All this while, one of the cows was shoving her great behind up onto me until she near enough had me pinned against the wall. I had to juke out the way to save myself from being squashed. Your woman came back towards me holding a bucket.
“What a grand lot of cows you have, missus,” I says to her. She said nothing to that just handed me the bucket. I looked at it. Then I looked at the cows. Then I looked at your woman.
“What is your name?” she says.
“My name is Bessy,” I told her. “Bessy Buckley.”
“Well then, Bessy, here you are,” she says and she give me a stool and pointed to one of the cows, the one had been squashing me. “Go ahead.”
To my great relief she did not stay to watch, but went back to talk to the Curdle Twins who had sat themselves down and begun their own work. You could hear the milk firing into their pails like billy-o. I watched them, thinking to myself well gob that looks easy enough and so after a moment I settled on my own stool.
But could I get a drop of milk to appear? Could I flip. I sat there for what felt like an age with a bucket in one hand and a great pink tittie in the other. It wasn’t my own tittie, it was the cows and it was that full it was touching the floor. I swear I squeezed till the fingers was dropping off me and the only thing that emerged from the cow came steaming out its hole and would near enough have ruined my good frock if I hadn’t skipped out the way. At the end of about 20 minutes, the bucket was still empty.
Your woman came back this time with the Curdle Twins in her wake. She took one look in the bucket and says to me, “Now then, Bessy, I thought you said you could milk a cow?”
“I lied,” I says, wishing I had never stopped to help with her flipping pig. The Curdle Twins was exchanging glances, very superior in the background, shock almighty, oh she said she could milk a cow but she can’t oh she’s a liar did you ever hear the like, and all this. My face felt hot. I shot up from the stool. It was my intention to say “I’d better be off,” and then stride out with my head in the air but I must have got up too quick, and instead I said, “Oh flip,” and keeled over in a dead faint. I would have fell in the cowpat if missus hadn’t leapt forward and caught me.
How long I was out I haven’t a notion but when I came to I had been carried out the byre. I was sat on a stool with my head between my legs and your woman had her hand in the back of my frock, she was loosing my corset. I had a good view down my bodice, there was a load of breadcrumbs in the cleft of my bosom, I had to fold my arms to stop them falling out.
“Keep still now,” your woman says, but kindly. “You fainted. And no wonder with your stays laced so tight.”
After a while she let me sit up and brought me a tin cup of milk that she got from a bucket. She stood with her hands on her hips watching me. I was full of shame, I sipped at the milk just to please her and as soon as my head cleared I got to my feet. “I best be going,” I says. “Sorry, missus.”
She just nodded her head and waved her hand, I was dismissed.
I left the farmyard and went down the lane to the back of the big house. My bundle lay where I’d dropped it, near the hen run. I was about to pick it up when I seen your woman returning. A thought struck me and I called out to her. “Missus, which way is the castle?”
“Castle?” she says. “What castle?”
“Only the sign down the road there said there was a castle up this way and I wanted to have a look at it.”
Ah,“ she says and shook her head. ”There is no castle. Castle Haivers is the name of the estate.“
“Oh well,” I says and leaned down to pick up my bundle. “Not to worry.”
“WAIT!” goes your woman, of a sudden.
Oh sugar, I thought, she’s seen the bread in my bosom and I’m in for it. I straightened up. She was staring at me, her head cocked to one side. “You didn’t tell me you could read,” she says.
“Well you never asked,” I says.
“I just assumed. I thought—because—”
She did not say because why but I knew anyway it was me being only an Irish girl, everyone thought the same. Her eyes was gleaming now. “But can you write?”
“Indeed I can,” I says. “I write very good.”
“In English?”
I looked at her. “What else?”
“Oh?” she says. “And who taught you?”
I thought a second then I says, “My mother, God rest her soul,” and I blessed myself.
Your woman tilted back a bit offended, I suppose it would have been the sign of the cross bothered her, even the English don’t like it.
“Wait here,” she says, and hared away over to the big house.
I stood there looking about me. What next I was asking myself, perhaps she wants me to read something for her or write a letter. After a while she came back with a blotter in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Here you are,” she says. “Now show me your writing.” She was not going to take me at my word not after the incident with the cow, who could blame her.
I took the pen, it was already dipped in ink. There was a stone base to the pump, I leaned the blotter on it and quickly wrote a few words I think they was
thank you for the bread missus sorry about the duplicity
or something like that. I remember I put
duplicity
because it was a word I had learned off my Mr. Levy. I might not be able to milk a cow but I could spell and I was proud of it.
Your woman was watching over my shoulder. I would have wrote more but the ink run out. When I finished I handed her back the pen and blotter. “Well, well,” she says, and laughs very gay. And how old are you, Bessy?“
“18 missus.” Which did not really count as a lie because I was always lying about my age. In any case there was some doubt about when I’d been born, my mother had not a very good memory for dates.
“18?” Your womans eyebrows shot up. Then she says, “Well, no matter. I can pay you 4 shillings a week and you will have bed and all food provided. Would you like to work for me?”
“Oh dear,” I says. “Oh no. I’m going to look for work in Edinburgh, missus.”
She laughed. “But you don’t have to go to Edinburgh now,” she says. You can stay here and I will look after you and give you 4 and 6 a week.“
“But—I can’t really milk a cow, missus.”
“You have other skills,” she says. “5 shillings then, and I will look after you and give you a patch of garden to grow what you will.”
I tellt her she could forget about the patch of garden, the only thing I was interested in growing was rich. Of course there was little chance of that. 5 shillings was a pittance even in them days but I knew my prospects would be the same anywhere else and at least here I was out of the world, all there was in these parts was clodhoppers cows and a few coal pits. And there was something else made her words appealing.
I will look after you.
I glanced over at the farmhouse. “Do you have any books in there, missus? I mean story books.”
“Oh yes,” she says. “Quite a number.”
“I have a fondness for reading,” I says. “If I could have permission to read the books on occasion—”
“Hmm.” She sighed and walked about a bit and then at length seemed to come to some sort of
very reluctant
decision. “Very well,” she says. “Access to books. And 5 shillings a week.”
“Done,” I says, and I can honestly say I thought it a bargain.
She took me into the kitchen then and without making any comment about the smell of burning or the mess she kicked some of the oats about the place so you could no longer read the word they spelt. Then she sat me at the table to explain the full extent of my duties. Well, if you had wrote it down, the list would have been as long as your arm but it all seemed straight forward enough, there was nothing strange or startling in what she said. Most of the livestock was kept over on the farm and was looked after by farm servants but your woman said she liked to keep a few hens and a pig at the main house, more or less as pets, and I was to feed them. I was to keep the house clean and tidy, wash cook scrub sweep dust shake the mats and make tea. Every day, light all the fires and clean the range and keep it lit. Clean the boots empty the thunder mugs for her and the master. In addition, if they were short-handed, I might have to cart manure and pick stones out a field, then I might have to help put these same stones in holes in another field which, she said, was to make a drain. I’d have to help look after the vegetable garden and if I had any time left over I could always fill it by darning and mending. Generally, I had to do any chore you cared to mention since I was to be what they called the in and out girl, 1/2 the time I would be in and then the other 1/2 out. There were farm servants that lived on the farm and in bothies on the other side of the wood but I was the only domestic servant. The one thing she did not mention was the milking. I asked her about that.
“Oh,” she says. “Don’t worry about that for now. Jessie and Muriel will see to the cows. You would only have to help them out it in case of an emergency”
That tickled me. Now what would be the emergency, I wondered. I got a picture in my head of everyone running around in a panic falling over each other to get the cows milked. Wash the pots, Bessy! Make a drain! I can’t missus I have to milk the cows it’s an emergency!
Your woman was looking at me. “Don’t tell me you are a day-dreamer,” she says.
“Oh no, missus.”
“But perhaps you are lazy? Or bad-tempered?”
I shook my head. “No indeed.”
She says, “Are you, let me see—dishonest?”
She had me there, because of the cows. But I wasn’t going to admit to it. “No missus I am not,” I says. “Not in the usual course of things.”
Your woman didn’t look convinced. “Now then, Bessy” she says. “Tell the truth and shame the Devil.”
My mother was forever telling me I wouldn’t know the truth if it flew up my skirt and said “How do you do.”
I says, “Honest to Gob, missus, I’m not a liar.” And would have spat to swear my word except we was inside, so I just did three small pretend spits over my shoulder. Your woman looked appalled, I don’t know why she was bothered, the place was a shambles.
“Bessy” she says, “I don’t know what you have been taught, but don’t
ever
do that in this house again.”
“Sorry, missus. But missus I only said that about the cows because I wanted you to think well of me.”
She sighed and then says very patient, “Bessy dear, what did you call the lady where you last worked?”
“Nothing at all,” I says.
She looked at me.
“The reason being there was no missus, it was just my Mr. Levy. He was an old bachelor gentleman and it was just me and one boy looked after him, missus.”
“Oh,” she says and frowned a moment. “But I’m sure you called Mr. Levy Master or Sir, did you not?”
“Well yes, I suppose I did.” I says that because it was what she wanted to hear. “Master, that’s what he liked to be called. Master this and Master that.”
“Bessy,” she says now very solemn. “I would like you to call me
marm
.”
“Certainly I will. Whatever you like, marm.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “That’s better,” she says. She took a deep breath. “Now Bessy,” she says. “There is one other task that I want you to do for me.” And the way she made her eyes bulge out when she said it I knew it was the most important thing.
She crossed over to a tallboy and took an accompt book out the cupboard. Jesus Murphy, I thought, she wants me to do the accompts, she’s got the wrong girl there for I might be able to write but I have never had a head for figures. But I was wrong.
“This book is yours,” she says and pressed it into my hands. “Now Bessy, listen carefully. I will see to it that you are taught everything you need to know about the work about the house. But in return, every night, I want you to take the time to write down what you have done in this book, from the moment you get up until the moment you go to bed, leaving nothing out.”
I just looked at her. “But what for missus?” I says, a bit nonplussed. “Marm.”
She didn’t even blink. “Because it is what I wish,” she says. “And be aware, it is the main condition of your employment. Don’t think I would take you on if you couldn’t write. It would not be worth my while to train you otherwise since it’s clear you know nothing of this kind of work.”
Ever since I had scribbled those few words on the blotter she had seemed very excited. Even now there was a kind of a gleam in her eye and she was breathing heavy. I shivered, for the light was going and it was getting cold.
She says, “I will take a look at what you have written from time to time. And when you have filled this book I will provide you with another. Is that understood?”
“Yes, miss—I mean marm.”
I stared at the book, it had a brown cover made of board and a lot of pages inside with lines on them where you could add up the totals of your purchases. I don’t know how many pages perhaps a hundred in all. I could never imagine writing enough to fill it not in a million years. She handed me the pen I had used outside and then she says, “You will need ink, just a moment,” and hurried out the room, the hem of her skirt trailing oats into the passage.
While she was gone, I glanced at the grate wondering did she ever in gobs name light the fire. It was then I seen the reason for the charred smell in the air. I don’t know why but it made me shiver again. For laying among the ashes was an accompt book the exact same as the one I had been given. The only difference being that the book in the grate was burnt so bad that only the binding and a few pieces of its scorched cover remained. I took a candle and peered down at the hearth to have a better look. Up close I could see that all the pages had been ripped out and was now just wispy ashes in the grate. The cover was damp, as though someone had poured water on it to douse the flames. I flipped it open. Inside there was an inscription in a childs hand, the words was 1/2 scorched but you could still read “belongs to Morag Sutherland‘ and a date in July but no year was given. Who was this child Morag, I wondered and why was her book burnt? I was about to lift it out the grate when I heard your woman coming back down the passage, so I stood up.