when it were possible I watched them close as a dipper studies his mark. The ways of married ladies and gentlemen were not familiar to me. I watched them, and it seemed to me that there was something amiss between this pair, the missus and her husband, and not just the fact that they did not share a bed. For one thing, his treatment of her was puzzling. Mostly, he was gracious to a fault with her but in a manner that was over-polite and assiduous (now there’s a word for you!), as you might be with a person you just met or an invalid rather than with your young wife. At other times, however, his patience seemed to snap for no good reason. He became brusque with her, interrupting or ignoring her, or contradicting what she said. As for missus, no matter how he acted, she was pleasant to him and dutiful and all the things a wife is meant to be. Except, of course, for one minor detail.
She was lying through her teeth to him the whole time.
I had already guessed that her husband was unaware she was writing a book. It did not take long to work out that he didn’t know about what she got up to with the servants either. Proof of this was that— from the moment he arrived at the farm—the experiments ceased altogether. No more strange moods, no outlandish requests, no more sit, stand, sit. It was as though none of it had ever happened. I realised that when she had went on about me being discreet, there was one person in particular she wanted me to be discreet with—and that was her husband. Well I had a good mind to tell him all about what she got up to when he wasn’t there, so I did. Make her laugh on the other side of her mouth.
But it was not long before I was to discover another, more entertaining, way to take my revenge.
9
An
Important Dinner
Two things happened at about this time. Master James decided to give an Important Dinner. And a little later, I thought of how I would get my own back on missus. Let’s have dinner first. On the day the invitations went out the master and missus were that excited Jesus Murphy it were a shame only a handful of guests was invited because with all their nervous agitation the pair of them was lit up like a couple of candelabras and could have illuminated a ballroom. In comparison, my own mood was shabby, my spirits low, my hostility for missus at a peak. The Reverend Pollock was to be among the guests (I need not tell you the jig of joy I danced at
that
news) as was McGregor-Robertson, the doctor. Mr. Davy Flemyng was also invited. He was only a tenant of master James, but a cut above the rest by virtue of his growing repute as a poet. (It was with him that they’d dined on the night of the masters return.) The other guests were strangers to me, according to missus they were “people of influence‘. There was Mr. Mungo Rankin who owned adjacent farmland but was now turning his fields over to coal pits. He was to be accompanied by his lady wife. And most important of those invited was Mr. Duncan Pollock,
Member of Parliament,
no less. This bucko was the Reverend Pollocks younger brother and apparently ”a leading light of the Liberals’.
It was really for him that the dinner was being held, the rest of them could have drowned in the mulligatawny for all master James cared. It was only Duncan Pollock
Member of Parliament
that he wanted to impress since the fellow had much sway over the local party and would be able (if so inclined) to support master James when he went up for the elections. Not only that but every so often Duncan Pollock held a
Soiree
in Edinburgh, which old Lord Pummystone himself was said to have attended! Lord save us all!
Of course, these distinguished guests would have to be waited upon. My one previous attempt at silver service had not been a great success, I will not go into too much detail but gravy was involved as was the masters neck and despite my
genuine
best efforts the two became accidentally conjoined in a way that is not usually acceptable in polite society. Ever since then I had plated up the food in the kitchen. But now there was to be a dinner, missus put me in training with the silver and drilled me until I could have served a single pea off a platter to the Pope himself. It seemed that I was not to be alone in my endeavours on the great night, for Hector and one of the Curdle Twins were to be recruited to assist at table and behind the scenes. In the absence of a cook, missus took charge of the menu and supervised the preparations.
By the time that the day of the dinner arrived the lady of the house had reached a peak of luminescence. If beforehand she had been a candelabra she was now a blazing chandelier. From midday onwards, the kitchen was a Frenzy of activity lit up by her majesty presiding and me a mere wick smouldering low and resentful beside her. For once it seemed that no expense was spared. We made soup and pies, we roasted pheasants and a forequarter of lamb, we boiled beef and carrots.
At some point Hector arrived, with dead chickens he had to pluck, which he did in due course, having paused only to carry out a horrified examination of the birds private parts. Once the plucking was finished I believe he would have happily slipped away but missus gave him more work, he had to polish the silver and wash the potatoes, chore upon chore she gave him and in all the confusion it is a wonder that he didn’t end up washing the silver and polishing the potatoes. Normally I felt little kinship with Hector but that day I warmed to him somewhat for whenever the missus made some new pronouncement he would wait until her back was turned and then he’d stroke his chin like a wise man while puffing, straight-faced, on an imaginary pipe and this mockery did afford me some private amusement.
Muriel, or Curdle Features the 2nd as I called her, presented herself in the late afternoon once milking was done. Her task was to keep the kitchen clean and later to assist me in serving at table. She was all prinked up, her cap was off and she had put ribbons in her hair but you might as well have stuck primroses in a cowpat. While missus was in view, she was keen to appear a hard worker. She bustled round the kitchen pretending to be out of breath and swiping at things with a cloth. But if ever missus left the room it was not long before C. Features ceased to bustle. She was that lazy I bet she lay down to fart. Not once did she open her beak to me apart from this time she came up behind me and put her mouth to my ear. I thought she might be going to whisper me a secret but all she says was, “Ma waist is
1/2
the size of yours,” and then she skipped away, giggling. This endeared her to me no end, apart from anything it wasn’t true.
I do believe that missus was suffering from a last-minute attack of nervosity, because she decided that only the mulligatawny was to be dished out at table. The remaining courses we was to lay up in the kitchen, to save accidents.
At 1/2 past 7 exactly Hector was stationed at the kitchen table, commanded never to desist from washing plates. C. Features and I had donned fresh aprons, ready to make our first entry to the dining room. We were unable, however, to decide who should carry the soup and who should serve it, both of us were inclined to serve, as it seemed the better job not least because the tureen was flipping scalding. Quite the old tug-of-war developed over the ladle and only the intervention of missus prevented it from being bent completely out of shape. She settled the argument in my favour and then returned to her guests. Moments later, Muriel and I followed and never did a more shambling and ill-tempered little procession enter a dining room.
For once there were candles in all the sconces and in holders on the table and the place was lit up and going like Argyle Street. Never once in my experience had the house seen so many people. Several polite conversations were going on all at once, missus at one end of the table next a fair-headed young man with eyeglasses that I took to be Mr. Flemyng. Mrs. Rankin (as the only other lady present I presumed it was she) was at the far end, to the right of master James and she had to be served first according to missus instructions so I prodded C. Features in that direction with the ladle and used it to steer her around the table. She would take only one baby step at a time for fear of spilling the soup and as a result we advanced at a desperate slow pace. I was not sorry, however, for this afforded me the opportunity to eavesdrop at leisure.
“Surely that can be of no interest?” I heard Mr. Flemyng murmur in reply to something that missus had asked him.
“On the contrary,” she says. “I would be fascinated to know.”
“Very well,” he says. “I do it in the evening. After the days work is done. And I stop when my hand is tired or when the candle burns out, whichever is first.”
Missus gave the appearance of hanging on his every word but I knew for certain that she’d caught a glimpse of us out the corner of her eye and was watching our progress (or lack of it) with some alarm. She made a wafting motion with her hand below the level of the table but she had not let slip a gastric
faux pas,
she just wanted us to hurry up. I poked Muriel harder with the ladle and missus applied herself once more to Mr. Flemyng.